Posted on 09/05/2004 6:10:47 AM PDT by Happygal
AGE chews up the courage of youth and discharges it in dribbles of weakness. Playwright Frank McGuinness, formerly brave consensus outsider with Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985) has become timid consensus insider with his new adaptation of the Greek drama Hecuba.
McGuinness told the Daily Telegraph last Monday that he saw comparisons between Agamemnon's declaration, "We can go home now - the war is over", with George W Bush's "ludicrous"'Mission accomplished' speech - "when it clearly was not accomplished," rebellious Frank pointed out.
How fresh. How gutsy. But, really - how can he bear being so banal? Announcing that you're anti-Bush is as daring as admitting you like chocolate. People fall into anti-Bushism with the same ease they flop into the sofa.
Rather than challenging the consensus as good artists have traditionally done, too many have chosen the smooth option of feeding us the fast politics diet of anti-Bushism we've become addicted to. McGuinness's Hecuba is just a McHealthy option to Michael Moore's greasy Big Mac.
What a sad spectacle it is to witness a once courageous playwright belly-flop so gracelessly and lazily into the new dominant political orthodoxy. The Texan cowboy that launched a thousand pompous anti-war petitions from the literary world now seems to be the easiest (not to mention most lucrative) cure for writer's block.
When 'artists' meddle in politics they become vainglorious wafflers. The only cogent argument for evicting Bush from the White House in November is that it would put a stop to the obesity of bad art he has inspired over the last four years.
Such as Ronan Bennett's attempt to rehabilitate the 9/11 terrorists in The Hamburg Cell. Like his previous effort to rehabilitate Gerry Adams in Rebel Heart, not only is Bennett's new film awful politics, it's awful TV.
The only consolation is that the bad art has no effect on politics. A recent poll revealed that hardly any swing voters bothered to go and see Fahrenheit 9/11. Those who saw it were already rabid anti-Bushites and others were more likely to have been repelled than converted by Moore'stendentious methods.
Jon Margolis of the International Herald Tribune debunks the delusion that popular culture affects politics: "People go to the movies to be entertained, fully aware that they are seeing artifice, even if it's non-fiction artifice."
But Ireland still splashes merrily in the cove of anti-Bush cliches that have flooded in from the European media. Bush is stupid. Hee Hee. Bush is a WMD. Ho Ho.
Any fair-minded Irish person who managed to bypass the editorialised coverage of last week's Republican Convention from RTE, BBC and the ideologically confused dimbos in Sky News would have been struck by how buoyant, witty and feel-good a carnival it was. Not grisly and menacing as had been reported. It didn't drip expectation and desperation like July's pumped-up Democratic Convention.
I stayed up last Thursday night to catch Bush's address and for the first time this haughty European understood what the blancmange - sometimes crassly decorated - face of the "United States of Otherness" (David Aaronovitch's phrase) sees in George W Bush.
Admirably sticking to the neo-conservative agenda, Bush continued to speak radically of America as an active non-isolationist force of reform in the world and refused to make any concessions to his critics on Iraq. But above all, Bush showed himself to be a likeable guy - "some people seem to see in me a certain swagger, which in Texas, we call walking," he delivered with dry confidence.
Bush's energy and scamp's grin make John Kerry look like Mr One Flip-Flop in the Grave. The television images the morning after Kerry's Convention speech said it all. Kerry looked feeble, smiled limply and perspired profusely. Bush was pictured bounding onto a podium in a bomber jacket like a Labrador puppy.
LAST week, 'liberated' viewers would have caught the demure First Lady's speech and realised why 70 per cent of America has a favourable opinion of Laura Bush. They would have also noticed the street cred spunky charm of the 22-year-old Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna. More representative of America's young rebels without a cause than Kerry's snooty, cosmo-elite daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, couldever be.
There is an entrenched belief in Ireland that only civilised, sophisticated, decent Americans vote Democrat and only ignorant, hick, rednecks vote Republican. No doubt buttressed by delicate flowers like RTE's Carole Coleman who summed up Dick Cheney's brilliant political hardball speech last week as "vicious". Carole, you should get out more.
Europe, Democrats and Michael Howard's Tories have a snobby superiority complex towards Republicans that is foul. All are consumed with the fear of appearing common or vulgar. When they see Bush their faces wince the way Fine Gael's does when it hears Fianna Fail.
This supercilious mentality was typified by some of the anti-Bush placards in New York last weekend. One read: 'A Village in Texas has Lost its Idiot.' Another accused Republicans of being 'Aliens'. From a cosmopolitan, supposedly tolerant metropolis, these taunts bordered on racism.
And John Kerry is a discreet, upmarket brand of these ten-a-penny bargain basement sneerers. Smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous and patronising. But beneath the fondant pillow rhetoric, his party is far more exclusive and less inclusive than the Republican Party.
