Bob Somerby Explains All

NewMexiKen thinks you should be reading the Daily Howler every day because a lot of what Bob Somerby writes about is important and revealing. (Alas, he has no RSS feed.)

Normally I would just provide a teaser and a link. Today I’m including the whole first part of his posting because I think it is that important and that revealing.

YOU OUGHTTA KNOW: After yesterday’s post (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/27/06), we briefly revisited the 1994 public discourse about “midnight basketball.” We really thought you ought to consider a bit of what we observed.

In Saturday’s New York Times, Thomas Edsall warned Dems to stop making such proposals, even though they may represent the “pursuit of laudable goals.” After all, Edsall noted, “conservative talk radio” will trash such ideas; the trashing will “spread to the establishment media, and soon became a liability.” As we noted, this is a perfect history of our recent politics—and it’s a perfect history of the way the establishment media has learned to bow low to pseudo-con power. Edsall seems to take it as a given: His colleagues won’t defend the pursuit of laudable goals. Instead, they’ll simply repeat What Rush Says, even when he trashes such efforts.

In precisely that manner, the crackpot forces in American politics seized control of the public discourse during the early Clinton-Gore years. Yesterday, our brief research showed that “midnight basketball”—Edsall’s chosen topic—was an especially good example of the way this process has worked.

What did we think you ought to consider? We were struck by a short, unsigned report in the 8/17/94 New York Times. The Times report noted an interesting fact—the previous Republican president had also approved of midnight basketball:

NEW YORK TIMES (8/17/94): The Republicans who maintain that President Clinton’s stalled crime bill is loaded with excessive social spending often point to a provision for midnight basketball as a prime example of waste.

What they may not know is that the idea of midnight basketball was promoted by George Bush when he was President. In fact, Mr. Bush, a Republican, was so impressed with a midnight basketball program in Maryland that he named it as one of his Thousand Points of Light.

“The last thing midnight basketball is about is basketball,” Mr. Bush said when he visited the program in 1991 in Glenarden, Md., home of the first midnight basketball program in the nation.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, a Democrat who represents that district, quoted the former President’s remarks on the House floor today.

“Mr. Bush named the program his 124th point of light,” the Times noted. And the paper quoted more of Bush’s 1991 statement: “Here, everybody wins. Everybody gets a better shot at life.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? Before Bill Clinton showed up at the White House, the sitting Republican president applauded this program. But when Clinton proposed modest funding in its support, “conservative talk radio” began to trash it, in ways that were often racially coded; according to Edsall, these attacks “spread to the establishment media,” making the proposal a liability for Clinton. But Edsall doesn’t criticize his establishment colleagues for adopting these pseudo-conservative values; instead, he implores the Democrats to never-again pursue such laudable goals. As such, Edsall’s column becomes a perfect portrait of the way our discourse was lost in this era—of the way a new wave of pseudo-conservatives seized control of the public discourse, with the willing acquiescence of Edsall’s weak-willed cohort. By 1999, Edsall’s establishment colleagues were happily conducting their War Against Gore, taking their talking-points from Jim Nicholson, the endlessly dissembling RNC chairman. After twenty months of such crackpot behavior, they’d sent another Bush to the White House—and he sent us to a new Vietnam.

In short, before the “conservative revolution” of the early Clinton years, everyone thought well of midnight basketball. But soon, a group of loudmouth kooks weighed in—and the Edsels of the establishment media began to suffer the endless breakdowns which have shaped our politics right to this day. Even today, Edsall can’t see the peculiar shape of the history he relates. Even today, he begs the Democrats: Please don’t incite those talk-radio hosts! In the name of all that’s convenient, don’t pursue “laudable goals!”