Things no longer true...
I was reading an article last week on spectator.org, by James G. Poulos, which looked at the life and death of Hunter S. Thompson, and the required liberal fawning and praise that resulted. It is unnecessary to read the article, Hunter S. Thompson's gonzoism is nothing to emulate, and being opposed to everything is not difficult to do (see Michael Savage). I find it so underwhelmong that a person can build a career around being a nattering naysayer. Take a stand, be for something, and find out that it takes work to support and argue for an idea, or cause, or purpose.
Back to the article, in it Poulos points out that the stereotypes that were effective in defining the two sides of the political spectrum no more than twenty years ago no longer hold true. The idea of the rich, Scroogish, greedy, big-business right-winger does not make much sense anymore. In the past on this blog I have pointed out that websites like Buy Blue list companies that lean or are leftish. Go there for yourself (or avoid it like I do), and check out the Fortune 500 companies that the website espouses to be democrat supportive: Clorox, Gap, Apple, Amerada Hess, Hilton, 7-Eleven, Levi & Strauss, Polo, and Progressive to name a few. Think back to the tyrannical villain in the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko. Think of Leona Helmsley. Do those associations work anymore?
I remember hearing stories from my father of how democrat through and through union members were. Those two do not mesh as well as before in my mind. It is hard to associate, these days, the blue collar with the left. When one thinks of the blue collar heroes of today, one would normally think of fly-over country, as some may call it. And by the way those states are red, as in Republican red. Big money, big business backing; one can find most of that on the left, i.e. George Soros, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, etc. Is it any wonder that the besmirched junk bond king Michael Milken, the left's example of 80's greed, now spends his time raising money for cancer research. If you think as the media would have you do, none of the above would make sense.
Perhaps those ideas of big money on the right and poor rabble on the left were just someone's creation. Two things to ponder: Did not Teddy Roosevelt fight to break big monopoly men like J. P. Morgan, and wasn't T. R. a Republican? And if I remember correctly, Daddy Warbucks was awful chummy with F.D. R. Hmmm?
Back to the article, in it Poulos points out that the stereotypes that were effective in defining the two sides of the political spectrum no more than twenty years ago no longer hold true. The idea of the rich, Scroogish, greedy, big-business right-winger does not make much sense anymore. In the past on this blog I have pointed out that websites like Buy Blue list companies that lean or are leftish. Go there for yourself (or avoid it like I do), and check out the Fortune 500 companies that the website espouses to be democrat supportive: Clorox, Gap, Apple, Amerada Hess, Hilton, 7-Eleven, Levi & Strauss, Polo, and Progressive to name a few. Think back to the tyrannical villain in the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko. Think of Leona Helmsley. Do those associations work anymore?
I remember hearing stories from my father of how democrat through and through union members were. Those two do not mesh as well as before in my mind. It is hard to associate, these days, the blue collar with the left. When one thinks of the blue collar heroes of today, one would normally think of fly-over country, as some may call it. And by the way those states are red, as in Republican red. Big money, big business backing; one can find most of that on the left, i.e. George Soros, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, etc. Is it any wonder that the besmirched junk bond king Michael Milken, the left's example of 80's greed, now spends his time raising money for cancer research. If you think as the media would have you do, none of the above would make sense.
Perhaps those ideas of big money on the right and poor rabble on the left were just someone's creation. Two things to ponder: Did not Teddy Roosevelt fight to break big monopoly men like J. P. Morgan, and wasn't T. R. a Republican? And if I remember correctly, Daddy Warbucks was awful chummy with F.D. R. Hmmm?
posted by Daedalus at 5/03/2005 08:15:00 PM
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