The obituary page of The Massachusetts Spy
By Luke Reschuss
Obituary Editor
Although Henry Kissinger inexplicably remains alive (see infra), the Grim Reaper finally collected two of his most loathsome Republican contemporaries: insane bigots Pat Robertson and James Watt.
Pat's infamy proved more durable than Jim's, but the passing of both is well worth celebrating because their despicable deeds, and the undeserved respect they were accorded by journalists that should have known better, shine a brilliant light on the intimate relationship between evil Republican bigotry, plutocracy, and subversion then and now.
At a time when our new Wonderful Republican Allies are maintaining with a straight face and a handsome home-studio backdrop that everything was grand in their old party until it was unaccountably hijacked in 2016, let's take a look at the two Republican stiffs and how they helped create the Republican world that now cheers every indictment of their treasonous Tangerine-Faced Leader.
We'll start with Jim Watt, an egregious Western whack job in the mold of Dick Cheney, whom St. Ronald of Bitburg installed as Secretary of the Interior to undercut the halting progress that his predecessor, the then-reviled and now-beloved Jimmy Carter, made toward energy conservation. (In an early example of the kind of crowd-pleasing performative spite that is the sole animating force of all Republican acts today, St. Ronald removed the solar panels that Carter had installed on the roof of the White House.)
Lovable St. Ronny brought Jim in to strip mine if not sell our national parks and wilderness. According to The New York Times, he did his level best:
But it wasn't just his relentless pursuit of environmental degradation that marked him as a pioneering modern Republican. It was three other loathsome qualities that paved the way for today's indicted Republican front-runner:
1. Claiming his terrible selfish deeds were inspired by God Almighty. It wasn't just that ol' Jim hated the natural world; it was that as a devout Christian, he was expecting to be raptured up to Heaven at any time and so why not let Exxon drill next to Old Faithful while we're just hanging around:
 |
| James Watt had a bold vision for Yellowstone |
After taking office in 1981, Mr. Watt was asked at a hearing of the House Interior Committee if he favored preserving wilderness areas for future generations. ...
He replied, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”
Mr. Watt’s response startled some committee members, but seemed to explain his intention to ease restrictions on the use of millions of acres of public lands.
Jesus H. Christ.
2. Impugning the patriotism of his political opponents. Some people might think we should save our wilderness; others think that we should strip mine the Grand Canyon. People can disagree. Not according to Watt:
Mr. Watt attacked critics aggressively. “I never use the words Democrats and Republicans,” he said in a favorite line. “It’s liberals and Americans.” He became the Republican Party’s third most sought-after speaker, after President Reagan and George Bush, who was then vice president.
That's the punch line: the Republican yahoos ate this stuff up. Scoundrels from George W. Bush up to and including Ted Cruz noticed.
3. Crude insult comedy. Like every other aspect of his miserable Adderall-addicted life, the Tangerine-Faced Victim stole his insult comedy bit. Republicans have been working on their Jack E. Leonard routines for 40 years. Jim Watt thrilled the Republican faithful with his crude attacks on those who wanted to protect the environment from Watt's big money owners.
St. Ronnie didn't blink when Watt pioneered today's common Republican threat to shoot their political opponents: “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box,” he remarked flippantly, “perhaps the cartridge box should be used.” [Wait for laff]
But back in the pre-Trump 1980's it was still possible for Republicans to go too far:
He committed his last gaffe in a talk to a business group. Upset by a Senate vote barring him from leasing any more federal land for coal mining, he described a panel reviewing his coal-leasing policies as having “every kind of mixture — I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
Even though the line killed in the room, his boss, who knew how to pitch the dog whistle so only the white dogs could hear it, had had enough. Watt was out, but the Reagan Administration's war on the environment continued under the able leadership of one of St. Ronnie's favorite enforcers, Bill Clark.
By the way, even during the Reagan Administration, the threat of global warming was clear:
An atmospheric greenhouse effect caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels will make the Earth a hotter and more difficult place to live during the next century.... As concentrations of [greenhouse] gases increase in the atmosphere, global temperatures will rise, changing precipitation patterns and raising the sea level, probably causing droughts across the nation's agricultural heartland, as well as coastal flooding. The climate expected by the end of the 21st century resembles none that man has ever experienced, warming by an average of six degrees Fahrenheit or more.
Disruption of human habitat, agricultural patterns and ocean productivity could interrupt food supplies in some areas, change relationships among nations, generate large population shifts and lead to bitter global conflict. Entire ecosystems, such as the Arctic tundra, may be destroyed.
