[lbo-talk] explaining right-wing idiocy

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Apr 27 08:13:39 PDT 2011


Joe Klein, musing on the epidemic of right-wing idiocy in the USA, writes:

http://swampland.time.com/2011/04/26/the-republican-crackup/

There is also the accumulating decades of educational incompetence, since–let’s face it–a whole lot of smart female teachers were liberated to pursue their dreams and we were left, as Albert Shanker used to say, with the bottom 20% of college graduates to preside in our classrooms. And another thing: Perhaps this is just rear-view, rose-colored glasses, but after Bill Clinton took his lumps in 1994, he learned how to out-argue and out-think the extremists. His message was complicated, but his persona was clear–he was the McDonald’s-eating, lounge-singer-screwing, good ol’ boy with the 800 SATs, who really did understand how Americans (especially blue-collar American males) think, and really cared about their welfare. It was just flat embedded in his DNA after a childhood of having the cool athlete guys laugh at his sax-playing obese butt.



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