"Reprise the 100-Year War," and Other Purgatives

Lordy what a wasteland is cable news. My choices at this hour are Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews. It's reminiscent of that crack Dorothy Parker made about Katherine Hepburn: that she ran the gamut of emotion from A to B.

If Chris hadn't already lost my confidence some years ago, nothing he could do would so seal that deal as inviting Tom DeLay on his show. That's sticking his hand into the sewage and pulling up a . . . well, you get the picture.

But if the conservatives want to field a piece of crap for national cameras, that's fine with me. Let's go for it. Let's remind voters of the four horsemen of the conservative apocalypse: DeLay, Abramoff, Scooter, and. . . . Gee, there are so many it wouldn't be fair to choose only four. Taft? Reed? George Allen?

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So McCain is it? I know why conservatives can't stand him. Neither can I. I haven't forgotten that he said that having an abortion or not would be his 15-year-old daughter's decision if she got pregnant, and he hoped the procedure would be legal and safe. I remember very well when he called Falwell an agent of intolerance because it amazed me that he'd show that kind of integrity. But that was before he donned the bishop's cap of "Christian" fundamentalism and decided to oppose safe and legal abortions and write gays out of the Constitution.

No straight-talker, he. McCain is, if anything, even more opportunistic than his former competitor, Romney. Since the end of his military career, it seems to me that McCain has mostly sought new opportunities for self aggrandizement, no matter who he's had to shaft and no matter who he's had to blow. He divorced his first wife, married a pile of money, got tangled up in that very dirtyKeating savings and loan scandal (caused, in part, by Republican deregulation, just like today's mortgage crisis), and shifted political positions like a Vegas dealer shifts cards. McCain not only sails where the wind blows. He blows the sails when necessary, as in his little cuddle with the Bushman. McCain should have had the regard for his wife and children to denounce Bush, not kiss him. He's as phony as they come.

Let's make our anti-McCain campaign slogan "Four more years!" That should do the trick. That or, "Reprise the Hundred-Year War!"

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Remember when Romney said that his sons were serving the country by assisting his presidential campaign? That's when he lost the nomination. So much arrogance was revealed in that remark. It was a genuine Marie Antoinette moment, and Americans saw it for exactly what it was. Good riddance--at least from the TV screens for now.

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Do I really have to think about a Vice President Huckabee? "IthinkI'mgonnabarf!"

Extreme Christianist Views Need Airing

Huckabee's intention to bring the US Constitution in line with the Bible, and his equation of gay marriage with bestiality, are just two of numerous offensive opinions held by this kind of "Christian. It's time for the country to talk openly about the extreme Christian Right and get its agenda right out on the table so that Americans know where they stand and where they'd like to take us.

I put the word "Christian" in quotation marks because one hallmark of fundamentalism, in my experience, is that its believers give far more credence to Old Testament texts than to the of the Bible where Jesus actually comes on the scene.
Specifically, they, like Mel Gibson, are drawn irresistably to blood, punishment, the wrath of God, Hell's fire, and anything to do with sex. It's all of a piece. Your sex, their violence, but not always. Often their violence, always their deep-seated misogyny.

So that's not Christianity. That's Deuteronomism, or Leviticism.

Let me pause right here to say I'm not talking about the Torah. I'm not talking about Jews. I'm not talking about Judaism. I'm talking specifically and only about how a certain tortured group of people, of this and past generations, have found their religion in focusing on the X-rated parts of the Bible, the parts that, if filmed, couldn't be shown to children. Or at least shouldn't be shown to children.

Huckabee is one of them. It was one thing when people like Huckabee kept their religion to themselves. It was tragic, then, because of what they did to their women and their children, and how their perverse interpretations of this world and the next perpetuated generations of damaged people.

I'm not saying it was OK then, but it was less sinister then than it is now.
For the last thirty years or so, a small group of these disturbed extremists has been busily about seizing control of the Republican party in order to impose its views on the nation. It is a measure of their success that the current President is in office and has placed legions of these people in the judiciary and in government office buildings, and that Huckabee is--so far--a viable contender for the White House in 2008.

Consider how this statement of intent to conform the Constitution to the Bible would have played forty years ago. It would have been shunted off into the round file without any "ado" whatsoever. That it is being spoken out loud on the presidential campaign trail is a barometer that shows us just how far Right the nation has tilted.
And that's scary.

I hope that people will stop referring to Huckabee and his ilk as the lunatic fringe. The lunatic part is right enough, but when a Huckabee can campaign for the White House and be taken seriously, he's not fringe. He's mainstream.

Wake up. The people who want to stone adulters and Queers are coming out of the closet, and it's not a pretty picture.

Obama!

He's not my guy, but I'm thrilled that he pulled a victory in Iowa. He has run a brilliant campaign, he has inspired a rural white farm state, he has touched, arguably, the thread of decency that runs underneath and through this poor, divided, often angry, reactionary, and racist country. Please God he will toughen up if elected and forget about holding hands with Mitch O'Connell and Dick Cheney.

I'm thrilled that Edwards placed second. I think he's just begun to be heard. Take account of the degree to which the MSM have ignored and condescended to him and his showing in Iowa is remarkable.

I'm sorry that Hillary didn't place second because I want this woman to do well. I'm also glad that she didn't place first. Now she will sharpen her thinking, improve her campaigning, and whatever she achieves will indisputably be due to her personal effort, not because she is Bill Clinton's wife or the beneficiary of the vaunted (and alleged) Clinton "machine."

There's a terrific op ed in the NYT today about Huckabee. I recommend it. The nice thing about his win is that he kicked Mitt's butt. But I don't think Huck has national appeal. We've just had a clod-hopper in the White House. I'm going to enjoy watching the GOP get hoisted on its own evangelical dimwit petard.