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"  Welcome back to our weekly feature on the state of Our National Dialogue, which sounds like that which Leonard Bernstein would have produced had he conducted a sewage treatment plant instead of an orchestra. The big noise among the gobshites centered around something the invaluable Chris Hayes said about the promiscuous use of the word &amp;quot;heroism&amp;quot; in our rhetoric these days. Here&amp;#039;s what he said. I think it&amp;#039;s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words &amp;quot;heroes.&amp;quot; Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word &amp;quot;hero&amp;quot;? I feel comfortable \u2014 uncomfortable \u2014 about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don&amp;#039;t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that&amp;#039;s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I&amp;#039;m wrong about that. I don&amp;#039;t entirely agree, but this carefully nuanced opinion was enough to scramble the flying monkeys. (For my money, Paul Campos over at LGM had the best take on the whole business.) The inevitable apology was forthcoming. But you know who I recalled through all the screeching and poo-flinging? This is who I recalled. This smug, overstuffed yahoo, that&amp;#039;s who.  I guess John Kerry can go back to being a hero now. I guess he now has the permission to do so from all those people who mocked his heroism, who bankrolled that slander, and who talked giddily about what a clever political maneuver it all was. Unless they&amp;#039;re prepared to issue the same kind of apology that Hayes issued, they all can begin their morning with a tall, cool flagon of STFU with a Bite Me chaser. Jesus, these people... Elsewhere, it was Presidents Just Don&amp;#039;t Understand Week among the gobshites. Over on This Week, George Effing Will, a man who hasn&amp;#039;t paid for a dinner since he first snuggled himself down in Nancy Reagan&amp;#039;s purse back in the 1980&amp;#039;s, was quick to point out that he is smarter than the black president, just as he proved he was smarter than the black candidate back in 1984, by assuring us that he&amp;#039;s got his and that the rest of us are going to feel the pimp side of the Invisible Hand, and that&amp;#039;s pretty much just the way it is: The president is quite right. He&amp;#039;s made clear what the choice is this fall, and it really became clear I think this week. The president wants capitalism without casualties. He wants dynamism but no dislocations. Me? I want dipshits without bowties, but, as Messrs. Jagger and Richard once said... (Effing Will also got some props in some corners for calling Donald Trump a &amp;quot;bloviating ignoramus,&amp;quot; which really is not a charge that George Effing Will, climate-change denier, ought to be throwing around idly at anyone else, not even a bloviating ignoramus like Trump.) Over on Fox, Brit Hume unlimbered his jowls and sought to reassure us of the president&amp;#039;s ignorance through in a parable. Look, every business person who runs a hamburger stand understands you&amp;#039;re trying to make a profit. And the business of making a profit has jobs as a byproduct. It&amp;#039;s not as if there&amp;#039;s some favorite industry out there called &amp;quot;Jobs R Us&amp;quot; which is in business for the purpose of creating jobs. That isn&amp;#039;t how it works. Actually, Brit, the hamburger guy isn&amp;#039;t around any more because his mortgage got sliced and diced and robo-signed out from under him. But that&amp;#039;s okay, because nobody can afford to go out to dinner any more anyway, because the primary function of business is to make a profit and creating jobs is secondary because the economy always thrives when practically nobody is getting paid a decent wage and demand drops down to negative infinity. Scoreboard! Things were just as lively over at Dancin&amp;#039; Dave Gregory&amp;#039;s Disco Party, where they brought out Carly Fiorina, failed candidate, stalker of demon sheep, and possessor of a matched set of golden parachutes, to make pretty much the same point: I find the attack surprising from many perspectives. First of all, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the history of the world. The way you do that is with a job. Third, successful companies create jobs. Failing companies destroy jobs. I think President Obama is indicating what many of us have suspected for some time: he actually doesn&amp;#039;t understand how the economy works. Judging by these remarks, the primary purpose of our economy these days is the production of banality. If you give me a few minutes, I think I can come up with an example or two of &amp;quot;successful&amp;quot; companies who destroyed jobs, at least in this country, by transferring them to capitalist paradises like China, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Marianas Islands. Look, we all lived through the years 2008 and 2009, right? I thought there was a general agreement that, because the financial services industry had dedicated itself to enriching itself through complicated financial mechanisms that nearly ate the world, the &amp;quot;economy&amp;quot; wasn&amp;#039;t really working well. This is what the president&amp;#039;s been saying. To the contrary, this, apparently, was precisely what&amp;#039;s supposed to happen. Schumpeter&amp;#039;s rainbow has a pony at the end! The Dancing Master&amp;#039;s show was chockfull of guest stars this week. N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civilization&amp;#039;s Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces, came down from the baubled heights of Callista&amp;#039;s Neck to pretend he hadn&amp;#039;t said about Willard Romney exactly what the president has been saying for a month now.... Plus, I was very careful. I didn&amp;#039;t go after private equity. You just heard the president just now. He&amp;#039;s going after all private equity in a way. Which explains why you had Senator Warner, you had the governor of Massachusetts who&amp;#039;s one of his closest allies, you had Senator Feinstein, you had Cory Booker on this show. Again, I think there are 15 or 20 Democrats now who have said this is \u2014 this is an inaccurate and wrong approach for the president to be taking. I&amp;#039;d been missing the sound of big, clanking brass ones. (Willard&amp;#039;s are platinum and do not echo. You can hear Gingrich&amp;#039;s on Mars.) Truly, I had. When God gave out mendacity, our N. Leroy got in line twice. Here he is, in January, talking about how Willard made his pile.... You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money? ...I am totally for capitalism, I am for free markets. Nobody objects to Bill Gates being extraordinarily rich, they provide a service.&amp;quot; What he instead is concerned about is when an investor receives &amp;quot;six-to-one returns, and the company goes bankrupt.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;A handful of rich people&amp;quot; manipulating the lives of thousands of people? Well said, Comrade Speaker! We&amp;#039;ll see you in the drum circle this weekend. God, Gingrich must want that prime-time speaking slot in Tampa awfully badly. Face The Nation, former Van Buren transition correspondent Bob Schieffer brought on an old favorite, Enron Ed Gillespie, to lie about what things were like here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) when Willard condescended to be our governor for almost two entire years of his four-year term. (At least Sarah Palin had the decency to quit her job before she stopped doing it.) Well, he does actually if \u2014 if you look at the qualifications that we cite for Governor Romney to be the next President it is the private sector experience which is important, but it&amp;#039;s also his time as governor, the fact is, during his time as governor, the unemployment rate dropped from nearly six percent to 4.7 percent. There was net job creation of about forty thousand jobs, that is more in one state in his one term as governor than President Obama has been able to generate in the country during his time in office, so that&amp;#039;s a pretty good contrast. He balanced the budget in Massachusetts without raising taxes and did that with a Democratic legislature. See, this is what happens when you hand your show over to a guy whose previous gigs including making sure Kenny Boy Lay&amp;#039;s pool stayed clean. While our unemployment rate was dropping, as it was in many places, and faster, too, we were 47th in job creation, and that was with a booming biotechnology sector that Willard began to muck with because he realized that his national ambitions required him to pray for all the Jesus snowflake babies. I think Gillespie found that part about the 40,000 jobs that Willard created, and how that was more than the president&amp;#039;s created in three years, in the extensive research done on the topic by Professor Otto Yerass. And can we please stop now with bragging that Romney \u2014 or any Massachusetts governor\u2014- balanced the state budget as though that were any kind of an accomplishment? The governor is required by law to do that. For Romney to boast about having done so is precisely the same as if he were running based on the fact that he never knocked over a liquor store in Melrose. And as to how he did it, well, check in with anyone who was going to UMass at the time and let them tell you about how their student fees sailed into the ionosphere. It&amp;#039;s part of the reason why only 34 percent of us like him any more. The other part is that he&amp;#039;s, well, Willard Romney. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14220/chris-hayes-apology-9255487/>