Mark Helprin wants you to shut up, talk radio. Especially you, Laura Ingraham.
Mark Helprin is a consummate wordsmith and a great novelist. (I recommend Memoir from Antproof Case.) He was also a speechwriter for Bob Dole, and in today's WSJ it looks like he's auditioning for the same job with McCain:
Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn't worth it, however, for the rest of us.That last bit is funny because he's gone to such effusive lengths to identify himself as an ink-stained wretch writing in a dying medium, so unlike the hair-trigger loudmouths of the airwaves.So, rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party ostensibly for its impurity but equally for the sake of their self-indulgent pique, each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man. And that would apply equally as well to the gorgeous Laura Ingraham and the relentlessly crocodilian Ann Coulter.
Guess what, Mark: Ann Coulter doesn't actually have a radio talk show. She writes books and columns just like you do.
Aside from that, what a jerk this guy is telling people to shut up and calm down. That tactic has worked smashingly so far, and that's one more smug little dollop of kerosene on the fire, my friend.
RELENTLESSLY PERNOCTALIAN UPDATE: It's like she's inside my brain. Didn't know that was coming out.
You know, talk radio is in the business of giving listeners what they want to hear. Rush, Glenn Beck and those guys don't tell people what to think; they have to connect in some way to what people were already thinking. They're not a perfect barometer but they do manage to sense political trends a lot better than the beltway smarties do--even if they're trends the beltway smarties don't particularly like to hear. For an example, see the last couple of paragraphs in my next post.