More Rice-a-Roni for everyone
posted by Liberal Beagle at 8:30 AM
So Fox News put up a banner in front of a picture of Nancy Pelosi holding her gavel reading "100 Hours to Turn American Into San Francisco". Can anyone tell me why this is remotely a bad idea, anyway?
The constant tarring of San Francisco in political discourse is amazing. Besides the obvious nutcase Bill O'Reilly's entreaties to al-Qaeda to blow up San Francisco, there's also the term "San Francisco values" which they have desperately tried to paint as a pejorative. Heck, trying to sway rural voters by calling Nancy Pelosi a "San Francisco liberal" was intended to be a fierce swipe at her morality.
This just doesn't take, except with the extremists. I don't know a single progressive activist who would use an epithet like, say, "Montgomery, Alabama ideals." (Honest, I'm just picking a city at random here.) For one thing, to tar a whole city based on an outlook shared by some vocal residents is ludicrously unfair. For another, it's missing the point entirely. You can't base your arguments on some vague idea that once Sodom falls, the maypoles spring forth out of the earth. Misinformed attitudes don't come from a physical place; they come from an ideology. It is possible that facets of this ideology are formed in a single location, but once they spread into the consciousness of the public, the argument has gone beyond "cutting off the head and the body will die."
Many conservatives live in the San Francisco area. Many more have loved ones there. As a result, the blame the name game can't possibly succeed on a massive level, or Republicans will never have a credible chance in California again. (Besides Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose success of late has come from creeping towards the left.)
The constant tarring of San Francisco in political discourse is amazing. Besides the obvious nutcase Bill O'Reilly's entreaties to al-Qaeda to blow up San Francisco, there's also the term "San Francisco values" which they have desperately tried to paint as a pejorative. Heck, trying to sway rural voters by calling Nancy Pelosi a "San Francisco liberal" was intended to be a fierce swipe at her morality.
This just doesn't take, except with the extremists. I don't know a single progressive activist who would use an epithet like, say, "Montgomery, Alabama ideals." (Honest, I'm just picking a city at random here.) For one thing, to tar a whole city based on an outlook shared by some vocal residents is ludicrously unfair. For another, it's missing the point entirely. You can't base your arguments on some vague idea that once Sodom falls, the maypoles spring forth out of the earth. Misinformed attitudes don't come from a physical place; they come from an ideology. It is possible that facets of this ideology are formed in a single location, but once they spread into the consciousness of the public, the argument has gone beyond "cutting off the head and the body will die."
Many conservatives live in the San Francisco area. Many more have loved ones there. As a result, the blame the name game can't possibly succeed on a massive level, or Republicans will never have a credible chance in California again. (Besides Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose success of late has come from creeping towards the left.)
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