Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 13, 2012

BINGO!

Orion

GT hated the self-esteem movement and will never pass up a chance to take a shot at it.

very different from my generation to say the least

But the trophy shops sure had a boom going…

One of those odd issues where Bill Bennett and George Carlin were on the same page. The latter’s exposition on the topic is worth watching..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALf2HZsGtGQ

As a (university) teacher of young adults, I can attest that 9/11 wiped out all memory of “the self-esteem movement,” of which the ultimate, political reflection was the rise and fall of Bill Clinton. Jeff’s pornographic narcissism is just self-esteem on life support.

isn’t it ironic that our Jeff inspires the pithiest of comments!

(Just made myself miss pi.)

Not only did Clinton have higher approval ratings than Reagan when he left office, polls also showed that if he’d been able to run for a third term, he’d have handily defeated either Bore or Gush—I mean, Bush or Gore. A big part of the reason Gore lost the Y2K election is that he took the advice of the “Democratic Leadership Council” (also known as the RNC sleeper cell) and spent his campaign trying to distance himself from Clinton’s record.

I miss Bill.He got it right.

some things bear repeating “When did Clinton fall? I remember Gingrich falling. I remember Livingston falling. I remember Clinton completing his second term and leaving with higher approval ratings than Reagan had when he left the White House.”

WARNING: If Mitt Glomney gets in, wait-&-see: he’ll suck up to conservatives by giving a Pres. Medal of Freedom to f’n Rush Limbaugh.

A new Facebooked group for Garry Trudeau fans:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/Mettle.Of.Freedom/members/

“Medal Campaign for Garry Trudeau” -POLITICO-Patrick Gavin:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74390.html

Now as Then, Good To Go!~Four decades long & winding,that millions should follow his journey “on the road less-traveled”—The Medal Of Freedom For Garry Trudeau…

To one of democracy’s closest friends, whose protean originality, courageous breadth of thought, generosity of spirit, great sense of justice and uniquely brilliant wit, have so well served American Culture for decades now. High Time this loftiest national civilian THANK YOU to Garry Trudeau.

Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the Clintons, but I admire their enemies’ list. Anyone who is hated by Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh can’t be all bad. As the Albanians say, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, but he’s the next best thing.

Regan had been out of office for 11 years before we had the surplus. Crediting him for it is a stretch.

I did not mean to start a political debate. I just felt that Palin Drome was factually wrong in saying that Clinton fell. There was an attemt to take him down but it failed. “If you strike at the King, you must kill him. Or he will kill you.”Gingrich found that out when he resigned the Speakership.

Jeff is a product of the self-esteem movement.

It was Bill Clinton that convinced me that Democrats were just as corrupt as Republicans.

I appear to have stirred old wounds by linking the “self-esteem movement” of the 80s with Bill Clinton’s presidency. Some of the comments seem to think self-esteem leads to sexual license (Hillary could tell them they’ve got it backwards). And the politician whose self-regard is twinned with Clinton’s is Newt Gingrich.

For true self-esteem, Reagan is the opposite of both men. Compared with the self-deluding, moral dishonesty displayed by Clinton/Ginrich, Reagan—-and even the two Bushes—-are models of integrity.

Consider Iceland.

@tigre“Clinton . . . A MAN among men” who like to take their pants off in front of infantile, submissive women.

I could care less about Bill’s sexual exploits, inside the Oval Office or out. What disillusioned me—-after I’d voted for him twice—-was his contempt for Americans who expected intellectual honesty from a president. For all his charm and ability, he was a hypocrite who lied to himself.

His hypocrisy was on display after the perjury indictment. Instead of apologizing to the people for having lied, he made his confession in church to his fellow-Baptists (and Billy Graham forgave him), knowing that they share his belief that their sins have been forgiven.

Like that other Baptist, Carter, Bill Clinton divides all of us sinful humans into sheep and goats. The sheep are those who confess their sins and are immediately forgiven by Jesus. The goats are the rest of us who don’t realize we’re sinners and instead talk about things like honesty and justice.

@leftwing

Somebody who lies about himself to himself—-and to his family and the public—-is showing hypocrisy, not self-esteem. Bush (and Cheney) appear in retrospect stupid, but they did not knowingly deny the truth as Clinton did. For all their mistakes, they never stooped to his contemptible hypocrisy.

The “self-esteem movement” seriously damaged my sense of accomplishment. I can never tell if people actually mean it if they compliment me, because all through my childhood I saw people get lavished with praise for achievements that were mediocre at best. So I’ve never been clear whether people compliment me because I’m genuinely talented, or because they are trying to build up my self esteem. I had a teacher who would tell us “you are all extraordinary.” For a long time I thought he didn’t know the definition of the word.

Trudeau’s engaging in a bit of retconning here. It may seem hard to believe now, but when Jeff was a little kid, he was offiicially recognized as “gifted.” And no, this wasn’t yet commenting on the inflated self-esteem thing, which I don’t think had yet to fully materialize as a meme (though I could be wrong about that——Jeff and I are exactly the same age, so my four-year-old self could hardly be aware of cultural trends in 1987). IIRC Trudeau used to use Jeff as a device for commenting on contemporary parenting issues such as the “new breed of involved fathers” and the pressures of academic readiness. His being gifted at an early age was part of that.But once Jeff hit his teens, Trudeau morphed him into a slug, and a slug he’s been ever since. It’s difficult to reconcile his modern persona with the bright little kid he once was.