I have never been well disposed toward George Will. I have regard for his knowledge of and reverence for baseball but his politics are appalling. A chasm separates his experience from that of most Americans and he seems unperturbed by this void in knowledge.
My distaste for his political commentary, both print and broadcast, is of long vintage. An anecdote from the way-back machine explains why. Sam Donaldson, the former ABC News correspondent, was skillful at exposing Mr. Will’s absurdities. During the Iran-Contra imbroglio, Mr. Will undertook the task of defending the indefensible Oliver North. He suggested that Mr. North had merely engaged in a justified act of civil disobedience and the left’s umbrage at the colonel’s conduct was hypocritical when considered alongside its tolerance toward acts of civil disobedience by sixties radicals. Ever the culture warrior, our Mr. Will. Mr. Donaldson made an obvious yet devastating point rhetorical point: The core principle of civil disobedience is acceptance of legal consequences for breaking the law the civilly disobedient has deemed unjust, in effect having the courage of one’s convictions. Mr. North was cravenly determined to evade responsibility for his actions; his doe-eyed presentation of himself as a cruelly victimized patriot was Oscar worthy. Mr. Will was rendered speechless, a delicious rarity. Despite his Brahmin mien, his education apparently had been a bit light on Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes the mask slips.
It was likely inevitable that Mr. Will would join the great migration of the Never Trump conservative punditocracy in the months following the 2016 election. Once Fox News made the pivot to become what Chris Hayes calls “Trump TV,” it was no longer welcoming for those of Mr. Will’s ilk. There was a stampede to secure spots at centrist or left-leaning outlets. MSNBC assembled a stable of these types: Steve Schmidt, Charlie Sykes, William Kristol, Rick Wilson, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, David Frum, Mr. Will, others.
Mr. Will was among the least successful of these commentators. There was an unmistakable tension inherent in his commentary. He had a tough circle to square. He simultaneously felt compelled to register his contempt for President Bone Spur while his ideology fueled his undisguised disdain for anyone not subscribing to his narrow brand of movement conservatism, effectively an attack on his new audience.
So Mr. Will in a column exhorted people to vote against the GOP – note, not to vote for anything – in the 2018 midterm elections in order to thwart Mr. Trump. That was all well and good. That’s what the voters should have done and by and large did. However, the efficacy of the message is undercut by the Never Trumpers’ lack of a constituency, as Sam Seder points out. Had the Never Trumpers been significant numerically, The King of Queens would never have been elected president and pundits like Mr. Will would still be opining at right-wing outlets. At least Mr. Will had the courtesy to make his plea general. Other Never Trumper pundits had the gall to define type of candidates the Democratic Party would need to put on offer to garner their votes, a tacit threat either to vote Republican or to sit out the election. In their view, beggar was by right chooser. Never Trumpism is clearly weak tea.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch routinely runs Mr. Will’s columns, which afforded an opportunity to unload on him. I did. The paper passed on it. “I can’t imagine why,” the Bourbon Progressive repeats ironically.
George Will, “This November, Cast Your Vote Against the GOP,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 24 June 2018, E3 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/george-will-column-this-november-cast-your-vote-against-the-gop/article_8ec57b8d-843d-599c-80ce-c4d4054327c7.html).
George Will’s call to reject the GOP in the 2018 midterm and thwart President Trump’s quasi-authoritarian antics is welcome. He also properly chastises the Republican Party for fecklessness. No one, however, should harbor illusions about Mr. Will’s brand of “never Trumpism.”
Mr. Will affects high dudgeon at the ugliness Mr. Trump has exposed, yet one wonders whether the wellspring of his disaffection with his onetime party is found more in the ascendancy of a chief executive who offends his priggish sensibilities, who, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quipped in 2016, refuses to “stick to the script.” [1]
The selfsame George Will has penned apologias for the race-baiting, segregationist presidential campaigns of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, [2] has insinuated that President Obama’s race inoculated him from criticism, [3] and then has had the effrontery to accuse liberals of suffering from “Tourette’s syndrome” in matters of race. [4] Can we believe that Mr. Will was taken unawares when Mr. Trump incited intolerance and rallied broad support by substituting a bullhorn for the dog whistle used by the GOP since President Nixon’s hatching of the “Southern Strategy,” a political modus operandi in which Mr. Will’s complicity is more than tacit? Mr. Will suffers either from singular absence of self-awareness or impressive intellectual dishonesty. He is talented. Perhaps he manages both.
