Let’s define ‘vulgar’

June 18, 2008

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, has spent most of the year devoting his columns to bashing Barack Obama. Today, he mixes things up a bit by bashing a different Democrat he doesn’t like: Senate candidate Al Franken.

Consider his article in Playboy magazine titled “Porn-O-Rama!” in which he enthuses that it is an “exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography.” The Internet, he explains, is a “terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved.” Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the “Minnesota Institute of Titology.”

Orwell would be so proud.

“Porn-O-Rama!” is a modern campaign document every voter should read — the Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism. It has the literary sensibilities and moral seriousness of an awkward adolescent nerd publishing an underground newspaper to shock his way into campus popularity. But, in this case, the article was written in 2000 by a 48-year-old man.

Gerson goes on (and on), highlighting various excerpts from Franken’s satirical works, some of which are funny, and some of which aren’t. Gerson’s broader point, it seems, is that Franken has contributed to a coarsening of our culture — in the “cause of relevance and realism” — and it would be another setback to allow this coarsening to affect our “political discourse.”

Gerson insists politics “should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity and viciousness,” which, Gerson argues, “Sen. Franken” would do.

I’m all for a civil discourse, but I find Gerson’s complaining wildly off-base.

First, Gerson makes no effort to appreciate the distinction between candidate Franken and satirist Franken. To hear Gerson tell it, Franken will be telling risque, profanity-laden jokes on the Senate floor. This is foolish — Franken may have a background as a comedian, but he’s serious about politics. Our “political discourse” will remain unchanged, whether Franken’s quick wit is brought to Washington or not.

Second, Gerson’s right about having Franken used, shall we say, “salty” language in his comedic work, but I’m not sure why Gerson believes contemporary politics is free of this kind of talk now. When Gerson’s former boss decided to launch an unnecessary war, he proclaimed, “F**k Saddam, we’re taking him out.” When Dick Cheney ran into Pat Leahy on the Senate floor a couple of years ago, he said, “Go f**k yourself.” John McCain, someone Gerson praises in his column for his civility, has cursed out most of his Republican colleagues who have dared to disagree with him. (Last year, discussing immigration policy, McCain screamed at Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), saying “F**k you! This is chickens**t stuff.”)

And we should be worried that Franken might worsen the “vulgarity and viciousness” of modern-day politics? How, with a few scabrous jokes? My hunch is, our political system will survive just fine. (Indeed, given Norm Coleman’s priorities and policy positions, bawdy humor should be low on voters’ list of priorities.)

Ultimately, the biggest problem with Gerson’s complaining isn’t that he’s a prude; it’s that his priorities are hopelessly misguided. Josh Marshall noted:

…Michael Gerson, who helped bring us Dick Cheney, state-sanctioned torture and official lies to lead the country to war lets us know that Al Franken is the Vulgarian at the Gate. He’s also concerned about “the cooperation and mutual respect necessary in a functioning democracy.”

Exactly. Gerson was a top aide in the Bush White House. He wants to talk about “vulgarity and viciousness”? The day after we learn that a CIA counterterrorism lawyer told interrogators at Gitmo in 2002, “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”?

The mind reels.

The op-ed is from an ex-Bushie. It’s all we need to know. Don’t forget, this is just anoher chapter in the brilliance of Fred Hiatt(Since he hired Gerson). For all her faults, Kay Graham is probably rolling over in her grave right about now.

  • I hate to be cynical, but this will work against Franken in a big way. Republicans must own all of the smelling salts factories in the U.S. hence the role of guardians of our puritanical sensibilities. But when they are doing it, it’s business as usual, move along, nothing to see here…and there isn’t because the media won’t discuss it.

  • We’re living in sensitive times. Perhaps Franken could express an appreciation for arugula with Clos du Bois Chardonnay to round out his image.

  • Goes to the old cliche about how it’s only acceptable to show the “forbidden” parts of the human body in movies if you are cutting them up rather than giving them pleasure. You can show with impunity a bomber blowing the hell out of an entire village using illegal munitions*, but if you show a breast with a pasty on it you’ll get in a huge amount of trouble.

    I would also point out that at age 40 George W. Bush was a drunk. I’m pretty sure he had a lot of things to say back then that would make Franken’s stuff look pretty tame.

    The authoritarian mindset is thankfully being overcome, but it will not go quietly. We need to do our part to help stuff it down the tubes, and the best way to do that is to register new voters, especially young ones.

    * http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.2285247.0.Where_is_the_moral_compass_on_weaponry.php

  • I don’t know if Al Franken’s a very good candidate, but even if you took his comedic work as serious, it pales in comparison to the sickening abuses by the Bush Administration

  • The conservatives don’t want input or any kind of participation in democracy from us citizens. They do not want anything to upset the ruling class they have set up for themselves and ceo buddies in washington.

