This Year’s Emmanuel Goldstein
February 27, 2011 4 Comments
It’s been pretty hilarious to observe the rise of “the Koch brothers” in the Left’s pantheon of black-hatted behind-the-scenes right-wingers, secretly pulling the strings and controlling everything.
Whatever happened to “Richard Mellon Scaife”? Was there even a power struggle between the Scaifes and the Koches? Or did he cede behind-the-scenes power peacefully?
The cute little Left. They always need someone to hate, don’t they?
I know. I love how, when prank callers called the governor of Wisconsin, posing as a Koch brother and making all sorts of downright evil suggestions, the governor was shocked and immediately realized his benefactors would never say such things. Oh, wait, that’s not how it went…
I realize that this ‘Koch’ thing is supposed to be an argument for something in the lefty mind. I’m just not sure what. As far as I can tell the broad outlines of the proof are:
1. That prank Koch phone call.
2. ?????
3. Therefore, Wisconsin should not be able to forbid collective bargaining by public-sector unions the way twentysomething other states do.
What is step 2 of the proof?
Also, I’m totally serious in my question: what happened to Richard Mellon Scaife? It’s as if the left completely forgot about their previous boogeyman.
I didn’t know who Scaife was. Maybe he was before my time (I was a 1984 baby)? Looking at Wikipedia, I would very very tentatively suggest that maybe he’s simply become irrelevant, being a newspaper mogul in a world where newspapers are a relic of the past– who the F*#$ gives a damn about the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? Roissy’s blog is more influential. That’s just speculation though.
And I totally agree with you that both parties are guilty of two-minutes hates. I find politics makes more sense when you assume every politician is forever trolling the others. U mad, public workers?
You’re right, Scaife has long drifted from memory of most. And yet, he was all the rage in the late ’90s! Go check out any lefty magazine/journal commentary of the time, viz. who was behind the impeachment of Clinton and all that. There were dark, sinister ‘profiles’ written of him. And, the people who wrote (the equivalent of) blog comments back then, they would have used ‘Scaife’ precisely where people like you are now using ‘Koch’.
So, my point is, those of us who have been paying attention to politics long enough, we recognize a pattern of demonizing this or that Shadowy Figure of the moment who is (supposedly) behind everything. This year, it happens to be the ‘Koch brothers’ who have caught the Left’s fancy. I’m just pointing out that this is nothing new, and probably doesn’t say anything in particular about the ‘Koch brothers’, whoever the hell they are (and I still don’t know). It says far more about the Left’s need for a villain.
But you could prove me wrong by coming up with some kind of actual argument for or against something, to which ‘the Koch brothers’ is a convincing punchline. I just can’t ever envision what that might be, anymore than I could when it was Scaife who was the villain.