The Republican position, then as now, was to do nothing and drill, baby, drill. But it was more fun to focus on Watt's feud with the Beach Boys.
As odious as he was, Watt's influence pales in comparison to the bigot lunatic Holy Roller who made a fortune dispensing supposedly Christian bigotry on TV while transforming the Republican Party into a tool of his fellow white racists.
Despite his profuse schmearing of religiosity, Robertson was a child of privilege who after graduating from Yale Law School parlayed a Korean War draft deferment through the efforts of his politically powerful father (no doubt inspiring ol' Bone Spurs' draft-dodging years later) into many years of louche fun as a NYC lounge lizard.
Figuring out that the safest path to wealth and power was pretending to profess Christianity, he turned an obscure UHF TV station into a $1,900,000,000 media empire. Talk about the wages of sin!
As Greg Sargent and Ron Perlstein recapitulated in a memorial, um, tribute, the results were catastrophic:
[Sargent:] Robertson relentlessly demonized gay people. Between that and him making abortion central to GOP politics, his influence on the party is felt today in the end of abortion rights, in extreme anti-choice laws on the state level and in the right’s attacks on LGBTQ people.
[Perlstein;] Yes, yes, yes. Every time a riot breaks out at a school board meeting because the board wants to recognize that gay people exist, that’s Pat Robertson’s shadow. Every time a crusade against teaching the history of race in America leads to a school limiting access to Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, that’s Pat Robertson’s shadow.
If you want to talk about the overturning of Roe v. Wade and women who are dying because of it, look at his response to 9/11, when he and Jerry Falwell go on camera and say that God has given us what we deserve. The villains they cite are the ACLU, the “paganists,” the “gays and lesbians” and the “abortionists.”
 |
| Pat Robertson was the world's greatest Christian |
You should read the whole column for yourself, which make an irrefutable case for the historical fact that Republicans have mobilized bigotry and greed for decades to debase our country and destroy democracy, no matter how many ex-Republican flacks and shills try to tell you otherwise, Rick Wilson.
The hypocrisy was world-class. But that's not really the point. The point is that neither Watt nor Robertson could have done nearly as much harm had not the press, ever eager to burnish its pretense of “objectivity,” refused to tell the truth about these corrupt bigots.
Watt was eulogized by the Times after his departure thusly:
Mr. Watt's policies and his administrative procedures affecting the public lands and resources placed under his stewardship at the Interior Department, along with his aggressive style in carrying out those policies, also generated an erosive tide of ill will against him and the Administration he served, a tide that had been rising almost since the day he took office. But Mr. Watt had the support of many, especially in the West and on the Republican right, as an able administrator and successful advocate of developing public resources as an impetus to economic growth.
Watt's bigotry was treated not as a shocking indictment of the Reagan Administration's casual racism and plutocrat-lovin' white supremacy but as a harmless “gaffe” while his failure to save us from global warming while there was still time was a matter of “style.”But the media's failure to call out the nonstop eructations of religious hatred from Robertson and fellow bigot grifters like Jerry Falwell was far more profound. Here's a representative sample from The New York Times in 1980, which described a busy and influential gang of nice devout Republicans until you got a long way down:
Equal rights for sexual perverts? Whatever do they mean by that? And what's so evil about Gloria Steinem? Or indeed equal rights for women? Back in 1980, the Times's deep reporting didn't take that plunge.
By allowing hatemongers to pass themselves off as ordinary friendly Christians, the media first whitewashed and then legitimized the injection of this insane hatred and bigotry into the political bloodstream. Once there, like untreated syphilis, it infects, inflames, and sickens every part of the body politic.
And they're still at it! Here's a bog-standard sample from The New York Times in March, 2023:
Conservative evangelical politics have both expanded and moved sharply rightward, animated by a new slate of issues like opposition to race and history curriculums in schools and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and shaped by the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, which some pastors rallied against as a grave affront to religious freedom.
This language appears to be a long euphemism for the following facts about white supremacist Christian Republicans: 1) they are opposed to teaching the truth about America's shameful history of systemic racism because that truth undercuts their unearned grievance, 2) they seek to shame, shun, discriminate, and torment LGBTQ individuals purely on the basis of their own bigotry, and 3) a large number of them propagate lethal unscientific anti-vax anti-public health lies that prevent the country from protecting itself against a fatal disease that has thus far claimed 1,400,000 human lives.
That's the objective truth. If only the media could bring itself to report it, the skies over Manhattan might not be glowing orange with choking lethal smoke. That prospect would be limited to Watt's and Robertson's new home for eternity.
No comments:
Post a Comment