Sunday, April 13, 2008

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down



Uppity Negro Edition.

I’ve got reams and reams of notes here, but honestly today really was just about as much of a teevee wasteland as I have ever seen.

Frankly, given a choice between

A. Watching today’s Mouse Circus again

B. Eating a fistful of Flintstone’s Chewable Anti-coagulants, pummeled my kidneys with a truncheon, and peeing blood for an hour into a dumpster fire. Or,

C. Getting drunk and passing out at an all night, no-limit organlegger poker party.
I would have a hard time deciding which would leave me feeling more drained and sore and awful for the experience.

But innocent of this knowledge, I woke up early to get the vacuum tubes and telex machine that drive my in-home electronified difference engine

all warmed and ready for the watching of the Mouse Circus.

And then sat through what felt like 1,000 hours of drivel in which neither the name “John Yoo”, nor the designation of “The Principles”, nor the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E was mentioned anywhere.

Not a peep. Not a whisper.

From anyone.

Anywhere.

Instead it was mostly about how a black man running for President shouldna oughtna be using the word “bitter” to describe the mood of a certain segment of the American electorate.

'Cause that'd be "elitist".

Which is spelled e-l-i-t-i-s-t, but pronounced like so

Instead the pattern which the Media will continue to follow vis-à-vis Senator Obama came into full, clear relief:

Stage 1: Someone finds something controversial that either the candidate said or someone he knows said. Thirty seconds -- scratchy, context-free -- snatched from here or there.

Stage 2: The pearl-clutching begins in earnest, usually on FoxNews (“Your 24 hours Reverend Wright Station.”).

Stage 3: The Villagers toupees, weaves and comb-overs burst collectively into flame from the meteor-grade atmospheric friction generated by running in every direction at once and screaming about how, yes, these comments will probably be received by The Average American as an affront and a tragedy worse than the Hindenburg.

Crashing into The Manger!

On Christmas!

Stage 4: The hunt begins by The Villagers for an Average American to actually interview. Finding none (and realizing it has been something 20 years since any of them had the slightest inking what “average” people do, say, sound like or believe) The Villagers instead devote the vast resources of the Mouse Circus to interviewing each other.

Stage 5: Having spent the Lord’s Day vigorously circle-jerking their peers, The Villagers somberly confirm that very Serious People all agree that whatever-it-was was worse than seven Hitlers.

Stage 6a: Obama makes a speech that is longer than 30 seconds that turns the lead weights they were tying to his ankles into solid gold. Or;

Stage 6b: Someone dirty fucking hippy finds a speech from Bill Clinton from, say, 1991 that says exactly the same thing, and which no one at the time (certainly not Team Clinton) found to be in the least bit controversial. Or;

Stage 6c: Someone remembers that the powerful, leading Conservatives routinely do and say things orders of magnitude more deliberately divisive and hateful every damned day.
(And don’t you get tired of these “Hate America First” Conservatives that people like McCain relentlessly fellate for the privilege of giving the United States a third Bush term, good and hard, right up the ass?)

It took me a full day to realize that the MSM and camp Clinton were actually trying to making a Big Frakking Deal over the fact that Senator Obama thought that some people who have been left behind as they watched American Dream drive away in a Hummer with a "W" sticker on the left bumper and a faded yellow ribbon on the right are bitter about it.

That this observation and its corollaries are somehow wildly controversial or condescending.

Because if Middle America weren’t exhausted and frustrated and furious and, yes, bitter about have their children’s futures carved up and sold off by the job-lot by vast, heartless, moneyed interests, then this guy


wouldn’t have a career.

Hell, that's the easy truth.

The harder truth is this: if a whole lotta people weren’t also as gullible and terrified and, yes, dumb-as-five-pounds-of-Play-Doh enough to let homophobia, Hispanophobia, Bible-thumpery, flag-swaddling and other baubles hyp-mo-tize them into stepping off a cliff, then this guy

would never, ever have been elected anything.



For me, the fact that the Reagan Campaign – not the Mondale Campaign, but the fucking Reagan campaign – used this in 1984 as a GOP Call to Arms

told anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention to life in these United States everything they needed to know about “Reagan Democrats”

Because anyone who actually bothered to listened to the lyrics heard some very scary things.

Like this:

Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man

Born in the USA....

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said son if it was up to me
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said son, don’t you understand



Which, in retrospect I now realize probably makes it the perfect Republican Anthem


A ballad about the tragic life of the vet and the working man who have gotten fucked over…

Sung by those who were getting fucked over…

As a worshipful paean to those
who were doing the fucking over.


Amazing. Just, a--mazing.

And so the Conservative revolution reached its apotheosis, powered by a generation of aggrieved idiots who could be kept forever distracted by guns and Jebus and bright, shiny queers into slitting open their own bellies and offering up their livers to feed Republican house pets.

Who couldn’t be bothered to understand how their own country works.

