Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky!

The inspiration for today's post comes straight from the House of Substance. Monsieur McGravitas is riffing on a sad post by "Townhall" doofus John Hawkins:

10 Musicians Who Should Be Blacklisted By Conservatives

Predictably, the list itself largely consists of people who haven't recorded anything of note in the last decade- as Mr McGravitas puts it: We here omit the various crimes of the artists named - saying things - in order to simply list them and let you, the reader, decide how the state of popular music would be rocked if conservatives gave up on:

Psy
Sheryl Crow
The Dixie Chicks
Bruce Springsteen
Moby
Madonna
Bette Midler
Barbra Streisand
Tom-Morello-from-Rage-Against-The-Machine-after-Paul-Ryan-said-he-was-a-fan-of-their-band
Kanye West



Yeah, it's just sad and out-of-touch, like all conservative attacks on last decade's pop culture. For me, though, the most interesting feature of the original piece is the invocation of combination bĂȘte noire and inspiration Saul Alinsky: "Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." -- Saul Alinsky

I'd never heard of Saul Alinsky before the right-wingers elevated him to the status of combination Public Enemy Number One and Sensei. Most of the liberals I know are inspired by FDR, Woody Guthrie, and RFK, and are unfamiliar with Alinsky. To my Northeastern Establishment ears, "Saul Alinsky" is merely a poorly-attempted dogwhistle signifying "Jewy Jew Jew", a successor to "Upper West Side NPR Liberal" which is easier to gloss over ("we're not anti-Semitic, we just hate this one guy"). Googling "Saul Alinsky", the majority of the results lead to right-wing websites. In the first page of results, we even have a post by dopey John Hawkins (not gonna link, check it out for yourselves): 12 Ways To Use Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals Against Liberals. In the post, Hawkins writes:

Saul Alinsky was a brilliant man. Evil, but brilliant. Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, everyone on the Left from the President on down is playing by his rules in the political arena.

EVERYONE on the left is playing by the rules of this evil man... therefore conservatives have to emulate this evil man. Got it? Hated enemy and inspirational tactician, Saul Alinsky serves as a combination Emmanuel Goldstein and Sun Tzu.

It's no wonder that conservatives are so unhinged- the cognitive dissonance necessary to simultaneously demonize and lionize a figure of no great significance would be enough to disorder the most brilliant mind, and righties like Hawkins are far from brilliance.

8 comments:

  1. Barbara Streisand should still hold mustard for the far right since she's opposed to the Hawking-approved boycott, right? Perle-Wolfowitz-Feith are also opposed. So is Barbara Boxer, Feinstein. So many "liberal" dual loyalists who are pretty close to conservative dual loyalists....on Israel.

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  2. I'd never heard of Saul Alinsky before the right-wingers elevated him to the status of combination Public Enemy Number One and Sensei.

    Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks Paul Alinsky has.

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  3. You are guilty of wrongthink, and must be dealt with, B^4.
    ~

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  4. I was rather ass-tounded to see this at one of my (many) alma maters.

    One must suspect that none of the liberal-types involved had heard of Saul before the droolers opened his grave & let him out.

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  5. Don't forget John Prine tweaking the nose of George the Stupider, calling him that "hotshot from Texas who started his own war with Iraq".

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  6. Yes, to the Alinsky thing. Not sure where the "EEEeeevilllll!" comes in with Mr. Alinksy, since mainly what he's known for is tactical advice, not political advice. So a manual instructing one on tactics of fundraising, or tactics on persuasive public speaking, or on writing legislation is Eeeevillll if the author used those tactics in service of the "wrong" political end? But then Hawkins says it's OK, even brilliant to use the tactics for the "right" end?

    And I am flabbergasted by the list of musicians. Streisand and Psy?They represent the "state of popular music"?

    First - Hawkins can't seem to distinguish the difference between someone who contributed to a politician's election by holding a ka-jillion dollar fundraiser, and someone who simply said something bad one time on the TeeVee about one politician that happened to be on Hawkin's team.

    And second - yes, Mr. Hawkins, pray tell, how would the state of popular music be "rocked" if 25% of the population failed to purchase the music of a singer who hasn't performed in public or released an album for decades?

    (BTW, what's Psy's supposed sin, anyway? Did I miss that?)

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  7. Imma just leave this here.

    http://thisdayinscifi.blogspot.com/2013/05/never-to-be-forgotten-jack-vance-1916.html

    I figure the Bastard will be inconsolable. Hopefully mikey has some idea who THIS guy is.

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  8. what I did NOT know was that his novel was the basis for Jennifer's favorite movie, Bad Ronald.

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