Very interesting and amusing, Mike.
Orson Welles would appreciate the irony, surely, that Glenn Beck takes him as one of his two inspirations. The men could not be more different, but Beck is fair enough to say that it is Welles' single-minded determination to accomplish his ends, by a variety of means, which appeals to him, not those particular ends in themselves. The parallels are between Welles/Kane (not necessarily Hearst) and Beck/Soros. There is a kind of dichotomy yet bonding there.
More significant -- and every bit as ironic -- is Beck's other idol: Walt Disney! Beck is saying that he wants to become the Everyman Folk Hero/Artist/Political Agitator of the 21st Century, but also an Artist/Business tycoon in the bargain, like Disney. As both Welles and Disney discovered in their own time, in their own way, such combinations may not be possible. Glenn Beck is rolling the dice and putting himself on the line here, as Welles would have (and Disney would not). I happened to watch Beck's last TV Show on Fox. At the finish of the hour, he announced his end on Cable Television, and went around his massive studio, reaching down to lift tall overhead blinds to the ceiling, flooding the space with natural sunlight. For there! The whole apparatus was revealed as a simple, large ground level storefront looking out on a NYC street. It was a piece of theater magic Welles would have applauded, much more interesting than the majority of Beck's convoluted, windy platitudes which had filled the space for years.
I'm also fascinated by how Late 19th and Early 20th Century revolutionaries, like Lenin and Stalin, started out to be pius priests, and then, turned the logic lessons of their studies toward bringing down establishments and creating mayhem. Perhaps, future revolutionaries will be media stars. Perhaps, as in so many things, Welles was before his time.
I am doubly reminded by word last week from his widow of the death of Carl Oglesby, a gifted public speaker, co-founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, my colleague at Kent State University, one of a dwindling number of Macedoneans, that seminal group which presaged so much for America. The SDS which rose from them can now be seen to have been our last hope for American Democracy. Because he remained true to the Civil Disobedience principles of Thereau and Emerson, because he eschewed violent means, Carl was thrown out of the SDS he had helped create and inspire. Carl Oglesby was a playwright, actor, director, orator, activist, and leader. Carl Oglesby was great man. I never personally met another with his charisma and strength of vision. He was truly Wellsian though he never reached the heights or depths of the man we celebrate here at Wellesnet.
Let's see how Glenn Beck does.
Thanks, Mike.
Glenn Anders
As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Perhaps, future revolutionaries will be media stars.
Yes, like Mussolini rose to power as a newspaper man. Welles himself said in the early 40's, that if a dictator ever came to power in America, it would probably be a movie star. I've heard Glenn Beck described as an American Mussolini, but then I've heard Obama described the same way. I guess Inflamed rhetoric makes great media on either side.
Rough transcription from the Beck show:
"Everything that I know about business, good and bad, I can trace back to two individuals. The first one is Orson Welles. He taught me to dream big, and his dedication to his craft, his unrelenting pursuit of his vision, are standards which I have spent the last 10 years trying to chase. He looked at the world differently; he broke all of the boundaries that stopped everyone else in their tracks.... I want to make room for the artists... people need to look at their craft as art."
Nice praise actually, but it's curious that Beck picks two artists as his idols. As far as I know, he's never done anything artistic of note, although when he says "people need to look at their craft as an art", he is obviously putting himself on the side of those that blur the line (or make little distinction at all) between art and commerce, like Disney. His feeling of a kinship with Welles probably stems from the fact that both men used the medium of radio to make a name for themselves and launch themselves into a larger medium: in Welles's case, film; in Beck's case, TV. I also get the impression that Beck probably envies Welles for the War of the Worlds and Kane scandals, and pines for some kind of BIG event that will give him a permanent place in the American psyche.
"I want my Mercury company to be a company like (Welles's); a company where, 20 years from now, people will look back and say "how did they do that?". The company did radio, they did live events, they did television. "How can they do that with just half the staff of the institutions being paid millions of dollars just to shut them up?". It all started in radio, and for the last 10 years my life has been about what I learned from (Welles), but after 8/28 I began to feel a sense of urgency, so the next 10 years of my life will be all about Disney. He found his mouse. I'm still looking for mine"
Since Beck seems to have graduated from Welles to Disney after the "8/28 rally" of last year, maybe he should change the name of his company from the "Mercury" to "Glenn Beck's Mouseketeer Club."
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Quite right, Mike. We both agree that it will be interesting to see how Beck fares in the next decade. Of course, the next ten years will be hard on many Americans, and Beck's basic message that we are on the edge of a precipice is more apparently true every day. Alas, many of his solutions are a bit crazy.
As you may have seen reported, the family of Howard Koch sued Glenn Beck, winning an injunction to prevent him from ever again attempting to re-create "The War of the Worlds" on Radio. Beck thinks BIG, I agree. I suspect that, with his tragic family background, he harbors harbors dark fantasies of being assassinated or crucified.
In any case, Beck is trying to move from the derivative to the original, as Welles did. However, the latter proved more genius than charlatan. Beck seems the other way about, by far.
Glenn
As you may have seen reported, the family of Howard Koch sued Glenn Beck, winning an injunction to prevent him from ever again attempting to re-create "The War of the Worlds" on Radio. Beck thinks BIG, I agree. I suspect that, with his tragic family background, he harbors harbors dark fantasies of being assassinated or crucified.
In any case, Beck is trying to move from the derivative to the original, as Welles did. However, the latter proved more genius than charlatan. Beck seems the other way about, by far.
Glenn
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Glenn, thought you might enjoy this very interesting article on Carl Oglesby:
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/950 ... w-left-sds
Gingrich, like Beck, has also been criticized for his alarmist, edge-of-precipice warnings, such as this recent article by Andrew Ferguson:
"Reading the Gingrich catalog, you get used to intimations — or are they threats? — of Armageddon. Windows are slamming shut, or are just about to, all over the place, all the time. “Time is running out,” he wrote toward the end of “Window of Opportunity,” 27 years ago. It’s no wonder that Washington thinks he’s so smart: Gingrich was panicky before panicky was cool. The political class runs on his kind of excitement, as one crisis of the century succeeds another, week by week. Politics on its own terms is so boring — decades of the same issues, the same interests, the same charges of heartlessness against Republicans and of profligacy against Democrats — that attention has to be stoked by artificial means...
And every Gingrich carries the same theme. “Today we have a horse-and-buggy style of public administration presiding over a nation entering the space-shuttle age,” he wrote in “Window of Opportunity.” “In an era of A.T.M.’s, iPods and eBay” he wrote more than 20 years later, “we have government from the era of quill pens, inkwells and paper ledgers.”
As a result, he wrote in “To Save America,” “we stand at a crossroads: either we will save our country or we will lose it.” “America today,” he announced in “Real Change,” “is at an extraordinary crossroads.” In a revised edition of “Winning the Future,” he phrased our predicament like this: “America is the most energetic, resourceful and innovative nation in the history of mankind. But we are at a crossroads.” Moreover, he said in “Saving Lives and Saving Money,” “we find ourselves at a crossroads.”
The choice between these two roads diverging in a yellow-bellied wood is always stark: a question of “whether the United States as we know it will cease to exist.”
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/950 ... w-left-sds
Gingrich, like Beck, has also been criticized for his alarmist, edge-of-precipice warnings, such as this recent article by Andrew Ferguson:
"Reading the Gingrich catalog, you get used to intimations — or are they threats? — of Armageddon. Windows are slamming shut, or are just about to, all over the place, all the time. “Time is running out,” he wrote toward the end of “Window of Opportunity,” 27 years ago. It’s no wonder that Washington thinks he’s so smart: Gingrich was panicky before panicky was cool. The political class runs on his kind of excitement, as one crisis of the century succeeds another, week by week. Politics on its own terms is so boring — decades of the same issues, the same interests, the same charges of heartlessness against Republicans and of profligacy against Democrats — that attention has to be stoked by artificial means...
And every Gingrich carries the same theme. “Today we have a horse-and-buggy style of public administration presiding over a nation entering the space-shuttle age,” he wrote in “Window of Opportunity.” “In an era of A.T.M.’s, iPods and eBay” he wrote more than 20 years later, “we have government from the era of quill pens, inkwells and paper ledgers.”
As a result, he wrote in “To Save America,” “we stand at a crossroads: either we will save our country or we will lose it.” “America today,” he announced in “Real Change,” “is at an extraordinary crossroads.” In a revised edition of “Winning the Future,” he phrased our predicament like this: “America is the most energetic, resourceful and innovative nation in the history of mankind. But we are at a crossroads.” Moreover, he said in “Saving Lives and Saving Money,” “we find ourselves at a crossroads.”
The choice between these two roads diverging in a yellow-bellied wood is always stark: a question of “whether the United States as we know it will cease to exist.”
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Thanks, Mike: Glad to see you looking out articles on Carl Oglesby. Todd Gitlin was Carl's righthand man, and at one time, he wanted me to write for a magazine called CRAWDADDY, which Gitlin edited. I always regretted a bit that family commitments prevented me from doing so.
