A Few Words on “Decorum”
[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]
I didn’t watch the President’s speech before Congress last Wednesday. Life is short, after all, and I reasoned that in the unlikely event I should be seized by the desire to take in the man’s oratorical gifts, I need only wait a matter of hours before the next opportunity came around. (And sure enough, he’s speaking on Wall Street even as I write this.) But as one who pays attention to the news, I have been unable to escape all this talk about Congressman Joe Wilson’s little outburst, which appears to have overshadowed any discussion of the President’s own remarks. Mr. Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, took exception to the claim that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the President’s envisioned federalized health care regime. “You lie!” Mr. Wilson shouted, drawing disapproving, censorious stares from Vice President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and the President himself, followed by disapproving, censorious commentary from observers on all sides.
Fine. As is generally acknowledged, Mr. Wilson crossed the line with this breach of decorum. He extended an apology to the President, which was duly accepted. We move on then, don’t we?
We do not, apparently. Maureen Dowd, for example, took up where Janeane Garofalo left off some months ago, ascribing Wilson’s fit of pique to racism. “ But, fair or not,” Dowd wrote, “what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”
One expects such drivel from Ms. Dowd. But I would ask her, and anyone else similarly deluded, if Republicans heckling Mr. Obama can only be ascribed to racism, then Democrats heckling President Bush should have been ascribed to . . . what? I searched in vain for disapproving, censorious commentary from Ms. Dowd, or from anyone else in the New York Times’s stable of columnists, regarding the reception Democrats gave President Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address, during which he proposed changes to the still-foundering Social Security system. Recall that Mr. Bush was accorded the same level of decorum customarily extended to the visiting team at the Roller Derby, yet none of the wags at the New York Times was sufficiently perturbed by this affront to good manners as to make note of it in a column.
If I were a member of Congress, as unlikely a contingency as can be imagined, I would propose we abandon this pretense of civility and give the viewing audience the rollicking good show it desires, one that would rival if not surpass even American Idol in viewership. If representatives and senators are to be rounded up and forced to listen to a speech at eight in the evening, an hour at which most of them would ordinarily be swilling cocktails, chasing interns, or scurrying about K Street picking up the envelopes, we ought to make it worth their while. When gathered for such a speech, each of them should have at his feet a small bin of fruits and vegetables, sufficiently ripened so as to cause insult but not injury, with which he would attempt to bean the speaker every time he told a whopper. Given Mr. Obama’s casual relationship with the facts on health care, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, Charles Krauthammer, and others, if such an arrangement had been in place last Wednesday evening, we would have seen one well-beaned President.
That, I would have watched.
–Jack Dunphy
Well, for my part, I think that hypocritical demands for decorum are merely efforts to squash vigorous dissent by conservatives and others deeply opposed to the insane policies of the Democrats.
So, screw them. Throwing verbal tomatoes at the POTUS (physical ones are likely to get the thrower jailed if not shot) sounds pretty good to me. If we are not breaking the law, then go right ahead and do it.
And, for that matter, even if we are breaking the law. The Left understands the difficulty that the courts have in convicting thousands of citizens committing civil disobedience. We should learn that lesson as well.
iconoclast (30a029) — 9/14/2009 @ 11:45 amThere is a cognitive dissonance that even the left will begin to have trouble with. Limbaugh this morning had a nice riff on all the times Bush was insulted, threatened and libeled during his presidency.
Mike K (addb13) — 9/14/2009 @ 12:00 pmDecorum is for countries what don’t run third worldy deficits and don’t start trade wars just to appease their pet dirty socialist union thugs and what don’t work to support the advance of dirty socialists in Latin America. Decorum is forward-looking, an anticipation of the sort of atmosphere one would like to prevail next week and next month and next year. Decorum is for countries what have a future, not for declining loser nations like our little one.
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/14/2009 @ 12:05 pmFinally. A post that agrees that Joe Wilson was wrong in his behavior. Now we can start to talk about what the real issues are. Funny how this is coming five days after it happened. But like they say, better late than never. Kudos to this blog for standing for what is right. Irrespective of whom it hurts or helps. What is wrong is wrong. Doesn’t, matter who started it. Again, great post.
