Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [124]
Someone needs to sit down with Hollywood and explain to it what “courage” is. It is not, for example, going on CNN and ridiculing Christians. It is not going on the Bill Maher show and being outspokenly pro-abortion. The first tip-off should be the standing ovation. Uh oh, I thought what I was saying was courageous, but the audience is applauding, so it must agree with me.
Liberal logic is exactly backwards. They think: How do I know Lebron James just made a great shot? Answer: Because the cheerleaders cheered him. They have no capacity to reason in the absence of thunderous applause or booing from the bleachers indicating what they should think.
It is so embedded in celebrities’ DNA to think whatever they do is courageous that they begin with the conclusion and reason backwards: Okay what that singer just said was courageous. Now how do we get there? Oh, I know! It upset people in the red states! Meanwhile, all traditional signs point to it being ass-kissy.
The mob’s craving for conformity is common to all primitive beings, Le Bon says. Look at how liberals dress alike,11 mimic their professors, use the same leaden platitudes, and laugh on cue at prominent conservatives’ names—and ask yourself if these are swashbuckling rebels.
People desperate for a badge of identity are highly susceptible to groupthink. Most people, Le Bon says, “especially among the masses, do not possess clear and reasoned ideas on any subject whatever outside their own specialty.”12 Thus, they need someone to serve as their guide. In a crowd, “the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness.”13 But the mere fact that a person is part of a crowd means “his intellectual standard is immediately and considerably lowered.”14
Jon Stewart transmits the party line to idiots, who sit in the audience of The Daily Show and maniacally applaud everything he says. They don’t get all the jokes, but they know who they’re supposed to hate. For some people, nothing is more important than to think of themselves as smart and hip, way better than other people. The very act of applauding a joke—instead of laughing at it—serves no function apart from associating oneself with the crowd. Laughter is involuntary, like a sneeze. By contrast, applauding a joke is a public gesture intended to announce, I’m with him!—rather like a “Heil Hitler” salute.
To truly witness the horrible spectacle of a man desperately in need of the crowd’s approval, we turn to financial reporter Jim Cramer.
Cramer got in trouble with the mob when he criticized the angel Obama on March 3, 2009, calling Obama’s agenda “radical” and saying “this is the most, greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a president.” The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart—remembering that his role as a comedian required him to do something important—began repeating the White House line on Cramer, denouncing him for faulty financial predictions he made on CNBC.
At that point, Cramer had to choose: Make a Damascus Road conversion like Dennis Miller, Bernie Goldberg, and Brit Hume or go the whimpering sycophantic route of Chris Matthews.
The day he was to appear on Stewart’s Daily Show, Cramer did a round of appearances on NBC programs to prepare for his monumental suck-up that night. On the Martha Stewart Show he droned on about his tremendous support for Obama, “I happen to support his agenda.… I’m a lifelong Democrat. There isn’t a part of his agenda I don’t support.”
He called Stewart his “idol” and said, “This is killing me. My kids only know I have a show because Jon Stewart is skewering me. ‘Dad’s got a show! Holy Cow!’ No he’s the best there is.” The boundless