Carl was the closest thing to Orson Welles that I ever met personally. He had an array of talents, but the times took him toward the political rather than the theatrical and literary in the formulation and operations of The Macedoneans, and then the SDS, though his later lectures and books like Yankees and Cowboys showed that he had lost little of his powers. He had all the personal and concentrated qualities that Glenn Beck does not.
Let's not get into Newt Gingrich, who never been much more than a talented ward heeler.
Glenn
Carl was the closest thing to Orson Welles that I ever met personally. He had an array of talents, but the times took him toward the political rather than the theatrical and literary in the formulation and operations of The Macedoneans, and then the SDS, though his later lectures and books like Yankees and Cowboys showed that he had lost little of his powers. He had all the personal and concentrated qualities that Glenn Beck does not.
Let's not get into Newt Gingrich, who never been much more than a talented ward heeler.
Glenn
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Forget Newt Gingrich, forget Romney and the rest. Rick Perry, the anti-Welles, is the man!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUA2rDVrmNg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUA2rDVrmNg
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
"It's also my pleasure to see to it that decent, hard-working people in this community aren't robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates, just because they haven't had anybody to look after their interests...If I don't look after the interests of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without any money or property...and that would be too bad!"
- Citizen Kane
From a newspaper article yesterday:
Romney’s GOP opponents have found a Romney weakness, and a cooperative press, in an area not included in what longtime Romney advisers consider the three legs of his stool of vulnerability: the flip-flop thing, the health care thing, and the Mormon thing. Instead, it is the Romney-as-Gordon-Gekko meme where rivals have found recent traction.
It’s where the Newt Gingrich-affiliated super PAC hopes to draw blood with its 27-minute video, “King of Bain,” depicting Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital as a spree of leveraged buyouts and front-office apathy toward the working man. It contrasts harshly with the blue-collar, old-economy message espoused by Rick Santorum. And it’s on loan from Karl Rove’s philosophy of turning an opponent’s strength–-in Romney’s case, a message of job-creation and profit-production in private-sector America that no other candidate or President Obama can match-–into a negative.
It’s an economically opportune moment for such a line of aggression. Who hasn’t heard a friend cuss out the bloodless corporate drone who just pink-slipped him or her? Who hasn’t eyed the new M.B.A. with the corner office with concern and a little resentment?
King of Bain: When Mr. Romney Came to Town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObrjX3TRgY
It is civil war within the Republican party.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said this kind of internal sniping is characteristic of the modern Republican Party, which he calls “ideologically undefined.” Today’s GOP, says Scarborough, has become “the party that attacks capitalism” and abandons traditional conservative principles. Rick Perry likened Bain Capital to “vultures, waiting for a company to get sick so they can sweep in, eat the carcass … and leave the skeleton.” Newt Gingrich, described Bain under Romney as “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company.”
*************************************
Contessa: Here we go. Get ready for 9 months of class warfare talk. Now we know why the occupy movement was started.
Chad: I don't understand why it's "class warfare" to ask those that have achieved so much to help just a little (about 4% of income) during a time we are emerging from 2 long wars, our economy is sluggish and our infrastructure is crumbling. Why is that seen as "class warfare" instead of "patriotic duty" to help the country that enabled the success at a time of need?
Whosdis: The top 1% of income earners (approx. those making > $500K per year) earn a cumulative $1 trillion. Your 4% tax increase idea would generate $40B per year, enough to pay for federal spending for 10 days, and 5 hours. $40B is enough to make up the deficit spending for 9 days and 17 hours (deficit $1.5T). Do you have any ideas which would have any significant impact?
Ingrid: Before this "class war" is over, I expect to see more than a few of the corporate elite dragged from their limousine, carried screaming through the street, doused with gasoline, and set ablaze. Only when the personal safety of the wealthy elite is in real danger, will the 99% have a seat at the economic dinner table. The only question remaining, is how many of our wealthy taskmasters will need to become charcoal briquettes.
Donald: I think the 1% learned well the lesson of the French Revolution, which is not to "share the wealth to ensure widespread prosperity and contentment", but rather, to "build higher walls."
Shooter: The American people are lagging because the rest of the world makes things better and cheaper than we can, and the resources we have that other people want are restricted by politics. In short we are our own worst enemy. Blaming job creators for that is just a faster way to spiral down.
Chad: Your statement is factually inaccurate, Shooter. American manufacturing (what's left) makes superior products. And the American worker is actually highly productive. The cost is now becoming negligible due to rising costs in the Chinese market. Hence, Chineses firms are seeking lower waged workers in Africa. The problem is all of the companies that off-shored during the Chinese boom now have to decide if relocating back to the USA is cost effective. And some (23k manu jobs added last month) are saying "Yes".
MrJ: You fail to mention that Mitt asked for it. Newt had pledged to run a positive campaign until he got slimed by Mitt's SuperPAC in Iowa. Mitt refused to condemn the attack ads, claiming that would amount to "coordinating" with the organization run by his closest friends. Now, Newt's not running for the nomination, just for revenge. Well Mitt, you know what they say about paybacks...
My2cents: Millions of people have lost their jobs and many of us are in fear of losing our jobs. The argument of the principles of capitalism is not a worthwhile argument when people are hurting and in many cases desperate. Depicting Romney, fair or not, as a super rich greedy capitalist vulture who only cares about the rich is extremely damaging to him and in effect the GOP party as a whole since he’s the establishment’s guy. Romney and the establishment are going to have to figure out how they are going to combat this perception and I can tell you that this will be a difficult task. It will be interesting to see if they can.
Mika: We are not a capitalist economy and the violations of capitalist principle are the cause of our economic problems. This economy is based on fascist interventionism by government --- supported by Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Gingrich. . And the more abject, disastrous and complete the failures of these fascist policies of statism, the more urghently the bloodsucking tax-eaters demand more of the same. Those who argue for the abandonment of the remnants of capitalism "because people are hurting", are in reality arguing for more of the poison that is killing us. The Democrats love this --- the ignorant fish want to SWIM in their anticapitalist Kool-Aid.
Alwaysthink: Mika, sounds like you've decided that Somalia sounds good. No rules, no government to interfere. Everyone has personal responsibility and lots of guns.
Mattias: Let's face the dire truth. The US is founded on vulture capitalism. What else is slavery?
It is a myth that capitalism is pure and good by itself and must not be regulated. It is now time to stand up for true righteousness and expose the hypocrisy.
Remember the civil war and how unwillingness and stubborness led to the bloodiest war in the history of the US. Great Britain got rid of slavery in a peaceful way. The United States, where all men are created equal on paper, had to have it pried out of their fingers.
What would happen if the rich, who profit from vulture capitalism, and their powerful friends in the media and in Washington, are as stubborn and unwilling to acknowledge the evil of vulture capitalism. Why would God not bring justice to those oppressed by this selfish system as He did for the slaves?
Vass: "So ask yourself this: Is it inherently wrong for an investor to purchase a firm and then decimate its staff, dumping the workers onto the unemployment rolls, driving the company into the ground because the owners wanted to line their greedy pockets for a quick profit in their campaign to redistribute wealth to themselves without having to earn it through hard work?"
David: I agree with the criticism of Mitt Romney. The core of Mitt Romney's platform is that he can restore American jobs, and that he is an experiened businessman who has created jobs. In fact, Romney's actual track record on jobs, either as a businessman and politican, is poor.
Bain Capital may have had a few success stories where they improved business, but by and large, they caused job loss. Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman are absolutely correct to contrast real businesses that create jobs by making products or providing services, and those like Bain Capital that simply move money around.
None of the candidates has said that companies like Bain Capital should be illegal, just that Romney's experience at Bain Capital doesn't make him a job creator. Compare this to the Huntsman Corporation where Jon Huntsman formerly worked, which is a manufacturer of chemicals and construction materials, and actually created jobs.
The real issue that Republicans face is that their lead candidate is unelectable, and a better candidate is needed to run against Barack Obama. Romney is a flip-flopper on a wide variety of issues, and now he's shown that he is out of touch with most Americans. History has shown that Americans do not vote for spineless candidates who they cannot relate to. If Romney cannot deal with criticism from fellow Republicans, how is he going to deal with an onslaught of attacks from the media and Democrats later this year?
Matt: Give me a break...and how many millions did Newt make being a "historian" for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? I know he's desperate at this point, but it's hard to take Gingrich seriously.
Fairfield: When we get down to brass tacks, the USA has three problems with jobs:
1. Too many illlegals taking too many jobs.
2. Too many jobs being exported to Mexico, China and India under so-called "free trade", and
3. Efficiency in the workplace through computerized machinery etc. that reduces the need for as many workers.
Our "ruling elites" LIKE these problems because it makes them rich. They lobby to keep them in place, while the only legitimate one is increased technology requiring fewer workers. The other two are scams againt America.
- Citizen Kane
From a newspaper article yesterday:
Romney’s GOP opponents have found a Romney weakness, and a cooperative press, in an area not included in what longtime Romney advisers consider the three legs of his stool of vulnerability: the flip-flop thing, the health care thing, and the Mormon thing. Instead, it is the Romney-as-Gordon-Gekko meme where rivals have found recent traction.
