Glenn Greenwald
Thursday May 31, 2007 06:54 EST
Fred Thompson, "tough guy" and "folksy cultural conservative"
Newsweek's Howard Fineman -- last seen expressing admiration for the "reassuring" "male" qualities exuded by the GOP presidential field -- was on Hardball last night heaping praise on Fred Thompson. According to Fineman, Thompson not only is "tough on defense," but he himself is "a tough guy." Fineman also swooned: "He's got a strong record on cultural issues as a cultural conservative from the South."
What, in Fineman's mind, makes Thompson "tough on defense" and gives him credibility as "a tough guy"? Fineman obviously means that as a high compliment, but what -- in actuality -- has Thompson ever done that warrants such praise for his alleged "tough-guy-ness"?
Here is Thompson's biography -- his own official, endorsed version. He's been a government lawyer, an actor and a Senator. Though Thompson does not mention it, he also has been -- for two decades -- what a 1996 profile in The Washington Monthly described as "a high-paid Washington lobbyist for both foreign and domestic interests." This folksy, down-home, regular guy has spent his entire adult life as a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, except when he was an actor in Hollywood.
And -- like the vast, vast majority of Republican "tough guys" who play-act the role so arousingly for our media stars, from Rudy Giuliani to Newt Gingrich -- Thompson has no military service despite having been of prime fighting age during the Vietnam War (Thompson turned 20 in 1962, Gingrich in 1963, Guiliani in 1964). He was active in Republican politics as early as the mid-1960s, which means he almost certainly supported the war in which he did not fight.
So what exactly, in Fineman's eyes, makes Thompson such a "tough guy"? Fineman clone Mark Halperin, in a fawning piece in Time last week -- hailing Thompson's "magnetism" and praising him as "poised and compelling" and exuding "bold self-confidence" -- provides the answer:
Even before his Law & Order depiction of district attorney Arthur Branch, Thompson nearly always played variations on the same character -- a straight-talking, tough-minded, wise Southerner -- basically a version of what his supporters say is his true political self.
And he is often cast as a person in power -- a military official, the White House chief of staff, the head of the CIA, a Senator or even the President of the U.S. It could be called the Cary Grant approach to politics. As the legendary actor once explained his own style and success, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, and I finally became that person."The only thing that makes Thompson a "tough guy" is that he pretends to be one; he play-acts as one. There is nothing real about it. But in the same way that George Bush's ranch and fighter pilot costumes (along with his war advocacy) sent media stars swooning over his masculinity and "toughness," the Howard Finemans and Mark Halperins, along with the Bush followers in need of a new authoritarian Leader, are so intensely hungry for this faux masculine power that the illusion, the absurd play-acting, is infinitely more valuable to them than any reality, than any genuine attributes of "toughness."
Last week, in response to Michael Moore's request that Thompson debate him over health care, Thompson -- showing what a tough guy he really is -- filmed a forty-second You Tube video where he smoked a cigar and told Moore to check into a mental hospital. Chris Matthews had Mark Halperin on his show (who, it is always worth noting, was until recently the Political Director of ABC News and is now at Time) to giggle like sixth-grade boys high-fiving each other after the cool kid they are desperate to be near (played by Thompson) unleashed some adolescent prank on the nerdy kid in the corner:
MATTHEWS: Wait till you catch this. . . .
Mark Halperin, is Thomas' cigar-chomping chide a sign that he's serious about getting in this race?
HALPERIN: Chris, I've got to see your, "Ha ha!"
MATTHEWS: I have to tell you, Mark, it's for real. I can't fake it. But let me ask you this...
HALPERIN: I agree.
MATTHEWS: Is this the kind of winning performance that the avuncular Fred Thompson needs to win this thing?
HALPERIN: I echo your "Ha ha." Mega "ha ha" to you, Chris. Because that is exactly what this kind of campaign is going to have to be. He said he has said he's going to run in an unorthodox campaign.