The Emperor (1b037c) — 9/14/2009 @ 12:07 pm“what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”
She’s projecting either her own racist-tinged emotions regarding a non-white politician or being disingenuous about the politics she holds near and dear to her heart—that being “progressivism.” So folks like her in general will claim “oh, no, the New York Times doesn’t have leftist bias!” Or “I’m not a liberal! I’m a progressive!” Or, “characterizing a person’s politics as either left or right is so misleading or vague or incorrect!”
That’s why if someone like Dowd weren’t so conscious of race to begin with — which really is a preliminary step to being racist, if not bigoted — she’d be far more into the ideology of Barack Obama or any non-white person. And anything else about such a person would place but a very distant second.
I envision people like Dowd when I theorize that if 80 percent of black America were conservative instead of “progressive,” a lot of people on the left would find themselves becoming very cavalier or apathetic about racial diversity. Some of them might even show signs of becoming hostile.
Mark (411533) — 9/14/2009 @ 12:26 pmSorry for the OT, but Howie Kurtz just called Kenya “Obama’s native country,”
Back in Kenya
The Boston Globe has an interesting piece from Obama’s native country on attempts to cash in:
“The price of land here has skyrocketed because of rampant speculation about an Obama family museum that the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism has promised to build. And there have been some modest, but tangible, signs of progress that seem tied to the village’s new notoriety. Within a week of Obama’s election victory last year, the government began to pave the main road to town. It also brought in an electricity and water lines to Obama’s step-grandmother’s compound.
Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R. (a18ddc) — 9/14/2009 @ 12:27 pmObama should just be glad Wilson didn’t throw shoes at him. That sort of thing makes you popular in some circles, I hear.
Mars vs Hollywood (a49876) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:13 pmoh. NPR agrees with Dowd that Wilson is stupid bigot head.
I didn’t see that coming.
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:15 pmPersonally, I think decorum regarding the Presidency is a great idea. Too bad that the Democrats…um….don’t have clean hands on this subject.
In fact, one character is a bald faced hypocrite on the subject. Ed Morrissey has the goods”
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/14/hypocrisy-alert-famous-disruptor-now-an-etiquette-scold/
Amazing. The MSM just rolls over like a submissive dog hoping for a belly rub.
Eric Blair (0b61b2) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:26 pm‘Dowd wrote, “what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”’
Liberals are always seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. Kinda like schizophrenics.
Dave Surls (a76971) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:49 pmIt would improve ratings, which is becoming an issue in the never-ending Obama show. But, like Eric, I’m a fan of decorum. Supporters should show their support by clapping and occasionally standing up. Detractors should show their disdain by sitting on their hands.
tim maguire (4a98f0) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:49 pmHowie Kurtz just called Kenya “Obama’s native country”
You mean Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States? Whoa!
Official Internet Data Office (4dc17c) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:52 pm“Detractors should show their disdain by sitting on their hands.”
I prefer to throw shoes.
Dave Surls (a76971) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:57 pmYou know, when your President–and Obama is my President–looks you in the eye and lies “I did not have sex with that woman”, or “this will not give health care to illegal aliens”, and you know he knows he’s lying to you–well Maureen Dowd mistakes what you want to say to your President.
It isn’t “You lie “boy”, it’s more along the non racial lines of “yer a lying a#$hole”!
But Maureen lies back on her couch, peels a grape, and gets the vapors. Get with the program Mo Do–and figure out what the country really thinks.
Mike Myers (3b216c) — 9/14/2009 @ 1:59 pmMoDo is self-imprisoned in a Kaelian bubble contained within an impenetrable force-field!
AD - RtR/OS! (5c940e) — 9/14/2009 @ 2:15 pmI have to remind myself that it is the President of the United States speaking.
SteveG (97b6b9) — 9/14/2009 @ 2:20 pmI keep getting flashbacks to corporate seminars with Tony Robbins and I just want to yell “Bullshit” and go home early.
Codewords, b*tches. They get to make things up, and say that you said them.
JD (16fd4f) — 9/14/2009 @ 2:38 pmMy “unspoken word” would have been “Asshole”.
Techie (482700) — 9/14/2009 @ 3:35 pmA guy who runs and is elected as a moderate, then pivots to ram liberal dreams down our throats, is based on a lie from the beginning.