It’s where the Newt Gingrich-affiliated super PAC hopes to draw blood with its 27-minute video, “King of Bain,” depicting Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital as a spree of leveraged buyouts and front-office apathy toward the working man. It contrasts harshly with the blue-collar, old-economy message espoused by Rick Santorum. And it’s on loan from Karl Rove’s philosophy of turning an opponent’s strength–-in Romney’s case, a message of job-creation and profit-production in private-sector America that no other candidate or President Obama can match-–into a negative.
It’s an economically opportune moment for such a line of aggression. Who hasn’t heard a friend cuss out the bloodless corporate drone who just pink-slipped him or her? Who hasn’t eyed the new M.B.A. with the corner office with concern and a little resentment?
King of Bain: When Mr. Romney Came to Town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObrjX3TRgY
It is civil war within the Republican party.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said this kind of internal sniping is characteristic of the modern Republican Party, which he calls “ideologically undefined.” Today’s GOP, says Scarborough, has become “the party that attacks capitalism” and abandons traditional conservative principles. Rick Perry likened Bain Capital to “vultures, waiting for a company to get sick so they can sweep in, eat the carcass … and leave the skeleton.” Newt Gingrich, described Bain under Romney as “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company.”
*************************************
Contessa: Here we go. Get ready for 9 months of class warfare talk. Now we know why the occupy movement was started.
Chad: I don't understand why it's "class warfare" to ask those that have achieved so much to help just a little (about 4% of income) during a time we are emerging from 2 long wars, our economy is sluggish and our infrastructure is crumbling. Why is that seen as "class warfare" instead of "patriotic duty" to help the country that enabled the success at a time of need?
Whosdis: The top 1% of income earners (approx. those making > $500K per year) earn a cumulative $1 trillion. Your 4% tax increase idea would generate $40B per year, enough to pay for federal spending for 10 days, and 5 hours. $40B is enough to make up the deficit spending for 9 days and 17 hours (deficit $1.5T). Do you have any ideas which would have any significant impact?
Ingrid: Before this "class war" is over, I expect to see more than a few of the corporate elite dragged from their limousine, carried screaming through the street, doused with gasoline, and set ablaze. Only when the personal safety of the wealthy elite is in real danger, will the 99% have a seat at the economic dinner table. The only question remaining, is how many of our wealthy taskmasters will need to become charcoal briquettes.
Donald: I think the 1% learned well the lesson of the French Revolution, which is not to "share the wealth to ensure widespread prosperity and contentment", but rather, to "build higher walls."
Shooter: The American people are lagging because the rest of the world makes things better and cheaper than we can, and the resources we have that other people want are restricted by politics. In short we are our own worst enemy. Blaming job creators for that is just a faster way to spiral down.
Chad: Your statement is factually inaccurate, Shooter. American manufacturing (what's left) makes superior products. And the American worker is actually highly productive. The cost is now becoming negligible due to rising costs in the Chinese market. Hence, Chineses firms are seeking lower waged workers in Africa. The problem is all of the companies that off-shored during the Chinese boom now have to decide if relocating back to the USA is cost effective. And some (23k manu jobs added last month) are saying "Yes".
MrJ: You fail to mention that Mitt asked for it. Newt had pledged to run a positive campaign until he got slimed by Mitt's SuperPAC in Iowa. Mitt refused to condemn the attack ads, claiming that would amount to "coordinating" with the organization run by his closest friends. Now, Newt's not running for the nomination, just for revenge. Well Mitt, you know what they say about paybacks...
My2cents: Millions of people have lost their jobs and many of us are in fear of losing our jobs. The argument of the principles of capitalism is not a worthwhile argument when people are hurting and in many cases desperate. Depicting Romney, fair or not, as a super rich greedy capitalist vulture who only cares about the rich is extremely damaging to him and in effect the GOP party as a whole since he’s the establishment’s guy. Romney and the establishment are going to have to figure out how they are going to combat this perception and I can tell you that this will be a difficult task. It will be interesting to see if they can.
Mika: We are not a capitalist economy and the violations of capitalist principle are the cause of our economic problems. This economy is based on fascist interventionism by government --- supported by Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Gingrich. . And the more abject, disastrous and complete the failures of these fascist policies of statism, the more urghently the bloodsucking tax-eaters demand more of the same. Those who argue for the abandonment of the remnants of capitalism "because people are hurting", are in reality arguing for more of the poison that is killing us. The Democrats love this --- the ignorant fish want to SWIM in their anticapitalist Kool-Aid.
Alwaysthink: Mika, sounds like you've decided that Somalia sounds good. No rules, no government to interfere. Everyone has personal responsibility and lots of guns.
Mattias: Let's face the dire truth. The US is founded on vulture capitalism. What else is slavery?
It is a myth that capitalism is pure and good by itself and must not be regulated. It is now time to stand up for true righteousness and expose the hypocrisy.
Remember the civil war and how unwillingness and stubborness led to the bloodiest war in the history of the US. Great Britain got rid of slavery in a peaceful way. The United States, where all men are created equal on paper, had to have it pried out of their fingers.
What would happen if the rich, who profit from vulture capitalism, and their powerful friends in the media and in Washington, are as stubborn and unwilling to acknowledge the evil of vulture capitalism. Why would God not bring justice to those oppressed by this selfish system as He did for the slaves?
Vass: "So ask yourself this: Is it inherently wrong for an investor to purchase a firm and then decimate its staff, dumping the workers onto the unemployment rolls, driving the company into the ground because the owners wanted to line their greedy pockets for a quick profit in their campaign to redistribute wealth to themselves without having to earn it through hard work?"
David: I agree with the criticism of Mitt Romney. The core of Mitt Romney's platform is that he can restore American jobs, and that he is an experiened businessman who has created jobs. In fact, Romney's actual track record on jobs, either as a businessman and politican, is poor.
Bain Capital may have had a few success stories where they improved business, but by and large, they caused job loss. Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman are absolutely correct to contrast real businesses that create jobs by making products or providing services, and those like Bain Capital that simply move money around.
None of the candidates has said that companies like Bain Capital should be illegal, just that Romney's experience at Bain Capital doesn't make him a job creator. Compare this to the Huntsman Corporation where Jon Huntsman formerly worked, which is a manufacturer of chemicals and construction materials, and actually created jobs.
The real issue that Republicans face is that their lead candidate is unelectable, and a better candidate is needed to run against Barack Obama. Romney is a flip-flopper on a wide variety of issues, and now he's shown that he is out of touch with most Americans. History has shown that Americans do not vote for spineless candidates who they cannot relate to. If Romney cannot deal with criticism from fellow Republicans, how is he going to deal with an onslaught of attacks from the media and Democrats later this year?
Matt: Give me a break...and how many millions did Newt make being a "historian" for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? I know he's desperate at this point, but it's hard to take Gingrich seriously.
Fairfield: When we get down to brass tacks, the USA has three problems with jobs:
1. Too many illlegals taking too many jobs.
2. Too many jobs being exported to Mexico, China and India under so-called "free trade", and
3. Efficiency in the workplace through computerized machinery etc. that reduces the need for as many workers.
Our "ruling elites" LIKE these problems because it makes them rich. They lobby to keep them in place, while the only legitimate one is increased technology requiring fewer workers. The other two are scams againt America.
-
Le Chiffre
- Site Admin
- Posts: 2078
- Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2001 11:31 pm
Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Glenn Beck's "endorsement" of Newt Gingrich is probably what brought him down in Florida:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/ ... ngrich-Not
***********************************************************************************************************
Edited transcript of Glenn Beck interview with Newt Gingrich (12/6/11):
GLENN: I am increasingly disinterested in Washington because I don’t believe the answers lie in Washington. However, we all have to be responsible and we all have to pay attention to politics and vote. Now is the time to ask the questions of each of the politicians.
Let’s start with a piece of audio here where you were talking about healthcare and you went down the progressive road with Theodore Roosevelt.
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “Government should not make guarantees that we don’t have the ability to change. But no private corporation has the purchasing power or the ability to reshape the health system, so in this sense I guess I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I were going to characterize where I come from on health care, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lead in terms of it’s regulations. Leading is okay.”
GLENN: Regulation and the government scares the crap out of me, and most Tea Party conservatives too. Theodore Roosevelt was the guy who started the Progressive Party. How would you characterize your relationship with the progressive ideals of Theodore Roosevelt?
GINGRICH: Well, that depends on which phase of Roosevelt you’re talking about. By 1912, he’d become a big government, centralized power advocate running as a third party candidate. The story is that, around this time, Roosevelt advocated the Food and Drug Act after he was eating sausage and eggs while reading Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, which has a scene in which a man falls into a vat at the sausage factory and becomes part of the sausage. This was also the era where Chinese people had doctored and put all kinds of junk in food. As a child who lived in Europe, I always marveled at the fact that American water is drinkable virtually anywhere. So there are minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety that I think are really important.
