…With No Particular Place to Go But Here
If This Were in a Book, You Wouldn’t Believe It: It’s been hilarious watching various members of the GOP hierarchy criticizing the Rush monster, and then scurrying hat in hand to apologize or ‘clarify’ their comments, the new Republican euphemism for kneeling at the ‘flabulous’ bloviator’s altar and seeking forgiveness. (Michael Steele’s ‘clarification’ “Really, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about!” was worthy of a Monty Python skit.) Doubling the fun is watching some of the same humbugs deny the bleeding obvious — Limbaugh is the 500-pound elephant in the middle of the Republican Party’s leaky punchbowl and he’s calling the shots now. This is killing the GOP and there’s nothing they can do about it welcome to your self-made hell, neocons.
Speaking of the Mouth of the Wingnut South, Limbaugh recently challenged Obama to debate him on his show, knowing full well, naturally, that the president has much more important things to do than goose Lard Lad’s ratings. If Rush really wants to debate Obama, here’s something he could do, if he has the guts: Run for president in 2012 and, if he’s the Republican nominee, he’ll get his debate with Obama, probably even two or three. Don’t bet on that happening, though Limbaugh would never face the people that way he only talks to Dittoheads and other psychotics. (Incidentally, the Radio-Dazed Monarch’s assurances of 20 million weekly listeners may be as exaggerated as his bulbous torso it also doesn’t confirm how many are tuning in to laugh with him and how many to laugh at him.)
Speaking of Our President: A Politico.com minion named Nia-Malika Henderson was on MSNBC last Tuesday afternoon advancing the odd theory that Obama was speaking in ‘code words’ only understood by blacks and not whites. To bolster her hypothesis, she played a brief video clip of Obama in a crowded diner in Washington. When the person behind the counter asks if he wants his change, Obama replies, “Nah, we straight.” On TV, Henderson, who is black, embroidered this seemingly innocuous exchange into Obama possibly referring to his sexuality in ‘black-speak.’ She also claimed, in her Politico article that the words ‘bamboozle and ‘hoodwink’ had some special meaning to a black audience that escaped a white one. Nia-Malika, pull your head out from below the Beltway this is 2009, not 1979. I have heard people of all skin shades say ‘No, we straight,’ meaning keep the change or ‘Okay, that’s fine,’ and I would say ‘bamboozle’ and ‘hoodwink’ describe approximately the same thing no matter what your race. In the video accompanying Henderson’s piece, Obama is shown speaking to large crowds of people of many colors, and they are all applauding I’m not sure exactly how this helps make her point. Like the WSJ’s Amy Chozick who blathered on last summer about Obama being ‘too thin’ to be elected president, I think this was just another exercise in wheel-spinning by a writer who couldn’t find a better straw to grasp that day. I’ll give her this: It’s true some whites didn’t understand what Obama was saying or his appeal those white people are called ‘Republicans’ and they didn’t vote for him.
Speaking of Wheel-Spinning, there’s this slice of puff pastry: “Among the Young Conservatives,” a ‘Newsweek Web Exclusive’ confected by one Mollie Reilly, no doubt a ‘web exclusive’ because even Newsweek’s toadying editors were too embarrassed to have it in the print edition. Reilly was assigned to cover the Conservative Political Action Committee conference last weekend, and her objectivity was just this side of Himmler reporting on the SS. Here’s a choice cut of passionate prose by Reilly that says it all: “This year’s events are anticipated to draw some 9,000 people, up from 7,000 last year, which would make this the largest CPAC in history.” What a fatuous sentence; it’s missing only an exclamation point and a Happy Face emoticon. Reilly doesn’t tell us who anticipates this draw (is it the breathless correspondent herself?), nor why they think this will happen — Gee, Mollie, ‘some say’ such ‘journalism’ by Newsweek is mighty shabby high school newspaper by-lines writing on the winning football team exhibit more reportorial integrity than this lovesick press release. There is also no comparison drawn between the projected history-making crowds at CPAC this year and the tens of thousands who routinely showed up at Obama campaign events, or even Move On.org meet-ups. Is Ms. Reilly auditioning for a spot flacking for the RNC? Hurry, Mollie, I hear they may be out of business soon.
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Copyright 2009 R.S. Janes