Bozzio,
I am NOT a Beck head. He rather strikes me as a bit of a goofball. But I have a very hard time taking people who focus on his defects, instead of Obama’s, seriously.
I note a distinct recent record of acomplishment and outreach from Beck’s agitation vs. a long (almost a year now) record of failure, mockery, alarmism, and repetitive, snobby sounding, carping from most of his seemingly ineffectual critics who think they need to protect me from his mesmerism.
I hate to say this but a Beck is better than a Christopher Buckley in my book right now. He’s gone out and earned some real interest. When will the rest of the pile of stunned Republican pundits be able to say the same?
And when will we stop worrying about the smoke and mirrors of mainstream media approval? That carrot will never get any closer no matter how fast we walk. It’s a shell game. It’s a hustle. When a reporter or columnist mentiones that someone they wish to smear sort of looks like a child molester in the hopes of shutting them up or ruining them, and this observation takes hold and becomes widely repeated, the aboslute WORST thing the target can do is scratch his chin and wonder if it is his haircut, or shirt, or tie, or shoes that provoked the comment. It simply does not gain the Republican party or the conservative movement anything to compulsively buy into, and respond in good faith to, every false premise, ugly implication, or tangential association with distasteful imagery that springs from the malice of a hyperpartisan media with a clear political agenda.
The media are NOT executing a fair system of negative reinforcement on you commensurate with your actual guilt or virtue. They are cynically and intentionally trying to bury you and define you and beat you down. You will never be able to make yourself immune to such efforts or collaborate your way to a position of equality or safety. All sympathy is temporary. To them you are either a problem to be actively dealt with or a neutralized sucker. Mccain just learned that the hard way last fall. At least, one HOPES he did.
