23 February, 2009

“The Rant” and a “Dissenting View”

By now, you’ve surely seen or at least read Rick Santelli’s “Boston Tea Party” rant from last week. If, somehow you’ve lived in never never land and missed, here’s the obligatory YouTube embed:

 

Santelli pretty much nails how an overwhelming majority of us feel.

However, Doug Masson, a blogger from Indiana has responded to it in his blog. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll extract one of the few remotely salient points:

These guys, if they are smart, do not want to draw attention to themselves. There is a lot of ambient anger out there looking for a place to land. Because the “financial industry” is nameless, faceless, and complicated for the “Average American” (including this one), very few individuals have taken too much heat for the economic collapse. But if a guy like Santelli wants to stand up and tell honest folks who got in over their head despite hard work and good intentions that this is all their fault, I just have to say “good luck with that.”

The most interesting thing about Masson’s piece is it’s Clintonian nature. Barack Obama (D-USA) needs someone like this in his administration, because the response is brilliantly done.

Notice how he never refutes anything that Santelli has said. Instead of attacking the message, he goes straight for the messenger. Bill Clinton was a master at doing just that.

Note to Doug: the message is still valid, no matter what you may think of the messenger. And that’s yours, and Obama’s problem.

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