Did you ever see "Annie Hall"? There's a classic scene in which Woody Allen starts lecturing some loudmouth in a movie-theater line about how little he knows about Marshall McLuhan. When the guy protests, Allen brings the actual McLuhan over. "You know nothing of my work," the scholar says.
At this point, one wonders whether Mitt Romney has seen the movie, because the McLuhan Moments keep popping up.
A couple of weeks ago, the Republican presidential candidate cited Jared Diamond as support for his views on international affairs. Diamond himself responded soon after, saying that Romney has no idea what he's talking about. He didn't literally say, "You know nothing of my work," but he came close.
This week, Romney also cited former President Bill Clinton's welfare law, which Romney falsely claims President Obama has "gutted." The same day, Clinton issued a statement explaining how very wrong Romney is about the basics of the policy. The Republican apparently knows nothing of Clinton's work, either.
And yesterday, Ezra Klein noted that four Romney campaign economists released a paper on the Republican's economic plan, which included supporting documents from independent economists. Oops.
And so I contacted some of the named economists to ask what they thought of the Romney campaign's interpretation of their research. In every case, they responded with a polite version of Marshall McLuhan's famous riposte. The Romney campaign, they said, knows little of their work. Or of their policy proposals.
Yes, Team Romney cited the work of several respected scholars, all of whom disagreed completely with how Romney's campaign had characterized their work. In one case, the truth was the polar opposite -- Team Romney, hoping to prove Obama's Recovery Act didn't work, cited the scholarship of University of Chicago economist Amir Sufi, who said the stimulus actually worked rather well.
Perhaps Romney should stick to citing dead people who can't speak up, or secret sources who'll tell him what he wants to hear. At this point, these McLuhan Moments are making him look pretty silly.
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i agree. i'm sick and tired of hearing the repubs arrogating dead democrats like jfk, harry, and even fdr, people they absolutely despised, but who history has proven right. but, conveniently, they're no longer able to defend themselves.
I don't know what they'd count for, Mr. Benen, but you get extra points for using that clip in an actual political context! Oh, the number of times I had to hold back the laughter listening to people prattle on about things they know nothing of... and that was even before Mitt Romney started campaigning.
Actually Ezra dramatically misinterpreted what he was told:
"So I asked Bordo whether he agreed that this recovery had been inexplicably sluggish, and whether a different set of policies could have dramatically shortened it.
“This recession is really quite different,” Bordo said. But he didn’t see government policy as the obvious cause. “We found that a lot of the difference between what would’ve been predicted by the normal behavior of recessions and what we observed now is explained by the collapse of residential investment. Put another way, if residential investment were what it was in a normal recovery, we would have recovered already.”
That is to say, what Bordo found was fairly consistent with the rest of the literature on this topic: Recessions associated with a housing bust tend to have very slow recoveries. That’s rather different than the Romney campaign’s interpretation of Bordo’s paper, which is that the features of this particular recession couldn’t explain the slow recovery, and thus you had to conclude that “America took a wrong turn in economic policy in the past three years.”
First of all this is the FIRST recession in history as a result of a housing bust so contrary to the implication, there isn't an actual comparative history. Ezra is writing about economic predictive models, not previous real world events.
Secondly what Bordo says is that the government policies have had no effect on the recovery, contrary to what Romney says . . . true . . . but also contrary to the admiinistration's pronouncements that they saved us from a far worse fate.
Bordo makes this contrast plain later on in the piece when he says:
"But Sufi and Bordo disagree on what should have been done. “If the problem is housing, then the market needs to clear, and when the market needs to clear, it needs minimal amount of government intervention,” says Bordo. But when I probed whether Bordo was implicitly criticizing the Obama administration’s housing policies, he essentially shrugged. “We didn’t have massive government intervention in it anyway,” he says."
Yes, we needed to speed up foreclosures not impede them, to enable the housing market to find a level below that of the insane bubble prices of the last 8-10 years, not attempt to recreate them.
Yes, we needed to speed up foreclosures not impede them, to enable the housing market to find a level below that of the insane bubble prices of the last 8-10 years, not attempt to recreate them.
Thank you ever so much, you drooling moron, for demonstrating so clearly how it is that you idiots failed reading comprehension long ago. I doubt any of the economists mentioned would be saying this, but kudos to you for another demonstration of how stupid stupid has to be to be stupid enough to be you. I'm sure Willard appreciates your ability to parrot his talking point and even remember it from so long ago.
Your post is far too learned and detailed to enable an immediate response.
TC's response was absolutely perfect and spot on, and is on the same level as your lengthy bull@!$%# post.
Good for you, TC!
I hope in the first debate, Obama comes to the podium with a "Book of Lies" - perhaps Steve Benen's "Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity" and after explaining what it is and why it is important ("Mitt lies to the American people all the time. Don't vote for him"), walks over and hands a copy to Mitt and to the moderator.
Or each time Mittwit says something in the debate that's another lie, Obama can point it out, provide the press with the accurate information, and then, at the end he can look at Mittwit and ask "are you ever going to stop lying, sir?" Leaving Mittwit like the fish out of water he is.
Political beliefs have a strong hysteresis component, so Romney has scored lasting political gains while the truth is still getting its shoes on.
"At this point, these McLuhan Moments are making him look pretty silly."
Correction, Rawmoney looks pretty silly all on his own! From flip-flops to outright lies to just making shyt up Rawmoney looks like the Manchurian Candidate that he is......
One can easily take McLuhan's last line of that movie clip and apply it to the Romney candidacy: "How you ever got the
teaching coursepresidential nomination is totally amazing."Their just talking to their base, if Romney's mask felloff and the Right Wing saw Satin standing there they still wouldn't see Satin standing there.
All they would see is that it isn't Barry, and thats all they want to see.
Brand new here, and very excited to be a "member" on the blog. Anything even remotely associated with Rachel Maddow, and I am THERE. She is amazing.
Steve, love love loved the article. Brilliant journalism. Very concise take-down of that idiot Romney.
it was Marshall McLuhan, NOT Andy Warhol,who said: "Art is anything you can get away with."
Substitute "Politics" for "Art" and you have nailed the Romney campaign!
I doubt that the Romney campaign is actually ignorant of the true import of what they distort. I think that it is simply that they don't care. I'm not entirely certain that right-wingers really see other people as actually being people at all.