The Goldberg File: Rosen Follies

The Goldberg File

By Jonah Goldberg

April 13, 2012

Dear Reader (and the little green man in my head, and he said "you're not going crazy . . .")

Look, it's hardly a new insight that Barack Obama has become pretty much everything he said he wasn't. Lots of folks have noted that the candidate of hopeful changey goodness has become an utterly cynical figure. For instance, two months ago I wrote:

Instead of fulfilling his promise to deliver a "new kind of politics" and a new era of idealism, he's made politics more cynical than ever. The case for Obama has become the case against everyone and everything inconvenient to his success. Don't agree with Obama's policies? Well, you can't possibly have a good reason to do that. So you must be racist, greedy, dumb, or corrupt.

Meanwhile, Obama casts himself as the humble servant of the 99 percent, even as he forklifts cash from Wall Street into his campaign coffers and exploits the very sort of super PACs he not long ago claimed were a "threat to democracy."

But to point that out is just cynicism.

And I was far from the first person to make that case.

But I have to say I was taken aback by the cynicism on display yesterday when the Obama administration opted to attack Mitt Romney by "celebrating" the anniversary of Romneycare's passage. Superficially, I guess there's nothing wrong with Obama tweaking Romney over that. But the subtext of the whole episode is stunning. The Obamatrons are playing guilt-by-association with their own immensely unpopular law. It's hardly as if Obama would be eager to give credit to Romney if Obama's signature accomplishment didn't stink like a used diaper filled with Indian food.

It's like that scene in The Sopranos where Christopher Moltisanti lashes out at everyone at his intervention (language warning). In effect the White House is saying "Who are you to criticize us for our incredibly craptacular and unpopular law? I saw you in the bathroom at Limelight two weeks ago snorting lines with a rolled up health-insurance mandate!"

Rosen Follies
There's not much more to add to the Hilary Rosen hilarity, but that doesn't mean one cannot have more fun.

And since we're talking cynicism, on Monday (in that very special G-File), I laid into Jay Carney for being, well, a liar. Here he is responding to the fact that Rosen's name shows up quite a bit on the visitors logs at the White House:

I know three, personally, women named Hilary Rosen. So I'm not sure that those represent the person we're talking about necessarily, so I really can't comment on the number.

She is a Democratic strategist, she is a CNN contributor. . . . I don't know how to assess her overall relationship with people here in the White House. But I have not seen her here very frequently."

Obama himself played a similar game by simply describing her as "somebody on television," like maybe she was nothing more than female Gladiator #6 in the credits of Spartacus.

In other words, the woman who runs a P.R. shop with former White House Communications Director, Anita "Mao is my co-pilot" Dunn, is a total stranger at the White House. That's why Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, his senior adviser David Axelrod, and his wife all rushed to condemn this complete stranger's comments.

By the way, I think this story will go away pretty soon, but it will have some significant lasting effects. First, it made an impression. For all the talk about the Beltway bubble, some controversies -- manufactured or legitimate -- cut through the din and stick in peoples' minds. I think this is one of them. It won't move a lot of votes, but it sets up a narrative.

Perhaps more important. It stopped the "Republican War on Women" thing in its tracks (a term Rosen brazenly tried to claim was a slogan cynically pushed by Republicans). The media -- mostly out of an utterly hypocritical desire to carry water for Obama -- has had to switch to the argument that the Dem War on Moms and the GOP War on Women are both fake stories. That's actually fine with me, but the standard should have kicked in when Democrats were attacking Rush Limbaugh as if he was the author of the GOP platform and the Republican budget combined. My view is, if Democrats and the press want to set up these criteria for beating up conservatives, they shouldn't bitch and moan when it blows up in their faces. Regardless, the Democrats had to go on defense, and when you're on defense it's hard to be on offense.

Barring a gaffe from the Romney campaign about keeping women barefoot and pregnant, it will be a while before the White House can effectively go back to the War on Women nonsense, which is great news for Romney in and of itself.

