As most of my Generation X cohorts were too young at the time to process fully the abysmal political reasons why the 1970s sucked, network television did its part to ensure we kids realized some of the pop-cultural reasons.
I enter into evidence Exhibit 3,471,983: ABC’s 1976 “made-for-television” movie, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.”
“Based on a true story,” or so it was billed, the flick starred the most popular Sweathog in Mr. Kotter’s class, John Travolta, in the lead role with Mr. Brady (a.k.a., Robert Reed) as his dad; Glynnis O’Connor as his love interest; and, in the golden daze of disco and glitz, spaced out viewers rubbed their bloodshot eyes with Cheeto covered fingers at a cameo by none other than Buzz Aldrin. With a thank you to IMDB for dredging up from my memory hole where I buried it long ago, the fact that the storyline revolved around one Tod Lubitch (Travolta), being born with a deficient immune system. This causes Tod to “spend the rest of his life in a completely sterile environment. His room is completely hermetically sealed against bacteria and virus, his food is specially prepared, and his only human contact comes in the form of gloved hands.”
Talk about a feel-good movie. But, wait for it: “He falls in love with his next-door neighbor, Gina Biggs, and he must decide between following his heart and facing near-certain death, or remaining in his protective bubble forever.” And this being Hollywood, bubble boy meets girl; bubble boy loses girl; bubble boy ditches rubber suit and gets girl again, literally riding off with her on horseback into the sunset.
Some have decried the movie for advocating unprotected sex. I disagree. Instead, the flick was but another riff on breaking out of one’s self-imposed isolation to risk everything for love (which, in hindsight, may not have been the best advice given that we were on the cusp of a herpes outbreak).
Today, though, while the Left advocates breaking out of one’s self-imposed isolation to risk everything for love with however many one can coax into joining in, there is one bubble the Regressives refuse to exit.
The intellectually ossified limousine liberals of the 1970s have spawned the petri-dish leftist, a more class inclusive but equally obtuse and incurious gaggle of statists. This genus of regressives never leave the bubble of their leftist environs and salons; consequently, they have few encounters with non-leftist thought and no understanding of it, except perhaps cartoon level caricatures. All in life is viewed through the intellectual prison that is the woke-broke prism of Leftist ideology.
Recently, a breathtaking example of this regressive genus was glimpsed trolling through the Washington Post petri dish, in this instance its Plum Line blog. Paul Waldman’s opinion piece—“Can Republicans Relearn How to Accept Political Outcomes They Don’t Like?”—is an exquisite example of the petri-dish leftist fiction genre (though presumably, it won’t be a course offered when the Left institutes its reeducation camps, because by then the “common good” will assure there will no longer be Republicans). Moreover, Waldman, whose brief bio carefully mutes his Leftist political bona fides outside of working for the American Prospect (which is a prog whistle we non-leftists aren’t supposed to hear and are, I guess, supposed to assume is a nonpartisan fanzine about gold prospectors), also provides Exhibit 404,351,965 of the Left accusing its victims of what the Left is doing. Only a petri-dish leftist could produce this piece’s pristine idiocy, for it required liberal bubble boy (hereinafter “LBB”) Waldman’s abject obliviousness—if not outright hostility—to reality.
If one wishes to nibble lefty clickbait and, ergo, reward it, knock yourself out. But be forewarned, among those well-grounded in reality, LBB’s opinion piece will provoke uncontrollable spasms of mirth. Playing it safe in proving the point, here are but a few of the LBB’s more hysterical assertions revealing how the shell of cognitive dissonance insulates Petri-Dish Leftists from countervailing facts.
The gist of the LBB’s piece is that the GOP refusing to accept losses in elections is a grave and continuing threat to the citizenry. Why? Because of the Kentucky gubernatorial election, which was narrowly won by a Democrat, pending a potential recount. Hold on . . . can’t stop laughing.
From this, which the LBB himself admits is not necessarily dispositive of the GOP’s inability to concede elections, he then . . . laughing . . . hold on . . . he then extrapolates this into a phantasm about the Bad Orange Man refusing to accept defeat in 2020.
That’s right, the oblivious LBB penned this tripe as the Left continues to “resist” and deny the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump. My God, make the laughter stop . . .
To date, here are but a few of the Left’s attempts to thwart, derail, and otherwise subvert the Trump presidency, which have yet to ooze their way into the LBB’s petri-dish: Trying to stop Trump in the Electoral College; commencing a special counsel investigation of a bogus Democratic talking point, the Russia-gate scam (to which LBB snidely alludes); the nullification of federal laws and executive orders by regressive-controlled states and cities; Antifa violence; #TheResistance merrily accosting members of the administration in public and private venues; the collusion media’s constant bias against the president and his administration; Hillary Clinton’s less than veiled references to having been “cheated” out of winning; oh, and the House Democrats’ baseless impeachment proceedings being held in the darkened bowels of the Capitol (which is one form of darkness the Washington Post doesn’t think endangers democracy).
I could go on, but can’t . . . stop . . . laughing.
OK. Then LBB approvingly cites a defeated candidate’s example to follow—wait . . . laughing again . . . Stacey Abrams:
You might recall last year how Stacey Abrams ended her campaign for governor of Georgia but pointedly refused to call it a “concession” because, she said, it would grant the election, in which her opponent engaged in various forms of voter suppression, a legitimacy it did not deserve. That case, in which a candidate said that the election was fundamentally problematic but still accepted the result and moved to prepare for future elections . . . .
What else was she going to do? Super-glue herself into the governor’s seat? No, LBB, Abrams did not accept the result of the election. She accepted the finality that she could not prove her baseless allegations; and, by not conceding the race or retracting her allegations, she left intact her slanders of illegitimacy upon the officeholders, institutions, and elections in Georgia.
Oh, in the piece there’s more such inanity, but my sides hurt. Honest to God, cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
Ultimately, bubble dwellers like Waldman unlike Hollywood’s “Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” are unlikely to escape their petri dish and embrace reality anytime soon, if ever. For the only horse they want to saddle up is one riding off into the sunset of the 1970s.
Which, as noted, sucked.