    In fact, they do not even want us to be citizens. Rather, they would have us be mushrooms. That is, kept in the dark and fed shit.

  • Highlighting Franken’s affinity for pornography may actually garner him some votes. Certainly can’t call him an elitist. He’s just a normal, smut-loving guy.

    (Of course, I assumed noting Obama’s membership to a Christian church would quite the Muslim rumors, so maybe I’m not being cynical enough.)

  • Gerson’s an idiot, but I emailed him anyway. If he’d like some civility in our political discourse, perhaps he could check with Dick Cheney on the proper kind of instruction to give a US Senator on the Senate floor. Maybe he could check on the Texas GOP campaign button that says, “If Obama Wins Can We Still Call It The White House?” I also took pains to explain that if he wanted more civility then perhaps he could set an example and clean up his own house first. It was all very civil, of course, except where I had to quote Cheney.

  • John McCain, someone Gerson praises in his column for his civility, has cursed out most of his Republican colleagues…

    AND he called his wife a c*nt.

  • Perhaps Franken picked up that salty language on one of his several USO trips out to entertain the troops. You know, the troops that Gerson’s pals put there, on extended deployments, to ‘save us’ from WMD that didn’t exist?

    The only actual bad thing about Franken’s candidacy is that it means we don’t get to hear Franken on his radio show, skewering idiots like Gerson anymore. I look forward to hearing the much more serious Franken from the floor of the Senate.

  • Look, everyone knows that, when people in the entertainment industry enter politics, the personas they create for themselves becomes their political persona as well. Don’t you remember all those nights Reagan spent in the Lincoln bedroom with “Bonzo?” Remember how many times Fred “Gopher” Grandy had to chastised on the House floor for trying to “hook up” various politicians while wearing those ridiculous little white shorts? And Fred Thompson…well, actually, those two personas do pretty much match up.

  • Since Republicans are the targets of satire rather than the consumers, it’s hard for them to recognize it. Gerson, of course, is self-satirizing, and never moreso than with this.

  • Well, the Republicans sure loved Scooter Libby. So did Gerson condemn Libby’s novel that included:
    a scene of incest between two uncles and their niece;
    a hunter asking his companions if they should fuck a freshly killed deer while it’s still warm;
    the description of a prepubescent girl’s painted “mound” and pleasing lack of vaginal odor;
    a story about a girl who’s kept in a cage and raped by a bear to train her to become a prostitute.
    (thanks: http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/libby/dirtypolitician/)

    Oh, yeah, he’s a traitor for ratting out an American spy for his boss, too.

    Oh, I forgot IOKIYAR

  • I went door-knocking a couple weeks ago with a Keith Ellison group trying to identify which “independent” or “undeclared” registered voters might be leaning Democratic. I didn’t discover anybody who was anti-Obama in big way. Same for Ellison. But there’s an anti-Franken segment out there that’s actually scary. It might not be a big segment, but it’s really hot.

    Tomorrow I’ll be making calls for Team Franken. Wish me luck.

  • Gerson insists politics “should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity and viciousness,” which, Gerson argues, “Sen. Franken” would do.

    …and Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo and the rest of that loathsome cabal ordering and justifying torture, what, doesn’t?

    Gerson is a jackass.

  • to paraphrase Harry, Franken isn’t giving them vulgarity, he’s just describing the Republicans’ own programs and positions and it feels vulgar.

  • There are two kinds of satire, the kind that kicks UP at the powerful
    and the kind that kicks DOWN at the weak. Gerson has a hard time when
    Franken attacks Karl Rove.

  • This doesn’t change the fact that Gerson is a braying, hypocritical jackass who ought to be fed his own waste–a pretty good metaphor for what he did to the American public as part of Bush’s propaganda operation–but nominating Franken was a big mistake on the part of the MN DFL. I wouldn’t have believed that anyone could dim my enthusiasm for taking out the foulness that is Norm Coleman and reclaiming Paul Wellstone’s seat, but Al’s serial self-inflicted wounds have done it.

    He’s a lousy candidate who looks primed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I hope he proves me wrong; I’m not very optimistic that he will.

  • Well, at least we don’t have to redefine “asshole.”

    From the folks who brought us the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity, we don’t need any discussions about “vulgarity” in politics.

  • I don’t have a lot to say about the Franken race, except that he may manage to cost us a Senate seat we would have won.

    But I have to dispute ‘slappy’ about one thing. If “Arthur Branch” — the character Fred Thompson played on Law and Order — had run, he might have been a major player, could have won, and had he won the race would have been a lot closer than it is now. (It was because I thought Thompson had become Branch that I had expected him to be a formidable candidate.) Branch was a Conservative, but truly a compassionate one, someone who understood the ‘social issues’ and was a liberal in these respects, someone who was understanding and sensible even in his Conservatism — enough so that I will admit that in a ‘Branch’-Clinton race it would have been hard to make a choice.

