–TP

Still, this country could use more of this entertaining stuff.

Getting to the actual post: me, I’m not so sure about this sort of thing. It’s fun to read, and FSM knows Palin deserves no more respectful treatment and is no kinder to her opponents – but, on the other hand, she’s an unemployed ex-politician making her living as a huckster and political sideshow. Wallowing in the slime of personal and political attacks is how she makes her money and remains in the public eye. I suspect that none of this is good for our politics or our public policy – especially because it is perfectly positioned for the process- and personality-oriented stories that our media love to do instead of writing substantive reports on policy proposals. If Palin and Grayson get in a slanging match, the press can gleefully report on it, and contribute to the idea that both parties are equal groups of carnival sideshow barkers with no important difference between them.

It’s like the health care debate: the provisions of the bill poll extremely well on their own and cleanly phrased, but the bill and its contents poll much worse when they are named, because although most news outlets have done a substantive story about the basic policy implications of the bill, albeit few outlets have done many more than one, for twelve months they’ve done daily reports about the endless wrangling, intrigue, and especially the substance-free but invective-rich accusations that each side launches. And this may go for Grayson’s charge that the Republicans want the sick to die as well: as a substantive assessment of their policy prescription’s effects it may be uncomfortably close to the truth, but when phrased as he did it seems as dishonest and meaningless, and as much a debasement of our public discourse, as Palin’s lies about Death Panels.

So, good for Grayson for standing up for himself. And it might be the case that when one party is using such flamboyant nonsense to good effect, the other must do the same or be left behind, so maybe he’s doing the right thing not only for himself but also for his policy goals and his party. But I don’t think it’s a good development for our society.

The problem, as Rachel Maddow discovered the other night in interviewing J.D. Hayworth, is that the nutters think that anything other than a refutation equal in vehemence and nuttery to their own constitutes assent.

“It is a marvel of medical science that they could first locate the one part of Randolph that was not malignant, and, having found it, immediately remove it”

attributed (IIRC) to Auberon Waugh, on being told that Randolph Churchill had undergone the surgical removal of a tumour that turned out not to be malignant.

You don’t use a scalpel on heads made of rock.

pretty much sums it up

Other examples of how to do it:
- The Earl of Sandwich to John Wilkes, circa 1770: ¨Sir, do you expect to die on the gallows or of the pox?¨
Wilkes: ¨That depends, my Lord, on whether I embrace your Lordship´s principles or your mistress.¨
- In the Oxford Union, ca. 1965, I heard Leofranc Holford-Strevens (sic) describe the young Douglas Hogg as ¨a shining wit, as Dr Spooner might have said¨.

More please.