Conservatuives and their personal Hells

What is it about these conservatives and their personal Hells? Sen. Larry Craig has just exposed his form of Hell to the nation on Nationwide TV. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has similarly exposed his personal Hell and denial in his recent book "My Grandfather's Son : A Memoir."

Each obviously has a conflict between who they are inherently (Craig = 'Gay' and Thomas = 'Black.' I suspect that Thomas feels that being labeled 'Black' is being labeled 'inferior.') and who society wants them to be. Craig has entered deep denial, and Thomas has become a very angry person, but the cause for each is the conflict between who they are inherently and who or what society generally will permit them to be.

Each has also entered politics. Their form of politics in each case has consisted of a rejection of the loosening up of the very elements of society that they each previously found so much pain with. Craig rejects the way society has recently approved of openly Gay homosexuals and Thomas rejects the entire Civil Rights Movement. Both are practicing what Bill Buckley once stated to be his goal - to stand athwart the movement of history and yell "Stop!"

Each of those two live in their own personal form of Hell, and I guess they have learned to accept it as long as it is not disturbed or disrupted. Each represents the older ways of coping with social inequity.

So when society moves to accommodate their difference in a way that was not available to them as they were growing up, it must expose just how very painful it was to come to grips with their personal conflict with the earlier less liberal social prescriptions. They each achieved personal social acceptance before society moved to recognize the pain it was inflicting. Sen. Craig dealt with a total rejection of his homosexuality, and Justice Thomas dealt with the rejection of the Civil Rights Movement by the powerful and wealthy men he desperately wanted to be accepted by. Each made extensive, difficult and painful personal accommodations in order to be accepted socially. Each achieved their goal, which justified the cost they paid.

Now society is changing so that people who face the conflict between society and who they are personally no longer requires such massive cost in order to be socially accepted. Society gives the rewards they paid so much for at much lower personal cost now. Their personal success in coming to grips with the social inequity - clearly at great personal effort and cost - becomes something that is no longer recognized for the great achievement that it was. Their effort and the price they paid is robbed of value to them.

Assuming this is true, and the mechanism I describe if obviously speculation, it certainly would show why both men would want to be conservatives, standing athwart the movement of history and yelling "Stop!" That conservative reaction which each so clearly displays is also extremely self-centered, showing no empathy for others who are liberated from the need to fight the battles they previously fought. But the self-identity they each have built that allowed them to overcome the challenges they faced has its severe penalties built in, and can no longer be changed or abandoned without paying the price of total psychic collapse.

That psychic collapse would mean abandoning the very social acceptance and success that they have each fought all their life to achieve. The price of leaving their personal versions of Hell is abandoning everything they have won to date.

Neither is willing to pay that price, and both are angry. So both are conservatives who are using their personal power to try to return society to the world in which they succeeded at such great cost. They have each created their own personal Hell, and the want to force everyone else to enjoy it the way they do.

That's the conservative way.

This is what happened to our national Press Corps

Glenn Greenwald interview Helen Thomas to find out how she felt about the relationship between the Press and the President. Here is a very revealing part of an excellent interview:

GG: You have covered every President since John Kennedy. I wanted to ask if you could identify how the White House press corps has changed over time, if it has, and what differences are there in terms of how journalists cover presidents?

HT: Well, that's a big order. But I do think that in the good olden days, reporters were really straight reporters. I worked for a wire service, UPI, for 57 years, and I covered the White House for UPI from the 70s onto Bush, and then became a columnist. So I certainly know both sides.

As a wire service reporter, I played it straight, with the facts, which is absolutely required of a wire service reporter. But that doesn't mean I bowed out of the human race. I permitted myself to think, to care, to believe, but it didn't get in my copy.

I did think that tough questions were always very important. With Kennedy, we knew he enjoyed the banter with the press, and he had the first live televised news conferences. And it made a big difference in terms of really capturing the imagination of the public. It was the first time they really saw reporters in action, they saw a witty president that was able to dodge questions as deftly as anyone, and he had great eloquence. That was the first time the American people really became interested in presidential news conferences.

And then Johnson had a love-hate relationship with the press. He couldn't live without us, and yet at the same time, he thought we were hurting him every day. The words "credibility gap" were created in that era.

With Nixon, that is when news management and manipulation really began. Now, every president wants to put his best foot forward, and always be able to manage and manipulate news coverage.

All presidential candidates, especially, vow to run an open administration. But they step foot in the Oval Office and the Iron Curtain slams down. Suddenly, all information that I think belongs in the public domain becomes their private preserve.

The manipulation of the press has become greater and greater. This is the most secretive administration I have ever covered. And they're all secretive.

GG: Has the press corps that covers the White House played a role in why the White House is so manipulative and why they're able to get away with such secrecy?

HT: Very much so. Reporters, after Watergate, realized that we had let so much go by us. They got much tougher when President Ford took over. It wasn't animosity. It was anger that we hadn't asked the right questions. And the press became tougher.

But they really went soft after 9/11. Reporters, I'm assuming, did not want to be called unpatriotic and un-American when we were in a national crisis.

And I don't think the corporate heads exactly wanted anyone to rock the boat at that time.

But I kept asking questions about the validity of going to war against a country that had done nothing to us.

Intimidation works on the Press Corps, too. There are a few exceptions, though. Helen Thomas is one, and the McClatchy News Service is another.

Go look at the entire interview. It is very good.