What I’m against is the government trying to implement things, because bureaucracy’s such a bad implementer, and I’m against government trying to pick winners and losers. I mean, there’s no accident that the Smithsonian got $50,000 from Congress for the Pierre plane and failed, while the Wright brothers invented the airplane because...
GLENN: Okay.
GINGRICH: But I do think we should make sure, for example, that if you buy certain electric things they don’t start fires in your house. I believe everyone would agree with that.
GLENN: But you’re not into picking winners and losers. So you would not have done the GM bailout?
GINGRICH: No. No, absolutely not. Remember, you can have a bankruptcy for reorganization, not just for liquidation. If GM had gone through a reorganization bankruptcy, they would be much better off than they are today.
GLENN: Sure. But you have selected a winner when you came out, quite strongly, for the ethanol subsidies.
GINGRICH: Well, when Obama suggested eliminating the $14 billion a year incentive for exploring for oil and gas, everybody in the oil industry who’s against subsidizing ethanol jumped up and said, hey, if you do that, you’re going to wipe out 80% of exploration, which is all done by small independent companies, not by the majors. I favored the incentive to go out and find more oil and gas, which is a bigger tax subsidy than oil ever got. But that was because I want American energy to drive out Saudi Arabia and Iranian and Iraqi energy and Venezuelan energy. And so I am for a subsidy to create sources of American energy in order to make us not just independent, but to create a reservoir so that if something does happen in the Persian Gulf, or in the Straits of Hormuz, the world’s industrial system doesn’t crash into a deep depression.
GLENN: Why would we go into subsidies, though? Aren’t subsidies really some of the biggest problems that we have with our spending and our out-of-control picking of winners and losers?
GINGRICH: Well, it depends on what you’re subsidizing. The idea of having economic incentives for manufacturing goes back to Alexander Hamilton’s first report of manufacturing in 1791. We have always had a bias in favor of investing in the future. We built the transcontinental railroads that way. The Erie Canal was built that way. We’ve always believed that having a strong infrastructure and having a strong energy system are net advantages because they’ve made us richer and more powerful than any country in the world. But what I object to is subsidizing things that don’t work and things that aren’t creating a better future. And the problem with the modern welfare state is that it actually encourages people to indulge in the wrong behaviors, encourages them not to work, encourages them not to study.
GLENN: All right. You said if you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important bill to vote on in your career than in support of the Medicare prescription drug program, a new entitlement.
GINGRICH: Which also included Medicare Advantage and also included the right to have a high deductible medical savings account, which is the first step towards moving control over your health dollars back to you. And I think that is a very important distinguishing point. On the government, my position is very straightforward. If you’re going to have Medicare, which was created in 1965 before many breakthroughs in drug research, you can’t take a position that we’ll pay for your kidney dialysis but won’t help you with insulin. That is bad on both a human level and on a financial level. Kidney dialysis is one of the fastest growing centers of cost, and we spend almost as much annually on kidney dialysis as the entire National Institute of Health research budget, about $27 billion a year right now. If we say to you we’re going to pay for open heart surgery but we won’t pay for Lipitor so you can avoid open heart surgery, it’s also bad both humanly and financially.
GLENN: But aren’t you starting with a false premise here? Shouldn’t we be going the other direction, away from Medicaire, instead of building on...
GINGRICH: Which is why they had Medicare Advantage as well, which is the first example of diversity and choice in Medicare, and it’s why they put in the health savings account model, which is the first big step towards you being personally in charge of your own savings. So your point’s right. But the question is, how do you manage the transition so it is politically doable?
GLENN: But you’re voting for something that tries to transition into smaller government, but also supporting a bill that has in it a gigantic giveaway?
GINGRICH: Well, you’ve already given it away - that’s my point. I don’t see how one defends not giving people the ability to avoid surgery, which is what this is all about. And the question is, can you live longer and more independently and more healthily with the drug benefit than without it? So you’re going to have Medicare and Medicare Advantage. And the question in the short run is, do you want to have a system that basically leaves people with bad outcomes, or do you want to, in fact, maximize how long they can live and how independently they can live.
GLENN: All right. Well, I think that where we fundamentally differ is that it seems to me - and let me just play the audio here - that you are for the individual mandate for healthcare and you have been for quite some time. Let’s play the audio:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "I am for people having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, just as they are required to have auto insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so it will ensure that everyone as individuals have health insurance."
GLENN: Okay. That’s 1993. Here is May 2011:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "All of a sudden there is a responsibility to help pay for healthcare. And I think that there are ways to do it that will make most libertarians relatively happy. I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement to either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you are going to be held accountable."
VOICE: "That is the individual mandate, is it not?"
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "It’s a variation on it."
GLENN: Here’s about Paul Ryan trying to fix Medicare:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I don’t think rightwing social engineering is any more desirable than leftwing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.”
VOICE: “But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare?”
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you are suddenly imposed upon. I’m against Obama Care, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.”
GLENN: Okay, but this is long-term individual mandate stuff. You always seem to be very interested in the government finding the solution.
GINGRICH: Well, let’s go back to what I just said. What I was asked was, if a program is unpopular, should the Republicans impose it anyway? We can go back and we can listen to exactly what I was asked on that show and what I said I stand by, which is that in a free society, you don’t elect officials to impose on you things that you disagree with. We just went through this slide over ObamaCare.
Now, ironically, I would also implement the Medicare reforms that Paul Ryan wants. I would implement them next year as an optional choice and I would allow people to have the option to choose premium support and then have freedom to negotiate with their doctor or their hospital in a way that would increase their ability to manage costs, but I wouldn’t impose it on everybody across the board. I think that’s a very large-scale experiment. But I think you could migrate people toward it. I’m proposing the same thing on Social Security. I think young people ought to have the right to choose a personal Social Security insurance savings account plan and the Social Security actuary estimates that 95% of young people would pick a personal Social Security savings account over the current system but they would do so voluntarily because we would empower them to make a choice. We wouldn’t impose it on them. That’s a question of how do you think you can get this country to move more rapidly toward reform, and I think you can get it to move toward reform faster by giving people the right to choose.
GLENN: You voted for the Department of Education, and in 2007 spoke very cautiously about changing Fannie and Freddie. On global warming, you sat down on the couch with Nancy Pelosi, and I would agree with you that that was the dumbest moment of your life. But it’s not an isolated moment of your life. In speech after speech, in your book Contract with the Earth, even with John Kerry in a debate, you’ve made statements that suggest you believe in global warming:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “Evidence is sufficient, and we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon looting of the atmosphere.”
VOICE: “And do it urgently?”
AUDIO RECRDING OF GINGRICH: “And do it urgently, yes.”
GLENN: Now, you have John Kerry in this debate sticking up for the private sector and you say the government should help pay:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I think there has to be a green conservatism. There has to be a willingness to stand up and say, all right, here’s the right way to solve these problems, as seen by our values system. And to have a dialogue about what’s the most effective way to solve it. First of all, I think if you have the right level of tax credit, it isn’t just voluntary. My guess is there’s a dollar number at which you would have every utility in the country agree they are all going to build private and sequestering power points. So I think this is a definable alternative.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF KERRY: “This is a huge transition. You actually want the government to do it. I want the private sector to do it.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “No, no, no. I want the government to pay for it.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF KERRY: “You want the governor to pay for it with a big tax credit.”
GLENN: Help me out. This is a multiyear stance. It’s not an isolated moment in your life.
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I believe in the environment in general.
GLENN: So do I.
GINGRICH: Okay. Second, I think that there is evidence on both sides of the climate change argument, and the point I was making was that, in a situation where, for example, having a larger nuclear program reduces carbon in the atmosphere, it’s a prudent thing to look at nuclear power as one of the actions to be taken.
It’s also a prudent thing to develop a green coal plant that takes the carbon and puts it into carbon sequestration to use it to develop oil fields more deeply and can be actually economically done. We do it right now in West Texas.
GLENN: All right. So you would vote for the prescription drug bill because you don’t believe you can fundamentally change Medicaire, but you do believe that you can get nuclear power plants built in a Gingrich administration?
GINGRICH: Oh, sure. I also think you can reshape Medicare, but I think you have to do it in a way that people find desirable and trustworthy. I helped reform Medicare in 1996 in a way that saved $200 billion and we had no major opposition to it. And people concluded that we had thought it through and we were doing the right thing and they were comfortable with it.
GLENN: Do you still believe in the “Inconvenient Truth” as outlined by global climate change advocates?
GINGRICH: Well, I never believed in Al Gore’s fantasies and, in fact, if you look at the record, the day that Al Gore testified at the Energy and Commerce Committee in favor of cap and trade, I was the next witness and I testified against cap and trade. And in the Senate, I worked through American solutions to help beat the cap and trade bill. Cap and trade was an effort by the left to use the environment as an excuse to get total control over the American economy, centralizing a Washington bureaucracy. In the end it had nothing to do with the environment. It had everything to do with their desire to control our lives.
GLENN: I appreciate the willingness to come on and answer the tough questions, and I wish you the best.
