This is not one of the them.
This is a fisking of a liberal writer that I do whenever I get the feeling for it. The fiskee will be in italicized red, the fisker will be in blue.
ArkansasOnline
Archetype rides again
By Gene Lyons
Thursday, August 18, 2011
LITTLE ROCK — Now that he’s declared his candidacy, odds are Republicans will nominate Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president. They won’t be able to help themselves. If Hollywood put out a casting-call for an anti-Obama, Perry would get the role.
Can’t disagree with that. Perry is smart, ethical, tough, and pretty much truthful. So yeah, pretty much everything Obama isn’t. Although Perry is clean and articulate, so he’s not the perfect anti-Obama.
Democrats have been chortling about running against yet another swaggering Texas governor.
They were also chortling about the Tea Party and the unlikeliness of a Tea Party victory. They’ve got an awesome record, don’t they?
Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum explains why Perry can’t win: “He’s too Texan. . . . Even in the Republican Party, not everyone is from the South and not everyone is bowled over by a Texas drawl. Perry is, by a fair amount, more Texan than George W. Bush, and an awful lot of people are still suffering from Bush fatigue.”
Re-read that, but use a lispy voice when doing so. Boy, you can almost smell the estrogen, can’t you?
I think this is wrong. The cowboy archetype runs so deep in American culture that even George W. Bush couldn’t ruin it. Besides, the Connecticut rancher was a trust fund poser who rode bicycles, not horses. Deep down, everybody knew that. Now that he’s no longer president, Republicans no longer have to pretend they believe the brush-cutting charade.
This is a staple of Gene’s columns. He accuses Bush of being a poser, although he posits absolutely no evidence. This is also why I’ve come to refer to Gene as the MBW - Make Believe Writer.
Perry, though, strongly resembles the Tommy Lee Jones of Lonesome Dove. Never mind that while an authentic Texas roughneck, Tommy Lee was Al Gore’s Harvard roommate.
Never mind that Perry actually worked for Al Gore.
It’s the symbolism that matters.
That’s the Democratic Party’s motto!
Perry also has what appears to be a genuine mean streak. More than anything, Republicans who see a waffling centrist like President Obama as a “socialist” dictator yearn to punish somebody.
Yes, Gene just called Obama “a centrist". This is how out of touch Gene is.
Perry may be exactly the bully they seek.
Yes, Gene just called Perry a “bully".
Even executing a seemingly innocent man -some who’ve looked into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham think so- and then allegedly tampering with a commission charged with investigating the case, makes him a hero to some.
Oh! Well, if ”some” think that Willingham was innocent, then it must be true!
Yep! Absolutely true!
What about the others who say that Willingham wasn‘t innocent?
Nope! Innocent!
What about the tampering?
Yep! Absolutely true!
Er, ‘allegedly‘ tampering?
Nope! Tampering!
What about the evidence?
Nope! Innocent!
No, I mean, about the ‘alleged‘ tampering?
Nope! Tampering!
No, I mean, what evidence is there that there was tampering?
Noper! Tampering!
But...
Nope! Tampering!
But...
Nope! Tampering!
The evidence...
Nope! Tampering! Lalalalalala! I can‘t hear you!
“It takes balls to execute an innocent man,” one hairy-chested patriot famously told a focus group. I think that guy sends me weekly e-mails.
Don’t look at me. Any letters I send about Gene, I will post here.
Although my chest is kind of hairy.
But hey, I don't want to hog the spotlight. Perry's staff answered this during his primary against Kay Bailey Hutchison. They said that if Perry's opponents:
"oppose the death penalty for someone who murdered his three children, beat his wife while she was pregnant with twins in an effort to force an abortion, repeatedly changed his story, who confessed and whose last words were an obscenity laced tirade aimed at his ex wife, and whose conviction was upheld numerous times over the course of more than a decade, including nine times by federal courts then they should just say so."
Perry went on to cruise to a 20-point victory in the primary and an easy win in the general election.
True, Perry has manifest liabilities. If Michele Bachmann can’t make an issue of his ill-fated executive order requiring sixth-grade Texas girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease that could lead to cervical cancer, she’s got no business running.
This is another staple of Gene’s columns: the unclear writing. It isn’t clear as to whether the vaccine could lead to cervical cancer, or if it is the sexually transmitted disease that leads to cervical cancer. The first makes more sense, although that has no bearing on a Gene Lyons’ column.