An MSNBC Reelection Strategy
Obama's description of Hilary Rosen as "somebody on television" is nicely ironic. I've been thinking for a while that the only way Obama can get reelected is by running a campaign that turns the whole country into a cable-TV shout-show. Why? Because he desperately needs the election to turn on questions fundamentally unrelated to his own record. That means he will ask lots of loaded hypothetical questions about "What kind of country do we want to live in?" There will be lots of ginned-up outrage, charges of Republican hard-heartedness, radicalism, racism, and the like. The Democrats need to cast Romney as a racist, plutocratic, woman-hater out of touch with modernity for the simple reason that by Obama's own standards, laid out in 2008, he has been a failure and the country feels like it's stagnating.

The inestimable Jay Cost has a very good post on all this over at the Weekly Standard.

You Can Hear the Words Coming out of My Mouth
This has been an absolutely crazy week. I've been in a recording studio every day recording my first rap album ("My name is Jonah/This ain't no 'My Sharona'. . . the game is on/don't immanentize the eschaton"). No. Really no.

I'm recording the audio version for Tyranny of Clichés. And it is hard. I've been in the recording booth every day this week and I've been really stunned to discover how difficult and exhausting it is to read nearly tens of thousands of words out loud. There's not a huge amount of money in it for me (a crucially important metric!) but I wanted to do it because audiobook fans have been telling me ever since Liberal Fascism, that it's better when the author reads. Also, I really liked the idea of being forced to reread the whole thing from the beginning, so the material would be fresh. I'm not sure I would ever do it again, but I'm glad I did it (19 pages left to go today). Given what an awful year it was -- my brother died right when I was about to really hunker down on the thing -- it's been really useful to de-blurrify my memory of it. Much to my pleasant surprise, I really like the book. I was worried I'd revisit the text and cringe, but I'm proud of this thing, which is nice -- and useful when the spitballs start coming.

One Last Plug for the Preorder
It seems that the e-book of my best NR cover stories is not a sufficient enticement for some of you to preorder TOC. That's okay. Really. I don't find the taste of my own tears bitter at all.

But I should let you know that I have lost the battle with the suits at Penguin. They want me to make this offer to the whole world, and not just G-File readers. I'm just telling you this so that you don't feel betrayed or slighted by the implication that you're not first in my heart.

Anyway, this offer -- now not exclusive to you people -- will definitely go away after Pub Date. So if you're interested, send your receipt to tyrannyofcliches@gmail.com and you'll get the Goldberg Variations e-book. Buy three and get shmancy TOC tote bag. Buy 1,000 and I'll come to your house and wash your car.

Look: I hate this sort of hucksterism. I cannot wait for the book to stand or fall on its own merits. But the terms of my Faustian bargain are clear, and I'm grateful for whatever support you can offer.

And . . . Some Other Plugs
By way of evidence it was such a busy week, the new NR has a cover story by yours truly on Joe Biden.

Also, I adapted some of my TOC chapter on social Darwinism for a piece in the next Weekly Standard.

Also, I penned a small item (that box-column I do every other issue for NR), on Kosherism and Corporatism. Pick up your copies now.

And here is my column today on how Romney needs to cultivate his un-coolness.

I'm heading to Milwaukee this afternoon for a speech tomorrow at Yafapalooza. April 18, I'll be at West Liberty University in West Virginia. I'm going to drive down because it's spring and I hate flying these days. Actually I don't mind the flying, it's everything around it I hate.

On May 23, I'm speaking at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Sign up now. I'm really psyched, not just because it's a great group. But I've always wanted to go to Reno just to see a man die. So this is like a bonus.

Various and Sundry
Kim Jong Il has been named "eternal general secretary."

More fatwas saying women who want to work should breastfeed adult coworkers. What could go wrong?

The original pitch video for the Muppets. Awesome!

In China chicks have tattoos in English.

I cannot wait to learn that Chinese hipsters are walking around with "Fried chicken special #7" or "I have chlamydia" written prominently on their bodies.

Seriously, if you don't know what I mean, check out one of my favorite blogs which translates Chinese character tattoos for unsuspecting Western poseurs.

You know how you can tell the health bureaucracy has gotten out of hand? When there are this many codes for "struck by turtle."

Very strange monuments to famous people!

Inappropriate test answers for children (language warning).