GINGRICH: Well, sir, you and I have always had a great relationship and I admire your courage and I think you’ve had a huge impact with Tea Party folks in maximizing interest in American history and interest in the Founding Fathers.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/ ... ngrich-Not
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Edited transcript of Glenn Beck interview with Newt Gingrich (12/6/11):
GLENN: I am increasingly disinterested in Washington because I don’t believe the answers lie in Washington. However, we all have to be responsible and we all have to pay attention to politics and vote. Now is the time to ask the questions of each of the politicians.
Let’s start with a piece of audio here where you were talking about healthcare and you went down the progressive road with Theodore Roosevelt.
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “Government should not make guarantees that we don’t have the ability to change. But no private corporation has the purchasing power or the ability to reshape the health system, so in this sense I guess I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I were going to characterize where I come from on health care, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lead in terms of it’s regulations. Leading is okay.”
GLENN: Regulation and the government scares the crap out of me, and most Tea Party conservatives too. Theodore Roosevelt was the guy who started the Progressive Party. How would you characterize your relationship with the progressive ideals of Theodore Roosevelt?
GINGRICH: Well, that depends on which phase of Roosevelt you’re talking about. By 1912, he’d become a big government, centralized power advocate running as a third party candidate. The story is that, around this time, Roosevelt advocated the Food and Drug Act after he was eating sausage and eggs while reading Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, which has a scene in which a man falls into a vat at the sausage factory and becomes part of the sausage. This was also the era where Chinese people had doctored and put all kinds of junk in food. As a child who lived in Europe, I always marveled at the fact that American water is drinkable virtually anywhere. So there are minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety that I think are really important.
What I’m against is the government trying to implement things, because bureaucracy’s such a bad implementer, and I’m against government trying to pick winners and losers. I mean, there’s no accident that the Smithsonian got $50,000 from Congress for the Pierre plane and failed, while the Wright brothers invented the airplane because...
GLENN: Okay.
GINGRICH: But I do think we should make sure, for example, that if you buy certain electric things they don’t start fires in your house. I believe everyone would agree with that.
GLENN: But you’re not into picking winners and losers. So you would not have done the GM bailout?
GINGRICH: No. No, absolutely not. Remember, you can have a bankruptcy for reorganization, not just for liquidation. If GM had gone through a reorganization bankruptcy, they would be much better off than they are today.
GLENN: Sure. But you have selected a winner when you came out, quite strongly, for the ethanol subsidies.
GINGRICH: Well, when Obama suggested eliminating the $14 billion a year incentive for exploring for oil and gas, everybody in the oil industry who’s against subsidizing ethanol jumped up and said, hey, if you do that, you’re going to wipe out 80% of exploration, which is all done by small independent companies, not by the majors. I favored the incentive to go out and find more oil and gas, which is a bigger tax subsidy than oil ever got. But that was because I want American energy to drive out Saudi Arabia and Iranian and Iraqi energy and Venezuelan energy. And so I am for a subsidy to create sources of American energy in order to make us not just independent, but to create a reservoir so that if something does happen in the Persian Gulf, or in the Straits of Hormuz, the world’s industrial system doesn’t crash into a deep depression.
GLENN: Why would we go into subsidies, though? Aren’t subsidies really some of the biggest problems that we have with our spending and our out-of-control picking of winners and losers?
GINGRICH: Well, it depends on what you’re subsidizing. The idea of having economic incentives for manufacturing goes back to Alexander Hamilton’s first report of manufacturing in 1791. We have always had a bias in favor of investing in the future. We built the transcontinental railroads that way. The Erie Canal was built that way. We’ve always believed that having a strong infrastructure and having a strong energy system are net advantages because they’ve made us richer and more powerful than any country in the world. But what I object to is subsidizing things that don’t work and things that aren’t creating a better future. And the problem with the modern welfare state is that it actually encourages people to indulge in the wrong behaviors, encourages them not to work, encourages them not to study.
GLENN: All right. You said if you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important bill to vote on in your career than in support of the Medicare prescription drug program, a new entitlement.
GINGRICH: Which also included Medicare Advantage and also included the right to have a high deductible medical savings account, which is the first step towards moving control over your health dollars back to you. And I think that is a very important distinguishing point. On the government, my position is very straightforward. If you’re going to have Medicare, which was created in 1965 before many breakthroughs in drug research, you can’t take a position that we’ll pay for your kidney dialysis but won’t help you with insulin. That is bad on both a human level and on a financial level. Kidney dialysis is one of the fastest growing centers of cost, and we spend almost as much annually on kidney dialysis as the entire National Institute of Health research budget, about $27 billion a year right now. If we say to you we’re going to pay for open heart surgery but we won’t pay for Lipitor so you can avoid open heart surgery, it’s also bad both humanly and financially.
GLENN: But aren’t you starting with a false premise here? Shouldn’t we be going the other direction, away from Medicaire, instead of building on...
GINGRICH: Which is why they had Medicare Advantage as well, which is the first example of diversity and choice in Medicare, and it’s why they put in the health savings account model, which is the first big step towards you being personally in charge of your own savings. So your point’s right. But the question is, how do you manage the transition so it is politically doable?
GLENN: But you’re voting for something that tries to transition into smaller government, but also supporting a bill that has in it a gigantic giveaway?
GINGRICH: Well, you’ve already given it away - that’s my point. I don’t see how one defends not giving people the ability to avoid surgery, which is what this is all about. And the question is, can you live longer and more independently and more healthily with the drug benefit than without it? So you’re going to have Medicare and Medicare Advantage. And the question in the short run is, do you want to have a system that basically leaves people with bad outcomes, or do you want to, in fact, maximize how long they can live and how independently they can live.
GLENN: All right. Well, I think that where we fundamentally differ is that it seems to me - and let me just play the audio here - that you are for the individual mandate for healthcare and you have been for quite some time. Let’s play the audio:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "I am for people having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, just as they are required to have auto insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so it will ensure that everyone as individuals have health insurance."
GLENN: Okay. That’s 1993. Here is May 2011:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "All of a sudden there is a responsibility to help pay for healthcare. And I think that there are ways to do it that will make most libertarians relatively happy. I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement to either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you are going to be held accountable."
VOICE: "That is the individual mandate, is it not?"
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: "It’s a variation on it."
GLENN: Here’s about Paul Ryan trying to fix Medicare:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I don’t think rightwing social engineering is any more desirable than leftwing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.”
VOICE: “But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare?”
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you are suddenly imposed upon. I’m against Obama Care, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.”
GLENN: Okay, but this is long-term individual mandate stuff. You always seem to be very interested in the government finding the solution.
GINGRICH: Well, let’s go back to what I just said. What I was asked was, if a program is unpopular, should the Republicans impose it anyway? We can go back and we can listen to exactly what I was asked on that show and what I said I stand by, which is that in a free society, you don’t elect officials to impose on you things that you disagree with. We just went through this slide over ObamaCare.
Now, ironically, I would also implement the Medicare reforms that Paul Ryan wants. I would implement them next year as an optional choice and I would allow people to have the option to choose premium support and then have freedom to negotiate with their doctor or their hospital in a way that would increase their ability to manage costs, but I wouldn’t impose it on everybody across the board. I think that’s a very large-scale experiment. But I think you could migrate people toward it. I’m proposing the same thing on Social Security. I think young people ought to have the right to choose a personal Social Security insurance savings account plan and the Social Security actuary estimates that 95% of young people would pick a personal Social Security savings account over the current system but they would do so voluntarily because we would empower them to make a choice. We wouldn’t impose it on them. That’s a question of how do you think you can get this country to move more rapidly toward reform, and I think you can get it to move toward reform faster by giving people the right to choose.
GLENN: You voted for the Department of Education, and in 2007 spoke very cautiously about changing Fannie and Freddie. On global warming, you sat down on the couch with Nancy Pelosi, and I would agree with you that that was the dumbest moment of your life. But it’s not an isolated moment of your life. In speech after speech, in your book Contract with the Earth, even with John Kerry in a debate, you’ve made statements that suggest you believe in global warming:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “Evidence is sufficient, and we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon looting of the atmosphere.”
VOICE: “And do it urgently?”
AUDIO RECRDING OF GINGRICH: “And do it urgently, yes.”
GLENN: Now, you have John Kerry in this debate sticking up for the private sector and you say the government should help pay:
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “I think there has to be a green conservatism. There has to be a willingness to stand up and say, all right, here’s the right way to solve these problems, as seen by our values system. And to have a dialogue about what’s the most effective way to solve it. First of all, I think if you have the right level of tax credit, it isn’t just voluntary. My guess is there’s a dollar number at which you would have every utility in the country agree they are all going to build private and sequestering power points. So I think this is a definable alternative.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF KERRY: “This is a huge transition. You actually want the government to do it. I want the private sector to do it.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF GINGRICH: “No, no, no. I want the government to pay for it.”
AUDIO RECORDING OF KERRY: “You want the governor to pay for it with a big tax credit.”
GLENN: Help me out. This is a multiyear stance. It’s not an isolated moment in your life.
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I believe in the environment in general.
GLENN: So do I.
