Tag Archives: meme

April 1, 2014 · 9:13 am

Inside the meme factory: GOP discovers “imperial presidency”

By Christopher B. Daly

In today’s NYTimes, a story purports to have discovered a trend among Republican congressmen, who are depicted as suddenly deciding to accuse President Obama of creating an “imperial presidency.”

Hmmm. . .

Whenever Republicans start using the same phrase for the same purpose, it behooves political journalists to dig a little deeper and figure out where the new phrase/slogan/soundbite is coming from. Usually, it has been hatched deep in the bowels of the conservative “meme factory” — that set of interlocking think tanks, consultants, and media that serves the conservative movement by providing it with a constant supply of talking points, slogans, and rallying cries.

Today’s story, by Ashley Parker, traced the new “meme” as far upstream as a recent report from the office of Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the House, but that’s as far as she got. I suspect there are more tributaries to explore, even further upstream.

An excerpt:

Representative Eric Cantor, the majority leader, recently released an addendum to a 33-page report his office had already put out on the “imperial presidency.” And both Mr. Broun and Mr. Loudermilk used similar phrases when talking about the role they believe government should play.

“Our founding fathers truly believed that government should be a government of the people, by the people and for the people — not a government over the people,” Mr. Broun told a gathering of supporters recently.The day before, Mr. Loudermilk offered a nearly identical refrain: “This is a government that is of the people, not a government over the people,” he told supporters. “That’s the mentality that a lot of Washington has.”

The day before, Mr. Loudermilk offered a nearly identical refrain: “This is a government that is of the people, not a government over the people,” he told supporters. “That’s the mentality that a lot of Washington has.”

Imagine that — Loudermilk “offered a nearly identical refrain.” What a coincidence!

 

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June 14, 2012 · 10:12 am

Inside the Meme Factory

By Christopher B. Daly

That phrase, Inside the Meme Factory, is the working title of my next book. It refers to an idea that is well illustrated in a piece on page 1 of today’s Times by the estimable James B. Stewart (lawyer, book author, contributor to both the New Yorker and the Times — is there more than one of him?). In his article, Stewart seizes on a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and tries to walk it back to its origins. The phrase involved a rhetorical question raised from the bench by Scalia during arguments over the national health care law, asking whether the government could make Americans do other things that are good for them, such as eating broccoli. Here’s the nub:

It turns out that broccoli did not spring from the mind of Justice Scalia. The vegetable trail leads backward through conservative media and pundits. Before reaching the Supreme Court, vegetables were cited by a federal judge in Florida with a libertarian streak; in an Internet video financed by libertarian and ultraconservative backers; at a Congressional hearing by a Republican senator; and an op-ed column by David B. Rivkin Jr., a libertarian lawyer whose family emigrated from the former Soviet Union when he was 10.

 Stewart’s painstaking track-back shows that the idea of challenging the limits of the Commerce Clause originated with libertarian thinkers and was sustained in a series of hand-offs by other libertarians and conservatives, all working within the universe of conservative institutions (Cato, Reason, Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Reagan-appointed judges, a former Clarence Thomas law clerk, et al.) And, as so often happens, several of those institutions get crucial amounts of funding from the Kochs and the Scaifes.

The “broccoli” story exemplifies a much larger truth: most of the themes, slogans, argument-stoppers, images, and jokes that shape our politics and much of our public conversation don’t come from nowhere. Many of them are the fruits of deliberate efforts, especially among conservatives, and many of those efforts take place in a nearly hidden network of institutions. Those institutions include an array of think tanks, publishers, and conservative media outlets that generate and amplify conservative “memes.” In my book, I trace the deliberate campaign to fund and build this network of interlocking conservative institutions in the decades after World War II.

Stay tuned.

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November 28, 2011 · 11:57 am

Inside the “meme” factory

By Chris Daly 

Kudos to the New York Times for this piece which looks behind the curtain of the Occupy movement. Not to denigrate the movement, but this kind of process pertains to most political movements. The article focuses on the role of Kalle Lasn, the Canadian editor of Adbusters magazine.

I was especially struck by the use of the “meme” idea (or meme). It will be the major focus of my next book, which is coming soon. The working title is:

INSIDE THE MEME FACTORY: The Rise of Conservative Media

The main idea is that the rise of conservative media in America after WWII was not an accident in the specific sense that it arose in tandem with a set of institutions (think tanks, mainly) that supplied the ideas, slogans, and “studies” — in other words, memes — that the conservative media could use to advance the conservative cause. I plan to focus on the semi-hidden history of this movement, which was actually quite intentional.

To be continued. . .

 

 

 

 

 

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