Random musings

-After watching CNN’s report on the allegedly violent culture of the “Church” of Scientology a couple weeks back, I have to ask: Given all the legal experts they’ve got working for them, how much longer is the “church” going to continue with a legal strategy that seems to amount to “I know you are, but what am I!”?

-We can argue and argue and argue until we’re both red and blue in the face about the merits, flaws, goals, obstacles, members, exclusions, helps, hindrances, and exotic pineapple recipes of the tea party movement. But when all is said (and said....and said....and said) and done, can we try to keep one tiny little fact (oh no, the “F” word!) in mind? The movement, regardless of all the hue and cry about the independence of its loose, nationwide amalgamation of organizations, disorganizations, micromovements and bowel movements, gets the lion’s share (controlling interest?) of its funding (working capital?) from News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News.

-Newt, you’re a bloviator, a hypocrite and an idiot. And no matter what you say or do, you’re old news, a relic from the days when you started your whole party down this destructive path. Now shut the hell up.

-Just something to try. Go into any word processor, close your eyes and gently push down on your keyboard with both hands. The on-screen result will probably be something pretty close to the name of that Icelandic volcano that’s flinging ash all over Europe and destroying the continent’s airline industry.

-I have this bad habit of reading the reader feedback message boards whenever I read a political news story online. And after more than a year of catching the same thread mixed in with all the other commentary from the left, the right, and, occasionally, the sane, I really have to ask: Just how stupid does a person have to be in order to rave about how smart and savvy Sarah Palin is? Allowing that negative numbers are mathematically impossible, is there a gradient that low on the I.Q. scale? I don’t know if they’re doing it just to flabbergast liberals; and if so, kudos on the rousing success of such a move. But the woman has to be the stupidest lump of clay in the public spotlight since Anna Nicole Smith bought it a few years back.

-An open call to the U.S. insurance industry: It’s time for Flo from Progressive and Gordon the GEICO Gecko to declare their love for one another, have a lavish interspecies wedding (he’s male, she’s female, so the wingnuts shouldn’t have a problem with it), and ride off together into the sunset. Many of us have reached our thresholds. Some (I won’t cite names) are bordering on homicidal. The idiot box periodically needs to switch out its resident idiots. We as a society declare the right to make that demand, and to have it heeded by those in media and advertising who take so, so much and give so, so little in return. The Energizer Bunny went. So did the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Seriously, guys. It’s time.

-I’ll finish up with a slightly longer one. And I hate to do it, but I have to bring up Caribou Barbie again.

Now I wouldn’t dare suggest that we should expect citizen Palin to be any better a political strategist than Governor Palin or national candidate Palin, but a great many of her followers, detractors, and even those who wonder why a braying jackass wearing lipstick and heels keeps getting invited to speak at Republican conclaves have suggested that Ms. Palin has a future on the national political stage. And if she herself considers this even a possibility, it might behoove* her to pull back a bit in her aggressiveness at alienating virtually everyone who voted for Obama in 2008.

One of Ms. Palin’s more frequently-used soundbites (at least used frequently enough that she no longer has to read it off her forearm) seems to be a variation on “How’s that whole hopey-changey thing working out for you?” I offer a few observations here:

1) Regardless of her opinion of any particular high-profile invoker of such concepts as “hope” and “change,” when a person or group are in a depressed long-term socioeconomic state, aren’t the very concepts themselves universally good things, and isn’t the denigration of said concepts pretty darn insulting to everyone, regardless of political affiliation?
2) Aggressive “Don’t you just hate Obama and all his supporters?” rhetoric may play well to a conservative base, but mathematically, any candidate is going to need the ballot box support of a lot more than just a conservative base in order to win in 2012; in fact, since Obama received roughly 53 percent of the popular vote in ’08, those who numbered among his supporters then certainly outnumber those who voted for anyone else in the same election.
3) Since you’re going to need at least some of the voters who supported him then to vote for you in 2012 in order to win the popular vote, maybe it’s not such a great strategy to insult all the people who bought into the ideas of “hope” and “change” and would still like to realize them, if not under Obama, then certainly under whomever replaces him in the Oval Office. If you make all 53 percent of the 2008 voters who opted for Obama think you view their “hope” for “change” as nothing but fodder for a bully pulpit soundbite, the response, even from those who might otherwise have considered shifting their loyalties to you and your team next time out, just might come back to soundbite you in the jackass.

(* - I did catch the bad-pun potential of saying that something might “behoove” a “jackass.” I’ve been taught that every once in a while it’s a good idea to let an opportunity pass. I sincerely meant for this to be that once in a while, but given the inclusion of this parenthetical, I guess it’ll have to wait until next time.)