You are a famous Republican columnist and you have a problem. Over many years, you’ve solidified your position as the Official Intellectual GOP guy. The competition has died off, the insider guys like Kristol pose no threat, and nobody else dares to wear a bow tie. You are it. 
You cultivate the position through said wearing of bow ties and by writing long meandering paeans to baseball (the manly intellectual’s sport) while studiously ignoring football (manly but not intellectual) and (horrors!) NASCAR. You like this position, as it gains you spots in famous magazines and on talk shows. You go to state dinners. You even get to host dinner with a Democratic President. You get book deals.
Lately, though, things are becoming awkward. Intellectuals have not been welcomed in the GOP for a long time, and the party itself is skewing away from the kind of erudite conservatism you claim to espouse. The insane Palin-Limbaugh-Jindal-O’Reilly wing of the GOP has taken over. People are suddenly accusing you of being a “RINO”: Republican In Name Only. Threads at the Volokh Conspiracy go back and forth over whether you’re a “real conservative” or not. What’s a bow-tie wearing columnist to do?
 |
| Sans bow-tie |
Well, first, you wear your bow tie less. But that’s too subtle for the most rabid Republicans, so stronger measures are required. You make a list of red-meat issues for social conservatives, ones that send both them and Democrats into screaming frenzies of argumentation, real foaming-at-the-mouth foundational beliefs. From that list, you choose a belief and then you go out and espouse the insane wing of the GOP’s side of it, as loudly as you can.
This does not go well the first time you try it. Note to self: make sure Nobel laureates are not present during this maneuver.
So you go back to the list and choose another one. This time, you write a column about it (no Nobel laureates allowed!). This time things work perfectly. There is a firestorm of outrage and condemnation from the community of the sane, a firestorm which makes the crazy wing of the GOP rise to your defense. You stoke the fire a bit by writing another column defending the first, and then sit back and enjoy the warmth. You are George Will, and you have just reaffirmed that you are a Republican.
38 comments
March 1, 2009 at 6:55 pm
blueollie
Thank you for this post; this is the first thing that I’ve read that makes sense of what George Will did.
It is as if you need to make yourself dumb to be accepted by this current Republican Party.
I wonder if, in the near future, anyone who believes in heliocentric astronomy will be hounded out as a RINO? :)
March 1, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Rush Limbaugh: Face of the Current Republican Party « blueollie
[...] A historian at the Edge of the American West pointed out that this lunacy has lead to those who were formally known as intellectuals to embrace [...]
March 1, 2009 at 7:19 pm
tft
That’s some funny stuff. Like ollie, I think its the best explanation of Will’s nonsense so far.
March 1, 2009 at 7:43 pm
ari
This is very good stuff. But I still can’t believe Warren was granted a spot on the program at the inauguration. Let’s talk about that instead!
March 1, 2009 at 7:45 pm
foolishmortal
Extremism in the defense of baseball is no vice; moderation in the fight against NASCAR is no virtue.
March 1, 2009 at 7:52 pm
herbert browne
I do recall climate scenarios that postulated a global cooling trend… the first was in the mid-1950s, and it was predicated on a rise in sea level that would bring the (relatively) warmer N. Atlantic into the Arctic Sea in sufficient quantities to melt the ice out of the Arctic, eliminate the albedo effect there, and cause greater evaporation… with subsequent snowfall on nearby shores, that would begin building South.
In this way, global warming may lead to precipitous global cooling.
The other scenario was simply a reinforcement voiced by those who wanted more electric power infrastructure made available… and home heating was part of the package. I remember hearing this from Don Hodel when he was head of the Bonneville Power Administration, as another reason to support the development of 5 nuclear power plants in the Pacific NW. He predicted brownouts, Summer & Winter, because of a need for more power. This undertaking led to one big bond failure- and a ‘build-up’ that saw one nuke plant built at Hanford. Hodel was subsequently rewarded for his work by being made Reagan’s Secretary of Energy.
Is the ‘reason’ that we needn’t worry about future generations & their (need? desire?) for fossil fuel the rapid advance of the End Times? Why doesn’t a sense of “Thrift for its own sake”- which we hear about entitlement spending, for example- carry over to the situation with non-renewable resources? ^..^
March 1, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Jason B.
What’s strange is that during Dubya’s tenure, Will exhibited some signs of making sense. Now that the Democrats are back in power, though, Will is back to being freaking insane.
NASCAR: Rednecks making left turns for prize money.
More humanely: a colossal, pointless waste of fossil fuels.
March 1, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Ahistoricality
I don’t know: Will’s been flogging this particular bit of bad data for years.
This isn’t part of a new strategy: it’s a long-standing tic that can’t stand exposure to the fact-checking power of the blogosphere.
March 1, 2009 at 8:34 pm
urbino
The facticity of what Will says is irrelevant. All that matters (to the GOP base, which is who he’s talking to) is that he stick his thumb in the eye of the pointy-headed intellectuals and assorted other elites who blather on about why you shouldn’t drive a pickup truck because you’re making the planet warmer.
