Snivelization – Lawrence O’Donnell Commemorative Edition

Mr. Charm strikes again

The Huffington Post continues to astound with the “celebrity” firepower brought to bear to make childish, imbecilic and, in this case, clueless and cruel statements:

John Edwards Is A Loser
Posted January 11, 2008 | 09:01 AM (EST)

John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.

If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.

Maybe Edwards is already not a factor in the campaign because Edwards voters would split evenly between Senators Obama and Clinton if Edwards dropped out. But we’ll never know unless Edwards does the right thing and gets out of the way of the only two candidates who have a chance to get the nomination.

The white male monopoly on the Democratic nomination has finally come to an end.* Someone has to tell John Edwards.

[* see yesterday's eerily prescient post, "The Sick Transit of Gloria."]

The author of this vicious little screed is none other than Lawrence O’Donnell, sometimes nicknamed “Larry O’Scary.” Wikipedia:

(born 1955) is a MSNBC (sic) political analyst who has appeared on The McLaughlin Group and The Al Franken Show.

Born in Boston, he was also an Emmy Award-winning producer and writer for the NBC series The West Wing and creator and executive producer of the late NBC series, Mister Sterling. He also appears as a recurring supporting character on the HBO series Big Love, portraying an attorney.

He is widely known as a outspoken television political commentator, and was the Democratic Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance from 1993 through 1995. In 1992, he was Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

O’Donnell made himself a key figure in the coverage of the Valerie Plame scandal by naming Karl Rove as the primary source for Matt Cooper’s story. He is well known for his strong dislike of California’s current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger….

The obvious response to his little bloggery would be, of course, SCREW you, O’Donnell! But he’d just scream back.

Alas: Another jackass from Hollywood who thinks that dealing in the obscene snake pits of the TeeVee business and on Kapitol Hill with “the Suits” qualifies him, intellectually, for anything beyond a wraparound headset at a Jack In The Box drive-in window. An elite jerk is, after all, still a jerk.

And the jerkocracy of this snivelization has been, increasingly, routing us down that famed avenue paved with good intentions.

O’Donnell’s been melting down spectacularly lately. His astonishingly ill-considered attack on Mormonism per se is chronicled at the faux media-watchdog site Newsbusters, but you can watch the original video and judge for yourself. I don’t like the Mittster, but I don’t attack his religion, nor, did I feel as O’Donnell did, would I be so imbecilically impolitic as to slur it on national television like THIS.

Sorry, Larry, but you REALLY suck.

(And, one might note that he’s been characterized as a sock puppet for Hillary Clinton by the Freepers — a characterization that I’m loathe to disabuse, mostly because I suspect that it’s entirely true. Consider that Edwards is probably seen as the OBSTACLE to Hillary crushing that upstart Obama. Thus, the suspicious timing in a venue that O’Donnell won’t be spanked for his smear: the HuffPo as opposed to MSNBC.)

A couple of days ago, I was willing to defend a candidate that I’m not supporting in a party for which I have nothing but contempt (Ron Paul, Republicans, [dis]respectively), so I guess I can’t let this crap slide. Had Arianna Huffington any class (she doesn’t) she’d ban his ass tout de suite.

But, as long as we’re on the topic, here’s another American political loser, similarly smeared by self-styled “superior” types like O’Donnell. After all, he:

• Lost his job
• Was defeated for state legislature
• Failed in business – went bankrupt
• His sweetheart died
• Had nervous breakdown (first of two)
• Was defeated for Speaker in legislature
• Was defeated for nomination for Congress
• Was rejected for position as land officer
• Was defeated for the U.S. Senate
• Elected to state legislature (but declined seat to run for U.S. Senate)
• Defeated for nomination for Vice President
• And was defeated AGAIN for the U.S. Senate

Some kind of loser, right?

Oh yeah, there was this, two years after the last, crushing blow:

• Elected President of the United States.

(Adapted from THIS site).
You know who it is, right?

OK, one more clue. This president was he, of whom Leo Tolstoy marveled, when the famed author was among semi-barbaric tribesmen of the Caucasus in 1908. After telling them stories for hours to assuage their requests — of Caesar, Napoleon and even George Washington — they demanded: But why have you not told us of the greatest hero of all?

Tolstoy was astonished when they told him:

Abraham Lincoln.

I’ve paraphrased from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s exceptional history, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which I’ve just finished reading. Here’s the direct quote from Ms. Goodwin:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.”

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock…His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.”

“I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.”

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.”

Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

So, there’s another “loser” for you, O’Donnell. Maybe you can blog about him, too. I have a feeling that you’re about to suddenly have a LOT of spare time for blogging.

When you’re assassinating the character of someone who’s a “loser,” Gentle Reader, just remember: what matters is perseverance.

Or, to put it another way:

What matters isn’t how many times you fall flat on your face.

What matters is how many times you get back up.

And until you stop getting back up, no man can call you, with justice, a ‘loser.’

And, Lawrence O’Donnell: like Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Edwards has that quality in abundance.

Actually, the only “loser” here is the arrogant poltroon whose hubris has drawn a firestorm of condemnation from both the left AND the right. Congrats, O’Donnell.

It’s richly deserved.

Courage.