Waiting for the scent of regime change

Maureen Dowd, NYT, is spitting fire about the culture cops again, following a very tame Superbowl night (in comparison to last year's excitement with Janet and Justin).

In the article (2/6/05) Dowd worries about the increasing levels of self-censorship creeping into state-funded media. She should try living in Ireland!

I love sassy, dry-wit ironic Maureen. I'm not so fond of hysterical, outraged Maureen. In fact, I am getting a bit weary of the falsetto heights of the note the Liberal Media Elite (LME) keep hitting as they face the onslaught of hordes of victorious, red, Middle American heathen unsupported.

I mean, how scary can a legion of soccer moms be?

We have all seen bad times when our guys are dumped out of power and cut way out of the loop. But this is a time for listening to people to find out why this happened, not screaming at them for making it so. Those canny politicians who know this are hopefully half-way round what we call the 'chicken in a basket' circuit, engaged in this exercise. Maureen would do well to head off on her own little mission. After all, she is in the priviledged position of being able to 'be educated in public'. Unlike the rest of us, who have to do it in our own time.

The whole thing takes me back to a day in Dail Eireann in late 1994. After a series of Opposition by-election wins that undermined the government's hold on power, new TDs including Michael Ring, a rural, right-wing, populist operator from Mayo, arrived to take their seats. Michael, who ran a particularly effective vote-getting machine, was consequently accompanied by busloads of muck savages up for the day. They swarmed all over the Dail, and drank the bar dry, much to the distaste of his parliamentary colleagues, particularly his party colleagues.

Despite all that, I remember it as a glorious day. The FF-Labour coalition was in trouble and a faint new scent, a blend of regime change and pig slurry, wafted around us all. Pretty soon after that, the Rainbow Coalition took office. It would never have happened without Michael and the other by-election victors. Proving yet again that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I tell this story to put forward the proposition that the tide will turn, because that is what tides do. And it will turn on the unlikeliest event. As is always the case with the American fundamental/ religious right, they will not know when to shut up and consequently, they will ruin it for themselves.

Hopefully, their demise will be through the uncovering of a 'hookers for Jesus' scandal involving one of their most virulent spokespersons, or with media images of Limbaugh and Medved cottaging together. More likely, however, they will just take their attacks on public service broadcasting too far and incur the ire of the soccer moms. Whose views will be echoed by some muck savage populist, who just happens to have an effective, vote-getting machine ready and waiting.

And suddenly, the air will once again tingle with the faint scent of regime change and pig slurry.

As the Chinese proverb states:

If you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float past you.

So maybe take the hysteria down a notch or two, Maureen. And listen.....