Should 2020 or 2024 offer Mr. Will a Republican president he admires, one wonders whether he will forgive all and scurry to a sinecure in the Conservative Punditocracy Industrial Complex. He labels a 2019 House potentially controlled by Democrats – a party operating in good faith – as a “basket of deplorables.” The Right Wing Noise Machine beckons with a “basket” in which he himself can rest companionably. If George Will’s politicized maundering represents the acme of “conservative intellectualism,” how can it not be deemed an oxymoron?
[1] Jordain Carney, “McConnell on Trump: ‘I’m Not a Fan of the Daily Tweets,’” The Hill, 17 February 2017 (www.thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/320114-mcconnell-on-trump-im-not-a-fan-of-the-daily-tweets).
[2] George Will, “Robert Sarvis, Virginia’s Other Choice for Governor,” The Washington Post, 23 October 2013 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-robert-sarvis-virginias-other-choice-for-governor/2013/10/23/1544f8d6-3b5c-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?utm_term=.300984fb5eac&wprss=rss_homepage); Oliver Willis, “George Will Whitewashes Racism from Pro-Segregationist Presidential Campaigns,” Media Matters 24 October 2013 (www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/george-will-whitewashes-racism-from-pro-segrega/196578).
[3] Elspeth Reeve, “Actually George Will Has Been Obsessed with Race for a Long time,” The Atlantic, 2 October 2012 (www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/actually-george-wills-been-obsessed-race-long-time/322988/).
[4] Ian Schwartz, “George Will: Liberals Have ‘Tourette’s Syndrome’ When It Comes to Racism,” Real Clear Politics, 13 April 2014 (www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/04/13/george_will_liberals_have_tourettes_syndrome_when_it_comes_to_racism.html).
People in fact did come to know Dave Brat and that’s why he’s the former rather than sitting representative for Virginia’s seventh congressional district. His meteoric ascent and equally spectacular flameout can be read as a prefiguration of Trumpian politics, an instance of a local political dynamic with national implications.
Some context is useful. From 2003 – when The Better Half and I moved into our house – until 2017, we voted in Virginia’s third congressional district and our congressman was Bobby Scott. We met him in 2010 at a house party held down the street in support of his reelection. He was glum. He had taken the “hard vote” – Barack Obama’s characterization – to pass the Affordable Care Act and knew that the Democrats’ majority was endangered. He survived, but Democratic control didn’t in a political slaughter of the innocents, a purge of Democrats who’d done the right thing. Some commentators equated it with the 1994 midterm election when Democrats who had backed Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase were decimated. Court-ordered redistricting in 2016 to correct racially motivated gerrymandering placed us in the fourth congressional district. Donald McEachin became our congressman. We’ve been well satisfied with our representation.
More to the point, our district borders on Virginia’s seventh congressional district. In 2000, just before our arrival in Richmond, Eric Cantor replaced the seat’s retiring twenty-year Republican incumbent. In short, he grabbed a safe GOP seat. A stroll westward from our house soon crosses the boundary between the fourth and seventh districts. Proximity to Mr. Cantor’s Republican bastion led to a peculiar phenomenon in my neighborhood, wannabe Cantor voters, people with Cantor yard signs despite inability to pull the lever for him. One can always dream I suppose. It’s not difficult to imagine what sort of people these are.
Mr. Cantor was reelected repeatedly by comfortable margins. The Democrats fielded opponents, mostly sacrificial victims. An intriguing effort to unseat him came in 2002. Ben Jones, formerly “Cooter” on The Dukes of Hazzard and onetime US congressman from Georgia (1989-93), threw his hat into the ring. The theory likely was that a “yellow dog” Democrat had the best odds of chasing Mr. Cantor. It didn’t work; however, the margins narrowed a bit in Mr. Cantor’s later races.
In 2014, Mr. Cantor faced a primary opponent, Dave Brat, an economics professor at Randolph Macon College, a liberal arts school in Ashland, Virginia. Mr. Cantor must have sensed that Mr. Brat spelled trouble for him. An anecdote illustrates this. My Beloved and I live not far from the Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral, sponsor of a twice-yearly Greek festival. We usually attend it, mostly for the food. Mr. Cantor had released a pack of tee-shirted, well-scrubbed young minions, a Cantor teen brigade, to circulate through the crowd and encourage people to vote for him in the primary. I think they were giving away Cantor tchotchkes (no interest here, except for fashioning effigies). Mr. Cantor, needing to exert himself, was pressing the flesh in an unlikely locale. The majority of the festival’s attendees probably lived outside his district and he was blocks from Carytown, Richmond’s answer to Greenwich Village, the antithesis of a GOP stronghold.