March 2, 2009 at 6:40 am
politicalfootball
Intellectuals like baseball so much because football is too complicated for them.
March 2, 2009 at 8:05 am
Matt L.
I don’t know about George Will. But I do know that baseball is boring and takes too long to get a result. Soccer is the thinking man’s sport.
As a gearhead, I used to loath NASCAR. But I have changed my mind after watching some recent races. I think that it actually has merits as a motorsport. (Despite there being too many crashes and races finishing under yellow flags).
Yes, Jason B, the whole highspeed oval thing is boring in terms of everyone turning left, but they do a few road races every year (I am thinking of the Mexico city race). The cars are fast and there is more passing on the track in NASCAR than in Formula ONE or in IndyCar. Plus, the technological sophistication is pretty significant. Finally, Toyota has seen fit to get involved and they are not ones to lightly throw money around when it comes to racing.
March 2, 2009 at 8:09 am
silbey
This is very good stuff. But I still can’t believe Warren was granted a spot on the program at the inauguration. Let’s talk about that instead!
Thbbt.
What’s strange is that during Dubya’s tenure, Will exhibited some signs of making sense.
Yeah, but he has to burnish his credentials every so often.
This isn’t part of a new strategy: it’s a long-standing tic that can’t stand exposure to the fact-checking power of the blogosphere.
Interesting. He seems to have an old column he recycles whenever he needs it. My larger point is that George Will doesn’t care about global warming one way or the other. If he did, he’d write fresh columns on it, instead of the same one over and over again.
The facticity of what Will says is irrelevant
Exactly.
March 2, 2009 at 8:13 am
StevenAttewell
The facticity of what Will says is irrelevant.
I believe the accepted scholarly term is truthiness. It’s in the OED and everything.
March 2, 2009 at 8:43 am
Stephen
But I still can’t believe Warren was granted a spot on the program at the inauguration. Let’s talk about that instead!
I’m still upset by it. And since that decision was made by people with whom I am associated, I have every right to be upset at it. I’m not a Republican, I never will be, and there’s zero realistic chance that the conservative movement in the USA will ever offer ideas or people that will appeal to me. So what they do is rather less important to me than what people with whom I’m affiliated do.
Warren’s selection to give the invocation is relevant to this discussion of George Will’s strategy because the motivation for both Warren’s presence at the inauguration and Will’s columns is exactly the same: piss off the liberals, prove that there’s distance between him – Obama or Will – and the Dirty Fucking Hippies.
March 2, 2009 at 8:52 am
Ahistoricality
Yeah, but he has to burnish his credentials every so often.
This is my problem: by using such an easily refuted factoid, he may have done some good with “the movement” but has reduced, in the long term, his ability to tweak liberals, who will no longer take him seriously on this subject.
March 2, 2009 at 8:59 am
silbey
This is my problem: by using such an easily refuted factoid, he may have done some good with “the movement” but has reduced, in the long term, his ability to tweak liberals, who will no longer take him seriously on this subject.
I’m pretty sure that there will always be a good number who will react with outrage! outrage! every time he does it. We’re good that way.a
both Warren’s presence at the inauguration and Will’s columns is exactly the same: piss off the liberals, prove that there’s distance between him – Obama or Will – and the Dirty Fucking Hippies.
I wouldn’t have phrased it the way you would, but sure. There’s an ‘and’ to both of those, though. Will’s is “and thus to cozy up to the wingnuts.” Obama’s and is “and thus to get my legislation passed effectively.” And it seems to be working, if the stimulus bill is any indication. If the price of universal health care is having Rick Warren give the invocation…
March 2, 2009 at 9:10 am
Charlieford
Nice and witty. Will’s always been like the weather, now and then he’s pleasant, but too often just crummy. On sports: First, no one likes NASCAR. It’s simply impossible. They might like tail-gating, or the frisson of masculinity that comes with close proximity to all that horsepower, or the moustache-hat combination. But unless you’re actually mentally impaired, there’s just no satisfaction to be had from watching cars go in circles. Second, football’s alright. No more, no less. Third, baseball remains supreme. It has a diamond, set withing a big wedge–aesthetically superior to a rectangle in all ways, and the green is very pleasing. There’s lots of space between actions so the observers can contemplate the green, which is good in every way. Fourth, soccer is basketball on the ground. Everyone running around chaotically, with no real point to any of it, and it’s all quite insincere (why, for example, does the goalie pretend to care whether someone kicks the ball into his net? does it really matter?).
March 2, 2009 at 9:12 am
politicalfootball
I’m pretty sure that there will always be a good number who will react with outrage! outrage! every time he does it. We’re good that way.
And we oughtta make an effort to be. George Will has a big megaphone, and is certainly worth engaging. You can’t be all superior about this stuff.
