Posted on 07/13/2005 7:06:55 AM PDT by John Jorsett
HILLARY CLINTON made headlines earlier this week when she compared President George W. Bush to Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, freckle-faced mascot whose signature statement is "What, me worry?" As political put-downs go, this hardly ranks as the most egregious, even in the modern era of politics. Fellow Democratic Senator Harry Reid called Bush both a liar and a loser earlier this year, and later only grudgingly offered to retract the latter. The American left, exemplified by MoveOn.org, has compared Bush to Adolf Hitler--unfavorably. Howard Dean has spent his entire term as Democratic party chairman issuing insults to and about Republicans, explicitly declaring that they have never done an honest day's work in their lives and that the GOP is entirely comprised of unfriendly white Christians. Even as an insult to Bush's physical looks, Sen. Clinton's comparison pales to the usual references to chimpanzees that the Left has beaten to death.
Still, the Mad magazine comparison is significant and revealing. I grew up reading Mad, with its iconoclastic attitude and broad-based satirical outlook. The magazine existed in part to challenge authority and to skewer the self-righteous. Year ago, "authority" meant the establishment, mostly conservative, and the magazine's barbs were aimed more at stodgy Republicans than free-wheeling liberals and Democrats. But Mad also regularly scored points against the excesses of the counterculture, too.
In the intervening 30 years, times have changed. Today, cultural orthodoxies mostly come from the liberal establishment, coached along by the powerful media and academic engines that drive our national culture. Any iconoclast worth his salt would take on these pillars of political correctness as well as the mind-numbing sloganeering of their stalwarts.
SENATOR CLINTON'S SPEECH provides its own Mad magazine moments. For instance, in the portion of her speech that made the Alfred E. Neuman comparison, she argued that Bush's tax cuts had damaged the economy. Checking with the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, however, you find only one quarter during Bush's presidency where the national GDP has registered a decline, and that was in the third quarter of 2001, which included 9/11. In the past two years, GDP growth has not dipped below an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in any one quarter. Five of the eight quarters had better than 4 percent growth. At the same time, prices have only increased by 3 percent in one of those quarters, meaning that real growth has taken place since Bush got his economic plan through Congress.
If that's damage, no wonder Alfred E. doesn't worry.
Hillary wasn't done giving us her mad moments in her Aspen Ideas Festival speech (and don't think Mad wouldn't have a field day with the concept of an Ideas Festival, either). Later in her remarks, she delivered this eye-popping economic analysis for the Colorado audience: "Ours will be the last generation to rely so exclusively on fossil fuels." She added that the "ups and downs of the global oil market cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion last year . . . almost enough to pay off our entire national debt."
Seven trillion dollars? That would surprise most economists, as well as Mad magazine readers who learned both to question authority and check sources, since the entire American GDP for 2004 amounted to $11.735 trillion according to the BEA; $1.5 trillion came from imports of goods. Energy goods (both domestic and imported) only accounted for $250 billion, making it extremely unlikely that price fluctuations in a single import commodity market could have generated anywhere near the kind of economic damage Senator Clinton cited.
And yet a sitting senator and presumptive candidate for the presidency makes these strange assertions without criticism from the establishment press. The only coverage her speech received resulted from her coarse and personal attack on President Bush, which the media seemed eager to pass to its readers. Obviously, our national media's editors did not read Mad magazine well enough during their formative years to recognize patent demagoguery when they report it.
Perhaps Bush bears some passing physical resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman. However, the Democrats and the American left come closest to resembling the clueless targets of Mad's satirical darts of days gone by.
Edward Morrissey is a contributing writer to The Daily Standard and a contributor to the blog Captain's Quarters.
Big Bump!
"Smartest woman in the world" really isn't!
She's Mad. All for a soundbite. In that shrill voice of hers. She needs a voice coach.
And they all hate the big dubya. "A BIG DUBYA, YOU CAN'T MISS IT, A BIG DUBYA!"
She's not the Smartest Woman In The World, but she plays one on TV...
Everyone read...it's good.
AGAIN, and just what type of business does the Senator from New York have in COLORADO. She speaks in other states more than her own.......
Fast forward a few years: I came up with an idea for Hillary Clinton, but she was leaving office and would be less in the spotlight (Ha!) and less topical. I decided to save the idea for a few years, because I knew that she wasn't going away. I pulled the unfinished piece out a few weeks ago.
Now, I'll never be able to sell it to them because their staffers will be working overtime slamming Hillary. Still, I guess I should give it a shot.
TS
A lifelong Madophile, I cried when I came home on leave while in the Air Force and went to the attic to retrieve my comics and Mads! They were gone. Dad had tossed them and said that he thought that I was finished with that juvenile stuff! I had started antiquing and discovered what my "juvenile stuff" was worth. I had Mad issue # 1, Spidy # 1, Scrooge McDuck and many others including a series of Classics Illustrated including Tom Sawyer, War of the Worlds and Moby Dick!
Sniff!
GDP growth is quoted in after inflation amounts, so the absolute growth would be 6-7% annually, with 3% not really counting because it is just from inflation.
..."And yet a sitting senator and presumptive candidate for the presidency makes these strange assertions without criticism from the establishment press."...
That is because the "establishment press" is predominantly made up of left-wing "C" students" who have no real knowledge, despite their attempts to pass themselves off as intellectuals and thinkers. The MSM is devoid of thought and intellect, it is bankrupt of any ideas of objectivity. It exists now to oppose and undermine the republican party while acting as a de facto communication branch of the democrat party.
Hillary Clinton, anointed by the MSM, will never be questioned or held accountable by it. That is the danger facing the US in the national election of 2008. The possibility that Hillary Clinton could be elected President is as much a clear and present danger to us all as islamic terrorism.
Oil-up your PCs, Freepers. If the Left thinks that Free Republic and the rest of the web was a nuisance in 2004, they ain't seen nothing yet for 2008. WE will serve as the country's Hillary Truth Detector in 2007-2008. It really is up to us. And we can do it.
Bwah hah hah hah hah...
I learned a lot from Mad Magazine... They ran a piece on how to read between the lines... It taught me how to find loopholes in contracts, how to get much more information than is being said, and most importantly, how to avoid scams...
The smartest woman in the world can't find an internet search engine.
LOL!
("Nah, I just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night...")
I guess Hillary's quip was a dig into the ole "ALFRED E NEUMAN FOR PRESIDENT" campaign (in humor) of so long ago. Well, duh! President Bush isn't running again. Can't run for President Again. She wasted her ammo, and made herself look foolish. Just shows how out of centrifugal force the Dem party has got to be, behind the scenes.
Ping to Yoe. Crosslink to: GOP blasts Clinton's 'Mad' jab at Bush
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