    Fortunately, instead, Thompson ran as the dormouse from ALICE and failed to be a factor.

    (And, in passing, Thompson was a much better actor than people gave him credit for. He had the talent of showcasing the people playing with him and bringing out their best. Compare the painful scenes with Elizabeth Rohm (Serena Southerlyn) when she played against Dianne Weist with her scenes playing with Thompson. As a long-time L&O fan, I really miss Thompson, even though I am glad ‘Jack McCoy’ finally got the promotion he deserved.)

  • I don’t know, but I think the Larry Craigs of the world are causing more problems for people than a Playboy column.

  • For so long, the right wing has controlled the message and framed the debates to their benefit. What we saw the last 7.5 years is the culmination of 30 years of this effort. Pure propoganda, and look where it lead our nation.

    Their fatal mistake was choosing Bu$h, the incontinent miscreant to represent their movement. His gross inadequacies, infalted ego, and spoiloed brat mentality contributed to the failure of his presidency, and thankfully exposed Republicans for what they really are: greedy liars and frauds, all of them, to the core.

    So now the American public is waking up, seeing through the fog of 9-11. The media – in some instances – has rediscovered it’s family jewels, and dissent from the official party line is creeping back into our society. The mechanisms of democracy haven’t been destroyed completely, just badly damaged.

    Now we have people like Gerson, who for so long sat atop of the fascist propoganda machine, realizing that the tide has turned and their ilk will go the way of the Dodo bird. So what is his reaction? He starts whining and complaining about the state of ‘vulgarity’ and ‘discourse’ in our country.

    Amazing. I have said this before and I’ll say it again: Republicans are like schoolyard bullies. When some kid finally has enough and pops the bully square in the nose, the bully goes home crying to momma about how some kid picked on him.

  • I too thought Franken running for senator was a bad idea. Gerson is obviously full of shit but Franken did cause me to lower my expectations of what I thought a senator should be like when I noted that he was 50X better than Coleman but I still didn’t consider him senate material. It bothers me when the dominant word in a person’s conversation is..ah…ah..a…a…a. But then I never thought Franken was that funny either but did a decent radio show. I just never thought he was that bright …but compared to Coleman he’s far superior. Like purp above I fear he wilo cost us a senate seat we could easily have won with another candidate. I hope not because Coleman is a Bush neocon self serving sponge who needs to be gotten rid of.

    I disagree with Purp about Fred Thompson who was a major hypocrite whose hypocrisy was just “beginning” to come out. He was a smear campaigner with a lot of very nasty things to say about dem opposition but without any policy stands. A phony to the max who’s “acting” as a politician would have become extremely noticeable. He would have come across as a big fat asshole not a moral authoritarian. He was made as a bit player but not a lead and with a very limited capability. Even Nixon thought he was stupid but usable. He barely would have made it past that first impressive impression before he would have been canceled.

  • Republicans always claim to hate this stuff, but Gerson seems to go on and on in great detail about a topic he doesn’t want disseminated, which will only create more interest in the topic. I think they fake being offended and really are exploring their dark thoughts or reaching out to others who share the interest.

  • Joey, what I specifically said was that “Arthur Branch” was — were he real — a character who could have been a major force in the election, and that I had assumed that Fred Thompson might have begun to assimilate the ways of thinking of the character he played. Obviously he had not, as we saw from his campaign.

    And it is “Prup” not “purp.” The name has a meaning — as well as being a way to distinguish myself from other Jim Bentons on the net.

    It comes from a Gilbert & Sullivan line I used first as part of the introduction to a college radio show — and for a hint to those who are curious, click on my name and see the name of my abandoned blog which uses the same line.

  • And we can assume that Michael Gerson, having spent years as a Senate staffer, is aware it is not common for one member to tell another “[expletive] you” — as McCain did to Sen. John Cornyn during the immigration debate.

    We can assume that because he said so less than two months ago in a column arguing that we shouldn’t be scared of McCain’s temper.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042202523.html

    Got it? Al Franken? Vulgarity. John McCain? “fierce independence” (and) “wild defiance.”

  • One other point CB might have failed to make (or I failed to notice) is that to find a complaint against Franken, Gerson has to reach into Playboy magazine! Where Franken is only writing to his audience, material that is par for the course, where the mountains of evidence by Republicans is all over the public sphere, in plain sight of all, not just adults, most particularly in the Congressional record!

    Second, what does it say about Gerson that he reads Playboy magazine? Wouldn’t that make him some kind of hypocrite if he consumes that stuff?

  • “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”?

    Actually I could see Franken or the Onion having made that line up. Done right, it might even be funny satire.

    In a decent world, we might hope that the CIA lawyer was attempting dark humor rather than making frank commentary. Dubya has blurred my world enough that I cannot assume such a thing any longer.

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