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> On Feb 20, 2008, at 1:46 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > What in the world does Rove know?
>
> Demographics of voting, message targeting, etc. Why do many people
> find it hard to believe that right-wingers can be smart? Whenever I
> say that Fox is more interesting to watch, and not just for the
> perverse politics, than CNN, people look at me like I'm crazy. I'd
> rather listen to Rove - and Frank Luntz and Brit Hume - than the
> tedious wankers on CNN.
>
> Doug
I don't disbelieve that right wingers can be smart. "Why do many people find it hard to believe that right-wingers can be smart?" Why do you say this? You should remember and know that I am just skeptical about people's knowledge (including my own and yours) But I remember the same thing being said about James Carville being so smart and I didn't believe it about him either. Carville did have a certain charm, which is also a substitute for knowledge when it comes to these things People like Rove always seem to know so much and when I look at there statements ten years on they don't seem that knowledgeable at all.
I don't know who Frank Luntz is and I only know Brit Hume because I met him a few times. (I don't own a t.v.) But is your base of comparison these commentators.
Whenever I have heard Rove speak it has been on the radio. I have read his words in the newspaper. That is my extent of my knowledge of him.
But what you say of him reminds me a little of the way everybody used to tell me that Bobby Fischer was a genius. He knew chess and his knowledge within the boundaries of the game was pretty deep. But other wise Bobby seemed to me unfortunately not very knowing about the world. This seems to me to be the case with Rove. He knows the boundaries of the game that we call politics but it is a very stupid game, not as all as complicated as chess, and he is pretty much a bully about it.
So before you replied I was about to write back that maybe Rove is smart at "the game"; that he knows "the game" very well. He plays both the language game of television commentator well and "the game" of getting 26% of the 35% of people who vote, to vote for his candidate well. So I guess this is what you meant and even though I am not convinced that even this is true and that you are not being conned by Rove I am willing to concede he knows the game.
I look at people like Rove and their equivalents on the "left" as basically confidence men and swindlers. All marketeers are basically confidence men and swindlers. They are purveyors of wholesale bullshit. You have to have some "mass psychological" knowledge to play that game well, but I just don't see the brilliance in it.
Oh well. As usual I misunderstand you or interpret you the wrong way.
Jerry
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