"(oh-so-magnanimously)"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz, whom you know, has made the mistake of ¡really lettin’ itself go, just for once!

On the occasion, as I guess, of the first full moon of the Silly Season. [1]

Usually this NYTC _señorito_ is distinctly less so than its wombmate Don Davidito de B. y P. , but today I am willing to make an exception. Unwittin’ly -- surely -- Don Rossito has lapsed into the "self-referentiality" of the Eng. Lit. Dept., inasmuch as the topic it is bratty about happens to be the brattiness of its own Party neocomrades:

It’s not that Republicans needed to tug their forelock and go along with whatever grand bargain the White House whipped up. But to win the endgame, they needed something they were willing to concede, something they could tout in public as an example of meeting the Democrats partway. Their inability to make even symbolic concessions has turned a winning hand into a losing one. A majority of Americans want to close the deficit primarily with spending cuts — which is to say, they’re primed to side with conservatives in the debt-ceiling debate. But in trying to turn that “primarily” into a “completely,” the right has squandered this advantage. By 48 percent to 34 percent, a Quinnipiac poll found last week, Americans will blame Republicans if debt-ceiling gridlock precipitates an economic crisis. In the end, the threat of such a backlash will probably impel Republicans to make some kind of concession anyway, if they don’t admit that’s what they’re doing.

(( Read the whole neosilliness, please, sir. Swiping gets to be a bore quick. ))

I asume you will share my impression that what we have here is a doctrinal nine-year-old lecturin’ a seven-year-old ditto on the need to be very grown-up. An’ sly an’ Machiavellian.

To maximize your mocking pleasure, sir, imagine what the reaction to such neodrivel will be out at Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie. The Junior Birdpersons of Reaction are guaranteed to loathe it, havin’ been AstroTurf™bagged over the head into wantin’ it ALL -- an’ WANTIN’ IT ALL *N*O*W*. "¡Scrooge you an’ your ‘symbolic concessions’!" must inevitably be the unanimous soundbark from the Tee Putty.

The only thing ‘symbolized’ to kiddiecons by ‘concessions’ will be that we Lieberal an’ Demoncratic enemies of the Whight Civilisation of the Western Race™ have not been extirpated altogether. Bein’ a nine-year-old itself, Don Rossito can see through that one. But not clearly enough not to want what it realizes it cannot get:

... the public relations battle becomes crucial and the goal is to make the other side seem unreasonable, intransigent and even a little bit insane. Winning the later phase doesn’t require making enormous compromises, or giving up the ground you’ve gained. But it requires at least the appearance of conciliation, and a few examples of concessions that you’re willing to (oh-so-magnanimously) make to those unreasonable ideologues in the other party.

Our hero overestimates the seven-year-old ideomentality: most of the kiddies of Party an’ AEIdeology have not yet acquired a taste for nine-year-old puerilities in the "oh-so-magnanimous" line. Should Don Rossito ever make it to the ripe ol’ ideoäge of eleven, it will, as I conjecture, outgrow this fatuous fake magnanimity too. At that point it will be far more intellectually an’ ethically presentable, yet also a lot less fun. It -- perhaps one might even say ‘he’ at that point -- will then be not much more than your run-of-the-mill R.I.N.O., a Hoovervillain loyally servin’ the Hoovervillainous Class, willin’ enough to moderately take nine-tenths of a loaf rather than swipe no bread -- an’ not rub salt in by smirkin’ whight in our faces ’bout its own alleged greatness of soul.

That however will be then, if ever, and this is only now. For the moment, Age Nine is clearly much more engaged on its Age Seven front than against Age Eleven:

By backing into a compromise and shrouding it in procedural gimmickry, Republican legislators may hope to throw the Tea Party’s watchdogs off the scent. But both the politics and the substance of such a deal would probably be worse for conservatives than the kind of bargain that might have been available otherwise — if more Republicans had only recognized that sometimes a well-chosen concession can be the better part of valor.

Undoubtedly Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz could do with some -- with a LOT of -- practice in gimmickry shroudin’ before it attempts to diddle the entire holy Homeland™ from sea to whinin’ sea. Unfortunately it is in no good position to start by diddlin’ the Tee Putty, who have long been on to its little tricks. Havin’ figured the _novoseñorito_ out personally was not even necessary, however: the New York Times Company affiliation by itself would make Don Rossito a stench in the nostrils of Rio Limbaugh.

It follows, I think, that if Don Rossito were really serious about this drool, it would have found somebooby else to recommend it to the Tee Putty. Some booby not discredited in advance _chez Limbaugh_.

¿Perhaps that lesson does not occur until the sixth ideograde or higher?

And Machiavelli knows best.

Happy days.
--JHM

_
[1] If the race of vulgar Marxists had not gone extinct, I would ask one to explain why the Silly Season persists under Even-Later Capitalism. Given its Class advantages, a little neo- like Don Rossito can hardly lack for air conditionin’, that it should wax bratty *directly* from the air temperature outside the neodynastic _hacienda_.

The puzzle, really, is that nowadays even faithful peons an’ prole thugs an’ scabs can (mostly) keep cool enough in July and August. Indeed, my own researches with the Essex County Land Whale Watch and the Middlesex County Flightless Blimp Spotters strongly suggest that hardly anybooby except patent _indocumetadas y indocumentados_ spends more than twenty-three (22.954) seconds continuously without A.C. Darwinian selection would soon thin the herd, if the dash from comfy murder vehicle to equally comfy domicile (or emporium or whatever) were much longer than that.

Not being myself much of a Pscientific Psocialist, I can only note hesitantly that there may be a real parallel with Full Moon Syndrome, for now that the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced , Lady Cynthia cannot strike down many victims in the old-fashioned _literaliter_ way. Safely ensconced in their artificial neouteruses, Master Wally an’ Cindy from Wasilla -- an’ even Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz -- manage to be abstractly or vicariously afraid of the dark an’, similarly, neobratty from the heat, though both light an’ coolth, _Lux et Frigor_, prevail in their immediate vicinity.

As to *explaining* this phænomenon, assuming it really is one, far over the head of this coarse and illiterate keyboard is that grave task. We might ask Don Davidito de Brooks y Podhòretz whether its homebrew social-scientisin’ affords any clue.

Alternatively, if you can be satisfied with a merely literary ‘explanation’, I think it may suffice to mumble something vague about "memes in our cultural DNA" or the like. With a few well-chosen hand-wavings, that ought to do the trick well enough for Fedguv work. A little more specifically: ¿perhaps you remember that natural scientiser who suggested that sleeping seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four is just a habit we happen to have retained from several neological epochs back, when there was actually some physiological or Nat. Sel. point to it.

But Endymion knows best.

(( All of the above recommends the orthography "Psilly Season," which hints at phoniness as well as silliness. BEKB. ))