How To Shake That Post-We-Got-Our-Butts-Beat Blues
So you know how it it is – the day after Christmas you feel a little blue. The excitement is over. The company leaves. You take down the tree. You feel a little blue.
Imagine how you’d feel if you just lost an election that you thought you had bought and paid for. That’s some blues. So you can understand this. It was supposed to be a victory cruise. Seriously. They went anyway.
The cruise, featuring the star columnists of William Buckley’s 57-year-old conservative biweekly, had been planned long in advance, and everybody had believed it would be a victory party. An e-mail from the magazine’s publisher arrived a few days before we embarked: “Do not despair or fret. At least not next week.”
Onboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, no one could follow his advice. “Who sent Obama here to destroy America?” a fiftysomething woman asked me one evening over dinner, as if it were a perfectly reasonable question. And here onboard the cruise ship, it was. If the Nieuw Amsterdam was a kind of ark of American alienation, at least it was an eminently comfortable one. The ship was a country unto itself, eleven stories high, 936 feet fore to aft, with eleven bars, six restaurants, two swimming pools, five hot tubs, a large café, and a library. There was the endless buffet on the Lido deck, slot machines and craps in the casino, an Asian lounge singer who did a mean “Copacabana,” a discothèque and a chamber-music cocktail lounge, cigars and Cognac by the pool, gift shops, and a full-service spa.
You will probably enjoy reading the whole article, where you will learn that we have no morals, we actually allow black people to vote, we are fascists, we are kinda like Goebbels, and we may be on to something with talking to minorities “as grown ups.”
Rasmussen offered some friendly advice about approaching minorities. “You show them that you really care, you talk to them as grown-ups on a range of issues, you get them involved,” he suggested…
These rich Republicans on their Blues Cruise are lacking in introspection and reality, but what the hell – they have a spa and cigars.
Thanks to Rick and Raphael for the heads up.
Where’s an iceberg when you need one….. sigh….
1Those folks are beyond caricature. There is nothing one can say about them that is satrical; one can only repeat what they reveal about themselves.
2No Brian, that’s too quick. How about a nice dose of a really virulent norovirus mixed with some swine or avian flu. One could mix it into the drinking water.
3I’d be very happy if the Nieuw Amsterdam with all it’s Republican passengers became stranded on a deserted island, didn’t have a way to communicate to the rest of the world and no one could find them like Gilligan’s Island.
4I read the entire article, and I was appalled at how out of touch many of the people on this cruise were. Rasmussen’s comments about how to attract minorities to the GOP are an indication of the mindset of many republicans. His saying that “you should show them that you care” and “talk to them like grown-ups” shows that he doesn’t know many minorities. He must think we’re stupid if he thinks we don’t know that most republicans don’t care about us, their own rank and file members, or the country, or that we don’t know that their main interest is in consolidating wealth and power into the hands of the richest among us. His advice that they “talk to us like grown-ups” is very insulting and shows that he thinks we’re childlike, not accustomed to dealing with adult issues, and that we need well-to-do GOPers to tell us what to do/think, or how to feel about issues. His advice, thinking, actions, and comments are indicative of the problem the GOP has with winning a majority of the votes of minority groups in national elections. They were shocked when a majority of all minority groups voted for President Obama last month, but they shouldn’t have been. Just because they live in a bubble doesn’t mean that we can’t draw accurate conclusions about the way they feel about us. They were shocked because they thought that we’d ignore all the race-baiting they were doing and vote for their candidates anyway. That we’re not that stupid should have been a teachable moment for them, but based on the words/actions/behavior of those on the National Review Cruise, they haven’t learned a thing. We know that if they are willing to mistreat one group of Americans, they’ll mistreat other groups. As a black female, I know that if they will mistreat the president, they’ll mistreat women, other minorities, LGBTQ Americans, atheists, etc., and I’m having none of it, especially, after growing up under segregation in the South in 1950s America and getting a firsthand serving of their hatred, 24/7/365. No way, no how do I want to see any of these folks in positions of political power. We, like other Americans, are fully capable of examining the issues and the politicians running for public office and choosing those whose vision for the country are more aligned with ours. Although many GOPers seem to be stuck in the 1950s, the rest of us have moved into the 21st Century and are fully intent on moving forward and taking the country along with us.
5Interesting comments. In particular @majii.
I do hope enterprising Dems at the national level take this article and what its says clearly about the heart of the GOP and beats them senseless with it in 2014 midterms and in 2016 presidential election.
6Read that article. Scary to think many of those people actually wield a significant amount of power. And I can virtually guarantee they either married money or inherited it. They are too blind/drunk/stupid to have earned it.
