Showing posts with label false equivalency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false equivalency. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The False Equivalency Blues

Everybody's getting all bent out of shape from the latest eruption of false equivalency. In the wake of the Mitt Romney odium, conservatives like Ross Douthat can't resist tying Mitt's remarks to those of then-candidate Obama at a San Francisco fundraiser in 2008.  Rust Belt types of folks, Obama had been recorded saying, are bitter clingers to their guns and religion. The critics are right -- this particular comparison is false equivalency, because Obama tempered his remarks with a modicum of sympathy for the poor and downtrodden of Swing States, USA. Unlike Mitt. Well, we all know what a crass, clueless, "inelegant" guy he is.

For a better example of how both men hold the hoi polloi in utter contempt for the purposes of point-scoring with their wealthy donors, here's a gem from a 2010 $30,000-a-plate Obama fundraiser held at the home of banking and real estate tycoon Richard Richman in tony Greenwich, CT. Said the President:
Now, the second reason I'm telling you this is because Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particularly derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.)
Those remarks, dissing his own base as genetically disenfranchised malcontents, were officially released by the White House! So I guess Romney doesn't hold exclusive title to cluelessness, after all. Of course, what Obama later individually told the VIPs at the fundraiser, we will never know. His minions make them check their recording devices at the door, just in case.

The point is that both Romney and Obama suck up to thin-skinned Richie Riches (literally.) They persuade them to open up their wallets by appealing to their snobbishness. Romney used the half of the population which receives some sort of government assistance to make the thin-skinned elites feel superior. Obama makes fun of his own uninsured, bank-victimized, anti-war supporters, making the coddled elites feel superior. The pragmatist kids are so much cooler than those purist nerds, dontcha know.

The true equivalency is in the pandering for elite weighted votes, and the snob appeal. These candidates are not really all that far apart. One of them just happens to be a lot more talented in charm offensive and tasteful contemptuousness.