That kind of video gets the net roots totally in a lather. They hate Michael Moore. They like the jab. They like the cigar. It's a total winner.
MATTHEWS: So there is a right-wing net roots as well as a left-wing net roots?
HALPERIN: Look, it shows that this guy has the flair for the dramatic. He understands what the net roots cares about. He was aggressive on immigration. I think right now that this guy is poised to come in and be a key player in this.
MATTHEWS: He's also brilliant, because the attack from a defensive position is one of the smartest moves in politics. There you go again. He posed as if he was defending himself against Michael Moore and took his head off.Chewing on a cigar in front of a camera and telling someone to go to a mental hospital is, to them, what makes someone a "tough guy" -- "aggressive" and "avuncular." And the discussion which Fineman and Matthews had about Giuliani last night, in exactly the same way, was so creepy that it bordered on pornographic:
FINEMAN: I mean, "commanding daddy" is not the phrase I would use because "daddy" implies some generosity of spirit.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
FINEMAN: What's appealing about Rudy Giuliani is not the generous side, what's appealing about him is the tough cop side.
MATTHEWS: Right. You just wait until daddy gets home.
FINEMAN: Yes, that part...
MATTHEWS: That Daddy.
FINEMAN: ... of the daddy. It's the tough cop side, so...
MATTHEWS: Yes. Yes.They are right in one sense. For the authoritarians comprising the Republican base and the faux-masculine-power-worshipping media pundits, what is "appealing" about Giluliani is that he conveys: "You just wait until daddy gets home." Craving a stern "daddy" as a political leader is the root of the authoritarian mind. Yet these are the warped images that not only dominate their psyches, but their political "analysis" as well.
The same is true for Fineman's mindless claim that Thompson is "tough on defense." What does that even mean? Marvel at this quote from Thompson, from CNN on March 1, 2003, when he was urging the invasion of Iraq:
Can we afford to appease Saddam, kick the can down the road? Thank goodness we have a president with the courage to protect our country. And when people ask what has Saddam done to us, I ask, what had the 9/11 hijackers done to us -- before 9/11?That is quite an incredible mentality, and it has applicability for all sorts of situations. One can easily extend it:
THOMPSON: I think we should invade and bomb Uruguay.
QUESTION: What has Uruguay done to us?
THOMPSON: When people ask what has Uruguay done to us, I ask, what had the 9/11 hijackers done to us -- before 9/11?That mindset can be described by many adjectives, but "tough" is not one of them. "Toughness" can be demonstrated by actually fighting in a war. "Toughness" is demonstrated when a political candidate tells people what they do not want to hear. "Toughness" is not demonstrated by sending other people to war. But people like Fineman (i.e., media purveyors of Beltway conventional wisdom) reflexively, and incoherently, equate blind militarism and warmongering with "toughness" even though it is anything but.
This is what Thompson said last month when interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News:
WALLACE: What would you do now in Iraq?
THOMPSON: I would do essentially what the president's doing.Outisde of the dwindling band of dead-ender neocons and other assorted Bush followers, the only people who mistake that sort of mindset -- " I would do essentially what the president's doing" -- with "toughness" are Beltway pundits who continue to promote the view that the more wars one urges, the more militarism one embraces, the "tougher" one is. Conversely, the more one wants to avert sending fellow citizens into war, the "weaker" or "softer" one is, or -- to use Fineman's post-debate formulation -- the less "masculine" one is.
And then there is Fineman's assurance that Thompson has "a strong record on cultural issues as a cultural conservative from the South." In what way, exactly, is Thompson a "cultural conservative"?
Unlike, say, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards -- all of whom are still married to their first spouse -- Thompson divorced his wife (and the mother of his two children) after 25 years of marriage and then proceeded to marry a woman 25 years younger than he. And according to The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove in 2002:
Fred Thompson and Jeri Kehn met six years ago on the Fourth of July in Nashville. Since then, the Republican senator and the GOP media operative have been romantic, rocky, stormy, passionate, hot and cold, but never lukewarm.
