Hat tip to the Weekly Standard for catching retiring Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY5) insulting the American people. Or maybe just the people who kept voting him into office.
Congressman Ackerman, you’ve been here 30 years. Can you define comity as it existed when you arrived versus how it exists now?,” Bloomberg asks.
Ackerman responds: ” Your premise is that comity exists now. It may not be entirely accurate. It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It’s not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber. I don’t know that I would’ve said that out loud pre-my announcement that I was going to be leaving. [Laughter] But I think that’s true. I mean everything has changed. The media has changed. We now give broadcast licenses to philosophies instead of people. People get confused and think there is no difference between news and entertainment. People who project themselves as journalists on television don’t know the first thing about journalism. They are just there stirring up a hockey game.”
Retirement frees the New York Democrat to tell the people what he really thinks of us. But Ackerman really shouldn’t be so mean to NBC, which employs Andrea Mitchell, Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton and twice this year has tried to stir up a “hockey game” with blatant, deliberate and dishonest edits of the George Zimmerman 911 call and Mitt Romney’s WaWa remarks, while neglecting to devote more than 10 seconds to Fast and Furious over 18 months as the scandal has grown and reached the White House.
Liberals tend to have a much harder time not lashing out at the voters when the voters don’t agree with them. Which is why if Romney wins on Nov. 6, Barack Obana’s concession speech and the statements made by his supporters could be doozies, making the post-2004 election “Jesusland” griping by Kerry’s supporters look like a love-fest in comparison.
Tempted as I am to agre with the assertion (though we would no doubt argue about the details), I think instead it is better put somewhat differently.
The world is a far more complex place today, we are overworked coping with it, and only a specialist in this or that is really going to understand stuff, so we are all working at a further remove from things, like government, than we used to do. Any fool can sit on a horse, that will after all find its way home even if you fall asleep on its back. Only a few people can drive a race car at 220 mph around a track, and even they are going to crash spectacularly. But our world is full of fast machines these days.
Or, perhaps, it just is that people have gotten dumber.
He failed to take it to it’s natural conclusion. “People are dumber than when I took office and since I am a leader of the people I must have failed in my job.”
Let’s face there is a breakdown in education, the family, the monetary system ($worth pennies to what is was in ’71), work environment. So, Gary, you were in charge, why do you not take some responsibility?
This is why the Tea Party, etc.. must take back control. I do have hope.
The fact that we have allowed government to get so big might attest to this theory. I believe people are waking up to this fact. I’m tired of these politicians from both parties controlling everything in my life. It’s time to wake up and do our best. Study about these people before you give them your vote. Don’t act like a sheep be led to slaughter.
This asshat actually owns the newspapers in his district which he uses as a propanda machine for his pet liberal causes. How corrupt is that?
Also, he lives on a houseboat in DC named Unsinkable II, after Unsinkable I…um…sunk.
Good riddance.
Isn’t “Unsinkable II” some sort of oxymoron?
Well, based on the state of our public education system, he’s close to right. The people are much more ignorant than they were 30 years ago. (The difference between ignorance and stupidity is that one can be cured.)
Well, he *does* represent a Democratic district…
For the first time in memory I actually agree with a Democrat, although he unforgivably insults the great sport of hockey by somehow comparing it to TV “journalism”.