Oops, wrong Bundy. This isn't famous criminal crackpot "Cliven" Bundy, it's famous shoe salesman Al Bundy -- no relation, as far as I can tell. Never mind.
"The reason [Bundy] was embraced by so many on the right is that he was their kind of people, One of Us. . . .
"When conservatives looked at Bundy, they saw not just a white guy, but also a cowboy, and that particular brand of character who waves an American flag while fighting the American government (in his case by stealing public property). And they saw lots of guns, which also told them he was their kind of people. Everything about him told them he was their kind of guy."
-- Paul Waldman, in his "Plum Line" post yesterday,
"Cliven Bundy and the perils of identity politics"
"Cliven Bundy and the perils of identity politics"
by Ken
Last night I promised that I would keep thinking to see if I had anything to say about criminal crackpot Cliven Bundy, who at least for this week is serving as Sean Hannity's No. 1 Favorite Criminal Crackpot. Of course the story may have lost some of its, er, edge now that, as noted on today's Washington Post "Headlines" e-mails:
Still, some of the most important questions remain not only unanswered but unasked. Most important, of course, is the question no one dares to ask: What the hell kind of name is "Cliven"?
Finally there's the question of what "Cliven" did that was really so wrong. Fortunately the Borowitz Report is all over this one:
April 24, 2014
REPUBLICANS BLAST NEVADA RANCHER FOR FAILING TO USE COMMONLY ACCEPTED RACIAL CODE WORDS
Posted by ANDY BOROWITZ
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — Republican politicians blasted the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy on Thursday for making flagrantly racist remarks instead of employing the subtler racial code words the G.O.P. has been using for decades.
“We Republicans have worked long and hard to develop insidious racial code words like ‘entitlement society’ and ‘personal responsibility,’ ” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “There is no excuse for offensive racist comments like the ones Cliven Bundy made when there are so many subtler ways of making the exact same point.”
Fox News also blasted the rancher, saying in a statement, “Cliven Bundy’s outrageous racist remarks undermine decades of progress in our effort to come up with cleverer ways of saying the same thing.”
WELL, THERE IS ANOTHER QUESTION
THAT'S WORTH ASKING ABOUT "CLIVEN"
And in fact, as I pointed out last night, that worthy young sage Alexandra Petri asked it in a washingtonpost.com post of hers yesterday, "Cliven Bundy’s awful views should not be news":
You know that it is a slow week for news when the big story is that a man who thinks he should be allowed to let his cattle graze harmoniously for free on protected federal lands might have some racist opinions. What? Why do we care about his thoughts on race? Why, for that matter, were we listening to him in the first place?In an even moderately sane world, I would say thank you, Alexandra, that really says it all, next case. After all, this is a man who initially became a celebrity for knowing less than nothing about: state and federal law, the Constitution, and land use, and by breaking the law both by abusing protected land and stealing the grass his cattle grazed. I would not just hope but expect that the appropriate authorities would apply the appropriate remedies, and if the criminal wacko were to try to use violence to prevent the application of the law, then if there were no other way of resolving the situation, his stinking, worthless carcass should have been blown to kingdom come -- along with those of any conspirators in this criminal violence.
Say, do you remember the days when right-wingers at least pretended to be the bedrock upholders of law 'n' order? Now it seems that as long as your mind and heart are made up of pure right-wing scummery, you have a champion in Sean Hannity and the other reptilian scum of his ilk.
But if for no other reason than the reach and influence of because of that reptilian ilk, I'm afraid we can't calim to live in a society of even minimal sanity. And since this is a society where there are media hooligans who can be counted on to make a celebrity of a pile of psychotic filth like "Cliven," there doesn't seem to me any way he can be simply ignored.
As Amy Davidson notes in a newyorker.com post today, "Cliven Bundy's Slavery Delusion," in which -- God bless her -- she takes on the filthy task of actually answering the truly evil as well as psychotic filth "Cliven" has spewed in his racial rants (as reported, crucially, by NYT pro Adam Nagourney):
Bundy is not just a fringe character: he has had the support of Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor in Texas, and Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky. Too many conservatives have been charmed by the notion of a cowboy singing the anthem on horseback and threatening to turn guns on bureaucrats. They can’t just proclaim themselves stunned here.And no, as Amy notes parenthetically, the whackjob politicos can't just take it back -- not without owning up to their wrongdoing in jumping on the criminal-crackpot bandwagon.
SORRY, BUT NO, THE RIGHT-WING POLS 'N' NOISE
MACHINISTS CAN'T SIMPLY "NEVER MIND" IT
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has a great post up this afternoon, "Bundy saga reveals the risk of cozying up to extremists," in which he charts some of those GOP "never mind"s (links onsite)
[C]onservative figures who had celebrated [Bundy's] cause rushed to distance themselves from him."Bundy boosters are right to be appalled," Dana goes on, "but they should not be shocked."
