THE THINGS WE HADN’T HEARD! We were stunned when we read the reports about the mess in Atlanta: 

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2011

Kicking down, very-special edition/The Parson defers to The Donald: We’ll turn to Haley Barbour next week, as we’ve promised for some time now.

As a primer, we recommend this text by Jamelle Bouie at Tapped. (She discusses Barbour’s recent statement about the cause of the Civil War, which occurred in the 1860s.) On balance, we agree with Bouie’s reaction, although we’d drop the Boss Hogg reference, which seems to be a tribal requirement. That said, a few commenters quickly rose in high-minded opposition.

We note the third commenter (the fourth comment) got a fact semi-wrong. We’ll guess he or she was misled by the misleading coverage we’ll discuss next week—the misleading coverage which occurred at a wide range of liberal sites.

For today, let’s close out the week of The Donald with a note on Jon Meacham, The Parson.

Donald Trump played the fool all week, in escalating fashion. He did a multi-night interview on The Factor, even discussing a range of top issues. His thundering dumbness was on full display. But we might pick this comic exchange as the dumbest of his presentations:

O'REILLY (3/30/11): All right, illegal immigration. How are we going to stop that?

TRUMP: Well, you either have a country or you don't. You either have a line and a boundary or you don't. Something has to be done.

O'REILLY: What?

TRUMP: Well, you put soldiers on that line.

O'REILLY: You militarize it.

TRUMP: Do you have a choice?

[…]

O'REILLY: OK. Now the 15 million illegal aliens already in the United States. What do you do with them?

TRUMP: I think right now you're going to have to do something and, you know, it's hard to generalize. But you're going to have to look at the individual people. See how they've done. See how productive they have been. See what their references are and then make a decision.

O'REILLY: And then make a decision. All right, on a case by case— (Snidely) It’s going to take a long time and a lot of people.

TRUMP: A long time but— But you know, you have some great productive people that came in.

O'REILLY: No doubt.

TRUMP: And then you have some total disasters that probably should be in prison.

You’ll have to see what their references are! Apparently, Donald will interview each of the fifteen million, perhaps on a TV program. But then, every discussion he attempted was basically just that dumb:

O'REILLY (continuing directly): OK. Real quick, social issues. Abortion.

TRUMP: Right.

O'REILLY: You favor it?

TRUMP: No, I'm—as you know, I'm pro-life.

O'REILLY: Ok, so you're pro-life on abortion. But would you outlaw abortion?

TRUMP: Well, I'd, I'd go a step. I'd go a pretty strong step. Something I don't like, I used to not be pro-life. I have become pro-life. I have seen friends that had children that they didn't want. And now they have children and they are the apple of the eye.

So I really have changed in my views over the years but I am pro-life. I would—I would really– I'm forming an opinion, I'm forming a very strong opinion, but I'll let you know in about three or four weeks, if I decided it.

The man’s a relentless public fool. But The Donald is also a billionaire, so all good upper-end pseudo-journalists must defer in one way or another. These are the basic reigning values of your upper-end “press.”

This week, Mister O came the closest to telling Trump that he’s lying about Obama’s birth. As Donald rattled on about the troubling subject, O’Reilly finally told him, though a bit meekly: “I don't think you believe that…I think it's provocative, you get a lot of attention raising the question. But I don't think you believe it.”

Others found a range of ways to be polite about Trump’s conduct, in which millions of gullible people get conned and our discourse becomes a tribal mess. (In such ways, the plutocrats win.) This morning, The Parson thoughtfully joined the crowd, blaming it all on the voters.

You see, the Parson is a high-ranking man. Such men don’t criticize men like Trump. Men like the Parson don’t stand up and say: “Trump is deceiving millions of gullible voters—and Barbara Walters let him do it. Along with the numb-nuts Joy and Whoopi, who were dumb and unprepared, as they always are.”

People, it just isn’t done! So what did The Parson say instead on Morning Joe? Simple:

The birthers are “nativists,” nothing else, he declared, thus running to get in line with the herd. He said that is the onlyexplanation for their dumb belief. He kicked down hard, and kissed ass looking up—looking up right at The Donald.

(And at the still-silent Barbara, who has never corrected the factual garbage Trump spewed out on her air. People! It just isn’t done!)

This is how men like the Parson proceed. Invitations hang in the balance! The Parson cleared his throat and declaimed.

The Parson seems to enjoy kicking down, not unlike the professor.