This morning on the Sunday talk show on Fox with Chris Wallace, Bill Kristol remarked that Don Imus was the epitomy of liberal culture and that Imus is a liberal and that his guests are mostly liberal.
That sort of remark is the sort of thing where I just scratch my head. I scratch my head because I find it difficult to decide if Mr. Kristol really is that ideologically blinded or if he's just deliberately taking an opportunity to denigrate an artificial (and terribly arbitrary) class (i.e. "liberals") of political opponents for partisan gain.
Let me tell you what I know about Imus: he's a radio show host and in the Howard Stern movie Private Parts he's depicted as being a jerk and an early rival of Stern.
That's it. That's all I know about Imus.
But in what bizarre world does his vulgar comments about those basketball players have anything to do with being liberal? Could someone even give me a definition of liberal that works for this situtation? "Liberal" as used by Mr. Kristol may as well mean "anything I don't like."
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2 comments:
I used to understand "liberal" to mean "permissive, bordering on amoral". I thought of it as a lack of real beliefs and as an easy, hedonistic, corrupt way to go through life. It also encompassed everything outside of what I thought I was supposed to believe.
I think I understand where Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol are speaking from.
Erik
ps: Welcome back!
I can see where you're coming from, but I can't see where Kristol is coming from. Wallace was hosting and I didn't notice him make a comment one way or the other.
Kristol and his movement compatriots have used the word "liberal" in such a pervasively amorphous manner that I find it impossible to attach any significant meaning to their use of the term; it's almost totally opportunistic ... For example, a common critique of the conservative movement is that "liberals" are the p.c. police. It makes little sense to say "liberals" are the p.c. police and that they enculture a culture that is permissive of derogatory comments directed towards young black females.
What's more, though, if you get into what liberal really means, at least philosophically, you are getting into territory where Kristol's comments is absolutely and utterly ridiculous.
Myself, I consider A.C. Grayling to be a paradigm of what a genuine liberal would look like ... and you can peruse any of his essays and see that grouping him in with Imus is laughable, at best.
On the other hand, there is a motif within the conservative movement that "liberals" are responsible for the decline of Western society. D'nesh D'Souza's latest book makes that case ... but on balance his critique of liberalism resembles Qutb's critique of Western society. (a radical Islamic fundamentalist and the intellectual inspiration for the likes of Bin Laden)
Thanks for the welcome back.
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