The answer lies not in the intent of the order, but in the politician himself. Gene states that it was an “ill-fated executive order”. That’s because the order didn’t give the parents the option of not permitting their sixth-grade girls to get the vaccine.
But hey, letting them have abortions without parental notification is completely cool.
His scheme to build privately owned toll roads across Texas by giving out-of-state corporations the power to seize property by eminent domain represented the kind of crony capitalism that gave Mussolini a bad name.
Uh, Gene? Mussloini wasn’t a capitalist, much less a crony capitalist.
Perry’s sectarian religiosity and loose talk about Texas seceding might not play among Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania voters whose ancestors fought to save the Union.
Bzzzt! That’s not what Perry said. Here is exactly what Perry said:
“There’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the Union in 1845, one of the issues was whether we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”
Now, unless you want to argue that this is the year 1845, only a moron would say that Perry was calling for secession. Another staple of Gene’s writing: lots of opinion, no research.
Calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and doubting its constitutionality would doom most candidates, although it’s the kind of big talk that thrills them down at the Tea Party corral.
Even so, here’s the kind of anecdote people love about the Texas governor, narrated by Peter Boyer on The Daily Beast: “One of the photographs that Texas Gov. Rick Perry keeps on his BlackBerry is a portrait of Aurora P. (“Rory”) Perry, the family’s black Labrador Retriever, who last year acquired a key role in local Perry legend.
The governor and the dog were out for an early morning jog when a coyote suddenly appeared, growling at Rory. Perry, who carries a [laser-sighted] Ruger .380 handgun in his belt when he jogs, pulled the weapon and shot the coyote dead. When some Austin locals protested that Perry’s reaction was excessive, and dangerous, he shrugged it off. ‘Don’t attack my dog,’ he said, ‘or you might get shot.’ ”
Just like sissified Austin Democrats to whine about a dead coyote, right? Too bad there were no witnesses to Perry’s derring-do. The story strikes me as the kind of tall tale Sarah Palin might invent about herself. (The mighty huntress needed six shots to hit a caribou that stood grazing like a cow.)
Out in the boondocks we live surrounded by coyotes. We hear them most nights and see them all the time -normally running, because they’re scared to death of my two Great Pyrenees, whose life goal is to tear a coyote to pieces. One time I saw Jesse, the big male, pile into two coyotes attacking my neighbor’s goat kids. He flung one about four feet, and then started after the second, which took off at warp speed. Jesse can run almost 25 mph. Those coyotes left him like he was standing still.
Too bad there were no witnesses to the dog’s derring-do. This story strikes me as the kind of tall tale Bill Clinton might invent about himself.
Or Joe Biden.
Or Barack Obama.
Or... But I digress.
They’d have the identical reaction to a Labrador retriever. Coyotes are looking for a tasty Chihuahua or house cat, not a fight. They’re exceptionally wary predators that shun human contact. Holler, as Perry says he did, and they’ll vanish like smoke. My neighbor killed a coyote last winter-with a scoped deer rifle at 100 yards. He was awfully proud of himself.
Maybe Perry encountered a terminally ill coyote too weak to flee. That’s the only way his story makes sense to me.
This, from someone who wrote a book with Joe Conanson that came to the conclusion that Whitewater was just an invention of media journalists just looking for a scandal. So you can see what story passes for ‘sense’ with Gene.
More likely, I suspect, he saw one, snapped off a shot and imagined he must have hit it. Every hunter’s been there.
Insert personal hunting story that benefits from not having any witnesses to Gene’s derring-do.
Wait a minute. The coyote is too weak to flee, yet Perry snapped off a shot and imagined he hit it. Well, which is it? The coyote is too weak to flee, Perry snaps off a shot? He's going to hit it.
Conversely, if Perry snaps off a shot and thinks that he hit it, but he really didn't, and the coyote disappears like smoke? Then the coyote wasn't terminally weak.
You can’t have it both ways.
Here we have a bad case of LDS. No, not the Latter Day Saints. Liberal Derangement Syndrome.
Pretty much, one hopes, the way he imagines being president.
———
Freelance columnist Gene Lyons is a Houston, Ark., author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 08/18/2011
Oh, ho ho! That Gene, always trying to end on a pithy line. Well, we’ve made it through another column by Gene. Scrape the bull fecal matter off at the door, and join us next time.
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