Great Divide

Alan Grayson has come under attack for these comments a few days ago:

It's a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republican health care plan for America: Don't get sick. That's right, don't get sick. If you have insurance, don't get sick. If you don't have insurance, don't get sick. If you're sick, don't get sick.... If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly. That's right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.

Sullivan was disappointed, in both the comment and in Grayson's refusal to apologize, saying "It's impossible to watch the vast ignorance, hate and extremism in this country right now and not almost despair. At a time of extraordinary challenges, the center is not holding."

I think there is some truth in his post in general, and on Alan Grayson in particular. If there is an essential truth to Grayson, he's a bit of a grandstander. He likes to mock fools, often by exaggeration and outrageous commentary. In just his first couple of months in Congress, he built himself into a bit of a hero on the outraged left, after his mocking questioning of AIG chief Edward Liddy back in March; his clear, almost delightful, questioning of whistleblower Harry Markopolis about the Madoff fiasco and the SEC's utter incompetence in regulating the industry; and then there was this quote in the midst of Republican groveling at the feet of Rush Limbaugh: "I’m sorry Limbaugh called for harsh sentences for drug addicts while he was a drug addict. I’m also sorry that he’s bent on seeing America fail. And I’m sorry that Limbaugh is one sorry excuse for a human being."

Suffice it to say that Grayson clearly sees his role as using mockery to pull the "center" back to the left, instead of its general perch in the center of the right. Whether name calling is a legitimate way to do that, well, that's a sad commentary on public life today. Two wrongs don't make a right, and all that.

And I'm with Andrew and Eric Trager, referring to the positive fundraising and attention even off of stupid and offensive political commentary (case in point, Joe Wilson) all the way up to those sentences by Andrew that I quoted above. But it's there that I think some perspective is in order.

Let's be serious here. While Grayson's comment is mean spirited and a distortion, it is clearly intended as sarcasm, and nobody listening to it could mistake it for anything else. It's the comment of a preening smart ass, a freshman Congressman who spent longer campaigning for office than actually holding office and whose inexperience leads him to confusing the meaning of politic with politics, a man who hasn't learned how to properly deal with the frustration of an opposition party that doesn't act in good faith. Does it really fit into the same category as those who accuse the President of creeping Nazism or of concocting a government policy to euthanize the elderly, who have convinced a sizable portion of the country that the President is not just an illegitimate president but an illegitimate American, who encourage discussion of a military coup?

In many ways I admire Andrew Sullivan, but sometimes he gets it dead wrong, too, and unapologetically. Let's compare Grayson's comment to this: "The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column." That wasn't sarcasm, remember, but a clear, unambiguous charge that those Americans who disagreed with a march to war were, effectively, traitors. And while Sullivan walked back the meaning, it is my recollection that he, too, expressly refused to retract.

And so, in a way, I agree with his conclusion. "It's impossible to watch the vast ignorance, hate and extremism in this country right now and not almost despair. At a time of extraordinary challenges, the center is not holding."

Sometimes, those facing ridiculousness and extremism respond in kind, and sometimes in ways that don't reflect their best, or even better, instincts. And everyone is guilty at times. It's just that all of that is as true now as it was eight years ago.

And sometimes the center isn't what you think it is at the time, and sometimes what presents itself as the reasonable center just isn't right, either.