Friday, February 26, 2010

Centrism

DougJ at Balloon Juice:
"Apparently, Bill Frist and Mark Halperin are on Charlie Rose discussing today’s summit right now. (The good news is that Ezra Klein is on too.) I’d watch but I have no desire to take my own life this evening.

There are a lot of people out there who believe that our sorry state of affairs is caused by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and, if they’re really deluded, they’ll add “and on the left, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann”. I know plenty of people who say things like this.

The truth is, it’s more the fault of Charlie Rose and Tom Friedman and David Brooks. Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq."


I watched a bit of it. I saw Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin stage a masterful dialogue, supposedly analyzing the politics, which confirmed Republican talking points. Rose managed the back-and-forth among the panel, so there was no contradiction of what they said. Ezra Klein was brought in next on a completely different point, not that the career-minded Washington Post Online columnist seemed inclined to oppose Rose and Halperin on whether Obama's proposal was too far left, or too ambitious, etc.

It just left me despairing for my country. And, DougJ is right: this, not the clowning of Beck, is what got us into Iraq. Rose is absolutely relentless in defining "sensible" centrism in ways that make not just the Left, but rationality and facts and intelligence disappear. Critical reason is simply excluded. And, the result is quiet, and boring and rambling, and, ultimately, monstrous.

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