GINGRICH: Okay. Second, I think that there is evidence on both sides of the climate change argument, and the point I was making was that, in a situation where, for example, having a larger nuclear program reduces carbon in the atmosphere, it’s a prudent thing to look at nuclear power as one of the actions to be taken.
It’s also a prudent thing to develop a green coal plant that takes the carbon and puts it into carbon sequestration to use it to develop oil fields more deeply and can be actually economically done. We do it right now in West Texas.
GLENN: All right. So you would vote for the prescription drug bill because you don’t believe you can fundamentally change Medicaire, but you do believe that you can get nuclear power plants built in a Gingrich administration?
GINGRICH: Oh, sure. I also think you can reshape Medicare, but I think you have to do it in a way that people find desirable and trustworthy. I helped reform Medicare in 1996 in a way that saved $200 billion and we had no major opposition to it. And people concluded that we had thought it through and we were doing the right thing and they were comfortable with it.
GLENN: Do you still believe in the “Inconvenient Truth” as outlined by global climate change advocates?
GINGRICH: Well, I never believed in Al Gore’s fantasies and, in fact, if you look at the record, the day that Al Gore testified at the Energy and Commerce Committee in favor of cap and trade, I was the next witness and I testified against cap and trade. And in the Senate, I worked through American solutions to help beat the cap and trade bill. Cap and trade was an effort by the left to use the environment as an excuse to get total control over the American economy, centralizing a Washington bureaucracy. In the end it had nothing to do with the environment. It had everything to do with their desire to control our lives.
GLENN: I appreciate the willingness to come on and answer the tough questions, and I wish you the best.
GINGRICH: Well, sir, you and I have always had a great relationship and I admire your courage and I think you’ve had a huge impact with Tea Party folks in maximizing interest in American history and interest in the Founding Fathers.
-
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Excerpt from Future Shock at 40: What the Tofflers Got Right (and Wrong)
BY GREG LINDSAYFri Oct 15, 2010
They predicted the “electronic frontier” of the Internet, Prozac, YouTube, cloning, home-schooling, the self-induced paralysis of too many choices, instant celebrities, and the end of blue-collar manufacturing. Not bad for 1970.
In the opening minutes of Future Shock, a 1972 documentary based on the book of the same name, a bearded, cigar-puffing, world-weary Orson Welles staggers down an airport’s moving walkway, treating the camera like a confidante:
“In the course of my work, which has taken me to just about every corner of the globe, I see many aspects of a phenomenon which I’m just beginning to understand,” he says. “Our modern technologies have changed the degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety and time of stress. And with all our sophistication, we are in fact the victims of our own technological strengths –- we are the victims of shock… a future shock.”
“Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time; a feeling that nothing is permanent anymore; it’s the reaction to changes that happen so fast that we can’t absorb them, it’s the premature arrival of the future. For those who are unprepared its effects can be pretty devastating.”
************
ANNE COULTER ON NEWT AND THE TOFFLERS:
The day after the Republicans’ historic takeover of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election, Newt was off and running, giving a series of Fidel Castro-style speeches about “the Third Wave information revolution.” It had the unmistakable ring of lingo from his new-age gurus, Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
Hadn’t Republicans just won on a platform of smaller government? Instead of a Republican victory, the ’94 election seemed to be a victory for the Tofflers’ cyber-babble about “social wavefront analysis,” “anticipatory democracy,” “de-massification,” “materialismo,” “the Third Wave” and “decision loads.” How about a speech on Republican plans to reform entitlement programs?
Gingrich soon announced that all legislation passed by the new Congress would have to pass a test: Will it help move America into the Tofflers’ vision of a “Third Wave”?
The Tofflers were a couple of old folks who couldn’t figure out how to program their VCRs, so they began writing about the “Future Shock” of technology and how we needed government planning to deal with technological overload.
Their big idea was that the world was about to change faster than it ever had before, creating a technological explosion that would frighten and baffle the masses — much like the bewildering VCR clock. The government would have to have advisers and committees in order to ease the transition.
The facts are nearly the exact opposite. In the first half of the 20th century, we got widespread use of the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, electricity, radio and television, indoor plumbing, air conditioning and refrigeration, the computer, nuclear power and rockets.
All we got in the second half of the 20th century were some improvements on one of those inventions — the computer — with the personal computer, the Internet and the iPhone. (Boomers were more focused on acid trips than space trips and dropped the ball on the hard work of pushing scientific progress forward.)
Far from needing government agencies to help us “cope” with these advances — “Scientific Futurists,” a “Technology Ombudsman” and a “Council of Social Advisers,” as proposed by the Tofflers — the masses have taken to these improvements like fish to water.
Not only were they completely crazy, but Newt’s grand schemes didn’t quite fit the Republican model of a small, unintrusive federal government.
Soon, Gingrich was writing a foreword to a Toffler book — the same one on the Republicans’ reading list — and spending Christmas with the pro-choice, anti-school prayer, Christian Coalition-hating Tofflers.
At the end of Gingrich’s first year as House speaker, his endless, nutty pronunciamentos — in addition to his plan to entrust Republicans’ legislative agenda to an old couple whose living room VCR continuously flashed “12:00″ — had driven his public approval numbers into the dirt.
***********
COMMENTARY MAGAZINE ON ANNE COULTER:
Coulter believes that she has found Gingrich's equivalent of Bill Ayers.
His name is Alvin Toffler, who first became famous for a book he wrote in 1970 called "Future Shock" in which he posited, among other things, that the pace of technological change will become overwhelming to significant number of people and that would become a societal problem. Toffler has since published several ground-breaking books about the future, notably "The Third Wave" in which he discussed the emerging information revolution, "Powershift" in which he suggested that old patterns of power were breaking down and reforming into different patterns, and "Creating a New Civilization" where Toffler examines the effects of technological change on politics. It is the last book that Gingrich wrote a forward to and made Coulter angry.
The thesis that some people are frightened of technological change is not outside the mainstream, as Coulter should recognize. The left's opposition to every energy technology, genetically modified food crops, vaccinations, the space program, and even the automobile should have led Coulter to realize that future shock is very much with us and has become a problem.
Toffler's discussion of what he called the "post industrial society" brought on by information technology in "The Third Wave" was also phenomenally prescient. The Internet, computers, and other information systems have changed human civilization in ways that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.
Rather than being a crazy person that Coulter makes him out to be, Toffler would seem to be just the sort of person that a president might want to listen to while crafting policy. Too much public policy is informed by political whim and irrational ideology, as exemplified by the current administration. It would be very refreshing if one had a president who actually thought about future trends and created policy accordingly. Coulter should be ashamed of herself for not only not understanding Toffler and his ideas but trying to pass both off as frightening.
Comments:
Ann Coulter just likes to start arguments, she is bright but seems to not have read or understood Alvin Toffler. She is like Glenn Beck, any argument that attracts attention is good. She is the personification of what is wrong with the American Media - she wants to make the news, not report it.
Every time I see Ann Coulter, I think of Xanax and alcohol. She is always acting like she's on both.
Beck and Coulter, those two deserve each other. Maybe they should go get a room…on another planet.
Is Coulter a Mormon too?
No, Coulter isn’t a Mormon, she’s a moron.
Beck reminds me of a white lab rat that has been electro-shocked too many times....
HuffPo must be one of the only subscribers to Glenn Beck's internet "television" channel. Or at least one of the only ones that are allowed out of their mother's basements without court appointed supervision.
**********
WEBSITE ON THE RECENT AUCTION OF WELLES’S OSCAR:
Man1: I am pretty sure Mr. Beck is the new owner.Orson Welles is Glenn Becks Idol.
BOTH had Mothers that Died early. BOTH became Alcholics and stopped working. BOTH are fascinated with Ventriliquism and Magic. BOTH use the Radio to instill FEAR into their audience. BOTH were fasinated with the Symbolism, of the Roman God, Mercury. BOTH consider themselves Entertainers. BOTH Orson Welles and Glenn Beck, are tied to Mormons. Orson Wells considered himself a God, AFTER the Public reaction he recieved from ‘War of the Worlds’. Glenn Beck continues to work for his Mormon ‘Godhood’.
Man2: What a Dork…
Man3: Did you know that at one time “Rosebud” hung behind George Lucas’s desk at Skywalker Ranch? It may still be there.
******
Examiner.com:
Nancy Pelosi predicts that Newt Gingrich will never be president, but she did so in a dramatic Orson Welles type delivery last night. In a sinister comment torn right out of a mystery novel, Pelosi says, “there’s something I know,” giving a hint that she’s got something on Gingrich that isn’t public yet, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.
BY GREG LINDSAYFri Oct 15, 2010
They predicted the “electronic frontier” of the Internet, Prozac, YouTube, cloning, home-schooling, the self-induced paralysis of too many choices, instant celebrities, and the end of blue-collar manufacturing. Not bad for 1970.
In the opening minutes of Future Shock, a 1972 documentary based on the book of the same name, a bearded, cigar-puffing, world-weary Orson Welles staggers down an airport’s moving walkway, treating the camera like a confidante:
“In the course of my work, which has taken me to just about every corner of the globe, I see many aspects of a phenomenon which I’m just beginning to understand,” he says. “Our modern technologies have changed the degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety and time of stress. And with all our sophistication, we are in fact the victims of our own technological strengths –- we are the victims of shock… a future shock.”
“Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time; a feeling that nothing is permanent anymore; it’s the reaction to changes that happen so fast that we can’t absorb them, it’s the premature arrival of the future. For those who are unprepared its effects can be pretty devastating.”
************
ANNE COULTER ON NEWT AND THE TOFFLERS:
The day after the Republicans’ historic takeover of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election, Newt was off and running, giving a series of Fidel Castro-style speeches about “the Third Wave information revolution.” It had the unmistakable ring of lingo from his new-age gurus, Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
Hadn’t Republicans just won on a platform of smaller government? Instead of a Republican victory, the ’94 election seemed to be a victory for the Tofflers’ cyber-babble about “social wavefront analysis,” “anticipatory democracy,” “de-massification,” “materialismo,” “the Third Wave” and “decision loads.” How about a speech on Republican plans to reform entitlement programs?
Gingrich soon announced that all legislation passed by the new Congress would have to pass a test: Will it help move America into the Tofflers’ vision of a “Third Wave”?
The Tofflers were a couple of old folks who couldn’t figure out how to program their VCRs, so they began writing about the “Future Shock” of technology and how we needed government planning to deal with technological overload.
Their big idea was that the world was about to change faster than it ever had before, creating a technological explosion that would frighten and baffle the masses — much like the bewildering VCR clock. The government would have to have advisers and committees in order to ease the transition.
The facts are nearly the exact opposite. In the first half of the 20th century, we got widespread use of the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, electricity, radio and television, indoor plumbing, air conditioning and refrigeration, the computer, nuclear power and rockets.
All we got in the second half of the 20th century were some improvements on one of those inventions — the computer — with the personal computer, the Internet and the iPhone. (Boomers were more focused on acid trips than space trips and dropped the ball on the hard work of pushing scientific progress forward.)
Far from needing government agencies to help us “cope” with these advances — “Scientific Futurists,” a “Technology Ombudsman” and a “Council of Social Advisers,” as proposed by the Tofflers — the masses have taken to these improvements like fish to water.
Not only were they completely crazy, but Newt’s grand schemes didn’t quite fit the Republican model of a small, unintrusive federal government.
Soon, Gingrich was writing a foreword to a Toffler book — the same one on the Republicans’ reading list — and spending Christmas with the pro-choice, anti-school prayer, Christian Coalition-hating Tofflers.
At the end of Gingrich’s first year as House speaker, his endless, nutty pronunciamentos — in addition to his plan to entrust Republicans’ legislative agenda to an old couple whose living room VCR continuously flashed “12:00″ — had driven his public approval numbers into the dirt.
***********
COMMENTARY MAGAZINE ON ANNE COULTER:
Coulter believes that she has found Gingrich's equivalent of Bill Ayers.
His name is Alvin Toffler, who first became famous for a book he wrote in 1970 called "Future Shock" in which he posited, among other things, that the pace of technological change will become overwhelming to significant number of people and that would become a societal problem. Toffler has since published several ground-breaking books about the future, notably "The Third Wave" in which he discussed the emerging information revolution, "Powershift" in which he suggested that old patterns of power were breaking down and reforming into different patterns, and "Creating a New Civilization" where Toffler examines the effects of technological change on politics. It is the last book that Gingrich wrote a forward to and made Coulter angry.
The thesis that some people are frightened of technological change is not outside the mainstream, as Coulter should recognize. The left's opposition to every energy technology, genetically modified food crops, vaccinations, the space program, and even the automobile should have led Coulter to realize that future shock is very much with us and has become a problem.
Toffler's discussion of what he called the "post industrial society" brought on by information technology in "The Third Wave" was also phenomenally prescient. The Internet, computers, and other information systems have changed human civilization in ways that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.
Rather than being a crazy person that Coulter makes him out to be, Toffler would seem to be just the sort of person that a president might want to listen to while crafting policy. Too much public policy is informed by political whim and irrational ideology, as exemplified by the current administration. It would be very refreshing if one had a president who actually thought about future trends and created policy accordingly. Coulter should be ashamed of herself for not only not understanding Toffler and his ideas but trying to pass both off as frightening.
Comments:
Ann Coulter just likes to start arguments, she is bright but seems to not have read or understood Alvin Toffler. She is like Glenn Beck, any argument that attracts attention is good. She is the personification of what is wrong with the American Media - she wants to make the news, not report it.
Every time I see Ann Coulter, I think of Xanax and alcohol. She is always acting like she's on both.
Beck and Coulter, those two deserve each other. Maybe they should go get a room…on another planet.
Is Coulter a Mormon too?
No, Coulter isn’t a Mormon, she’s a moron.
Beck reminds me of a white lab rat that has been electro-shocked too many times....
HuffPo must be one of the only subscribers to Glenn Beck's internet "television" channel. Or at least one of the only ones that are allowed out of their mother's basements without court appointed supervision.
**********
WEBSITE ON THE RECENT AUCTION OF WELLES’S OSCAR:
Man1: I am pretty sure Mr. Beck is the new owner.Orson Welles is Glenn Becks Idol.
BOTH had Mothers that Died early. BOTH became Alcholics and stopped working. BOTH are fascinated with Ventriliquism and Magic. BOTH use the Radio to instill FEAR into their audience. BOTH were fasinated with the Symbolism, of the Roman God, Mercury. BOTH consider themselves Entertainers. BOTH Orson Welles and Glenn Beck, are tied to Mormons. Orson Wells considered himself a God, AFTER the Public reaction he recieved from ‘War of the Worlds’. Glenn Beck continues to work for his Mormon ‘Godhood’.
Man2: What a Dork…
Man3: Did you know that at one time “Rosebud” hung behind George Lucas’s desk at Skywalker Ranch? It may still be there.
******
Examiner.com:
Nancy Pelosi predicts that Newt Gingrich will never be president, but she did so in a dramatic Orson Welles type delivery last night. In a sinister comment torn right out of a mystery novel, Pelosi says, “there’s something I know,” giving a hint that she’s got something on Gingrich that isn’t public yet, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.
-
Glenn Anders
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
An interesting potpourri, Mike. You know that I used to regularly screen FUTURE SHOCK for my "Film and Mass Media Class," and one or two other classes on occasion. Alvin Toffler, along with Norbert Weiner and Marshall Mcluhan, was in the eyes of many the greatest "futurist" of the late 20th Century, and I'm surprised more connections are not to be found between Toffler and Welles.
Actually, the film's thesis -- that our increasingly fast moving industrial societies are tearing them (and us) apart, creating huge changes and leaving many of us longing for "the good old days" -- is hard to argue against, and looking at the film afresh (as you can on YouTube), the amazing thing I find is, allowing for style and detail differences from 1972 to the present, how many things have come to pass as predicted by Toffler/Welles. True, books are being replaced by electronic media (a Toffler given, really), and the "hippies" have come home to camp on their folks' doorsteps in today's economic mess, but certainly, marriages and relationships are increasingly more temporary. Race is not yet manufactured, but prosthetics (because of our "wars on terrorism") are more commonplace; plastic surgery and "rejuvenation" are, for all our clucking, coming to be accepted; digital art is all over the internet and galleries; robotics are replacing us in the work place; drugs and pornography are washing over us. [The kids of the 1970's and 1980's at my school took that in stride, but the gay marriage scene elicited, as I remember, almost universal "euchs! Perhaps, that would change today.] True, cryonics has not yet succeeded, but space travel is well-advanced, and plans for space colonization are on their way. And of course, the Chinese are taking over everything!
Not too bad (or good, depending upon your viewpoint toward predictions) for 1972!
Frankly, I viewed at the time a number of these projected events with considerable alarm, but they certainly were all part of mass media and the future.
That emphasis on dislocations of the Future is fundamentally Alvin Toffler's main idea. He says, somewhere: “Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life.”
In saying so, of course, without value judgment, he comes into fundamental conflict with one or two of the great American philosophical dictums. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that change is not necessarily progress, which goes against the whole Republican "Free Trade" Conservative remedy for economic and social ills which Glenn Beck and Anne Coulter champion. What really counts for Toffler is knowledge.
As he put it in "PowerShift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of 21st Century":
"Knowledge is also inherently different from both muscle and money, because, as a rule, if I use a gun, you cannot simultaneously use the same gun. If you use a dollar, I can’t use the same dollar at the same time.
"By contrast, both of us can use the same knowledge either for or against each other—and in that very process we may even produce still more knowledge. Unlike bullets or budgets, knowledge itself doesn’t get used up. This alone tell[s] us that the rules of the knowledge-power games are sharply different from the precepts relied on by those who use force or money to accomplish their will."
Which brings us back to Newt Gingrich (and the Clintons, not to mention, the Chinese) who depended heavily on Alvin and Heidi Toffler over the years. Here is an interesting C-Span interview Gingrich had with Alvin Toffler, in 2006, when the latter was 78:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/192676-1
One of many insights you may draw from this exchange is where Gingrich got his ideas about colonizing the Moon, which his enemies ridicule, but which the Tofflers consider the real [Third?] Wave of the Future!