I respect the office of the Presidency. I don’t respect this president. It wasn’t the Office that spoke to the joint houses and misinformed the public, but a man. If somebody lies, you can be as polite as you wish, when it doesn’t matter, and walking away has no serious consequences.
I was first ashamed an American President when Clinton sullied the office with his concupiscence. I was first ashamed of America when we elected this president. 9-12, the town halls, and the tea parties give me hope that the real America is not a bunch of selfish, credulous adolescents.
Wilson’s apology acknowledged decorum. But I can’t blame him for his exclamation.
jodetoad (059c35) — 9/14/2009 @ 4:56 pmI don’t think it is so much his “casual” relationship with the facts so much as him just being so economical with the truth. Frugality, you know.
rls (e58293) — 9/14/2009 @ 5:23 pmIn January, 2005, the Attorney General of the United States appeared before a committee on which sat Senator Joseph Biden. In the course of his questioning of the highest law enforcement officer in the land, Biden referred to him as “buddy boy.” No one objected. Ms.Dowd was silent on the issue. The AG was Alberto Gonzalez. Racial and ethnic insults to what liberals are pleased to call “people of color,” are all right when made by them to non-liberals. But the rest of us find only hypocrisy, liberal-style, in such practices.
mhr (0cd0ec) — 9/14/2009 @ 6:28 pmWhen I read what MD said, I knew what she really meant…., “as he slithered up my naked body I shook with anticipation….”
bizjetmech (022d42) — 9/14/2009 @ 6:32 pmJust sayin, unspoken and all….
sorry, just seemed appropriate…..
First, Maureen Dowd has no idea what real racism is and what it really means.
I’ve lived too long in the South and seen too many people victimized by true racism to consider her Park Place platitudes nothing more than the blitherings as backhanded insults to establish her credentials as an important “voice” to “heal” the nation.
I don’t see her ilk in New Orleans or Galveston or the fifth ward of Houston or South Oak Cliff in Dallas trying to make lives better.
I do see, and know, good, hard-working people giving up their time and money to help those who need help.
I don’t need to be lectured and accused of racism by a New York elite who wouldn’t know hunger if her prix fixe menu bit her in the butt.
But, it still bothers me a bit, and it shouldn’t. She gets to spend her weekends in the Hamptons or France or whatever place those folks get to enjoy. She has reaped the rewards of living in a free, capitalist society, so she can lecture the rest of us on what she thinks we think and do.
However, our society, and by that I mean the great unwashed masses, does expect a modicum in return.
I would like to see her tax returns and charitable donations.
I would like to see her hours spent in a homeless shelter or hammering a board for Habitat for Humanity.
I would like to see her donations to the local food bank and to the missions working to reduce hunger and disease and terrorism in the Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe or any other country where people can’t enjoy a free life or the ability for a better life.
But, mostly, I would like to see her come and call me a racist to my face. She won’t. She can’t. Because she’s a coward, hiding behind the institution of The New York Times.
Ag80 (64bef0) — 9/14/2009 @ 8:43 pmDon’t worry, Ag80. Our new troll JW Dhimmicrat (I like that) will be happy to call you a racist…and be just as safe as Maureen Dowd.
At the same time, consider this: does Maureen Dowd strike you as happy? I know you are. Every day Maureen Dowd has will even more sour and bitter than the one before it.
So let her call people names. She knows the truth. I’m not a fan of the hyperdramatic Morrissey, but I think this line from The Smith’s “Unhappy Birthday” are appropriate:
She knows the truth about herself every time she looks in the mirror. And I don’t mean her encroaching age.
Eric Blair (721b15) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:21 pmWhat does this tell us?
It tells us Dowd’s editors won’t let her put the N-word in print.
This reminds me of a party game:
Everyone sits in a circle. You go around the circle, with each person taking a turn, saying some sort of corporate slogan, like “Just do it” or “Army Strong.”
Then you go around the circle a second time. Everyone says their slogan, plus a few words (for example: “in my pants”). “Just do it . . . in my pants!” “Army strong . . . in my pants!”
It’s fun. It’s funny. People enjoy it. Well, teenagers enjoy it. And that’s what MoDo wants to do to us–to stick the word “boy” onto the end of everything Republicans say, to turn it into something racist.
