Political Theatre category archive

Via BartCop.

Via C&L.

The week in #RomneyShambles. It’s 20 minutes of worth it.

Via The Richmonder.param name=”FlashVars” value=”launch=48709273

PoliticalProf:

And by the way: complaining that the current Congress is the “worst Congress ever” because they didn’t pass any laws is like complaining that LeBron James is a bad basketball player because he has a lousy batting average. When you don’t want to pass laws (as the Republicans in the House don’t), you think of not passing laws as success, not failure.

Ed Kilgore explores the appeal of Ayn Rand to teenage boys.

Not only that: but the average nerdy adolescent boy hasn’t really had to do much of anything to test his theoretically vast potential in the marketplace of life: you know, things like falling in (non-heroic) love, performing a difficult job, dealing with entirely irrational and unindividuated economic forces like recessions, or for that matter “checking your premises” via debates with intellectual equals or superiors who come up with arguments that Rand and her “Collective” didn’t already savage in the totalitarian atmosphere of her smoky Manhattan salon. I suppose most people whose Objectivism survived high school probably stumbled upon having children–you know, those irrational critters whose almost complete absence in Rand’s novels is one of their most remarkable features. Indeed, it is perhaps the denial of childhood that probably makes Rand’s stuff so totally seductive to adolescents poised between that helpless state and the yet-to-be-achieved independent adulthood.

I suspect he is over-thinking this.

The appeal is simpler: glorifying selfishness as the ultimate value is quite enough to attract this demographic.

Fortunately, most teenage boys grow up and grow out of glorifying selfishness. Unfortunately, too many of the ones that don’t grow out of it do make it onto Republican tickets.

Speaking of objectification, I recall hearing a biographer of Ayn Rand intervideo on the talking box (no, I can’t remember who–it was two years ago). She said that, when she was in college, she learned early that boys who were wrapped up in Ayn Rand’s theories were not good dates.

A bit breathless, but generally on target.

Reg Henry considers the dynamics of Paul Ryan’s being selected for the Republican vice presidential nomination. A snippet:

As general whooping sounds across the nation confirm, he has chosen Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a darling of the right, as his running mate. He had little choice, due to the unavailability of other candidates who might please red-meat voters, such as Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler.

(snip)

As you can see, I think Mitt Romney has boldly answered his critics who were suspicious that he might be secretly reasonable, compassionate and sane despite all his tough talk during the campaign.

Read the rest.

I seldom read Maureen Dowd. She does snark well, but too often behind the snark there is emptiness. I have enough emptiness of my own, thank you.

But in a column in today’s local rag (not linked because they often do not put syndicated columns on their website), I think she’s on to something of substance.

I remarked to someone the other day that the underlying unifying quality to the policies of the contemporary Republican Party seems to be a delight in cruelty.

It’s Republican family values.

• Dying and can’t afford medicine? Suffer, baby!
• Unemployed and foreclosed by on a robo-signing bankster? Suffer, baby!
• Job shipped to China for a point on the stock market? Suffer, baby!
• Raped and pregnant by your uncle? Suffer, baby!
• Living in your car starving under a bridge? Suffer, baby!

A snippet from the column:

I’d been wondering how long it would take Republicans to realize that Paul Ryan is their guy.

He’s the cutest package that cruelty ever came in. He has a winning air of sad cheerfulness. He’s affable, clean cut and really cut, with the Irish altar-boy widow’s peak and droopy, winsome blue eyes and unashamed sentimentality.

Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans?

He’s Scrooge disguised as a Pickwick, an ideologue disguised as a wonk. Not since Ronald Reagan tried to cut the budget by categorizing ketchup and relish as vegetables has the G.O.P. managed to find such an attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face.

Warning: Even worse taste than usual, but the bit about Randian Paul Ryan is worth it.

Via BartCop.

Ye bolt hath struck home.

Jason330 agrees.

Addendum, Later That Same Morning:

Chauncey Devega’s has his own typically trenchant analysis of this. A nugget:

It is clear to most thinking people that Joe Biden spoke a plain truth when he suggested that the banks, credit card companies, and the financier classes basically have the American people in a state of debt peonage. By rolling back modest consumer protections enacted by President Obama, the Tea Party GOP and Mitt Romney would only make our shared pain even worse.

(snip)

In all, the vast majority of references to chains have little to do with the horrors of slavery, the Middle Passage, and the Black Holocaust. That Romney’s campaign would play with such historically potent imagery–efforts made even more insincere given the Tea Party GOP presidential nominee’s blatantly racist Barack Obama is a lazy negro welfare king ads–is not surprising.

In Wingnut World, health care, like car elevators and dancing horses, is a luxury for the rich.

Helen Philpot assesses the Republican veepstakes:

And speaking of a horse’s ass, Romney picked a Vice-Presidential nominee. They say Romney needed to pick a conservative like Paul Ryan to distinguish himself from Obama. I’m not sure why. Romney and Obama look nothing alike. I mean they look nothing alike on paper. Obama campaigned on universal healthcare and then delivered universal healthcare. Romney hates government controlled healthcare. Obama was pro-choice and then he became President and was still pro-choice. Romney is pro-running for President. That Obama even ran as a black man and wouldn’t you know it – he’s still a black man. Romney is a white guy. Which is probably why so many people in the Tea Party are so excited about the Romney/Ryan ticket – neither are black.

Read the rest.

H/T to Dick Destiny, who adds context.

Some Guy with a Website finds campaign press coverage lacking.

Paul Ryan is the final proof to me that this country simply doesn’t have a news media anymore. Regardless of you liking/hating Obama or supporting/opposing a right-wing economic plan, we don’t have people we used to have simply stating for the fact that almost everything he says is a complete lie. This isn’t a partisan observation; his tax plan literally doesn’t work using a highly biased system called “math.”

He has a point, you know.

Major media does not call out the lies until and unless they have no choice.

Remember way back when, oh, maybe three or four months ago, the punditocracy was all over Mitt flipping back towards the center?

Well, as The Richmonder points out, it ain’t happening, folks.

The rich, richer; the poor, poorer.

Now that Mitt has flipped Paul Ryan’s hat into the veep ring, only alienists (and perhaps these folks) will have any reason whatsoever to pay attention to the Republican National Convention.