WSJ: "The GOP embraces the culture of victimhood"
I've said this for years on this blog, but it'll be taken more seriously coming from the Wall Street Journal's uber-conservative editorial pages. Says Thomas Frank:
Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping.This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the "elites" -- that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional -- Sarah Palin's long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.
To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.
I'll add, that after watching her resignation and reading Purdum's recent piece on her, it's become more obvious to me that she's unprecedentedly thin-skinned as she moves from perceived persecution to perceived persecution. She and her husband Todd seem to rally together around their shared anger at a cruel world. And yet the GOP voters like her more than ever, proving Thomas Frank's concerns correct.
Very dishonest presentation, Rob. The WSJ actually publishes left-leaning writers (unlike the uber-liberal editorial pages of many papers), and Frank is one of them. Acting as if he's speaking for all GOP is disingenuous.
Not to mention the fact that Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin all were legitimate victims of unprecedented smear campaigns--thus their status as martyrs of "leftist crime." Frank neatly ignores this fact and attempts to actually twist it around to smear them again!
Again, whatever one might think of Palin or any other conservative, who gives a flying freak what a liberal thinks about who makes a good GOP candidate? People like Frank are kind of laughable--unable to separate their own biases from their "analysis" of Republican politics. Again...whatever.
Oh yeah, and your headline is wrong and misleading. One doesn't quote the paper as having made a statement when it's just a columnist who's made the statement. That is just incorrect.
>>The WSJ actually publishes left-leaning writers (unlike the uber-liberal editorial pages of many papers)
Oh, for God's sake, there's Jonah Goldberg, Michael Gerson, George Will, David Brooks, Bill Kristol, on and on a the uber-liberal papers, Diane. When I read Frank's column on GOP victimization (and yes, I concede he is more liberal than the paper as a whole), I think it just needed a picture of you.
You know, you're right. Kind of. Most papers do throw in a token conservative writer now and then. I think I was getting newspapers mixed up with MSNBC, on which there is no intelligent presence whatsoever.