“Gee, how ’bout them Steelers” becomes “gee, how bout them Steelers, BOY!!!!” And what was an innocuous, friendly, constructive comment becomes something hateful. Whatever.
Daryl Herbert (38e6a5) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:24 pm“…”May the lines sag, may the lines sag heavy and deep tonight”..”
The song by the hyperdramatic Morrissey, who I am a fan of.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:28 pmHow about adding it to “Maureen Dowd is a…”
Eric Blair (721b15) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:28 pmHey, Bradley, to each their own. I didn’t mean to act like Morrissey was like, um, Kanye West.
Morrissey has class, even if he is dramatic.
Eric Blair (721b15) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:36 pmEric:
Sorry to disagree, but every line she types means a ca-ching on her cash register.
If money makes her happy, she’s the happiest fool on the Good Ship Lollipop.
If the suffering of the disenfranchised makes her sad, I’m the captain of the Ship.
Ag80 (64bef0) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:37 pmHi Ag80..those aren’t the kinds of lines sagging heavy and deep I meant. Especially when she seems them in the mirror.
But yes, she is paid well to be a nasty magpie. And a plagiarist.
Eric Blair (721b15) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:41 pmNo worries, Bro Eric. And I agree that no how much money MoDo gets, she’s going to get increasingly unhappy with the march of time. Not because of age, but because she’s wasting her life on frivolities — a promising reporter who got sidetracked into cutesy but meaningless columns.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407) — 9/14/2009 @ 9:45 pmNow/ heaven knows I’m a miserable rascist boy with a thorn in his side..buoy!
pdbuttons (bbdd05) — 9/14/2009 @ 10:04 pmBigmouth Obama strikes again!
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407) — 9/14/2009 @ 10:09 pmJoe Wilson for House Minority Leader or Majority Leader after the 2010 elections
Horatio (e2e328) — 9/14/2009 @ 10:10 pmJoe Wilson for SotH! Then impeach the pair of nuts above him!
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 9/14/2009 @ 10:30 pmYou have got to see this clip!
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 9/14/2009 @ 11:45 pmbuttons! hey you I hope all is good –
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/15/2009 @ 8:42 amNPR is back today making sure its audience realizes that calling our lying dirty socialist president a liar is RACIST.
NPR wants to macaca Wilson and they’re using their dirty socialist government subsidies to do it.
I doubt though that NPR has enough swing voters or Republicans in its lily white rich people audience to make a damn bit of difference. There’s a reason BMW is one of their sponsors.
Also it would be easier if the little president man wasn’t a liar I think.
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/15/2009 @ 9:04 amI can’t help a feeling
who says that anyway? odd.
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/15/2009 @ 9:05 amHonesty, integrity and truthtelling is a far more important virtue than decorum.
The President lied.
When a different Joe Wilson called a different President a liar, nobody fretted about decorum. “Decorum” is saying it in the New York Times apparently.
We are a better nation when decorum is violated to stand up for truth, than when honesty is foregone and demagogues use ‘decorum’ to cover their lies.
Obama lied. he lied repeatedly and with malicious intent to fool voters about what is in the bill. Joe Wilson called out only one of many lies.
Travis Monitor (9e3371) — 9/15/2009 @ 9:16 am“We are a better nation when decorum is violated to stand up for truth, than when honesty is foregone and demagogues use ‘decorum’ to cover their lies.”
Comment by Travis Monitor — 9/15/2009 @ 9:16 am
Well said.
MD in Philly (d4f9fa) — 9/15/2009 @ 10:39 amDo you really, Cap’n Ed? Even though you acknowledge that…
Wilson’s interjection wound up exposing the lack of enforcement on citizenship in the ObamaCare system … ?
How incredibly insipid and not a little poncey.
happyfeet (71f55e) — 9/15/2009 @ 10:40 am#36 You have got to see this clip!
Comment by John Hitchcock — 9/14/2009 @ 11:45 pm
Thank you!
MD in Philly (d4f9fa) — 9/15/2009 @ 10:42 am[…] that Joe Wilson person. Find somebody with a good right arm: If I were a member of Congress, as unlikely a contingency as can be imagined, I would propose we […]
dustbury.com » Inside the Peltway (68987f) — 9/15/2009 @ 11:15 am