Couldn’t be bothered to read their own Constitution, or a newspaper, or even the lyrics to the song that they themselves are screaming at the tops of their lungs.

Instead, they went to the polls and voted Republican time after time after time because, y’know, that’s what guy’s like this told them

Sweet Baby Jebus wanted them to do.

They weren’t being persuaded to do it. Reasoned into it. PowerPointed.

Instead they’re being

bred to it.

The problem is, our politicians suck and our media is a joke because a great number of our fellow citizens are just too fucking meatheaded to properly steward the democracy that better men and women bequeathed to them.

An army of rubes who can be endlessly flim-flammed into stepping in front of the same bus the same way over and over and over again. And who only get angry when some “elite” gingerly suggests that, after two generations of stepping in front of that bus, maybe…uh…the bus is not the problem.

Maybe it’s them.

The simple truth is that way too many of our problems come down to the fact that our nation is barnacled with Stoopid.

And they vote.

And from now until the end of time, that is one subject no one at the Mouse Circus dares to even hint at while the cameras are rolling.

26 comments:

Unknown said...

You rule, Drifty.

I've sent this one out to everyone I ever knew.

And thanks, especially, for the Bruce lift. I always got it that way - and thought the American idiots would be easily outed by their rank stupidity (okay, maybe not right away - but someday!).

Suzan

Welcome to Pottersville

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

The old saying notwithstanding, sometimes honesty is NOT the best policy.

Obama spoke the truth, more or less, but he spoke it with a surprising lack of diplomacy.

However, I am given to understand that he thought he was speaking privately, but someone had sneaked a recording device into the meeting.

This shows that nowadays, no politician should EVER assume that anything s/he says is off the record, because of the proliferation of recording devices--security cameras, small tape recorders and digital cameras, cell phones with recording capability, etc.

It's not just happening to famous people, either. More and more, ordinary folks are being caught doing embarrassing or even illegal things on recording devices. Remember that woman who got caught smacking her kid by a parking lot security camera--I think it was in Ohio?

Although the technology is different from Asimov's "chronoscope", we may be approaching the zero-privacy society that was being born at the end of his famous short story "The Dead Past".

"Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone..." :(

Anonymous said...

There is still no substitute for "Sunday Morning Comin' Down". Thanks for watching and sharing.

Anonymous said...

Several years back an intrepid reporter uncovered the location of the work VTSC (Vacuum Tube Super Computer) Drifty uses for Photoshopping, nestled close by the shores of Lake Calumet.

Thanks for showing us your home analog difference engine, Drifty. You're a scholar and a gentleman, no matter what the NSA says.

Anonymous said...

If Fox News and the rest of the right wing punditocracy had been around in 1973, Nixon wouldda ended up Preznit-for-life.

Fran / Blue Gal said...

I agree Dave. I mean, two words: President Agnew. Thanks to Fox.

This really is one of the best ever, Drifty. Just sayin.

elitist is pronounce "uppity." GEEZ you had tears running down my face.

Anonymous said...

"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones."
So must it be with the Shrub. The noble Drift hath told you Shrub is teh stoopid.
Because it were so, it was a grievous fault, for which he will be richly and undeservedly rewarded.
Stammering, hath Dana Perino `splained it.
Here, under leave of Drifty and the rest --
For Drifty is an honorable man,
So are they all, all honorable men --
Come I to speak in Shrub's ebbing days
He was Jeebus' friend, faithful and delusional .
But Drifty says he was teh stoopid,
And Drifty is an honorable man.

++++++
Once more saved mine own scarred retinas by the selfless noble scribe. Once more tinged with jealousy at your keen wit and un-erring read. Humbled and buoyed that though all is likely in vain, at least some see the roomful of shit instead of the pony. Comfort, no matter how small, is always welcome.

As a fellow Chicagoan I think we understand, first-hand the breeding program that permits near-perpetual prosperity for the few, at the expense of the hopes and dreams of the masses. Leaving the possible near-dead in its march ever onward.

Generationally removed from feigned concern for the common good, proxied license to steal now tries
to consume all as their due and proper reward.

As our own due and proper reward we are given the blame.

Anonymous said...

I remember Mondale's response to Reagan invoking Bruce Springsteen in 1984: "Bruce may have been born to run, but he wasn't born yesterday."

Rock on, Driftglass!

Anonymous said...

The whole "bitter" thing pisses me off.
What about Hillary having a shot of Crown Royal? How fucking elitist is that? And it's a CANADIAN whisky, for shit's sake! What, she can't find a good old American whisky? Can't support American whisky workers? Is this more of her free-trade support/non-support flip-flopping?
'Cause in the end, they're both about equally significant.

Anonymous said...

Frank here. I love you Drifty, and I know you are right, but I still don't think you should blame the general voting public. I like it when you blame the pig people, which at least can't do any harm, but I don't see how blaming the general public helps get us where we want to go.

