Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [29]
This new paranoid style has been a resounding success. The last time political paranoia reached so deeply into American mass consciousness was at the height of McCarthy’s Red Scare. The John Birch Society, which Hofstadter focused on, never really escaped the fringe. It had from 60,000 to 100,000 members at its peak.11 Other right-wing publications of the day had a combined circulation of about a million.12 By contrast, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck have nightly audiences in the millions, and their books are always number one nonfiction best sellers. Beck has estimated his combined media footprint from television, radio, Web, and publishing to be 30 million per month.13 Though he’s prone to exaggeration, there is no question that he is a media powerhouse who would incite the envy of the old JBS leaders whose ideas he inherited.
But what we have yet to understand is the appeal of the paranoid style that has made it so popular. Hofstadter told us what it was, but he didn’t explain why it was. To reach that understanding, we’ll first need to plunge back into history for a richer appreciation of the phenomenon of projection in right-wing politics.
4
ATTACK OF THE GAY FASCISTS
The Religious Right Battles Homosexual Plots to Abolish Marriage,
Corrupt Children, and Discriminate against Straight People
I just think people should be very free with sex—they should draw the line at goats.
—Elton John
Q: What do ducks, goats, donkeys, turtles, dogs, and dolphins have in common?
A: They’ll be legally allowed to marry people unless same-sex marriage is stopped.
SO SAID JAMES DOBSON, founder of the religious right juggernaut, Focus on the Family: “It is certain that some self-possessed judge somewhere will soon rule that three men, or three women, can marry. Or five men and two women . . . Or marriage between daddies and little girls? Or marriage between a man and his donkey?”1
So said Bill O’Reilly: “Laws that you think are in stone—they’re gonna evaporate, man. You’ll be able to marry a goat—you mark my words!”2 And later, “You can marry 18 people, you can marry a duck.”3
So said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), more or less: “Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman . . . It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”ae4
So said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”af5
O’Reilly and friends have concluded that people may soon be able to legally wed donkeys and dolphins because they fail to distinguish between some change and any change. If you allow men to marry men and women to marry women, they reason, then you must drop all restrictions—you must allow anyone to marry anything. The question, given this line of reasoning, is why did they stop at goats and box turtles? Among my childhood friends, if one of us were to say something like, “I love this cinnamon roll,” another would inevitably and hilariously rejoin, “Well, why don’t you marry it then?” And indeed, if same-sex marriage becomes legal, why not? If a child of eight wants to walk down the aisle with his frosted pastry, who is to say no? The Supreme Court upheld corporations’ First Amendment rights. Why should they not have the right to marry as well? (It would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “married to the company.”) Soon enough, people will be able to marry Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Empire State Building, the theory of evolution, and the word lugubrious. Mark my words, you’ll one day be able to marry your own left butt cheek.
All hail the mighty logic of the slippery-slope argument. There is nothing that