A "Picture" Of Deception From BoBo

I actually tried to read David Brooks’ column today in the New York Times about last night’s vice-presidential candidates’ debate, and I got as far as five paragraphs (the fifth one, below, is where I “hit the wall”)…

When nervous, (Sarah) Palin has a tendency to over-enunciate her words like a graduate of the George W. Bush School of Oratory, but Thursday night she spoke like a normal person. It took her about 15 seconds to define her persona — the straight-talking mom from regular America — and it was immediately clear that the night would be filled with tales of soccer moms, hockey moms, Joe Sixpacks, main-streeters, “you betchas” and “darn rights.” Somewhere in heaven Norman Rockwell is smiling.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve HAD IT UP TO MY FREAKING EYES!! with ANY politician who professes to represent “small-town values” as opposed to offering constructive, legitimate solutions to any given problem (and yes, I wouldn’t like Sarah Palin anyway because she’s grossly under qualified, something only the most rabid of partisans fail to realize at this point, but it’s plain after last night that she barely has a constructive thought in her head as opposed to a collection of rote-learned GOP talking points – and people like BoBo consider it a triumph that she didn’t screw up too badly in their estimation while reciting them over and over).

And the consequence of listening to her spout her myriad drivel is that, while she endeared herself even more to people who, in their idiocy, choose to support her anyway, she put an exclamation point of sorts on the fact that independent voters have left the Repug Party at least for this election cycle (some preliminary focus group results about knowledge ability and electability looked good for her, actually, but Biden’s numbers were at least as good or better).

But getting back to the Rockwell thing, I wanted to link back to this recent column by Thomas Frank in the Murdoch Street Journal as a response of sorts to BoBo (in fairness, they publish Frank regularly to represent a left-of-center point of view; the closest the Philadelphia Inquirer comes to that, for example, is publishing George Curry, and he only shows up once every two weeks at the most).

Frank tells us the following about “Governor Hottie”…

It tells us something about Sarah Palin's homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969, Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.

There's no evidence that Mrs. Palin shares the trademark Pegler bloodlust -- except maybe when it comes to moose and wolves. Nevertheless, the red-state myth that Mrs. Palin reiterated for her adoring audience owes far more to the venomous spirit of Pegler than it does to Norman Rockwell.

This Wikipedia article on Pegler tells us that he was the forerunner of the bilious haters, particularly on right-wing radio, in this country (think Michael Savage and others of his foul ilk)…

Pegler became a supporter of the campaign to portray the New Deal as an internationalist Communist plot. Pegler compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler's "goose-steppers." (In his view, the greatest threat to the country was the corrupt labor boss.) By the 1950s, however, Pegler was showing some nostalgia for the Third Reich. His proposal for "smashing" the AF of L and the CIO was for the state to take them over. "Yes, that would be fascism," he wrote. "But I, who detest fascism, see advantages in such fascism."

In the 1950s and 1960s, as his conservative views became more extreme and his writing increasingly shrill, he earned the tag of "the stuck whistle of journalism." He denounced the civil rights movement, embraced anti-Semitism, and in the early 1960s wrote for the John Birch Society —until he was invited to leave for his extreme views.

Too extreme for the "Birchers"; truly scary...

His assertion in November 1963 (at the height of the civil rights movement) that it is "clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry"; his embrace of the label racist, "a common but false synonym for Nazi, used by the bigots of New York"; or his habit of calling Jews "geese," because, "they hiss when they talk, gulp down everything before them, and foul everything in their wake," characterized his beliefs in the latter portion of his life.

And as far as how Rockwell was influenced by FDR, the subject of Pegler’s ire…

In 1943, during the Second World War, Rockwell painted the Four Freedoms series ("Freedom From Speech" appears above), which was completed in seven months and resulted in his losing 15 pounds. The series was inspired by a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which he described four principles for universal rights: Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, and Freedom from Fear. The paintings were published in 1943 by The Saturday Evening Post. The U.S. Treasury Department later promoted war bonds by exhibiting the originals in 16 cities. Rockwell himself considered "Freedom of Speech" to be the best of the four.

So, as you can see, conflating Rockwell with ANYTHING having to do with Sarah Palin is truly grotesque. But as you can also see here, that’s never stopped BoBo from misrepresenting history before.

Finally, I just want to sneak in a plug here for the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, here as long as we’re talking about him. If you have the opportunity to visit, I highly recommend it; it gives you the chance to see the original paintings that were used for the legendary Saturday Evening Post covers in all their magnificent detail.

(By the way, it's interesting that the Rockwell reference doesn't appear in BoBo's printed column - maybe edited for space.)