DEL.ICIO.USFlock of Libyan parrots leave mark on U.S. democracy
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A flock of trained Libyan parrots came to roost Wednesday night on the campus of Hofstra University, site of the third and final presidential debate.
Libyan parrots, you ask? At a debate? Yup.
The story of the Libyan parrots goes back to ancient times, to a man named Apsethus who wanted to convince the locals that he was a god. So, according to the early Christian writer Hippolytus, the wily and ambitious Apsethus of Libya captured hundreds of wild parrots, caged and fed them and taught them all to repeat the same message: “Apsethus is a god.”
When he released the birds into the wild, the parrots endlessly repeated their newly learned talking point (parrots being very good at staying on message). And for a while, it worked.
Today, modern political lingo gives us other words for those trained Libyan parrots, words such as “surrogate,” “contributor,” “consultant” and on occasion, sadly, “journalist.”
After events such as debates, parrots from both sides gather at the TV cameras and microphones to repeat their message. It doesn’t matter what actually took place; it doesn’t matter how dishonest or nonsensical the message may sound: Their guy still won; their guy ought to be a god, or at very least president. The better parrots even take a peculiar pride in their shamelessness. Going into last night’s debate, for example, this cycle’s reigning king of Libyan parrots has to be former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani. After the vice presidential debate, he told interviewers that Palin delivered one of the best debate performances he had ever seen.
“Only the liberal media could deny her this victory,” he squawked.
Libyan parrotry is a sad, tragic use of the freedom of speech that so many have fought to preserve, but it has come to epitomize our nation’s political discourse. The parrots you see on TV aren’t there despite their refusal to speak honestly and independently. Too often, that dishonesty and message discipline are job requirements.
In fact, our discourse has become so cheapened that the candidate themselves have become parrots. Through the Commission on Presidential Debates, both parties have insisted on formats that squeeze out spontaneity, human interaction and honest discussion. Their goal is to create an antiseptic process by which both candidates can safely regurgitate their talking points, and they’ve largely succeeded.
With actual insight or inspiration rendered impossible, all that’s left is the possibility of a candidate gaffe, a nonscripted moment that usually tells voters little or nothing about the victim who committed it. But since it’s the only thing the Libyan parrots can’t spin away, it becomes news.
In recent weeks, though, the story has taken a bit of a twist. On the Republican side, the official message has become so nonsensical that, to their credit, a growing number of professional parrots have decided they can no longer utter such things as “Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president” and “John McCain is a steady leader.”
Instead, people such as Kathleen Parker, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks have expressed honest reservations about the GOP ticket and the party’s direction.
“I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for,” conceded Buckley. “Eight years of ‘conservative’ government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.”
For such honesty, Buckley and others are being attacked as traitors. (The same is true of attacks from the left on Joe Lieberman, by the way). But those who make that claim have lost sight of what treason really is.
Stating your honest opinion about what is best for this country is not treason. Those who argue otherwise value loyalty to a political movement above loyalty to country, and that’s just the kind of distorted thinking that got us into this mess.
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