I think it’s an interesting and salutary development that Will felt the need to defend himself with a second column. That’s not something he would have done before.
March 2, 2009 at 10:44 am
Urk
Agreed that Will should be responded to. there are still people who would like to use his supposed intellectual credentials as cover for pursuing their interests contra the future of the planet. It’s good that he had to right a second coloumn, sad that his editors at the Post are covering for him too.
Baseball is indeed supreme, despite Will’s blather about it’s “meaning.” And, I don’t personally care for NASCAR, but I don’t dismiss it or people who like it per se either. Pete Daniel’s Lost Revolutions has some interesting stuff about the origins of car racing culture in the south, Blanche McCrary Boyd’s “The Redneck Way of Knowledge” (in the collection of the same name) has an awesome, hilarious, insider/outsider account of a race, and the Drive-by Truckers song “Daddy’s Cup” is a very personal tale of racing as avocation and maybe art. All of these are worth checking out if you’re interested in understanding NASCAR as something other than Karl Rove’s favorite demographic’s favorite sport.
March 2, 2009 at 11:39 am
Ralph Hitchens
I can’t think of anything to say about George Will that hasn’t already been said (and better) by critics here and elsewhere on the ‘net. But as for the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration, it’s no mystery to anyone who attends a mainstream Protestant church. Obama — a longtime churchgoer and therefore (to outward appearances, at least) a committed Christian — was acknowledging Warren’s stature within the mainstream denominations, almost entirely by virtue of his book, _The Purpose-Driven Life_. Many of my Methodist coreligionists, who know very little about Warren’s personal stance on various social issues, hold his book in the highest esteem.
March 2, 2009 at 12:10 pm
urbino
Several years ago, when I was living elsewhere in the Bible Belt and Warren’s book was still at the height of its currency, the local tv news ran 40 days of coverage about local churches’ 40 days of purpose-drivenness. (Drivitude?)
March 2, 2009 at 12:13 pm
ari
40 days of purpose-drivenness
But what about the nights? Can one stop driving then, even if only to contemplate the next day’s purposefullnessitude?
March 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Bitchphd
NASCAR: cars driving in circles. Baseball: men hoping to run in circles.
March 2, 2009 at 12:29 pm
urbino
Nightful purposes are best not discussed in Christian fellowship, ari.
March 2, 2009 at 12:30 pm
urbino
Though, I’ve been saying for years that I’m going to make my millions by writing Purpose-Driven Sex.
March 2, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Ahistoricality
I thought Freud already covered Sex-Driven Purpose.
March 2, 2009 at 1:00 pm
urbino
Sure, but Freud was a Jew; my version argues from Intelligent Design. Viva la controversy!
March 2, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Charlieford
Women play baseball too.
March 2, 2009 at 4:34 pm
jazzbumpa
As spectator passtimes go, Nascar and Baseball are both boring (less so than soccer or golf, however.) In baseball, there is the occasional exciting moment when someone hits a home run. In Nascar, there is the occasional exciting moment when cars pile up.
Baseball participants almost always survive home runs. With Nascar, it’s a little more chancy.
That, I think, is the appeal.
March 2, 2009 at 5:58 pm
URK
JB: not to be argumentative, but if you find a sport boring you might not be the best person to diagnose it’s appeal, eh?
March 2, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Bitchphd
Charlie: not professionally, and not much.
March 2, 2009 at 7:51 pm
ignobility
I’m waiting to see The Sex-Driven Porpoise, or is it a dolphin?
March 2, 2009 at 9:13 pm
urbino
The only problem with socc- zzzzzzzzzzzzz snort!
March 3, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Chris
jb: For my money the only differences between Nascar and Byzantine chariot racing are the technology, and the fact that (AFAIK) Nascar hasn’t yet developed team tactics.
The thing that always struck me as odd – and fundamentally wrong in a flesh-crawling, Lovecraftian sort of way – about The Purpose-Driven Life was that the purpose was supposed to come from the outside. Any being that wants to take over your life and dictate purposes to you is not your friend; those espousing the contrary view seriously need to read more horror.
March 3, 2009 at 2:14 pm
herbert browne
Re “Purpose-driven Sex” (& “millions for Urbino, but not one cent for charleyford” spake the goalie) you gotta deal with Freud’s antecedents,
as recorded in Genesis 1:28
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (but not UNDER it, see?.. & my lawyer said “we may have a case for tree roots… & nightcrawlers”)…
^..^
May 21, 2009 at 2:13 am
toastyaroma
Hey! thanks for using my RINO image! Is there any way you can host the image yourself, rather than hotlinking from my site? That would rock.
A link back to my blog never hurts either ;-)
Great blog by the way!
Jeff
May 21, 2009 at 5:38 am
silbey
Jeff–
Hmm. We are hosting the image ourselves, and there’s a link to your page by clicking on the thumbnail.
May 26, 2009 at 9:42 am
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