Major news organizations are busy this week high-fiving each
other over what they’ve convinced themselves is the death of Mitt
Romney’s presidential campaign. Watching MSNBC these days is like
watching the autopsy of a murder victim, conducted by the murderers
themselves. Their unseemly jubilation is inspired by a “secret”
four-month-old video of Romney discussing the 47 percent of
Americans — myself among them — who do not pay federal
income tax. If I hit the Powerball, I’ll try to make good with the
Treasury Department, but the fact that I don’t make
$5 million a year like Chris Matthews is certainly not Mitt
Romney’s fault. Nor do I blame Matthews, who has real talent of the
kind that usually involves wearing a fright wig, a red nose and big
floppy shoes.
Despite my lack of resentment, I’m told I should be offended by
Romney’s remarks about myself and my fellow 47-percenters. Bill
Kristol called the Republican candidate’s comments “arrogant
and stupid.” Kristol once worked for Dan Quayle. Insert punch
line here.
All joking aside, however, and without regard for the media’s
self-congratulatory celebration of Romney’s troubles, there is a
serious question involved: Are the economically less fortunate
entitled to constant flattery, lest our self-esteem be damaged?
Should we think of ourselves as victims, deserving not only tax
exemptions, but also benefits which others are taxed to provide for
us? Or is it possible that with a new attitude — and a
different set of policies in Washington — some of us in the
47 percent might by our own efforts escape the embarrassment of
penury and achieve some measure of economic success?
Is it crazy to believe that? Then I might qualify for
disability, although Conservative Derangement Syndrome is not among
the disorders listed in the DSM-IV. But all joking aside…
My poverty is entirely my own fault. Before I got into the
journalism racket, I had a perfectly good job as a forklift driver,
and if I’d stuck with that, who knows? I might have been warehouse
manager by now. Yet I convinced myself that a suit-and-tie job was
more prestigious and more lucrative, which it might actually have
been. But then Al Gore invented the Internet, the bottom fell out
of the newspaper business, and nowadays all journalists are
compelled to scrape for nickels and dimes in the blogosphere, even
Harvard graduates like Bill Kristol (magna cum laude,
1973) and Matthew Yglesias (magna cum laude, 2003). The
latter is a liberal who no doubt heartily shares Kristol’s disdain
for their fellow Harvardian, the “arrogant and stupid” Romney
(J.D., MBA, 1975). In the 21st century, it sometimes seems,
political discourse is conducted entirely among Ivy League alumni,
usually on Twitter. Yglesias this week honored his Twitter devotees
with a philosophical
treatise: “The concept of ‘redistribution’ falsely implies that
the existence of property is prior to the existence of the state.
#mythofownership.”
Maybe you have to be magna cum laude to understand
that, or to be impressed by it. My own academic career more
resembled that of the Animal House character Bluto who,
when informed that he and his Delta frat brothers had been kicked
out of college, memorably lamented, “Seven years of college down
the drain. Might as well join the f—ing Peace Corps.” I
managed to graduate in less than seven years, and could have become
a warehouse manager if I’d stuck with that forklift job, instead of
getting into the newspaper business. Despite President Obama’s
eagerness to absolve me of responsibility for my mistake, I
contemplate my profession with a weird mixture of shame and pride
as I declare, “No, sir, I did build that.” This crappy
journalism career is all mine.
In 1776, contrary to what children are taught in school
nowadays, our nation’s Founding Fathers did not sign the
“Declaration of Equality.” No, the document to which John Hancock
and the others signed their names in Philadelphia — the vow to
which they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor — was the Declaration of Independence. There is a world of
difference between the two concepts. While I do not claim to be the
equal of such eminent Harvard alumni as Kristol, Yglesias, and
Obama (J.D., magna cum laude, 1991), I stubbornly refuse
to surrender my independence. And I’m damned well sick and tired of
hearing all these smart people on TV proclaiming that folks like me
are too stupid to understand what Mitt Romney was saying in that
“secret” video.
By God, Romney was right and if anyone is insulted by the plain
truth, they deserve to be insulted.
Ross Kaminsky is also right: The “secret” video could be just
what the Romney campaign needed to spark a serious conversation
about Obama’s economic failure. Our national debt is now $16
trillion, the annual budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion for
each of the past four years, and 47 percent of us aren’t
contributing a nickel to fix that problem. A big part of the
problem — and maybe you’ve noticed this — is that the
economy sucks. Even if you didn’t make the mistake of pursuing a
journalism career, it’s kind of hard to work your way up when the
unemployment rate is over 8 percent, a statistic that actually
understates the problem. As
James Pethokoukis has explained, the broader unemployment rate,
including part-time workers who want full-time jobs, is 14.6
percent, and the rate would be even higher if not for a declining
rate of “workforce participation.” Among the factors in this
decline is the extension of unemployment payments to 99 weeks, as
well as a troubling rise in the number of working-age adults
claiming disability. An additional 1.7 million are now receiving
Social Security disability payments, a
23 percent increase since 2007. More and more people are being
paid not to work, which reduces the number of taxpayers, and the
government is borrowing more money to make more payments to more
people, including the
increasing number (47 million) on food stamps.
This is no laughing matter, and Obama’s consistent “answer” to
the problem — to increase taxes on the rich — can’t possibly
solve it. The growth in the percentage of Americans dependent upon
government assistance is not a “Change We Can Believe In,” to
borrow the president’s 2008 campaign slogan. To go “Forward” in the
same direction, as the president’s 2012 slogan urges, is to hurtle
into an abyss. So why, faced with a crisis so clearly caused by the
incumbent’s disastrous policies, are the nation’s news
organizations doing their worst to cripple the campaign of the
Republican challenger? Why is Chris Matthews laughing with his
MSNBC buddies while the American Dream is on the verge of
extinction?
If that’s “journalism,” all joking aside, I’d rather go back to
driving a forklift.
