moanin' mona charen

Okay, those Wingnut Welfare Queens over at the NRO threw themselves a little Conservative Summit meeting and had all manner of right-leaning "luminaries" in to share their "knowledge" and "expertise" with the gruel-thin, anxious crowds who congregated there to soak up some tips about how to retain your myopic, distorted view of the world when so clearly reality is crashing in on all sides of the NeoCon dream.  Apparently, a dozen years of Republic Party hegemony has not worked out quite like they wanted, so now they are frantically convening to see what options are left to them.

Former Nancy Reagan speechwriter (She gave speeches?  I thought she just stood there looking like an anorexic stop-sign in a Valentino gown and let Ronnie do the talking.) Mona Charen has decided that the path to a bright, Right-Wing future is to start a breeding program for baby Republican artists. 

From Crooks and Liars:

Charen: When I travel around the country is when people say well you know how do we effect the country, how do we effect the culture, I will frequently say rather than have your kids be business men, teachers, lawyer—many other things—have them either be journalists or movie makers. That's where we have nothing in the culture…

Mona, sweetie!  What a fantastic idea!  Do you hear that Republic Party parents?  We know it will be difficult, but you must do everything in your power to dissuade your children from stable, respectable professions like medicine, education, and the law, and encourage them to be writers and filmmakers.  Huzzah!  What a brilliant plan!  What could possibly go wrong?

Seriously, why channel your children's hopes into fields that will edify and benefit both them and society when they could just as easily have their souls crushed and dreams destroyed by working in the arts?  I guess it beats sending them off to die in Iraq.  But then again, no one in your set was going to do that with their kids anyway, were they, Mona?

Mona sez (and you really should watch the video):

If you're "cool", you're a liberal.  They have all the "cool" shows.  They are all the "hip" people.  And to be a conservative is to be just a little bit "un-hip".

Uh, not just a little, Mona.  But hey, Hot Mama!  You seem to be pretty handy with the lingo us hepcat liberals talk these days! 

 And there's no reason that has to be so.  There are plenty of smart, funny conservatives out there who need to get out there and make a product that makes fun of liberals!

Spew alert!

Mona, Mona, Mona.  You've done it now.  I'm going to have to get out the Julia Gorin video to show you why your brilliant plan will never work.

 

As TBogg says:

Jesus.

That just makes my ass bleed with sadness.

Yeah, and lest we forget, Jack Abramoff briefly had a career in Hollywood.  Do the words Red Scorpion mean anything to you?  If they do, then you're among perhaps .001% of the population, which is a shame because I think Abramoff's Z-grade thriller serves as an exemplary object-lesson about the perils of ideologically-motivated filmmaking, especially in the hands of conservatives.

For you see, class, in order to maintain the conservative mind-set, one must do away entirely with one's imagination, and that is the first and foremost requirement for any person who wants to be a creative artist.  You can't make art without an imagination, and one of the first things that happens when a person with a fertile and flexible imagination meets the world is a phenomenon we call "empathy".  Does that ring any bells for you, Mona?  I didn't think so.

"Empathy" is when a person looks at the world and realizes that except for a few happy accidents of birth and societal station, they are no different than the refugees of Palestine and Somalia, the poor people stranded on their roofs after Hurricane Katrina, or the Mexican immigrants Tom Tancredo is trying to round up and gas.  When that happens, the whole Right-Wing ethos goes up in flames, for to remain a conservative, one must embrace the notion that one is inherently better and more deserving of good fortune than those "scumbags" (as Glenn Beck calls them) who were too sick, poor, or alone to score a ride out of New Orleans before the storm.

But please, rich Republicans, do everything you can to turn your children into artists.  They may be the only ones with trust funds that are capacious enough to support them through the lean years between graduation and joining the less than 1% of creative artists who earn enough to make a living in their field.  And who knows?  You may succeed in creating a generation of artists from "good" homes.  Except, of course, if they're any good at all and have even a modicum of talent, they'll turn into liberals and curse you in every interview and tell-all biography they ever do.  And that might be kind of fun!