The 'compassion' associated with the Democrats is a high society affectation. John Kerry is still the father who'd panic if one of his daughters announced she was marrying a petrol pump attendant.
Far from having a Jekyll and Hyde personality as the European media suggested last week, the Republican party is tightly united in its diversity and is more pluralistic a party than the Democratic party. Take Condoleezza Rice, recently named most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.
Last week RTE and the BBC accused Republicans of 'hiding' the Christian Right from the convention stage while pushing forward moderates like McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger and Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter Mary to soften the party image. But Bush - like an Old Republican Father ship - loomed above, keeping a firm leash on his roving satellites.
How come the Democrats weren't charged with 'hiding' the loony left when Kerry tried to disassociate himself from them?
Bush has a common touch. Even top Demo chomp Ted Kennedy agrees with that: "President Bush is personable, he's engaging and he has very strong political skills."
Who cares if Bush went to Yale and was looked after by Daddy all the way? He still doesn't wear his class and wealth as conspicuously and hubristically as Kerry does.
The Right Nation, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, offers an insight into why ordinary Texans prefer Dubya to his father. One Texan felt that Bush Senior - unlike his son - was 'the sort of man who steps out of the shower to take a piss'. In that case, John Kerry is the sort of man who'd step out of the shower to sneeze.
Gwen Halley has some great digs at the Kerry Campaign, media bias in Europe, Kerry's effete elitism, and there's one smashing bitch slap at Carol Coleman - the Irish Washington reporter who rudely interviewed President Bush earlier this year.
O'ping-a-ling!
Read this one guys, I think you will enjoy it! :-)
Good question.
Because the Democrats ARE the looney left! How could they hids Kerry at the convention?
Make the "hide" Kerry!
Have a good LOL:
"The Right Nation, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, offers an insight into why ordinary Texans prefer Dubya to his father. One Texan felt that Bush Senior - unlike his son - was 'the sort of man who steps out of the shower to take a piss'. In that case, John Kerry is the sort of man who'd step out of the shower to sneeze."
A really complicated issue - varies from place to place in this large country - and further muddled by the egalitarian myth that still prevails here: as Kipling said years ago, the party line is that there are no gentry in America - only rich and poor allowed. But of course, there ARE gentry.
I think she does a pretty good job of getting to the heart of the difference between Kerry and Bush. Kerry is a hothouse plant from a very limited social circle (he is an aspirant to the old upper class of New England - a group to which he doesn't really belong. Purely an ambitious hanger-on who doesn't fit in.)
Boy, did I enjoy that one! Thanks for posting it.
From the Mark Steyn school of commentary ---
"vainglorious waffler" = snooty flip-flopper
There is an entrenched belief in Ireland that only civilised, sophisticated, decent Americans vote Democrat and only ignorant, hick, rednecks vote Republican.
Both kinds of Americans have their roots in Irish ancestors.
Yeah! I loved that last line too. Kinda sums the whole thing up, really! :-)
The 'compassion' associated with the Democrats is a high society affectation.
Smug, santimonious, self-righteous and patronizing--pretty much sums up the outlook of the Dems, the people who tell the rest of us, "We know so well what's good for you that we'll make sure you never have a chance to vote on it." That lady judge in Massachusetts who gave the USA gay marriage is a perfect example. And I believe she's married to one of the guys who made the NYTimes what it is today.
Your welcome.
I was reading the hard copy version of the Sunday Independent in bed this morning, and enjoyed that so much I got up to post it! *L*
I'm a brand-new Gwen Halley fan, thanks to you. Where did you dig this up?
"Bush's energy and scamp's grin make John Kerry look like Mr One Flip-Flop in the Grave."
"There is an entrenched belief in Ireland that only civilised, sophisticated, decent Americans vote Democrat and only ignorant, hick, rednecks vote Republican. No doubt buttressed by delicate flowers like RTE's Carole Coleman who summed up Dick Cheney's brilliant political hardball speech last week as "vicious". Carole, you should get out more."
I wonder if she has a website or we can talk Drudge into linking to her.
How come the Democrats weren't charged with 'hiding' the loony left when Kerry tried to disassociate himself from them?
As other posters have already noted this is the heart of the matter politically and the great weakness of the Democratic position.
I disagree with the writer on only two points
John Kerry is still the father who'd panic if one of his daughters announced she was marrying a petrol pump attendant
Hardly a reaction limited to Kerry or the Democrats
'A Village in Texas has Lost its Idiot.'
This is funny. Give credit where it's due.
I'm in Ireland, and I get the Sunday Independent every week. Gwen Halley is one of their columnists. I don't know if she's got her own website or blog.
I'm buying the bar a round!
And, in fact, for those who actually care about such things--and thankfully few Americans do--Bush's lineage is more impressive than Kerry's. He doesn't have to wear it on his sleeve.
Easy can do.
Yooooo-hoooooo!
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