Please Make Him Stop
There’s a song by Alan Sherman from the 60s all about the forgotten David Susskind. He was one of the leading talking heads of his day, much to the irritation of people like Sherman. The lyrics of the song were always funny to me, even if I didn’t know much about Susskind:
Shut up little David Susskind! / Shut up; please don’t talk! / Please don’t talk little David Susskind! / Think first, then you’ll talk!
I wish I knew much more about his career, but I do know who currently occupies his place. It’s the unbearable James Carville who yanks my chain and fills the airspace with his spewing nonsense. If I were really honest, I’d say his condition is terminal. Thus, for someone with a case of verbal diarrhea that seems inexhaustible in its frequency and its volume.
If you follow his career, you know what I mean. In every election cycle, he tells you what to think. In every election cycle, he is unfailingly wrong. And then he tells you what to think next. Right now, he’s on an intolerable tear. While Republicans shred the American Republic, he wants Democrats to behave like Victorian school marms, guarding their lips from speaking a word of criticism. That is supposed to gain us the respect of the voters.
That was his message to a constellation of donors who endured the Great Man in recent meetings in San Francisco. I wish I knew what voters he meant. If it’s Republican voters, he must be delusional. When a party has descended into certifiable madness, it is unlikely to produce independent thinkers.
If it’s Democratic voters, he is fatally out of step. What we want is great big shows of resolve. No, you don’t get to destroy the civil service! You don’t get to deport legal residents of the country because you don’t like the things they say on college campuses! If the current firestorm engulfing Senator Schumer means anything, it’s that even the appearance of capitulation is infuriating.
Carville actually makes me worried for myself. Like him, I am an aging geezer (not!) with too many opinions about too many things. But I believe with my heart that I am on firmer ground and doing a better job of discerning the zeitgeist. The leader I’m ready to listen to at the moment is the one who calls me to crawl over broken glass, to raise my voice at the gates of the White House. It’s not the one who calls for tepid murmurings, decorous quiet, and bi-partisan cooperation. Our party needs to say no to the usual flounderings. If loud noises make people like James Carville uncomfortable, there’s a setting on their hearing aids that should be an adequate fix.