Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics by Glenn Greenwald Read Free Book Online
Authors: Glenn Greenwald
Well, manliness wins wars. Strength and guts plus brains and spirit wins wars….
I was there in America, as a child, when John Wayne was a hero, and a symbol of American manliness. He was strong, and silent. And I was there in America when they killed John Wayne by a thousand cuts. A lot of people killed him—not only feminists but peaceniks, leftists, intellectuals, others….
I missed John Wayne. But now I think…he’s back. I think he returned on Sept. 11. I think he ran up the stairs, threw the kid over his back like a sack of potatoes, came back down and shoveled rubble. I think he’s in Afghanistan now, saying, with his slow swagger and simmering silence, “Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy.”
I think he’s back in style. And none too soon.
Welcome back, Duke.
Truer words have never been spoken. The 9/11 attacks did indeed render once again dominant—especially among the war-crazed Right—the John Wayne version of “manlihood”: those who masquerade as tough guys and warriors, cheerleading for wars and sending others off to fight them; the type who swagger around saying things like “Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy” while doing nothing to back up those words, and who pose as wholesome defenders of American morality while living deeply decadent and depraved private lives.
John Wayne has long been considered the epitome of the American right-wing male. And he is—but not because of the wholesome, tough-guy virtues that he has long been thought to embody. The opposite is true. He is the perfect symbol of the political right-wing movement in the United States because—just as is true of that movement’s leaders today—his actual life was in every respect the precise opposite of what he claimed to be. And the larger his failings were, the more he lacked those virtues in his life, the greater was his need to present himself in public as the symbol of those virtues. As Noonan suggested, it is impossible to imagine a more perfect hypocrite and model for America’s right-wing movement than the sadly conflicted and profoundly deceitful John Wayne.
CHAPTER TWO
How Great American Hypocrites Feed Off One Another
R IGHT -W ING S MEARS AND THE E STABLISHMENT P RESS
S ince at least the 1980 election of the combat-avoiding, divorced, and playacting cowboy Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has relied on, and increasingly perfected, the same deceitful tactics John Wayne used to create his mirage of a wholesome tough guy. In all subsequent campaigns, personality and cultural images have far outweighed substantive policy positions in importance and emphasis. Republican campaigning since the Reagan era has been rooted far more in manipulation of candidate imagery than in debates over policy.
Throughout 2007, virtually the entire top tier of Republican leaders, both political and media figures, were little John Waynes—the very opposite of the virtues the conservative movement claims to embody. From Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine, including our brave neoconservative warmongers—to say nothing of the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney—it is nearly impossible to locate genuine acts of strength, bravery, regular-guy wholesomeness, or any of the warrior attributes and virtues of traditional masculinity they claim to revere.
But a gullible, hungry press digests and spews the Republicans’ cultivated Wayneseque themes religiously, and this illusion thus persists and dominates our political process. At the center of this tactic is the packaged depiction of the right-wing Male Leader as a strong, courageous, and tough warrior, exuding in equal measure the traditional American masculine virtues and Family Values wholesomeness, along with a regular-guy anti-elitism. Virtually every right-wing Male Leader playacts as an all-American mix of John Wayne
I was there in America, as a child, when John Wayne was a hero, and a symbol of American manliness. He was strong, and silent. And I was there in America when they killed John Wayne by a thousand cuts. A lot of people killed him—not only feminists but peaceniks, leftists, intellectuals, others….
I missed John Wayne. But now I think…he’s back. I think he returned on Sept. 11. I think he ran up the stairs, threw the kid over his back like a sack of potatoes, came back down and shoveled rubble. I think he’s in Afghanistan now, saying, with his slow swagger and simmering silence, “Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy.”
I think he’s back in style. And none too soon.
Welcome back, Duke.
Truer words have never been spoken. The 9/11 attacks did indeed render once again dominant—especially among the war-crazed Right—the John Wayne version of “manlihood”: those who masquerade as tough guys and warriors, cheerleading for wars and sending others off to fight them; the type who swagger around saying things like “Yer in a whole lotta trouble now, Osama-boy” while doing nothing to back up those words, and who pose as wholesome defenders of American morality while living deeply decadent and depraved private lives.
John Wayne has long been considered the epitome of the American right-wing male. And he is—but not because of the wholesome, tough-guy virtues that he has long been thought to embody. The opposite is true. He is the perfect symbol of the political right-wing movement in the United States because—just as is true of that movement’s leaders today—his actual life was in every respect the precise opposite of what he claimed to be. And the larger his failings were, the more he lacked those virtues in his life, the greater was his need to present himself in public as the symbol of those virtues. As Noonan suggested, it is impossible to imagine a more perfect hypocrite and model for America’s right-wing movement than the sadly conflicted and profoundly deceitful John Wayne.
CHAPTER TWO
How Great American Hypocrites Feed Off One Another
R IGHT -W ING S MEARS AND THE E STABLISHMENT P RESS
S ince at least the 1980 election of the combat-avoiding, divorced, and playacting cowboy Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has relied on, and increasingly perfected, the same deceitful tactics John Wayne used to create his mirage of a wholesome tough guy. In all subsequent campaigns, personality and cultural images have far outweighed substantive policy positions in importance and emphasis. Republican campaigning since the Reagan era has been rooted far more in manipulation of candidate imagery than in debates over policy.
Throughout 2007, virtually the entire top tier of Republican leaders, both political and media figures, were little John Waynes—the very opposite of the virtues the conservative movement claims to embody. From Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine, including our brave neoconservative warmongers—to say nothing of the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney—it is nearly impossible to locate genuine acts of strength, bravery, regular-guy wholesomeness, or any of the warrior attributes and virtues of traditional masculinity they claim to revere.
But a gullible, hungry press digests and spews the Republicans’ cultivated Wayneseque themes religiously, and this illusion thus persists and dominates our political process. At the center of this tactic is the packaged depiction of the right-wing Male Leader as a strong, courageous, and tough warrior, exuding in equal measure the traditional American masculine virtues and Family Values wholesomeness, along with a regular-guy anti-elitism. Virtually every right-wing Male Leader playacts as an all-American mix of John Wayne
Similar Books
Taken In The Night: Bred in Darkness Episode One
Victoria Knight
Moondust
J.L. Weil
Dangerously Yours: 2 (Loving Dangerously)
A.M. Griffin
Next Door Daddy
Debra Clopton
All Night Long
Jayne Ann Krentz
Her Husband's Harlot
Grace Callaway
The Cross of Mithras Vol. 1: EOD Operation Welcome to Hell
Douglas Howell
The Last Oracle
James Rollins
A Lady’s Secret
Jo Beverley
A Good Day To Die
Simon Kernick