The big swill.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Mainstream news media and Newt Gingrich - Pundit Watch - Column

I haven't heard this much swill about American politics since the media translated Reagan's 1980 victory with 50.9 percent of the popular vote into a "mandate" for cutting rich people's taxes, consigning poor people to cardboard boxes under viaducts, and reclassifying ketchup as a vegetable for schoolchildren. Following the elections on November 8, 1994, we've heard and read the word "revolution" 4,692 times and have been told that the "American people" voted for Republicans and against Democrats because they've become more conservative and want the role of "big government" reduced.

"The rejection of the Democrats," Newsweek announced, was "total." Bill Clinton, added the magazine, "is immobilized, if not irrelevant." Clinton's biggest problem, pundits like Fred Barnes and Michael Barone insist with moronic repetition, is that he has governed too much "from the left." (I am soooo tired of this piece of neo-con sophistry. If Clinton represents the Left, what are we? Anarchists? Maoists? Martians?)

Buying into Newt Gingrich's characterization of the first couple as the Abbie Hoffman and Valerie Solanas of the 1990s, the press and pundits have added to their post-election coverage enough '60s-bashing to smother ten hookahs. My personal favorite was in the Newsweek essay by Joe Klein, entitled, "Wither Liberalism?" Here I learned that the Republican sweep stemmed, in part, from the fact that Americans hate "1960s liberals." The problem with these folks is that they "romanticize [such] ... antisocial behavior" as "teenage out-of-wedlock pregnancies as an 'alternative lifestyle choice.'" Didn't I see you at a demonstration in 1969 rallying for this? And didn't you think the greatest act of rebellion was premature, unwanted pregnancy? Thought so.

Who will save America from Clinton's pinko, counterculture agenda? According to Newsweek, "A Quayle-Powell ticket in 1996 would be 'absolutely unstoppable.'" This assessment informed a full-page article in the magazine. It was based on a focus group Newsweek put together--of twelve (count 'em, twelve) New Hampshire Republicans.

Reality check, please. Yes, we have a major fiasco on our hands, what with Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, and the witless wonder Al D'Amato running the Senate. (And let's not forget how much we're going to have to listen to the likes of William Kristol for the foreseeable future.) But the conventional interpretations of the elections have been knee-jerk and have simply...