Thursday, November 09, 2006
The day after the day after
As a Democrat, I'm not used to all this winning. Having been forced so many times in the past to be the gracious loser, I'm not so sure how to act now that my side has won. So I thought I'd take a look back at come newspaper opinion pages to see how graciously Republicans accepted victory in the weeks after the 2004 presidential election.
Let's start with one letter by Peter Writer of Charlestown, R.I., who wrote these conciliatory words to Decmocrats in The Providence Journal: "Climb aboard the crybaby bus and go away. Don't worry -- you won't be missed."
How about these soothing words from Charles Duhon of Tulsa who extended this olive branch via an eloquent letter to the Tulsa World: "Why doesn't John Kerry grow up and act like a man and stop acting like a girlie boy? I'm not even going to give him the honor of being labeled a girlie man. The dude's a girlie boy."
Writing in to the Anchorage Daily News, Mathias Houston so badly wished to unite us all in his letter titled, "Whining Democrats need to accept the election results and get a life."
I could go on. You know how it is every election year. It's the old quit-whining-and-get-over-it letters that appear in the newspapers every time Republicans perceive an electoral victory. Of course this time, they've lost pretty badly, so I've been interested in gauging Republican reaction now that they've been forced to accept defeat. I tuned in yesterday to 97 Talk, St. Louis' purveyor of the Fox News brand of right-wing talk radio. You know, the whole Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham axis, tied together by those top-of-the-hour Fox News updates known for their fairness and balance -- at least by Roger Ailes' definition.
To be sure, Sean and a couple of local wannebe Limbaughs who do drivetime talk assured us they would not be whining and carrying on, as they subtly suggested we liberals did in 2004. They went out of their way to let us know they were not moving to Canada, as Alec Baldwin threatened. I know the rest of us are all relieved. One guy, ever sincere, even said he wished for all the success in the world for Democrats and would even pray for us. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
But of course, tigers can't lose their stripes any more than Karl Rove can grow hair (OK, I shouldn't be one to talk about growing hair), and within minutes these guys were back to their usual liberal- and Democrat-bashing. So much for fond wishes. The Democrats' extreme-left agenda will soon rear it's ugly head. Men will soon be holding hands in public. Men will marry their dogs. Salesclerks at Target will wish customers, "Happy holidays." You know the usual wedge argument. We conservaties are the good Christian patriots, the other 70 percent of America hates God.
One caller delcared that Claire McCaskill's Senate victory signifies that nothing is sacred anymore, that we've lost our sense of values. The host quickly agreed calling us in the majority by O'Reilly's term "secular progressives." Apparently, because most Americans think the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake, and they want affordable healthcare and security in their old age, we'll all soon be smoking pot and burning flags in the streets. Another caller, calling Democrats the "give-peace-a-chance crowd," informed us that the voters just handed America over to the terrorists, that we liberals don't understand that those terrorists are bad people. Our host, some wild, crazy guy calling himself Smash, insisted that Republicans are so much more sportsmanlike and ethical in their political conduct than Democrats. Smash, willfully ignorant of such names as Nixon, Atwater, Rove and Abramoff, piously informed us that Republicans would never stoop to the shameful conduct of Democrats.
But still, they're not whining. Really, they're not. After all, if a good conservative like Crash says so enough times, then it must be true.
Let's start with one letter by Peter Writer of Charlestown, R.I., who wrote these conciliatory words to Decmocrats in The Providence Journal: "Climb aboard the crybaby bus and go away. Don't worry -- you won't be missed."
How about these soothing words from Charles Duhon of Tulsa who extended this olive branch via an eloquent letter to the Tulsa World: "Why doesn't John Kerry grow up and act like a man and stop acting like a girlie boy? I'm not even going to give him the honor of being labeled a girlie man. The dude's a girlie boy."
Writing in to the Anchorage Daily News, Mathias Houston so badly wished to unite us all in his letter titled, "Whining Democrats need to accept the election results and get a life."
I could go on. You know how it is every election year. It's the old quit-whining-and-get-over-it letters that appear in the newspapers every time Republicans perceive an electoral victory. Of course this time, they've lost pretty badly, so I've been interested in gauging Republican reaction now that they've been forced to accept defeat. I tuned in yesterday to 97 Talk, St. Louis' purveyor of the Fox News brand of right-wing talk radio. You know, the whole Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham axis, tied together by those top-of-the-hour Fox News updates known for their fairness and balance -- at least by Roger Ailes' definition.
To be sure, Sean and a couple of local wannebe Limbaughs who do drivetime talk assured us they would not be whining and carrying on, as they subtly suggested we liberals did in 2004. They went out of their way to let us know they were not moving to Canada, as Alec Baldwin threatened. I know the rest of us are all relieved. One guy, ever sincere, even said he wished for all the success in the world for Democrats and would even pray for us. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
But of course, tigers can't lose their stripes any more than Karl Rove can grow hair (OK, I shouldn't be one to talk about growing hair), and within minutes these guys were back to their usual liberal- and Democrat-bashing. So much for fond wishes. The Democrats' extreme-left agenda will soon rear it's ugly head. Men will soon be holding hands in public. Men will marry their dogs. Salesclerks at Target will wish customers, "Happy holidays." You know the usual wedge argument. We conservaties are the good Christian patriots, the other 70 percent of America hates God.
One caller delcared that Claire McCaskill's Senate victory signifies that nothing is sacred anymore, that we've lost our sense of values. The host quickly agreed calling us in the majority by O'Reilly's term "secular progressives." Apparently, because most Americans think the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake, and they want affordable healthcare and security in their old age, we'll all soon be smoking pot and burning flags in the streets. Another caller, calling Democrats the "give-peace-a-chance crowd," informed us that the voters just handed America over to the terrorists, that we liberals don't understand that those terrorists are bad people. Our host, some wild, crazy guy calling himself Smash, insisted that Republicans are so much more sportsmanlike and ethical in their political conduct than Democrats. Smash, willfully ignorant of such names as Nixon, Atwater, Rove and Abramoff, piously informed us that Republicans would never stoop to the shameful conduct of Democrats.
But still, they're not whining. Really, they're not. After all, if a good conservative like Crash says so enough times, then it must be true.