Mr. Cantor’s concerns were not unfounded. Mr. Brat accomplished what no Democratic general election opponent had. Upon his defeat, Mr. Cantor resigned before the expiry of his term and made himself available to the Right Wing Lobbying Industrial Complex, ever the statesman.
How did Mr. Brat do it? He centered his campaign on immigration, channeled the Tea Party scorn for government bailouts and taxation, wrapped himself in the flag, and waved the scriptures around. He demonstrated that there was a vein of political angst to be mined. His Crassness exploited some of these same themes in 2015-16. When Melania’s Enduring Curse was installed in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Mr. Brat found his tribe and displayed a Trumpian taste for conspiracy-theory lunacy and dissembling. He lost his seat in 2018 to Democrat Abigail Spanberger. That his post-congressional gig is the Deanship of the School of Business at Liberty University should surprise no one. How better can Mammon and the Deity be served simultaneously?
In January 2018, before Mr. Brat’s loss to Ms. Spanberger, The Richmond Times-Dispatch published an op-ed by him in which he extolled his adherence to principle. It was too much to stomach. A response was sent to the paper. I was correspondent of the day again. Hip, Hip, Hurray. An attack isn’t ad hominem if it’s true.
Dave Brat, “Put Principles over Politics and Personality,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 28 January 2018, E5 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/rep-dave-brat-put-principles-over-politics-and-personality/article_3d415539-7961-5784-8c5a-82f4f79015f7.html).
“Brat Should Hold Off on Self-Congratulation,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 February 2018, A10 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-feb-12-2018-brat-should-hold-off-on-self-congratulations/article_07f9a4d2-6ac7-5075-bdc1-959a64892110.html).
The letter submitted to The Richmond Times-Dispatch exceeded the word limit and the paper dropped its penultimate paragraph. Here’s what was in the original:
“Brat’s commitment to rule of law will perhaps be tested by the ‘memo’ being brandished by Representative Devin Nunes, the indifferently recused chair of the House Intelligence Committee. This committee has authorized the document’s release while suppressing a minority response. The committee, furthermore, ignores pleas from the Justice Department to vet Nunes’ handiwork, reportedly a farrago of distortions and half-truths, for classified materials. Why does the GOP engage in serial conspiracy-mongering rather than facilitating the Special Counsel’s work? Absent straw, Mueller will make no bricks.”
Virginia has off-year elections for statewide offices and state legislative seats. Kentucky does this too. This depresses turnout, probably a feature, not a bug. The only upside to this custom is that it makes the Commonwealth a gauge for the electorate’s mood; more about that later.
The off-off-year elections also ensure an extra season of bloviating punditry. As the 2017 election neared, The Richmond Times-Dispatch printed an unsigned editorial asserting that the US Supreme Court could not and should not do anything about gerrymandering of federal and state legislative seats. The newspaper adopted this stance just as litigation arising from toxically, almost comically, gerrymandered Wisconsin reached the high court. Interesting timing, that.
The Supreme Court’s decision hinged on the whims of Anthony Kennedy, who had long dithered by braying about his need for a precise measure of the bias driving gerrymandering. This reads to me as motivated obtuseness. He balked yet again and soon afterward retired, his work done. The Supreme Court’s present composition likely will make this the final opportunity for the high court to address the issue. It’s just another step in the normalization of minority rule. Sigh. For whatever it’s worth, The Richmond Times-Dispatch gave me another gold star. Be still my heart.
“Gerrymander Is Awful. The Supreme Court Isn’t the Answer,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 5 October 2017 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-gerrymandering-is-awful-the-supreme-court-isnt-the-answer/article_fc6ab70e-8ec9-5d09-b92c-928ae9f71023.html).
“Today’s Gerrymandering Is Undemocratic,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 22 October 2017, E2 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-oct-22-2017-todays-gerrymandering-is-undemocratic/article_45384630-bf60-500e-924b-6f9faa241a30.html).
The drawing of specious analogies seems to have been key to A. Barton Hinkle’s editorializing modus operandi. In this case, it operates on multiple levels. He first equated hard science with economic “science” and insinuated that the laws of each were immutable and irresistible. He then suggested that denial of climate change by the right parallels the left’s belief that a higher minimum wage would not eliminate jobs. After a look into the research on the consequences of minimum-wage hikes, a reply was sent to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, it was printed, and I was “correspondent of the day” again. Huzzah, huzzah.
