Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s contempt and ignorant sneering is something that should give Americans at least quick pause.
It’s easy to just scapegoat a group, and mix in a few wildly exaggerated and in most cases idiotic stereotypes that appeal to our deepest and most base emotions. It’s the exact opposite of leadership. It’s cowardly, it’s insecure, it’s mean spirited. It’s ignorant.
At CPAC today, Tim Pawlenty went off an a really nasty rant about how liberals all sneer at conservatives for not having gone to Ivy League colleges and for not liking “brie and chablis.”
As this country moves further and further to the right, and– as we continue to have the opposite of our best and brightest, but the most gifted spinmeisters, seek to inform and lead our debate — misleading rhetoric continues to replace fact and understanding, America is beginning to slowly change. We are starting to enter the age of ignorance.
With all this information and misinformation abounding, in journals, magazines, books, universities, Internet sites galore, few can tell anymore what is spin and what is fact; with that which appeals to the lowest common denominator often rising to the top. Like a shipwrecked crew in an ocean locked lifeboat, water all around yet dying from dehydration, our democracy — with information all around as misinformation continues to lead our national debates, is itself being threatened. From the inside.
For the record, Chablis is pretty lame. But we’re not liberals, so maybe we just don’t know — like 12 year school yard kid Pawlenty clearly does. But this 12 year old prejudiced, ignorant, snob is a Governor of a state.
Maybe some Liberals can come off as a little elitist at times. Some, not understanding conservatives, sometimes do show disdain. It’s not helpful, and the disdain, with far more effective framing and messaging, is often shown right back.
But it’s idiotic, to bring brie and chablis into it. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a friggin’ cheese, and a crappy wine. It’s the fallback for the weak, the lazy, the unthinking mind. Exactly what Pawlenty seems to be insecure about being accused of, or, more likely, is trying to capitalize on, exploit, appeal to, foment, in others.
Incidentally, Pawlenty graduated from one of the best law schools in the country. He (theoretically) should know better. As should those putting up with this kind of lame reverse elitist snobbish contempt from the anti Chablis one time junior varsity Hockey Player.
One who, by the way, is considering a presidential run in 2008. No, not president of the local crass and lame divide and conquer stereotyping club; president of the United States.
A potential presidential candidate who — in addition to railing against any personal preferences for the easy targets of brie and chablis, picked an odd time to use a violence against Government metaphor:
Conservatives could learn a lot from Tiger Woods’ wife Elin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said at the Conservative Political Action Conference today.
“She said, I’ve had enough,” Pawlenty said. “We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government.”
One day after one Andrew Joseph Stack, using an airplane as a missile, did just that.
Pawlenty, in this same CPAC speech, also rails against Liberals trying to take away freedoms, and how conservatives will “fight back.”
It’s not clear which freedoms he is talking about, since neither group has a full monopoly on taking away freedoms, but it seems conservatives have the clear if not lopsided edge here.
Yet clearly Pawlenty is not talking about the most basic freedoms of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, because once we “suspect you” of something, you have no more rights. Which defeats the ENTIRE purpose of having rights, in the first place. But that’s okay, just rail about protecting freedoms and at the same time rail against those laws and constitutional provisions that actually protect them, while blaming, of course, “Liberals” for everything once again. Classic rhetoric. The new fuel for America.