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country”
7– Kurt Vonnegut
I had no information related to the “cruise” yet I wrote in my regular column in the Lufkin Daily News last Friday that the Republicans should “take a long and luxurious cruise and once totally surrounded by the tranquility of blue skies and blue water they could find the solitude to seek introspection, after which the ‘Common good of all Americans’ would at the top of the agenda for their group discussions.” Based on what is being reported from their “cruise” I could have not been more misguided with my suggestion.
8@glf- Love your Gilligan’s Island suggestion! 1st episode, the price of coconuts goes through the roof at the Island Coconut Auction. The winners are only too happy to bid $1000 a piece, but when they try to pay the sellers with their MasterCard, hilarity ensues.
9@ majii, yes, they are as bad as you think. I read the entire article too.
What a bunch of fearful, nasty and delusional people were on that cruise. They only became concerned about the national debt when they realized they might have to pay their share in reducing it.
In the last two paragraphs of the article, John Woo’s mother proved she was the smartest person on the cruise.
10Where are the Somali pirates when you need them???????
11Majii: You wrote: “They were shocked because they thought that we’d ignore all the race-baiting they were doing and vote for their candidates anyway.” IMHO, Republicans do not comprehend race-baiting. They live in so much of a bubble and are so used to hearing their world view echoing through their world that they cannot comprehend why anyone would think that they are racist, sexist, etc. etc. etc. This is why they are all going to have an extremely rough time coming to acknowledge their world view is not working or becoming “extinct” as a party. It will be agonizing for them and, unfortunately, the whole country will feel the effects of their death throes.
12@majii: Beautifully said. Unfortunately,we have to educate a whole lot of people who don’t see how they are hurt by these crazies. Words like yours should be a good start.
13Hot Tubs and no mention of Tom DeLay. What are they coming to.
14Well, they had Ralph Reed with an iguana…..
15(Repeat that line a few times to yourself.)
A cruise from h*ll. I hope they don’t die until after the 1st of the year, when their estate taxes will go through the roof.
16The gold ol’ white boys better wake up and learn that they will soon be in the minority. Imagine what it will be when they are no longer in control. They best pay attention, ’cause last time I heard, Karma can get to be really ugly. I don’t think they want the tables turned on them. But it would be fun to watch! They truly have no clue.
17I read the article. The best idea is one that they on the cruise came up with themselves. “maybe we should turn in our passports and stay on the boat.”
To which I say, “Be my guest…..”
18I’ m sure those far right christians do not use alchohol, but they had a boatload of WHINE.
19Good grief.
20Maybe they should just anchor it and use it as John Galt’s island. Of course, once the crew escapes, it would be more like Lord of the Flies.
21Read the article. Insulated insipid idiots – like the Tin Man with no heart… or brain to figure it out. Same bunch who went on a similar cruise with Weekly Standard writers to Alaska & had dinner with then Gov. Palin. Kid you not… that’s how the Gov. was “discovered” & the rest is history.
Vonnegut was spot on about old classmates. One of mine used “evil” 4 times in 1 paragraph to describe our president… well, & Soros was thrown in for good measure, too. I wondered where she got that word… now I know.
22Same folks return home to “put on the dog” with friends of the same ilk & impress them with stories of dining with their “good friends” in the know. It would be so sad if it wasn’t so funny!!! Meanwhile, their proverbial pockets were picked clean….
23Everyone should link to this article to fully appreciate the dementia pervading “Republicanism” today.
This episode is a perfect capsule (sorry, Mama – I kept the swearing in for effect).
One briefing spotlighted Scott Rasmussen, the pollster whose tilt toward Romney stood out from the crowd. Rasmussen, according to the article, “blasted the assembled Republicans with one crushing statistic after another. The exit poll data, he said, ‘create a negative brand image of the Republican Party as a party that only cares about white people.'”
The article’s author wrote, “To my right, a man snapped, ‘That’s bull****!’
“The man was Bing West, former assistant secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, a former Marine and a National Review contributor.
“West, mocking Rasmussen, said: ‘If you stupid Republicans weren’t so goddamn bigoted you would have won the election!'”
… Truer words were never spoken, Mr. West …
24The movie version of this cruise will be called (of course), “Ship of Fools”.
25OK, so these people are wealthy and Republican. Have access, and write fat checks to candidates and their causes. How about the redneck Republicans….who don’t so much as have a passport, have never been on a cruise, and hardly read the National Review….get all the news they need from FAUX. Those are the yahoos who help elect for us the craziest Congressional delegation in DC, give us Governor Goodhair time and again, and super-majorities in the Texas Lege. The Flat-Earth Society. The Abstinence-Only anti-science crowd. My brother in law sat at my dining room table last night and flat-a**ed denied global warming being a reason for all the severe weather we’ve experienced the past few years. Guess he’s committed the Tx Republican Party’s official platform to memory.
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