A. Barton Hinkle, “Is It Time to Start Dismissing ‘Economics Deniers’?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 June 2017, A13 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/a-barton-hinkle-column-is-it-time-to-start-dismissing-economics-deniers/article_c03ebb06-7321-5477-96df-2822a131b3ba.html).
“It’s Too Early to Draw Conclusions,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 20 June 2017, A10 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-july-20-2017-its-too-early-to-draw-conclusions/article_2f9c5a97-0b2c-547e-98c5-bd054702cb5a.html).
Among letters that never reached print, this is one of the more interesting ones. It responded to an opinion from an in-house editorialist at The Richmond Times-Dispatch, A. Barton Hinkle, who since has decamped for the private sector, Dominion Energy I think. Mr. Hinkle’s op-ed was either disingenuous or clueless or cluelessly disingenuous or disingenuously clueless. His thesis, to the extent he had one, was that the media is dishonest, politicians are dishonest, I do declare, whatever am poor, pitiful I to do? He presented this as a symmetrical affliction of both left and right, an annoying and misleading absurdity.
I sent the letter and it didn’t appear in the paper. There’s no entitlement to have an item printed but this one was especially on point and it touched upon journalism. I was curious about why it hadn’t made the cut and had a polite email exchange with the letters editor. I noted that the tetchiness between politicians and the media had gained a further dimension since the letter’s submission because Greg Gianforte, a GOP congressional candidate, had assaulted Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian. It should be noted, parenthetically, that President World Wrestling Entertainment nodded his approval of Mr. Gianforte’s criminous conduct, the Montanan won his race, and now, after a hot minute in Congress, is the state’s governor.
The editor cited a technicality, that fewer than sixty days had passed since a letter from me had been printed. The point could be contested, but I was invited to resubmit it after the moratorium, which by any mode of counting had passed. I did. It wasn’t printed and, of the stuff on the blog, it has the distinction of double rejection by the same outlet. The relevant wisdom comes from W. C. Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point being a damn fool about it.” This was a wall against which I didn’t need to beat my head.
A. Barton Hinkle, “Who’s Telling the Truth in Washington? Anyone?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 May 2017, E5 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/a-barton-hinkle-column-whos-telling-the-truth-in-washington-anyone/article_63dfa5c6-376e-5a2e-a78b-3e119bcc4c8d.html).
A. Barton Hinkle’s recent opinion piece (“Who’s Telling the Truth in Washington? Anyone?,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 21, 2017, E1, E5) misleads and lacks the balanced presentation of fact which Mr. Hinkle purports to champion.
Mr. Hinkle repeats the tired bromide of liberal bias in the “mainstream” media and then rehearses the canonical list of journalistic missteps. Absent from his excoriation of media is a Fox News network whose viewers have repeatedly been found the least informed, indeed the most misinformed, among consumers of major media outlets and are sometimes better served by no news at all. He likewise ignores a network of right-wing “think tanks” whose goal is ideological advocacy, not dispassionate regard for truth.
These omissions are stunning during a week in which Fox News begrudgingly disavowed its “investigative reporting” surrounding the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy theory dragged from the muck of far-right fever swamps. This correction perhaps represents progress under Fox’s new regime, since the late Roger Ailes would acknowledge only the most egregious errors. Is Mr. Hinkle so transfixed by the mote in the “mainstream” media’s eye that the nearby dangling beam vanishes? The comedian Stephen Colbert’s famous quip has never cut so sharp or true: “It is a well-known fact that reality has a liberal bias.”
Mr. Hinkle’s facile cynicism maligns journalists who toil in good faith against deadline to produce “history’s first draft.” This draft is sometimes messy. Sources can mislead. A journalist, like everyone, harbors political views. A rogue reporter sometimes willfully deceives. None of this on balance invalidates journalism’s service as bulwark against public malfeasance and corruption.
Mr. Hinkle seems to offer only a peculiar informational nihilism. In days when Russian President Putin baldly undermines Americans’ faith in media and institutions and President Trump seemingly admires Putin’s program, Mr. Hinkle’s critique, doubtless unintentionally, reads like useful idiocy.
