Political Theatre category archive

John Winfrey bestows the 2014 Squander Award on Teabaggery. Here’s a bit of the ceremony (emphasis in the original):

2. Squandering the opportunity for long-term investment in technology and human capital.

By sabotaging our recovery and making further cuts in funds for infrastructure, education, and basic research, we have already squandered seven percent of our growth potential for years to come (over one trillion a year).

Follow the link for the remaining counts in the indictment reasons for the award.

Steven M.

The one twit who is always wrong about everything. (Warning: Language.)

Voting is not a right. It’s a duty.

Birds of a feather.

Tony Norman considers the nascent, but growing movement to bring perspective to American’s veneration of Christopher Columbus. Several municipalities have replaced “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous Peoples Day” (or similarly worded memorial days) or instituted such a commemoration in addition to Columbus Day.

It’s a thoughtful read. Here’s a bit.

It isn’t a banishment of Columbus as much as a course correction. Of course, any move that recognizes the dignity and existence of indigenous people who have a different take on being “discovered” runs the risk of being characterized as a “war on Columbus” by those whose view hasn’t evolved much beyond: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two / Columbus sailed the ocean blue / he sailed and sailed and sailed and sailed / to find this land for me and you.”

But as Mark Twain once said, “The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” Ambrose Bierce, arguably the only writer who could legitimately challenge Twain as the greatest wit of 19th century America, insisted that history “is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”

Eric Cantor has made a lasting contribution to the polity.

Staffers have now coined the term “Cantored”, meaning to lose in what is otherwise considered to be a safe, Republican-controlled seat.

“Anyone who is in leadership or chairs a committee knows now that getting Cantored is a real possibility,” said one senior staffer of a House Republican committee chairman who is up for reelection.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

John Dickinson is fed up with political fund-raising emails. So too am I, even those from persons I tend to support. Furthermore, because I’ve chosen to contribute snall sums to a few candidates on my local ballot, I seem to get them from every candidate everywhere. A snippet:

Perhaps it’s effective, but there’s a larger point to be made about political fundraising emails: They are a bouillon cube of all that is awful about American politics — the grasping for money, the phony plays on your emotion, the baiting, and reduction of anything complex into its most incendiary form. What makes these emails bad is not the breadth of their insult, but what it says about the people who send them. Here’s the short version: They think you’re stupid.

Via Juanita Jean.

Matthew Pulver describes the symbiosis between Nixon’s odious southern strategy and the sense of victimhood and paranoia which characterizes (and fuels) contemporary right-wing ideology. A nugget:

Contemporary conservatism is a Southern politics. Ironically, the Southern persecution narrative, born of defeat, has spread nationwide to form the basis of Republican victories since Reagan and the conservative hegemony that moderated President Clinton, establishing through President George W. Bush nearly 40 years of rightward movement at the national level. It is the South’s principal political export, now a necessary ideological substrate in Republican rhetoric.

Read it.

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that the Republican Party’s main mistake over the last generation has been its failure to reach out to African-American voters.

Er, yeah. (More at the link.)

It would be difficult to “reach out” to African-American voters when kowtowing to bigotry has been the Republicans’ principle strategy for over 50 years.

The Daily Show reflects on the influence of Ms. PacMan on Republican marketing strategy. In related news, Dick Polman explains the Reince Cycle.

Video below the fold in case it autoplays.

Read more »

Another delightful parody ad from the Sacramento Bee’s Jack Ohman.

“The Three P’s” comes before “the three R’s.”

Accordlingly, teachers in Philly have lost their contractual health benefits, because, in Republican World, contracts and promises have no meaning.

Will Bunch explains how Republicanism trumps contracts and commitments. A nugget (follow the link for more on the three P’s):

Lost in the spin is the fact that health benefits for retired teachers — dental, vision, prescription drugs — were also disappeared by the SRC this morning. That’s some lesson that American society teaches today’s schoolchildren: Work hard all your life and someday we’ll break the promises we made you, because we can.

The Republican Party has become a vile and loathsome thing.

Driftglass.

Via Balloon Juice.

I seldom agree with Michael Smerconish. I once described him to Atrios as “an Every Man, Fred Flintstone with a typewriter.” Nevertheless, I do think that, unlike most persons who call themselves “conservative,” he tries to live in the real world.

In this case, he got one right.

Phony symbols are worse than no symbols at all.