Now we have this gem from Camille Paglia:
Why in the cosmos would the new administration, smoothly sailing out of Obama's classy inauguration, repeat the embarrassing blunders of Bill Clinton's first term? By foolishly promising a complete overhaul of healthcare within 100 days (and by putting his secretive, ill-prepared wife in charge of it), Clinton made himself look naive and incompetent and set healthcare reform back for more than 15 years.Clinton made no such promise. Paglia is lying her bony ass off.
The commission was established in January of 1993, yes, but Bill Clinton did not go forward with his health care initiative until the end of the year. And just when was Clinton supposed to focus on health care reform, if not in the space between his inauguration and the 1994 midterms?
Paglia seems to think that reforming health care was a bad idea -- but of course, she can afford health insurance.
The initiative was destroyed by an unholy coalition composed of three elements:
1. Republicans.
2. Congressional Dems in the pocket of the insurance industry.
3. Fucking arrogant progs, who shouted: "Socialized medicine or nothing!" Nothing is what they got.
Nevertheless, fuckshits like Paglia would have us think that Clinton was at fault here. In fact, he acted both nobly and wisely. Alas, not even his considerable political skills could defeat the propaganda machines run by the three factions listed above.
Now let's look at what Paglia has to say about Obama. As you know, I am no Obama fan. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to tolerate her presumption that our president has acted with an undue (and, in her view, all-too-Clintonian) haste. Behold the width and breadth of her argument:
A plague on all their houses! Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate.And that's it. She has nothing more to say about the stim package, because -- in truth -- she is a dimwit who cannot follow an argument about economics. Writing piffle about Nigella Lawson's tittage is pretty much the only level on which Camille can operate comfortably.
There's an emergency, fer chissakes. It's real. Really real. See the post below. I do not believe that Obama has done the right thing, but I remain convinced that he needed to do something.
10 comments:
Camille Paglia???
Does anyone read anything she writes anymore or pay any attention to that twit? I thought she had gone off into some little corner to mumble to herself. Bless her heart.
Nothing recommends the Clintons so much as the quality of their critics.
This woman has bothered me since I first read her. How and why does she receive any public notice, given her bizarre 'niche' as.... what?... a contrarian feminist lesbian something or other?
However, I hold little doubt that one thing she's written here is correct: in the fall campaign, Bill Clinton did most certainly promise his health care reform bill in his first 100 days (and didn't quite get there, of course).
And, while I've often defended Clinton & Clinton on their performance in the health care reform tragedy, they DO bear a measure of the blame (albeit together with bad faith actors in both parties).
Mainly political blame, by not figuring out the byzantine requirements of stroking Senate eminence gris like Pat Moynihan. But, on a policy level, by refusing to consider single payer from the beginning, they were stuck with the baroque structures borrowed from the German health care system, which were so complicated as to be easily parodied.
XI
I had to give the smackdown just yesterday to a prog who was still claiming that Bill moved to the right legislatively on some issues because he was really a Republican, instead of the actuality: that had to do so in order be able to get anything done with the newly-Republican Congress.
In his book Downsize This! Michael Moore lamented that the Dems lost Congress by only 20,000 votes, without noting that it was because progs such as himself joined with the Republicans and their allies in the MSM during the 1994 Congressional election cycle in spouting the message: "The two parties are just the same, so you might as well stay home, since it doesn't matter who you vote for." As low turnout tends to favor Republicans, well...we see what happened.
Further - in a remarkable feat of non-self-awareness - he was still spouting this phony meme in the very same book, misleading his readers by using unattributted cherry-picked quotes from various polticians and asking them to guess which is which. (Of course, the informed and perceptive reader will realize that most of them were from two minorities - conservative Dems. and liberal Reps. - and where such was not the case, that Dems and Reps do agree in a few sensible areas, such as maintaing a strong military.)
After doing a mea cupla of sorts by backing Kerry and bashing Nader in 2004, he returned to bashing the Clintons in 2008, buying right into crap such as "Hillary is a racist", "Wright was Bill's spritual mentor too", and even (I think) "Hillary wants Obama to be assassinated"...sheesh.
So much for "My forbidden love for Hillary."
Or maybe I'm being unfair to him, and it was only that he got a new shovel he needed to write off.
Sergei Rostov
XI, I recall no 100 days promise. Moynihan was an SOB, pure and simple.
As for single-payer -- I've made the point before.
OF COURSE I personally support single payer. But I've always known that it was impossible, politically.
In 1993-1994, the progs kept bleating that if Clinton had gone for single payer, he would have succeeded. Bullshit. There was a true single-payer initiative in liberal hip California on the ballot in 1994. It received, as I recall, a yea vote in the range of 20-something percent of the population.
Imagine how the REST of the country would have reacted.
The country was very right-wing in those days. That's just the way it was. The average American thought that CLINTON'S plan was socialized medicine. A surprising number of Americans thought that he was a commie. A large chunk of the populace was actually training with militias because they were looking to overthrow Clinton in a violent fascist revolution.
And yet shitheads like Paglia and Sirota wonder why he didn't govern as a progressive purist.
Molly Ivins said it first and best:
There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole."
Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole.
Joe, there actually was a "100-day" promise, according to Paul Starr, who was a WH Senior Health Advisor at the time.
[See Paragraph 7 http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hillarycare_mythology ]
However, you are correct about the popularity of single payer: only about "a hundred or so" of the 535 members of Congress (~18.7%) supported it at the time. although he was dead set against single-payer, Bill knew that health care reform couldn't pass without them, so he was trying to figure out how to get them on board, but they rejected his attempts.
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/healthca/hcfallow.htm ]
Sergei Rostov
Thanks for the link. The article says that Clinton wanted a plan formulated within 100 days, which is not what Camille Paglia said. She said that Clinton had, on the campaign trail, promised passage within that time.
The Atlantic article was great. Here's a bit worth repeating:
"But it wasn't only the right-wing noise machine that stirred up panic with outright fabrications. The New Republic carried an article that charged the Clinton bill would "prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better. The doctor can be paid only by the plan, not by you." In fact, one of the first provisions of the bill stated: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services."
Never forget the lies told by an alleged left-wing magazine. Never forget, too, that the average age of a TNR staffer was 26. A bunch of infants fucked up everything for the rest of us.
Joe - I stand corrected. CP did a deliberate mislead-and-distort-by-omission-of-information in order to bash Bill (which is a common tactic used by both progs and right-wingers).
Yes, there are many gems in that Atlantic article - in both articles, really - about how those on the left fought Bill (and in so doing gave the right even more ammunition).
This points out one difference between progressives and liberals: progressives refuse to accept the notion of gradual change on any issue - they want it all at once, which sometimes means all of us end up with nothing, or worse (read: Bush) - whereas liberals know that such occurs by steps.
Back during the 2000 campaign, I ran into a girl (a Kucinich supporter), who defied me to point out any positive change made in this country which took time to happen. I did so (in fact the answer is easy: all of them), but she wouldn't be convinced.
Sergei Rostov
Joe:
You are right! These idiots are not only Bagfuck Crazy, they are also Ratfuck,turd sniffing,voices hearing, ADD, simple minded, highly paid douche bags!
I am also not a fan of Obama. But I do believe he is in a situation where he was forced to do something...anything, to help this fucking sinking ship!
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