Todd Culbertson was a longtime editorialist for The Richmond Times-Dispatch. This letter was inspired by his misreading of Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal, in my view 2016’s most on-point and useful polemic. Mr. Culbertson posited an equivalence in how each political party has careered from its philosophical and policy roots. No such equivalence exists. Despite its manifold defects, the Democratic Party retains a utilitarian ethos. It is perhaps unsurprising that Mr. Culbertson could not bring himself to acknowledge the intellectual bankruptcy of movement conservatism. My response is harsh but neither unfair nor inaccurate. As with David Brooks, I invite a comparison of our respective assessments of the two major parties and a judgment regarding which proved closer to the mark.
I was correspondent du jour again. Cool, I guess.
Todd Culbertson, “Frank Talk Declares Class Warfare,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 23 March 2017, A9 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/todd-culbertson-column-thomas-frank-talk-declares-class-warfare/article_f321824f-210f-57da-bb8f-fd301ad8e9d5.html).
“On Dialogue and Empty Vessels,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3 April 2017, A8 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-april-3-2017-on-dialogue-and-empty-vessels/article_c7a878f2-f54c-5568-9719-54e262af5aef.html).
Cue the clichés: Third time is the charm. There was no third whiff. Pay dirt was hit.
The context for this letter to the editor was the aftermath of my father-in-law’s passing. After an extended stay in California, I returned to Richmond before New Year’s 2017. I covered The Beloved’s courses for a couple of weeks so that she could spend more time with her mother out west and I reverted to my slovenly bachelor ways. The Better Half discovered that she didn’t have enough of a refrigerated prescription medication, so I jerry-rigged a cold pack for quasi-illegal overnight shipment. I arrived at the Carytown UPS Store too early. Can Can, the nearby French bistro, beckoned. A self-indulgent, decadent breakfast with the newspapers followed.
An unsigned editorial in The Richmond Times-Dispatch disturbed my meal. It contended that President Obama had been successful in elevating nominees to the federal counts despite the Republicans’ glacially slow confirmation of them. It read like an apologia for GOP obstructionism, an aggravating stance against the backdrop of the Merrick Garland kerfuffle. It also seemed off factually. My inner dialogue whispered, “This can’t be accurate.” Its thrust was seemingly to normalize the GOP’s politically larcenous program of fulfilling Lewis Powell’s 1971 clarion call to movement conservatives. The avenue to power according to Mr. Powell lay in wresting control of media, state legislatures, and especially the courts from Democrats. The editorial was displeasing. I did some research, gathered the facts, and concluded that it was misleading. A response was written and submitted.
This was a watershed in learning the letter-to-the-editor ropes and honing a process for putting the bits together. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is due some credit. It’s frequently not to my taste editorially but it is good that it exists and retains a presence in print when so many papers have folded. Its policy on letters is sensible. A liberal maximum length allows for a coherent rebuttal to an editorial. My drafts invariably fracture the limit and are then carved down to the canonical wordcount. The Richmond Times-Dispatch places a sixty-day moratorium on further submissions once a letter reaches print. That too is sensible. Otherwise, I would fire an epistle at the paper weekly because of the silliness of many syndicated columnists.
The letter’s final draft was passed by The Mistress of the House, who offered encouraging words: “They’re never going to print this.” She likely thought it was too polemical and combative. The only reason I’m mentioning this, darlin’, is you’ve been the one banging the drum for me to archive this stuff.
The letter appeared in the paper’s Sunday edition without warning. This was pleasing, because Sunday circulation was then around two-hundred thousand rather than the weekday eighty thousand. The idea was to have the greatest possible opportunity to give a person or two pause to think. I discovered that I was also the correspondent du jour. The paper highlights a single letter each day, which is likely to ensure that more people read it. I learned that comments by readers were permitted online and there was feedback. It was mostly polite and positive, some of it even useful. Negative comments were by and large precious and self-indicting.
The bit, sadly, holds up pretty well, especially in light of subsequent events – Mitch McConnell’s assembly-line filling of judicial vacancies, his encouraging of senior conservative judges to retire and be replaced by barely post-adolescent ideologues, and President Best People’s filling of three Supreme Court vacancies, two more than he should have had. The courts in effect were stacked during the Trump ascendancy.
“The Party of Yes,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 4 January 2017, A8 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/editorial—on-the-judiciary-the-gop-played-ball/article_126ee798-fc23-5e5e-a821-b6604d8db307.html).
“GOP Obstruction is Hurting the Courts,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 15 January 2017, E2 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-jan-15-2017-gop-obstruction-is-hurting-courts/article_cebf7255-2df4-5606-9a56-3bcf0d3f521f.html).