Glenn
Actually, the film's thesis -- that our increasingly fast moving industrial societies are tearing them (and us) apart, creating huge changes and leaving many of us longing for "the good old days" -- is hard to argue against, and looking at the film afresh (as you can on YouTube), the amazing thing I find is, allowing for style and detail differences from 1972 to the present, how many things have come to pass as predicted by Toffler/Welles. True, books are being replaced by electronic media (a Toffler given, really), and the "hippies" have come home to camp on their folks' doorsteps in today's economic mess, but certainly, marriages and relationships are increasingly more temporary. Race is not yet manufactured, but prosthetics (because of our "wars on terrorism") are more commonplace; plastic surgery and "rejuvenation" are, for all our clucking, coming to be accepted; digital art is all over the internet and galleries; robotics are replacing us in the work place; drugs and pornography are washing over us. [The kids of the 1970's and 1980's at my school took that in stride, but the gay marriage scene elicited, as I remember, almost universal "euchs! Perhaps, that would change today.] True, cryonics has not yet succeeded, but space travel is well-advanced, and plans for space colonization are on their way. And of course, the Chinese are taking over everything!
Not too bad (or good, depending upon your viewpoint toward predictions) for 1972!
Frankly, I viewed at the time a number of these projected events with considerable alarm, but they certainly were all part of mass media and the future.
That emphasis on dislocations of the Future is fundamentally Alvin Toffler's main idea. He says, somewhere: “Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life.”
In saying so, of course, without value judgment, he comes into fundamental conflict with one or two of the great American philosophical dictums. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that change is not necessarily progress, which goes against the whole Republican "Free Trade" Conservative remedy for economic and social ills which Glenn Beck and Anne Coulter champion. What really counts for Toffler is knowledge.
As he put it in "PowerShift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of 21st Century":
"Knowledge is also inherently different from both muscle and money, because, as a rule, if I use a gun, you cannot simultaneously use the same gun. If you use a dollar, I can’t use the same dollar at the same time.
"By contrast, both of us can use the same knowledge either for or against each other—and in that very process we may even produce still more knowledge. Unlike bullets or budgets, knowledge itself doesn’t get used up. This alone tell[s] us that the rules of the knowledge-power games are sharply different from the precepts relied on by those who use force or money to accomplish their will."
Which brings us back to Newt Gingrich (and the Clintons, not to mention, the Chinese) who depended heavily on Alvin and Heidi Toffler over the years. Here is an interesting C-Span interview Gingrich had with Alvin Toffler, in 2006, when the latter was 78:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/192676-1
One of many insights you may draw from this exchange is where Gingrich got his ideas about colonizing the Moon, which his enemies ridicule, but which the Tofflers consider the real [Third?] Wave of the Future!
Glenn
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Le Chiffre
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Thanks for the link to that interview, Glenn. I like the analogy Toffler makes with automobiles, with the private sector going down the road at 100 mph to avoid being overtaken by the competition, and the public sector going down the road at 10 mph because there is no competition. Reminds me of Ambersons: the public sector is too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare. As Orrin Hatch put it recently, if the federal government had been in charge of cellphones all these years, they'd probably still be the size of bricks.
In Tofflerian terms, the magnificence of the Ambersons would correlate to a first wave, agrarian horse-and-buggy based society, where warriors like Major Ambersons had all the power, and the decline of the Ambersons would correlate with the rise of the second wave industrial society and the auto. If a third wave society ever comes to full fruition, we may have some of our highways replaced by info superhighways on the Internet. Who knows?
Yes, Toffler sees knowledge as the "money" of the future. Which brings to mind the Iranian nuclear scientist recently assassinated because of his knowledge.
On a lighter note, did you see Orson's son-in-law at CPAC?:
http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speec ... cpac-2012/
In Tofflerian terms, the magnificence of the Ambersons would correlate to a first wave, agrarian horse-and-buggy based society, where warriors like Major Ambersons had all the power, and the decline of the Ambersons would correlate with the rise of the second wave industrial society and the auto. If a third wave society ever comes to full fruition, we may have some of our highways replaced by info superhighways on the Internet. Who knows?
What really counts for Toffler is knowledge.
"Knowledge is also inherently different from both muscle and money, because, as a rule, if I use a gun, you cannot simultaneously use the same gun. If you use a dollar, I can’t use the same dollar at the same time.
"By contrast, both of us can use the same knowledge either for or against each other—and in that very process we may even produce still more knowledge. Unlike bullets or budgets, knowledge itself doesn’t get used up. This alone tell[s] us that the rules of the knowledge-power games are sharply different from the precepts relied on by those who use force or money to accomplish their will."
Yes, Toffler sees knowledge as the "money" of the future. Which brings to mind the Iranian nuclear scientist recently assassinated because of his knowledge.
On a lighter note, did you see Orson's son-in-law at CPAC?:
http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speec ... cpac-2012/
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Glenn Anders
- Wellesnet Legend
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- Joined: Mon Jun 23, 2003 12:50 pm
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Interesting point, Mike, about the Iranian scientist assassinated. You might add to that, from a different direction, the two correspondents killed in Syria today.
And of course, Andrew Breitbart is almost always worth the price of admission at C-pac. I had missed this year's performance, although one could hardly miss his having to be led away shouting from Occupy C-pac protesters, earlier in the day.
Amazing that this disheveled, as he admits himself, unshaven and unshowered demagogue can bring so many apparently well-educated conservatives to their feet. (I did notice a number of bemused faces and people covering their mouths in dismay, especially among women, as they listened to his invective.)
Think of what Breitbart is promising: a new TV series of staged and hidden camera exposes.
The election year continues as one of the strangest on record.
What would Orson Welles have thought?
Many thanks, Mike.
Glenn
And of course, Andrew Breitbart is almost always worth the price of admission at C-pac. I had missed this year's performance, although one could hardly miss his having to be led away shouting from Occupy C-pac protesters, earlier in the day.
Amazing that this disheveled, as he admits himself, unshaven and unshowered demagogue can bring so many apparently well-educated conservatives to their feet. (I did notice a number of bemused faces and people covering their mouths in dismay, especially among women, as they listened to his invective.)
Think of what Breitbart is promising: a new TV series of staged and hidden camera exposes.
The election year continues as one of the strangest on record.
What would Orson Welles have thought?
Many thanks, Mike.
Glenn
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Le Chiffre
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
I assume you mean the "Stop raping people" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o
Here's a moderately clever spoof called Obama the Con Artist:
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-oba ... con-artist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o
Here's a moderately clever spoof called Obama the Con Artist:
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-oba ... con-artist
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Glenn Anders
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
It's the season, Mike.
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Le Chiffre
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Re: As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .
Newt Gingrich is remembering Andrew Breitbart as a man with "great courage and creativity…the most innovative pioneer in conservative activist social media in America."
Aside from the sad news about Breitbart, Gingrich’s reference to the “social media” of the Internet puts a spotlight on the difference between it and the old, second-wave industrial media of the so-called “establishment”, such as newspapers, radio and television, which are still the dominant force in the GOP race, but less so then in 2008. As CNN puts it:
“Grass-roots activists would have a hard time keeping the race going on their own, without standard-bearers like Paul, Santorum and Gingrich to rally around. But as long as those candidates keep running, social media and social networking will continue to empower conservative voters and activists who care passionately about certain issues, enabling them to create strong factions within the Republican electorate that are less controllable by party leaders.
"The pundits are completely stumped as to what's going on. They say Romney's got it locked up, and then everything just changes. I think that's a real consequence of what is happening online with the conservative movement. Up until this cycle, conservative grass-roots activists haven't been online as much. On the left that happened a long time ago. Ron Paul was the start, then you had the tea party movement, and now you have the evangelicals on Facebook, on Twitter, discussing things on FreedomConnector."
"I do what I do because the mainstream media chooses not to do it."
– Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012
Aside from the sad news about Breitbart, Gingrich’s reference to the “social media” of the Internet puts a spotlight on the difference between it and the old, second-wave industrial media of the so-called “establishment”, such as newspapers, radio and television, which are still the dominant force in the GOP race, but less so then in 2008. As CNN puts it:
“Grass-roots activists would have a hard time keeping the race going on their own, without standard-bearers like Paul, Santorum and Gingrich to rally around. But as long as those candidates keep running, social media and social networking will continue to empower conservative voters and activists who care passionately about certain issues, enabling them to create strong factions within the Republican electorate that are less controllable by party leaders.
"The pundits are completely stumped as to what's going on. They say Romney's got it locked up, and then everything just changes. I think that's a real consequence of what is happening online with the conservative movement. Up until this cycle, conservative grass-roots activists haven't been online as much. On the left that happened a long time ago. Ron Paul was the start, then you had the tea party movement, and now you have the evangelicals on Facebook, on Twitter, discussing things on FreedomConnector."
"I do what I do because the mainstream media chooses not to do it."
– Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012
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