Thursday, September 2, 2004

Potemkin convention Day 3: Zell Miller puts on his clown act

The Republicans got to shuck all this moderate nonsense on Wednesday evening and get down to a bit of the red meat.  I still think it's great that the Republicans are designated the Reds these days.

Speaking of Reds, Zell Miller's "keynote" speech reminded me of an obituary tribute I once saw by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - the inspiration for Joe Hill's song "Rebel Girl" for those who dabble in labor history and/or folk music - written on the death of Joseph Stalin.  I'll have to see if I can dig that up somewhere.  Because I thought of it tonight as I heard Zell Miller sounding like a parody of a party apparatchik from one of the old East Bloc countries.

Zell Miller is a pathetic clown.  Not that his message was funny in the least.  But he fit well at this convention.  Christian Right Republicans pretending to be nicey-nice moderates.  (Well, before Wednesday evening, anyway.)  A rightwinger like Zell Miller pretending to be a Democrat.  The guy endorsed Bush the Magnificent, Liberator of Peoples - I wouldn't have been surprised if ole Zell had called him that - back in 2003.  Zell didn't even go through the pretence of waiting to see who his "own" party nominated for president before he endorsed Bush. 

I expected Zell to give one of the most militant and partisan speeches.  Republican Party partisan, let's not pretend to play along with the "Democratic" Zell Miller farce.  That is the "Fox Democrat" act, after all: put on someone who claims to be a Democrat to enthusiastically trash the Democrats and praise Bush on whatever the issue of the moment is.  And Zell the Republican didn't disappoint.

I'm not enough of a political-junkie/history-nerd to say with a lot of confidence.  But Zell's speech may be the most militaristic address ever given at a major party convention in the United States.  A big part of his speech was listing off weapons systems that Kerry supposedly voted against.  He sounded like an aged armchair warmonger reading off lists of weapons out of Jane's Defence Weekly to his drinking buddies and imagining that they were paying attention.

Pretty much every sentence was either a line about war and the military, or a lead-up to one.  Except for a couple of references to God and how He was helping America smite the heathen, or something to that effect.

What can you really say about Zell's speech?  Anhone who could take it seriously, even without the "I'm a Democrat but I support everything about Bush" clown act, wouldn't really be capable of processing dissonant information in any way that would normally be recognized as "listening" or "thinking."  I'll try to look at some of the content as though it were actually serious:

I have knocked on the door of this man's [Bush's] soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel ... (my emphasis)

Come to think of it, Bush did seem like he had a sturdy back in that clip of him sitting there on 9/11/01 listening to the kiddies read "My Pet Goat" after he had just been informed that the second plane had hit the World Trade Center.  Marcia Ellen has provided a link to an 11-minute video of Bush in that particular historic moment in her post on Day 1 of the convention.  (And how does she get those cool graphics to look like that?)

You know, I'm going to have to find that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn article.  I think Zell's speechwriter may have just cut and pasted directly from it.  "Stalin" means "steel man," or so I've always heard.  "A good heart and a spine of tempered steel."  Or maybe they stole it from one of Schwarzenegger's action movies.

And Zell told us:

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

Should I even bother to say this is totally bogus?  It's kind of insulting my readers to say things that painfully obvious, I know.  So I'm sorry.  I just felt like I had to try to take something of Zell's speech seriously.

Zell said that Kerry wanted to defend the country with spitballs?  Spitballs?  Yes, I heard it that way, I wrote it down in my notes, and I checked the transcript.  He said spitballs.

Zell mentioned that Harry Truman "pushed the Red Army out of Iran."  Now, I've read about the Berlin airlift and the Korean War.  But I don't believe I've ever heard of the Soviet-American War in Iran.  That was a new one on me.

Zell said that the Democrats have a "manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." Uh, Zell, that's called an "election."  You remember elections, now don't you, Zell?

And what's up with this business about how the Patriotically Correct should always call American troops "liberators" but never "occupiers"?  Say what?  Okay, okay, I'll stop trying to find anything in Zell's speech more substantial than a standard rant from Chuckie.

Did he really say "a spine of tempered steel"?  It's going to be very strange if Andy Jackson himself comes stalking out of his grave.  But if the Reps keep talking this way, it could happen.  "A spine of tempered steel"?  You would think even a guy like Zell with no other evidence of remaining personal pride would be embarassed to say something like that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been fascinated lately with reading about how much Zell has changed in the last few years.  It's hard to believe that he's the same person who gave the keynote speech for the Dems in 1992, and who was supported by President Carter to take over Paul Coverdale's Senate seat.  My repug sister-in-law sent me an article by him recently that was related to his book.  She called him a "die hard Dem".  I told her that Zell Miller had no more credibility with me or most of the other Democrats I know.

Anonymous said...

Zell a die-hard Dem?  In the fantasy world we call "Fox News", maybe!

Yeah, Zell's changes the last few years make you wonder what's going on.  I think he was always a fairly conservative Dem, but took some high-profile moderate/liberal positions, for instance on gay rights and the Confederate flag.

You always have to wonder about dramatic political conversion experiences like this, though, especially for an older person who's held multiple political offices.  He's not a novice politico, so there must be some part cynicism at work.

For the "believers," there's always something especially appealing about the "sinner" who was long immersed in the Other Side coming over to the truth and light.  But it's hard to believe that Zell's act is especially persuasive to people who normally vote Democratic but may strongly agree with Bush on one or two issues.

The *San Francisco Chronicle's* lead story today noted, "Analysts said Miller's harsh rhetoric, spoken in a Georgia drawl, would have its strongest appeal with conservative Democrats and rural Southern voters."  It's good news for the Democrats if Bush's campaign feels they have to shore up his base among conservative and rural Southerners.

But I agree with your observation, Cherie.  There's not many Democrats, "conservative" or otherwise, who would identify themselves with Zell Miller's harsh, militaristic rant Wednesday evening. - Bruce