You Hypocrite!

Now Serving The Latest Episode Of: When Baldwins Attack

And you thought the Al Smith dinner was edgy.

News is good these days - you might even say hopeful. But it can still be a shocking experience to read through the letters section of any given newspaper these days.

Letters to the editor have a bitter humor about them. It's not that they mean to be funny, it's that they're packed with suspiciously-similar-to-campaign-talking-point opinions, which the author often argues as though he or she came up with them. This is something that we're probably all guilty of to some degree.

It seems especially true with letters for McCain. In their case, the phenomenon has been highlighted by his "lurching" campaign: when it's about celebrity, the letter-writers cry "celebrity;" when it's Bill Ayers, they cry "Bill Ayers;" when it's socialism, they cry "socialism;" when it's about being like Osama bin Laden, they cry nutty things at rallies. If McCain actually had a central message, it wouldn't be so obvious; if Obama's campaign had been as erratic, I regret to admit that his letters would likely have been just as bad.

What makes it so disturbing is the presumed independence of these letters. "I am concerned over what I've seen; I could tell so-and-so was lying during the debate; I don't let the media tell me how to think." Less and less people say things like "as far as I know" or "I am convinced when X campaign says..." We could at least admit that we're repeating talking points.

Another disturbing element to these letters is just how many are still rabidly supporting McCain. It's incredible that a solid 40% of the electorate will always support one side - even ideologically, since we've narrowed ourselves down to two opposed camps. But it shouldn't be such a surprise. One of the most "left-leaning" (read: Democrat-supporting, which isn't quite the same thing) papers in the country helps explain why.

No, Obama Bucks aren't responsible for this perpetual symmetry. Much has already been said about this ridiculousness - including Diane Fedele's flat-out lie that she didn't intend KFC, watermelon, kool-aid and ribs as racist imagery - but what's incredible is the way the LA Times reports it. The second half of the headline is "while Democrats rib Palin." In the second half of the article, they say that "Obama supporters have been getting a bit naughty themselves," as if this is equivalent to essentially rousing a national lynch-mob.

False equivalencies are what keep Republicans from getting smothered by the hordes of poor and middle-class people who vote their way. It's become an unquestionable truth that our parties are symmetrical; that every bad move by the GOP supposedly has an equal by the Democrats. Each party is essentially seen to represent the status quo, which is somewhat true, but they're also both seen to be ideological representatives, which is less true (and directly contradicts the idea that they both represent the status quo). Democrats are absolutely not "liberal" in the sense that Republicans are "conservatives."

We've forgotten what those ideological terms even refer to. We've gotten to a point where we can somehow believe the conceit that "elitists" of the left - not the Democratic party specifically, but the left - are going to raise poor people's taxes. In other words, we somehow believe that the ideological position that by definition opposes the status quo is going to reinforce it.

Some of us only see "liberal" and "conservative" as defined by the differences between Democrats and Republicans - effectively the difference between a hybrid Escalade and a normal one (a difference real enough to be worth voting, but slim enough to be significantly weaker than portrayed). This is reinforced every time a mainstream media outlet uses "on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand" reporting; every time David Frum spews out logical garbage like this. We're letting ourselves think that Obama's subtle jabs at McCain's old age are equal to McCain riling up his base and letting them run amok. Nobody's going to assassinate McCain because they don't like how old he is.

When Michael Moore said that he thinks most Americans are liberal, I don't think it was too hard to understand what he meant. When you listen to a lot of Republican voters, they're not always talking about law and order or fears about subversion. They often complain about the intrusion of government, taxes, gun control, or anti-smoking laws. They're complaining about the Man.

We just don't know who "the Man" really is.