Dear Greg:
As you know, I’m working hard to be a good loser, telling anyone who will listen that Barack Obama will soon be our president, and we must support him. I’m trying to be a lot nicer than your side was to George W. Bush.
You, however, continue your diatribes about kindly corporate giants like ExxonMobil, which supports thousands of little old retired ladies with its profits, and your incessant trash talk about scrappy Sarah Palin.
So anyway, I took some time to find out how some prominent members of your party responded to the challenge of being gracious back in 2000 and 2004, and I learned plenty. You might want to check out the book “Makers and Takers,” by Peter Schweizer, which I’m pretty sure will make that vein in your neck stick out. All this stuff is in the introduction to the book.
For instance, Garrison Keillor wrote in August 2004 that Republicans are “swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brown shirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, aggressive dorks …”
Wow, Greg – misanthropic frat boys. That’s not very helpful. I guess we better not include Garrison Keillor in the “good loser” category, should we? More reasoned was David Early, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, who, according to a story by J. Peder Zane titled “Is Dubya Really That Dumb?” (!) simply “wondered how anyone he liked or admired could be a Republican.”
Do you ever wonder about that, old pal?
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut was succinct, saying in 2003 that Republicans like me are “crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies.”
A popular liberal bumper sticker said, “Republicans are people too. Mean, selfish, greedy people.” Ouch, Greg! That really hurts. If you cut me, do I not bleed?
You’ll like this, old pal. Liberal cartoonist Ted Rall speculated that people in Red States are dumb because “the best and the brightest gravitate to places where liberalism rules.”
After the 2004 election, Rall summed it up when he wrote this in a column headlined “Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters”:
“So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn’t those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music, and know more about what’s going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We’re adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don’t demand our respect.”
We’re learning a lot about being a good loser now, aren’t we, Greg? I’m sure you’ll find someone to tell us Peter Schweizer is crazy as a bedbug, and ugly, too. But these are direct quotes, and they speak volumes about how the left handled losing when it was their turn.
Your sweatshop tycoon pal,
Red State Dave [email protected]
Dear Dave:
I agree with you on one point, at least. I think the best thing you can say about Ted Rall’s columns is that as a columnist, he’s a very good cartoonist. His columns, not so much, and I think he ought to leave “editorial satire” to those who know how to do it right.
People like Garrison Keillor. You know, I’m reading what you quoted Garrison saying about Republicans, and I’m nodding my head and thinking, “You know, the old scout is bang-on right. Republicans are all those things, and more.” I especially like the part about “shrieking midgets of AM radio.” That one made me LOL, as the kids would say. Golly, that Garrison uses words like a plumber uses a wrench. You never want to get in a name-calling contest
with him, or he’ll whack you over the noggin with an adjective, jangle your knee bones with an adverb and bust your knuckles with a sack full of similes.
So yeah, Garrison was playing hardball, but you have to remember that liberals had a lot to be angry about in those days. There was that whole suspicion that George W. (Shrub) Bush had stolen the election to get his first term, and relied on people like the morally bankrupt idiots behind that despicable Swift Boat campaign to tarnish John Kerry’s service to get his second. So lots of Democrats were torqued off with Republicans in general back then, and (as Shrub’s disastrous terms in office have shown) they had good reason to be nervous.
I also suspect that even though Garrison was tarring with a pretty broad brush in the quote you mention, he knew then, and knows today, that some Republicans can be kindly, concerned, patriotic, generous, cordial, gracious, witty and erudite. I think you fall into that category, and I want you to know that when I finally go to that great press room in the sky, I’ve always hoped someone would remember me and say that I was “witty and erudite.”
I know you’re feeling a little piqued and tetchy lately on account of your Republican pals, and your new BFF Sarah Palin, getting the dog slobber knocked out of them in the last election, and you’re worried that if you Republicans don’t come up with some real ideas soon, you’ll be hanging on the ropes shouting, “No mas!” like Roberto Duran after getting schooled by Sugar Ray Leonard.
So I’m ready to cut you a little slack. I won’t, for example, remind you of what you said to me after Shrub won his first or second terms. That would not be the behavior of a graciouswinner. Let me just tell our readers that it was more “Neener! Neener! Neener!” than “Ebony and Ivory,” and leave it at that.
Let’s start from scratch. You forgive Democrats for being sore losers in 2000 and 2004, and we’ll (try) to forgive Republicans (like yourself) for paying lip service to being “good losers,” when what they’d (you’d) really like to do is hit a bunch of mouthy, liberal Democrats on the brain pan with a lug wrench (which would be crazy as a bedbug, and very soreloserish, indeed).
Wow! I feel so much better now! How ’bout a hug?
Your touchy-feely pal,
Blue State Greg [email protected]