In mid-February 2008,
Michelle Obama made a statement that, according to Republicans at the time,
revealed her as a hater of America.
Reflecting on her husband’s popularity as a candidate for President,
Michelle said that “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of
my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”
Her statement was mocked
far and wide over talk radio. No matter
what time of the day, you could listen to nationally syndicated voices blasting
her as an ungrateful, militant feminist – and on those shows, there is no
insult worse than “feminist.” Rush
Limbaugh, one of the pre-eminent voices of talk radio regularly uses the term
“feminazi” instead of feminist to further illustrate the point that feminists
are nothing short of a cancer on the nation.
I suspect he would use this term for any of the top women leaders of the
Democratic Party – Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten
Gillibrand. Whichever of these women are
actually seeking power at a given time are dehumanized on a regular basis
throughout the day on stations all over America. These are the programs through which Red
America gets its talking points. It has
been this way for nearly three decades.
By contrast, Blue America tried to create its own network, Air America, but
it failed in less than six years.
Ten years have passed
since Michelle Obama uttered those famous words about pride in her
country. She is pretty much out of the
news now; since she is not threatening Rush, Mark, Laura, Sean and the other
right-wing talking heads, nobody’s bothering to lash out at her. Lucky woman.
The last time she was really at the center of the nation’s attention was
when she delivered her speech at the Democratic National Convention in
2016. Michelle was reflecting on the
people – like our current President – who have questioned her husband’s
citizenship or faith, using hateful language and acting like a bully (for what
else do you call getting on the radio or television in front of an amen chorus
and dehumanizing the leaders of the opposing party constantly for nearly 30
years). And she was very clear about the
proper way to react to such bigmouths:
“When someone is cruel
or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go
high.”
There you have it – the
motto of the Democratic Party. So please
allow me to translate – the Republicans can engage in mixed martial arts,
throwing elbows, fists, knees, feet, you name it. And we’ll respond with dressage – calm,
composed, graceful, artistic. Somehow,
the good Lord has thrown us both into the same ring. Naturally, the Republicans keep on winning
battles (i.e., elections). But we, the
Democrats, feel like we’re winning the war.
Because in our minds, we’re the ones who can look ourselves in the
mirror the next morning, proud of our performance, whereas they – those cruel
bullies – they should be ashamed of themselves.
I assure you that
they’re not. In fact, right now, as we
speak, all over the country, Republicans are laughing at their opponents, the
way the Harlem Globetrotters must have laughed at the hapless Washington
Generals. They keep winning. They have the Presidency, the Senate, the
House, the State Houses, more and more courts, and now they are about to have
the Supreme Court for a long, long time.
So much for the value of dressage.
The two sports were
fully on display during the Kavanaugh hearings.
The Democrats brought calm, respectful Senators who asked questions and,
indeed, elicited a number of “little lies” about the Senator’s high school
yearbook and teenage alcohol habits.
“Well played,” as they probably say in dressage (you’ll forgive me but I’ve
never learned dressage jargon, so I’ll have to speculate about it). None of the Democrats lost his or her cool,
or even broke a sweat. Democrats rarely
break a sweat – they’re surely fearful that if they did, it would look bad. And
the one thing you can’t do in dressage is look bad – not you, not your
horse. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh came out
like Ronda Rousey in her prime. He was ready to throw punches, show off his
judo flips, and kick ass. And when he
was finished, Lindsay Graham was just warming up. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve
been in politics,” he hollered, “And if you really wanted to know the truth,
you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.”
Graham was
yelling. It’s the political equivalent
of the knee to the face, which badly gashes the opponent and turns a white or
brown face a red one. Republicans don’t
mind yelling. Our President does it on a
daily basis. Bernie Sanders tried to do
it on the Democratic side as well as Elizabeth Warren. But they don’t get very far. Bernie wasn’t even given a fair shake to win
his Party’s nomination. And Warren? She’s viewed as unelectable – too “shrill,”
too “negative.” That’s another way of
saying that there is no crying in baseball and no yelling in dressage.
As for mixed martial
arts, there are comparatively few constraints.
It’s kind of no holds barred – you basically do whatever you have to do
to win. Principles are for pussies. Uppercuts, armbars, and guillotines are for
champions. But there is one rule that
applies AFTER you’ve won. When you choke
someone unconscious, for example, you’re supposed to let go. You’re supposed to let the medics attend to
the loser right away. In Republican
politics, the analogue is that you’re supposed to behave in a bi-partisan,
statesmanlike way – after the choke hold has been successfully applied. So, for example, when it became clear that
Kavanaugh had the votes, he could go to the Wall Street Journal and write his
op-ed about how maybe, just maybe, his performance in the ring last Thursday
was a bit much. Of course, there is no
such thing as a bit much when you’re in the UFC and you’re fighting for the
Title (in this case, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court). You can make nice when the fight’s over, but
only when the fight’s over. Because if
you let your guard down earlier, you might just get kicked in the face. Even a Republican could have trouble
rebounding from that.
It’s kind of funny, I
guess, that the Republicans figured out a way to turn the would-be perpetrator
into the victim. Their passion has
galvanized their base. And the
Democrats? They have their base
wondering about how things could have been different. How Mitch McConnell could have said “Of
course, sir,” when President Obama asked if his own nominee, Merrick Garland,
would get a fair hearing. Garland was a
political moderate and AARP-eligible for 13 years, but still McConnell didn’t
feel like giving him a fair hearing.
Again, no rules. Elbows, knees,
feet, fists – all good. And how did
Obama and the Democrats respond? Rage? Are you kidding. There is no rage in dressage. Seriously, if you want to win gold at that
sport, you must exude class at all time.
You and your horse.
So President Obama took
McConnell’s news like the class act we knew him to be when we elected him. “No drama Obama,” we called him. Cool as the
other side of the pillow. No
problem. We don’t need our Supreme Court
Justice this year. We’ll wait until
after we win the election in 2016. In
fact, we won’t even bother to campaign in the states where the polls are close,
because our candidate is classy and your candidate is a lout, and Americans
would never elect a lout. What do you
think this is, mixed martial arts?
Ah, yeah. That’s exactly what it is. You see, MMA is a battle between people with
different specialties. You have boxers, wrestlers, judoka, and Muay Thai
specialists, and they somehow get together in the same ring and fight it out –
sometimes standing up, and sometimes on the mat, depending on whose skills are
most dominant. Similarly, the
Republicans are using the full panoply of MMA skills to ignore the environment,
cut taxes for the rich, and roll back reproductive rights and the Democrats are
using the full panoply of dressage skills to ... well, let’s just say to look
classy and feel good about themselves when they see themselves in the mirror
after their inevitable defeats.
It’s not a fair
fight. Then again, nobody thinks about
politics as being fundamentally fair.
Even the Democrats know that much.
Still, for reasons known only to the people at the last Democratic
Convention, they cheered when Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go
high.”
That’s insane. Because in MMA, when a wrestler goes low, and
the opponent goes high, he’ll swing and miss, get taken down, and then either
get pummeled via the ground-and-pound or get arm-barred and need to tap
out. And then his opponent can hug him
and behave in what we call in Washington a “bi-partisan” manner, until the next
fight. It’s a losing proposition. But apparently the Democrats would rather
stay classy than be effective. You would
forgive me for wondering if their heart was really in the competition.
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