COLORADO SPRINGS- Some people look smaller in person than they do on TV. Many of us only know George Will from newsprint, but in person he’s an organ grinder’s monkey, amusingly agile, if a little threatening, but basically smallish and tethered to somebody asking for money.
Maybe it was my perspective from the steep audience seating in the South Theater of CC’s new Cornerstone Arts Center. Maybe it was looking down at George as he walked in circles between folksy baseball anecdotes, over-simplified economics and patronizing criticism of the American culture of entitlement.
I wanted to ask how a gentleman of his obvious acuity got any pleasure from addressing audiences like they were idiots. People who applauded him, by the way, and laughed at the slightest old joke. “Half of all students are of below average intelligence.” Hahahahaha. “I’m glad you got that one.” Hahahahaha.
I remember a professor I had in an advanced math class who used to berate us undergrads for the time he had to waste with us. Tonight’s audience was filled to overflow with Colorado Springs’ better-heeled hayseeds, but George Will seemed perfectly at home.
Will’s “reflections on the 2008 election” consisted of the usual horse race stats about which states have to be won by whom in order to satisfy the probabilities of precedent. “History is consistent after all,” he was attributing this adage to someone I think, “right up until the moment it isn’t.” Hahahaha. Numbers and groups of states, etc. The next president may again win the necessary electoral votes and loose the popular vote.
As a gesture to the college age portion of tonight’s audience, Will offered that all the statistical stars were lining up for a Democratic win in November, but to his contemporaries in the theater Will later confided that he didn’t consider Obama ready to lead. He also opined that Sarah Palin would provide a refreshing change to Washington DC.
Thankfully the Pulitzer Prize rewardee soon wrapped up his election year remarks and got back on the horse he undoubtedly had been commissioned to ride. Scold Americans for their entitlement mentality and convince them to privatize Social Security. There followed a Libertarian mocking of all social responsibility, and an incredible stretching of credulity seeing the absence of ready rebuttal.
Take for example, Big Pharma. George Will applauds Big Pharma and the obscene profits they reap. Those profits are only appropriate, he says, considering the tremendous costs the pharmaceuticals bear with R&D and the circumnavigation of regulations. Really George? Profit is the product of income minus expense. You want to count the expenses twice? One might compare profit against expense in the light of risk, but wouldn’t that be to beg the definition of “obscene” profits, considering none have reported obscene losses?
Will chastised the growth of the Agricultural Department citing the narrowing ratio of Ag employees to American Farmers, without referencing the precipitous rise of Big Agra and the eclipse of family farms.
Of course, entitlement programs were the chief evil, while no mention was made to corporate entitlements or bailouts or subsidized banking or the federal deficit, EXCEPT where Americans will obviously have to borrow from the next generations to finance Medicare and Social Security.
While George Will admonished Americans for wanting more from their government, he expressed not a single curiosity for how every other developed nation is able to care for their sick, their poor, and their elderly. In fact, Will compared West Germany to East Germany as an example of Capitalism’s proven superiority to Socialism, without observing that modern Germany’s social system is not the heartless one he advocates for here.
Will got lots of applause, and fielded no challenging questions. A last answer, defined for me, the nature of his limited mindset. Will was asked if a sales tax mightn’t be a more equitable substitute for the income tax. Never mind it being regressive, the suggestion certainly pleased the crowd. George Will explained that a sales tax would have to be in excess of 20% to provide the same monies. This would be unfeasible, Will pronounced. But he didn’t say it was because neither the poor, nor the working class, nor the middle class could afford a 20% rise in the cost of living. No, Will described how buying a $500,000 home would mean an additional $100,000 in tax. Unthinkable he said. And he accuses Obama of being elitist. Hahahahaha.
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