Fran / Blue Gal said...

where's your blog, rehctaw? You can't write like that and not expect us to go all physioprof on your ass.

Maybe you're already blogging, but get a link up there before the word "said..."

She has spoken.

Anonymous said...

And, as Scarecrow points out this morning on his thread on FDL, the GOP has Hillary, as usual, parroting their talking points.

Too bad that Gore and Edwards, and a lot of other prominent dems, have so far gone AWOL on making the terribly difficult choice between "these two fine candidates".

(TB reaches for his in-flight barfbag...)

jiminy jilliker said...

Of course I loved this post. I'm an elitist.

I happen to think that ignorance is a bad thing, that critical thought is the best kind, and that a low bowling score might just make a man a more attractive presidential candidate. Nixon was a great bowler. The Jesus was a freakin' pederast, dude, and that creep could roll.

From what I've seen of elitists on the left and elitists on the right, the key difference is that the ones on the left want to help others get into the ranks of the elite, whereas the ones on the right want to lock the clubhouse door behind them.

So, yeah, I'm a liberal elitist. And I'm proud as hell of it.

Angel Of Mercy said...

Mr. Glass, I DO love your Sunday Morning Comin' Down rants. (I gave up on those clueless talking head shows years ago when I took a pick axe to my television...) Thanks for sharing; nobody does it like you!

mark hoback said...

good show, driftglass

boctaoe said...

Yes, Yes, Yes, Driftglass, keep writing. You raised my spirits which are pretty low. I gotta go back and hit that pronunciation link one more time. yes, yes, yes.

Anonymous said...

Driftglass,

A perfect sermon for my Sunday Mornin' (Moanin')

And if I hear one more time from the Hundred-Million-Dollar-Woman about a mixed-race, single-parent, raised poor kid being an elitist - I think I'm gonna do some unspeakable things to something...

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!

And the solution to the meatheads? Give 'em guns and send them over to kill the yellow man. The ones that come back might appreciate what they say they are fightin' for.

That, or thake their votes away because they obviously can;t be trusted to use them wisely.

ServingPatriot

Anonymous said...

Rock on, D. Sadly enough, the thesis of many of my rants end up boiling down to "and yet none of this would be possible if the electorate were even minimally aware." What idiot, after 2004, 2005, 2006, and the last year would even consider voting for Preznit Drinky's creepily intense uncle? I feel like Mencken when I point out there is no shortage of fools in the USA.

Anonymous said...

Let me disagree -- heartily -- with you, Ivory Bill Woodpecker:

The old saying notwithstanding, sometimes honesty is NOT the best policy.

Obama spoke the truth, more or less, but he spoke it with a surprising lack of diplomacy.

However, I am given to understand that he thought he was speaking privately, but someone had sneaked a recording device into the meeting.

This shows that nowadays, no politician should EVER assume that anything s/he says is off the record, because of the proliferation of recording devices--security cameras, small tape recorders and digital cameras, cell phones with recording capability, etc.


All this shows is that if you wet your pants over the "proliferation" of recording devices ... if you keep pulling your verbal punches cuz somebody somewhere MIGHT spin it ugly and make a Big Fing Deal about nothing ... then you shouldn't be saying anything. Never.

In a word: They win if you get all paranoid and wimpy about ever speaking Truth.

How about this? In the week right after Charlton Heston kicks the proverbial bucket -- this is Heston who switched from playing gladiators and god to being head of the National Rifle Association -- this is the same week that Hillary Baby decides to share with us that she killed a duck in Arkansas, about 110 years ago. And she supports 2nd Amendment rights to arm bears. Or, bear arms. I can't remember any more.

And we're supposed to get all twisty about Obama saying something that somebody MIGHT twist into something else.

Why bother with such human detritus like the TV Pundits and the Hillary Mein Kamp???

BTW -- I'm hearing that Jimmy Carter and/or Al Gore are about to clip Hillary's shitty little divisive wings. Let the clipping begin.

Mister Roboto said...

In that video clip where one woman was asked how she felt about being in Austin, I don't necessarily think she was being totally ignorant in saying that she was glad not to be in Bush Country. I have heard that Austin, TX is an exception to its surrounding environment in very much the same way that Madison is in Wisconsin. Ah, I really do miss old Madison, sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Drifty, preachin to the choir never sounded finer.

On key, note for note.

Too bad the rest of the nation don't get it.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Anon9:48pm--I shudder to think what your blood pressure readings look like. ;)

Mister Roboto said...

Even though this is rather heavy-handed and obvious, when I saw the "Jesus Camp" clip, I couldn't help but think of this.

Unknown said...

Second the comment on the woman from Austin. It may be blue in a sea of red but it definitely is very blue.

Not a whole lot of bush fans or republicans...

Rehctaw said...

Damn, I'm easy.

I must have just needed a nudge?

Chalk another one up for Gilly!

Anonymous said...

Thanks. You have my heart.
Forever!