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had condemned the federal government’s attempt to enforce court orders against Bundy: “Offensive.”
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who had declared Bundy’s followers “patriots”: “Appalling and racist.”
And Sean Hannity, who had led a Fox News campaign that made a hero of Bundy: “Beyond repugnant.”
The anti-government strain of thought that Bundy advanced has been intertwined with racist and anti-Semitic views over several decades. Not all people who resist the authority of the federal government are motivated by race, of course, and not all racists are anti-government. But there is a long symbiosis between the two.Dana does some useful surveying of some of the more notorious cases in point of that long symbiosis, stretching all too actively into the here and now. Toward the end of his piece he reminds us that "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Tuesday said the federal government was “using the jackboot of authoritarianism to come against the citizens.”
By Thursday, Cruz’s office was calling Bundy’s racism “completely unacceptable.”
And yet completely unsurprising.
ONE OBSERVATION THAT REALLY RESONATES WITH ME . . .
. . . was made yesterday by Paul Waldman in a "Plum Line' post, "Cliven Bundy and the perils of identity politics." It grew out of a question Paul posed, "Why on earth did any Republicans get behind [Bundy]?"
You could say it was reflexive anti-government sentiment; anybody who’s fighting the feds is OK with them. But that’s not really it. As a number of people pointed out [links onsite], if Cliven Bundy were black, he wouldn’t have become a right-wing hero, with all the loving coverage on Fox News and hundreds of gun-toting government-haters traveling hundreds of miles to brandish their weapons at his side. The reason he was embraced by so many on the right is that he was their kind of people, One of Us. And it shows the perils of identity politics.
Race is a part of that, but not all of it. When conservatives looked at Bundy, they saw not just a white guy, but also a cowboy, and that particular brand of character who waves an American flag while fighting the American government (in his case by stealing public property). And they saw lots of guns, which also told them he was their kind of people. Everything about him told them he was their kind of guy. And I’m sure if liberals had thought about it, they would have said, “I’ll bet this guy has some colorful ideas about race.” Conservatives would have protested that that’s a vicious and unfair stereotype. But in this case it turned out to be true, and how.
NOW, ALAS, WE HAVE TO TAKE A QUICK DIP
INTO (EGAD!) THE "MIND" OF SEAN HANNITY
And so, as washingtonpost.com media blogger Erik Wemple puts it in a post today: "No, Sean Hannity, you can't distance yourself from Cliven Bundy." Not, Erik says, if you don't make "the next logical move," which --
would have been to repudiate his own coverage of Bundy. But that was too far a walk for Hannity. Instead, he got into the hair-splitting business, attempting to keep alive the larger theme of his coverage, despite the unseemly comments about race from his ranching hero."The "hair-splitting" included this assertion from our Sean:
The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control.Sure enough, our Sean eventually evoked Waco, another situation of which our boy has less-than-zero understanding, which seems to be a prerequisite for all of his "news" coverage, very likely because the way he has mistrained his brain excludes any possibility of actual information-processing and thought.
Erik, however, isn't accepting a "Cliven-Bundy-a-la-carte option."
Either you embrace Cliven Bundy in toto or you reject him.Erik suggests that possibly our Sean "could be excused for embracing this guy, if only the signs of the rancher's unhingedness had been shrouded before this latest encounter." But this is "no sale" too. Our Sean, after all, is bragging about having been on this story for ages, long before anybody else had the courage to see this case of a Little Guy standing up to the out-of-control, overreaching federal government -- "a government gone wild today in America!"
Despite Hannity’s protestations, this is all about a man named Cliven Bundy. How many other Western ranching freeloaders are there who have stiffed the government for two decades with specious arguments and then rally with gun-toting protesters when the feds move in to round up his cattle?
Which means at some point he or one of his people should have done just the tiniest bit of research, made an absolutely minimal effort to discover the facts. But of course this is Fox Noise, where they puke on facts.
Still, Erik says,
All Hannity’s producers needed to do was check a certain document in the 1998 case United States of America v. Cliven Bundy. Here’s how it abridges Bundy’s stance in the case:But for Fox News in general and our Sean in particular, "local story" has no more meaning than "federal case." All our Sean has to work from is a psychotically delusional image of the universe imprinted in his nonfucntioning brain by some agent of evil, and the determination to dredge up, cut up, if necessary make up, and then eassemble any words and images he can scare up that fit his psychotic delusions.Bundy appears to argue in his Motion to Dismiss…that the Complaint…should be dismissed because this Court lacks jurisdiction since Article IV of the Constitution cannot be imposed upon him. Bundy claims that he is a citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States, and he also quotes religious texts.If you’re Fox News, that’s all the information you need to reach a simple conclusion: Perhaps this is a local story.
I'm going to guess that once upon a time when Little Sean was asked what he wanted to do if he grew up, he said, "Cowboy."
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