Joey Bishop and The Liberal Mindset

I’ve always been a fan of the “Rat Pack”, and was saddened last week at the passing of Joey Bishop, the last surviving member. While Bishop was probably the least well known of the pack, he was still a very entertaining member.

One of my favorite Joey Bishop moments came in the 60’s film A Guide For The Married Man. Bishop plays a man who is caught red-handed cheating on his wife. She walks in to find him in bed with another woman and goes ballistic. As she is screaming and yelling, Bishop and the “other women” calmly get dressed and make the bed. She continues to yell at him and he replies “What bed? What women? “ The women leaves and Joey keeps repeating “What women? What bed” as he calmly mixes a drink and starts reading the paper, finally he asks his wife “What’s for dinner?” as she stands there perplexed, starting to doubt what she saw with her own two eyes.

I was reminded of that scene twice this past week, first upon hearing the news of Joey Bishops death, and secondly upon receiving my weekly e-mail from Media Matters. That’s right, I’m on their mailing list – what better way to find out what the other side is thinking.

So the entire e-mail was devoted on how great Hillary did at last weeks debate, and that the articles stating that her performance was a “train wreck” were part of the infamous “vast right-wing conspiracy”. Now I’ll admit that some on the right are making this out to be worse than it really was, but the truth is it wasn’t a great performance. Clinton herself is quoted as saying "I wasn't at my best the other night," Clinton told CNN's Candy Crowley. "We've had a bunch of debates and I wouldn't rank that up in my very top list.

My point is not to debate whether or not Clinton did poorly at the last debate. There are always going to be loyalists on her side that are going to heap praise on her. There were also people who probably told Dukakis how good he looked in that helmet. My real point is that this situation is not an anomoly, it’s a pattern on the liberal front. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, just keep repeating the party line, and that mantra will become truth.

Think about what we hear over and over from the left: The surge isn’t working (despite attacks being down 80%). Bush lied about WMD’S (all you need to do is scroll down to my post of a few days ago to see what the left was saying about WMD’s). We need to end the war now and bring the troops home because 70% of Americans are against the war (yet they are oddly silent on ending illegal immigration, something that polls show 80% of Americans want taken care of).

And then there’s the biggie, all of the illegal evils that the Bush Administration has undertaken in the last 6+ years. If this administration is as evil as they claim, where’s the call for impeachment. Oh, the call is there, but where is the action. Either they don’t have the proof, or they do have the proof and yet they have decided not to act on it. According to my good liberal friend Chris, impeachment hasn’t happened because of “the expanded scope of executive privilege and a Justice Department that is complicit has made that impossible”. In other words, they don’t have the proof, merely speculation.

And when all else fails, attack the messenger. In the last several days I have been branded a “dumbass”, a “dick” and “un-American”, and this is from a friend of mine on the left. I can only imagine what my enemies think of me. And my crime? Questioning the liberal mantra, and daring to try to start a debate.

So are the arguments of the left always wrong? Are the arguments of the right always correct? Of course not, but we can never know what the right course of action is when the other side refuses to intelligently debate, and when the proof that they base their logic on is nowhere to be found.

And I’m not talking about the extremist nut cases here, the nut cases on either side of the spectrum. I’m talking about the supposed intelligent community on both sides of the aisle. And the big difference here is that I am acknowledging that there are intelligent individuals on the left, and they think that anyone on the right is a “nut case”.

What women? What bed?