"Hollywood Fred" -- as the divorced Thompson was nicknamed because of his successful movie career -- has been linked to a variety of women, including country singer Lorrie Morgan, pundit-pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, Time magazine writer Margaret Carlson, Nathans restaurant owner Carol Joynt and Washington PR executive Sydney Ferguson.Grove continued:
Now we're pleased to report that Kehn -- whom we've occasionally imagined strapped to a fighting chair on a metaphoric fishing boat, gripping her metaphoric rod and reel -- landed the big one Saturday. The 35-year-old Kehn and the 59-year-old Thompson were married at the First Congregational Church of Christ in the bride's home town of Naperville, Ill. Yesterday the newlyweds were bound for a week- long honeymoon on the French Riviera.In the very same show where Thompson was hailed as a "cultural conservative," Matthews continued his insatiable obsession with the Clintons' marriage, and one of his guests referred to "the incredible fascination that the American public has . . . on the private lives of the Clintons." Matthews, as he does on a virtually nightly basis, dredged it all up -- Gennifer Flowers; Kathleen Willey; the Weekly Standard cover story this week that "calls the Clintons 'a riveting saga of lust and ambition'"; "the women who want us to know about the relationships with Bill," and -- as Matthews put it -- the "pair of new books [which] exquisitely expose Bill and Hillary Clinton as a couple of soap opera characters."
But Fred Thompson? Fineman: "He's got a strong record on cultural issues as a cultural conservative from the South." Matthews: "he fits the need for a Bible Belt candidate." And last week, Matthews provoked this exchange:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about your party and the cultural right. I noticed that there is no cultural conservative southern Baptist type running this time. The president isn't quite in that category, but people are very comfortable with this president, in terms of his beliefs, his Christian beliefs, his cultural values. Is there a candidate out there now that shares the president's cultural values.
KEN BLACKWELL, FMR OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE: It seems as if Fred Thompson, who has yet to declare, is starting to build a momentum among social conservatives. But I will tell you --
MATTHEWS: Well, he's from Tennessee. He's from the buckle of the bible belt. I believe he is Baptist. He fits. He is pro-life. He has been for many years. He fits all of the categories. There's nobody else like him.
Beltway pundits are so easily fooled, because they are so eager to be. Their brains and emotional reactions -- and thereafter their political statements -- are dominated by these shallow and inauthentic symbols of masculinity and piety which overwhelm reality. They search so desperately for these attributes that they find two-dimensional cartoon images which are just archetypes -- really caricatures -- deeply satisfying.
Thus, parading around in military costumes or excitedly talking about sending people to war is infinitely more important for showing "toughness" than actually doing anything that evinces toughness. Warning in a Southern drawl that God wants marriage to be between a man and a woman is infinitely more important for demonstrating one's "cultural conservatism" than the question of whether one's behavior is actually "culturally conservative."
There is nothing in Fred Thompson's life that he has actually done that makes him "a tough guy" in the sense Fineman means it, nor is there anything that makes him a "cultural conservative." If anything, what his life actually is -- his behavior in reality -- seems to negate those characterizations.
But the illusion of manliness cliches, tough guy poses, and empty gestures of "cultural conservatism" are what the Republican base seeks, and media simpletons like Fineman, Halperin and Matthews eat it all up just as hungrily. That's how thrice-divorced and draft-avoiding individuals like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh become media symbols of the Christian "values voters" and "tough guy," "tough-on-defense" stalwarts.
And it's how a life-long Beltway lobbyist and lawyer who avoided Vietnam, standing next to his twenty-five-year-younger second wife, is held up by our media stars as a Regular-Guy-Baptist symbol of piety and a no-nonsense, tough-guy, super-masculine warrior who will protect us all.