A new Bloomberg poll suggests that public perception of the health care "debate" may be tilting toward reason. Majorities of those surveyed feel that right-wing claims about "death panels," socialism, abortion, and immigration are "scare tactics." In another possible indicator of thawing ice, none other than Bill O'Reilly has spoken in support of a public option -- perhaps because Glenn Beck has cornered the Fox News market on reactionary hysteria, and O'Reilly is staking out a claim to the slightly deeper end of the pool.
Even when O'Reilly says something I agree with, I applaud with great caution. But it would be a great thing if portions of his audience come around to the understanding that the public option in no way represents a radical "takeover" of health care. It would be a great thing if it became more difficult for conservatives to deny that the health care crisis is a greater threat to American lives and safety than any foreign-policy crisis in recent memory. A Harvard Medical School report has found that 45,000 people die in the U.S. every year due to lack of health insurance. That's fifteen 9/11s a year. Thirty-second spots produced by insurance companies should be received in the same vein as al Qaeda's crude video and audio dispatches.
Oklahoma Not Okay
Conservatives continue to scale new heights of absurdity with their ridiculous outrage over czars. One hundred House Republicans are actually co-sponsoring legislation intended to stop the Obama Administration from appointing advisors. Their message is that Obama is turning us into Russia, with all these czars! Never mind the facts: White House point-people with long titles have been informally referred to as czars since the practice began under Nixon; George W. Bush had more "czars" than either Clinton or Obama. These conservatives are plainly saying that the facts don't matter, because their constituents are ignorant. Of course those one hundred House Republicans know full well that there is nothing unique, let alone Communistic, about the Obama White House and its "czars." But they also know that their base doesn't know much, and can be easily whipped up into a frenzy over a foreign-sounding word. This is a useful message to the left: We don't have to call Republicans stupid. Republicans are already doing it.
Ignorance, as always, is a big advantage for Republicans and a big disadvantage for Democrats. Unfortunately, it's an epidemic, and it's getting worse. A recent survey commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs finds that only 23% of Oklahoma high school students can identify the first President of the United States. Only 14% know who wrote the Declaration of Independence; 27% can name the two houses of Congress; 26% know that the first ten amendments to the Constitution comprise the Bill of Rights. Six in ten cannot name the two major political parties in the United States, and four in ten are unsure which ocean is on the east coast.
The greatest irony of all is that the questions used in this survey are from the exam immigrants must take in order to become U.S. citizens. Immigrants have to answer six questions correctly. So the majority of Oklahoma high school students, if they were not born in the States, could not pass the test to become citizens. But we know that a good number of them will grow up to be adults who despise immigrants, equate liberalism with Hitler, and claim to defend the Bill of Rights they've apparently never heard of.
Santorum for President?
Former Pennsylvania Senator and renowned fetus-cuddler Rick Santorum says he may run for president in 2012. This would be a hilarious spectacle for all to enjoy, and I, for one, really hope he does it. We haven't had the pleasure of watching "Man-on-Dog" Santorum lose an election in three years, and it would be great to see it again. "The dynamic has changed," Santorum explained in an RNC conference call, adding that the Obama presidency is "injurious to America" and that health care reform is "an abomination." Santorum then returned to his office to cuddle a few fetuses before lunch.
There's a special place in my heart for Rick Santorum, partly because he's such a perfect example of right-wing religious lunacy, and partly because I played Santorum in the Nero Fiddled production Moral Value Meal. For notes on the acting challenge of a lifetime, and a picture of me in the role, see "Becoming Santorum," 4/17/06.
Yes, it's Racism
"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," said President Jimmy Carter this week. His timing could have been better. President Obama is about to appear on five Sunday talk shows plus Letterman to push health care reform, and the Carter remarks guarantee that each of those appearances will be devoted, at least partially, to the question of how racist the anti-Obama crowd is. If this sounds familiar, it's because back in July, when Obama held an important press conference on health care, he upstaged his own message by commenting, at the very end, on the perhaps racially-motivated arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates. The President was correct when he said the Cambridge police "acted stupidly," just as President Carter is correct when he says that a lot of the Obama-haters are racists. The question is how much it helps to say so.
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes that Carter was "right in essence, but wrong in degree," that "some -- but not 'an overwhelming portion,' as Carter claimed -- of the 'intensely demonstrated animosity' toward Obama is indeed 'based on the fact that he is a black man." Okay, I get it. We have to be careful not to appear to suggest that everyone who disagrees with Obama must be a racist. Obviously that would be going too far. But between the birthers and the deathers and the disturbing signage and the Joe Wilson outburst and the guns, the racist element of the opposition does strike me as, well, overwhelming.
And when Jim Sleeper, also in the Post, insists that "it's not about race," he comes off as disingenuous at best. He reminds us of "the swift-boating of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 campaign and the unending conservative rage against former president Bill Clinton," by way of saying that the rage of the right is not new or specific to Obama. But by raising those examples, Sleeper is disproving his own point. As ugly and as ignorant as the attacks on Kerry and Clinton were, it must be acknowledged that the animosity directed toward Obama is worse -- more ugly, more ignorant, and, incidentally, filled with obvious racism. It's sheer foolishness to suggest that these livid, gun-toting "tea party" people are actually bursting with visceral anger over the deficit.
And frankly, when your arguments are completely incoherent and have no basis in fact, people are going to wonder what's really going on. If you're filled with primal hatred of Obama, and you're carrying a gun and a sign that says "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens," and you're utterly incapable of coming up with a single rational argument, anyone with half a brain is going to dismiss your stated concerns and assume that there's another explanation for your hatred.
