Conservatives have lost the fine art of elegant put-down (RE: Savage)

STL Post-Dispatch | 07/13/2003 | Bill McClellan

[new cruelty]

Perhaps you have not read the apology issued by Michael Savage, a conservative talk-show host whose show, "The Savage Nation," was recently canceled by MSNBC. The apology appeared on his Web site.

"If my comments brought pain to anyone I certainly did not intend for this to happen and apologize for any such reaction. I especially appeal to my many listeners in the gay community to accept my apologies for any inadvertent insults which may have occurred."

And what were these inadvertent insults which may have occurred?

It turns out that a caller and Savage got into an on-air argument. The caller identified himself as a homosexual, and Savage said, "Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig!"

As far as insults go, that one does not seem very inadvertent to me, but then again, I'm a liberal. What do I know?

I'll tell you what I think I know. Public discourse has gotten increasingly coarse these past few years, and I blame the conservatives. I am not suggesting that the conservatives have a monopoly on coarseness. James Carville and Donna Brazille - two Democratic operatives - are as coarse and nasty as anybody on the right. It's just that I remember when the conservatives used to be, well, elegant.

That was the situation when I got my first newspaper job in 1975. I worked in Phoenix for a paper owned by Gene Pulliam, Dan Quayle's grandfather. The reporters were a seedy lot. The city editor drank heavily and wore green eye shades. If you wanted to have a serious discussion with him, you had to do so before noon. Politically, the newsroom leaned to the left, but not too hard.

The editorial writers were a cut above the reporters. They dressed better, and they were ever so much more articulate. They were all very conservative, and they all wanted to be William F. Buckley.

He was worth emulating. He was the master of the elegant put-down. When he insulted somebody, he did it with such class that even the insultee would have to admire the grace of the insult. He once wrote of Eleanor Roosevelt: "Following Mrs. Roosevelt in search of irrationality is like following a burning fuse in search of an explosion; one never has to wait very long." Or there was his comment about President Lyndon B. Johnson: "He is a man of his most recent word."

He said things like this with a total absence of rancor. It helped, too, I think, that he enunciated his words so very carefully, and he spoke so distinctively. He had an accent that marked him as a member of the ruling class. That accent, incidentally, was also imitated by our editorial writers, but with decidedly mixed results.

In contrast to Buckley, the leading intellectual lights on the left sounded self-righteous.

That hasn't changed, of course. Liberals still trend toward self-righteousness. What has changed is the quality of the argument from the right. Instead of elegant, it has become strident. Forget about absence of rancor. The new standard-bearers are furious and filled with vile. I think of G. Gordon Liddy advising his listeners to go for "head shots" when shooting at federal agents. They wear body armor, you know.

Of course, a lot of it is the nature of talk radio. It's entertainment. You've got to be outlandish. Name-calling works. Ridicule sells.

Admittedly, I'm no expert on this stuff. I can take only a few minutes of these bombastic national guys. Call somebody a "feminazi" and you lose me.

Then again, liberals just don't get it!

That qualifies as a put-down these days, and is about as articulate as it gets. It might not be up to Buckley's standards, but hey, it's a cut above the standards of Savage, who, of course, really hopes that his many listeners in the gay community accept his apologies for any inadvertent insults which may have occurred.

[jagrmeister]

True. Sometimes I wish we could elevate our country's political discourse. Every time we try though, we get the standard race-baiting and fear-mongering from the Left, replete with juvenille insults. And it works. So unfortunately the sometimes crass but usually effective blunt attack by conservatives is an unfortunate necessity.

[gcruse]

There is room for all of us under the Conservative umbrella.

I wouldn't say that.  The conservative tent lately looks
to be more of a sno-cone, too small to include the
president himself, if you have been reading the forum
the last few weeks.