By JAMES TARANTO The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.
A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.
President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."
The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well:
A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing. The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of healthcare legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday. Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." . . . The Palin claim about "death panels" was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the healthcare overhaul are misinformed. You have to love that last bit. The fearless, independent journalists of the Los Angeles Times justify their assertion that the Palin claim was "widely discredited" with an appeal to authority--the authority of the White House, which is to say, the other side in the debate. One suspects the breathtaking inadequacy of this argument would have been obvious to Times reporters Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac if George W. Bush were still president. And of course this appears in a story about how the Senate was persuaded to act in accord with Palin's position--which doesn't prove that position right but does show that it is widely (though, to be sure, not universally) credited.
One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.
If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.
For a wonderful example of such hubris, check out this post from David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo.com:
Is there anything quite as unsettling as when the nation's political class (and I use that term broadly to encompass the occasionally political, like the tea partiers) turns its fleeting but intense focus to a new (for them) and complex topic, like end-of-life issues? It seems like years of painstaking work to nudge our death-denying culture toward a more frank and humane approach to our own mortality and dying could be erased by one misguided national discussion set off by none other than Sarah Palin. Except that Palin didn't "set off" this discussion; President Obama did by trying to ram through legislation postalizing the medical system with no time for debate or reflection. How to care for dying patients is a serious, sensitive and complicated matter, one with which American families struggle every day. If you truly don't want the "political class" involved, your quarrel is with the man who is pushing for more federal involvement in this most personal of matters. It's entirely understandable that people would respond to such an effort by shouting, "Keep your laws off my grandma!"
Where's the Death Panel When You Need It? "Momentum Builds for Postal Service Relief"--headline, NationalJournal.com, Aug. 13
Two Papers in One!
"Those who favor a health care overhaul, urged to attend [town hall meetings] by unions and liberal groups like the Service Employees International Union and Health Care for America Now, said they were motivated by concern that the government might not go far enough. Only the government, they say, can take on a problem as big as health care."--news story, New York Times, Aug. 12 "The senator was too polite (or intent on survival) to correct his questioner by pointing out that . . . to talk of 'the government' as a single entity makes no sense, at least in this context, because of the divisions between Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, Capitol Hill and the White House."--news story New York Times, Aug. 13 The Media and the Haters on the Left
Our item yesterday on media coverage of anti-Iraq vs. anti-ObamaCare protests prompted some interesting reader commentary, including this from William White:
The point you make about the media not covering liberal loonies at left-wing protests because such stories would be of dog-bites-man importance has some validity. However, I think you miss two much larger concerns. First, I do not believe that the existence of left-wing fringe elements at liberal protests is at all common knowledge. Certainly political junkies like us know full well about what really goes on at these rallies. However, I think there is a huge swath of middle America that would be quite startled to get the full picture of liberal protests. I also think that were the media to provide such coverage it would notably alter public opinion on many political topics. (By way of contrast, note how the media cover religion. They almost never cover mainstream religious organizations and activity, but consistently report on religious extremists, and always in a negative light.) Second, yes, at any political protest you will have elements there shouting, arguing, whatever, that politician so-and-so is a jerk and in bed with special interests and untrustworthy and all that. However, what infuriated me about the antiwar protests when Bush was in office is that the left's level of rhetoric was not just different in degree from what one might commonly see at political rallies but was different in kind. To me, the left became completely unhinged. To regularly brand Bush as Hitler, to regularly refer to the Bush administration as a "regime," to tolerate the not-uncommon calls for Bush's death or assassination reflected a serious change in the nature of political debate in this country. That change was very much a valid news story. In many respects, that change superseded the significance of the war itself. Yet, the media totally and completely ignored and whitewashed the level of lunacy among the left. Now, maybe I, myself, am an extremist for seeing such an acute liberal bias in the MSM, but, I feel very strongly that the MSM is "at it again." They are working hard to report on fringe conservative protesters as a way to undercut conservative positions when they have regularly ignored the lunacy which exists on the left--and have ignored the size and sway that such extremists hold within the Democratic Party. These are some excellent points, though we're skeptical of the last point about "the size and sway that such extremists hold." The case of extremist wacko Cindy Sheehan, which we discussed at some length yesterday, illustrates the point. After her 15 minutes expired, she ran a fringe campaign for Congress against Nancy Pelosi, and no one cared. That is to say, she had no use for the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party and the mainstream media had no use for her except inasmuch as she could be disguised as a normal person.
Two Speakers in One!
"I say to the president, Mr. President, if you think that our troops in Iraq are there to fight for democracy, do not destroy it at home by cutting off our freedom of speech. . . . "So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view. All of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important. . . . There's nothing more articulate, or more eloquent, to a member of Congress than the voice of his or her own constituent. . . . I'm a fan of disruptors,"--Nancy Pelosi, speaking to a San Francisco town hall meeting, Jan. 17, 2006 "I think they're AstroTurf. You be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."--Nancy Pelosi on disruptive constituents, Aug. 5, 2009
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By JAMES TARANTO
The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.
A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.
President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."
The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well:
A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing.
The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of healthcare legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." . . .
The Palin claim about "death panels" was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the healthcare overhaul are misinformed.
You have to love that last bit. The fearless, independent journalists of the Los Angeles Times justify their assertion that the Palin claim was "widely discredited" with an appeal to authority--the authority of the White House, which is to say, the other side in the debate. One suspects the breathtaking inadequacy of this argument would have been obvious to Times reporters Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac if George W. Bush were still president. And of course this appears in a story about how the Senate was persuaded to act in accord with Palin's position--which doesn't prove that position right but does show that it is widely (though, to be sure, not universally) credited.
One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.
If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.
For a wonderful example of such hubris, check out this post from David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo.com:
Is there anything quite as unsettling as when the nation's political class (and I use that term broadly to encompass the occasionally political, like the tea partiers) turns its fleeting but intense focus to a new (for them) and complex topic, like end-of-life issues?
It seems like years of painstaking work to nudge our death-denying culture toward a more frank and humane approach to our own mortality and dying could be erased by one misguided national discussion set off by none other than Sarah Palin.
Except that Palin didn't "set off" this discussion; President Obama did by trying to ram through legislation postalizing the medical system with no time for debate or reflection. How to care for dying patients is a serious, sensitive and complicated matter, one with which American families struggle every day. If you truly don't want the "political class" involved, your quarrel is with the man who is pushing for more federal involvement in this most personal of matters. It's entirely understandable that people would respond to such an effort by shouting, "Keep your laws off my grandma!"
Where's the Death Panel When You Need It?
"Momentum Builds for Postal Service Relief"--headline, NationalJournal.com, Aug. 13
Two Papers in One!
"Those who favor a health care overhaul, urged to attend [town hall meetings] by unions and liberal groups like the Service Employees International Union and Health Care for America Now, said they were motivated by concern that the government might not go far enough. Only the government, they say, can take on a problem as big as health care."--news story, New York Times, Aug. 12
"The senator was too polite (or intent on survival) to correct his questioner by pointing out that . . . to talk of 'the government' as a single entity makes no sense, at least in this context, because of the divisions between Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, Capitol Hill and the White House."--news story New York Times, Aug. 13
The Media and the Haters on the Left
Our item yesterday on media coverage of anti-Iraq vs. anti-ObamaCare protests prompted some interesting reader commentary, including this from William White:
The point you make about the media not covering liberal loonies at left-wing protests because such stories would be of dog-bites-man importance has some validity. However, I think you miss two much larger concerns.
First, I do not believe that the existence of left-wing fringe elements at liberal protests is at all common knowledge. Certainly political junkies like us know full well about what really goes on at these rallies. However, I think there is a huge swath of middle America that would be quite startled to get the full picture of liberal protests. I also think that were the media to provide such coverage it would notably alter public opinion on many political topics. (By way of contrast, note how the media cover religion. They almost never cover mainstream religious organizations and activity, but consistently report on religious extremists, and always in a negative light.)
Second, yes, at any political protest you will have elements there shouting, arguing, whatever, that politician so-and-so is a jerk and in bed with special interests and untrustworthy and all that. However, what infuriated me about the antiwar protests when Bush was in office is that the left's level of rhetoric was not just different in degree from what one might commonly see at political rallies but was different in kind. To me, the left became completely unhinged. To regularly brand Bush as Hitler, to regularly refer to the Bush administration as a "regime," to tolerate the not-uncommon calls for Bush's death or assassination reflected a serious change in the nature of political debate in this country. That change was very much a valid news story. In many respects, that change superseded the significance of the war itself. Yet, the media totally and completely ignored and whitewashed the level of lunacy among the left.
Now, maybe I, myself, am an extremist for seeing such an acute liberal bias in the MSM, but, I feel very strongly that the MSM is "at it again." They are working hard to report on fringe conservative protesters as a way to undercut conservative positions when they have regularly ignored the lunacy which exists on the left--and have ignored the size and sway that such extremists hold within the Democratic Party.
These are some excellent points, though we're skeptical of the last point about "the size and sway that such extremists hold." The case of extremist wacko Cindy Sheehan, which we discussed at some length yesterday, illustrates the point. After her 15 minutes expired, she ran a fringe campaign for Congress against Nancy Pelosi, and no one cared. That is to say, she had no use for the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party and the mainstream media had no use for her except inasmuch as she could be disguised as a normal person.
Two Speakers in One!
"I say to the president, Mr. President, if you think that our troops in Iraq are there to fight for democracy, do not destroy it at home by cutting off our freedom of speech. . . . "So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view. All of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important. . . . There's nothing more articulate, or more eloquent, to a member of Congress than the voice of his or her own constituent. . . . I'm a fan of disruptors,"--Nancy Pelosi, speaking to a San Francisco town hall meeting, Jan. 17, 2006
"I think they're AstroTurf. You be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."--Nancy Pelosi on disruptive constituents, Aug. 5, 2009
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