Political Theatre category archive

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Ahem. And some may have questioned that. Larry Van Meter explains:

Newt Gingrich has spent the past 17 years in a box.

It’s an aquarium, actually, and a modest one. It measures about 500 cubic inches, which makes it a pretty small place to spend 17 years.

Newt Gingrich is a fire belly newt.

Newt is named after Newt. Follow the link for his tail tale.

When I started the article, I was wondering whether “aquarium” would turn out to be an analogy for Washington, which is also a hothouse environment with glass walls protecting unusual lifeforms and in need of frequent cleaning.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., decodes the dogwhistles. A snippet:

There has been a lot of talk about whether Gingrich’s recent language , including his performance at last week’s South Carolina debate and his earlier declaration that Barack Obama has been America’s best “food-stamp president,” amounts to a coded appeal to racist sensitivities. The answer is simple: yes.

In this, Gingrich joins a line of Republicans stretching back at least to Richard Nixon. From that president’s trumpeting of “law and order” (i.e., “I will get these black demonstrators off the streets.”) to Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of “welfare queens” (i.e., “I will stop these lazy black women from living high on your tax dollars.”) to George H.W. Bush’s use of Willie Horton (i.e., “Elect me or this scary black man will get you..”) the GOP long ago mastered the craft of using nonracial language to say racial things.

(snip)

One of my students shared this parable: A rich white man sits with a poor white man and poor black man at a table laden with cookies. The rich white man snatches all the cookies but one, then turns to the poor white man and says, “Watch out for that darky. I think he wants to take your cookie.”

I’m a Southern white boy. I know the damned code.

So does Mr. Pitts.

Click to read the rest.

What’s up is ACTA.

More here.

These things have little to do with “intellectual property” and everything to do with subjugating the internet to Hollywood.

Via Contradict Me.

When it hits them in the semi-pro college football, maybe the anti-immigration bigots will start to wonder whether they are a have a problem:

A relatively new Georgia Board of Regents policy regulating the admission of undocumented students and illegal immigrants has prevented a football recruit from gaining admission to the University of Georgia.

Chester Brown, a 6-foot-5, 340-pound offensive lineman from Hinesville, committed to the Bulldogs in July, but he confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and several other media outlets late Monday night that he was withdrawing his UGA commitment “for personal reasons,” declining to elaborate.

Much more at the link. The precise cause of the problem is still unclear.

Mike Papantonio talks with Theo Anderson about how a large segment of Republican primary voters have become divorced from empirical reality and have coalesced in a crusade to fight back the future–indeed, to fight back the present and even to fight back the recent past to at least 1954.

Shaun Mullin watched it so I didn’t have to. Field adds his own perspective.

By the way, am I the only person who finds many bloggers’ fondness for “I’m part of the in-group” text-speak acronyms, such as SOTU, POTUS, and SCOTUS, lazy, annoying, and patronizing?

PoliticalProf speculates on the political rebirth of Newt the Gingrinch, despite his having enough baggage to keep UPS busy for a week. A snippet:

Then it hit me: Newt Gingrich is the perfect candidate for that set of Republicans who think government should be run like a conservative talk radio program. One should bluster, blow hard, be rude to opponents, shut off debate and generally seek rhetorical dominance at all costs. Governance, in this model, is the act of saying what is “true” and enforcing that “truth” against all challengers. It is the politics of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck: my truth versus your evil.

Details at Kiko’s House.

The Tucson, Arizona, school district has suspended a popular and academically successful program for Mexican American studies in response to the program’s having been specifically targeted by an act of the Arizona legislature. The books that were used in the program have disappeared from classroom shelves.

This seems to be an attempt to deny that, before it was US territory, Arizona was Mexican territory ripped from Mexico during the US’s early foray into imperialism, the Mexican-American War. Persons of Mexican descent have lived in Arizona since long before persons of US descent.

It is almost as if Arizona wishes to deny its history. Calling this a form of cultural “ethnic cleansing” doesn’t seem out of bounds.

Students peacefully protested, and learned that no good deed goes unpunished:

When the marchers reached TUSD headquarters, they were met by several bureaucrats, including administrator, Lupita Garcia, an opponent of the MAS program who oversees the district’s ethnic studies programs. She unabashedly told the students that racism has nothing to do with color and that Mexico is where Mexican studies is taught, not America!

This was, of course, inaccurate: what was suspended by HB 2281 was Mexican American studies, not Mexican studies. When students asked why European studies has not been banned, nor any other area studies discipline, the administrators had no response. And regarding the issue of this being America, apparently this administrator believes that Mexican Americans don’t belong in America (as she presumably meant the United States).

In a development typical of Arizona, the students who walked out on Thursday, protesting the elimination of the district’s Mexican American studies program, have – without a hearing – been directed to perform janitorial duties this Saturday: an amazing message, right out of Newt Gingrich’s playbook (he has been campaigning in the GOP presidential nomination race, proposing the idea that students should be hired as janitors to teach them a work ethic). Apparently, TUSD administrators are paying attention.

Follow the link for more.

Via the Booman Tribune, a barrage of Mitticisms:

No sense of entitlement there, not a jot, not a tittle.

At Psychology Today, Stanton Peele argues that Newt the Gingrinch is ahead of his time:

Did you hear that PT Blog readers? All those titillating posts by Stanley Siegel about casual sex and non-conventional families — Newt Gingrich was living that. No wonder he got to charge so much money to consult because of his ability to peer into the future. Newt is the avatar of the kind of future family-sexual relationships that the rest of us only dream about.

Dr. Dale Archer thinks he’s just following his leader.

Good ruling.

The Supreme Court for the first time ruled on Monday that police use of a GPS device to monitor a suspect’s vehicle was a search and protected by constitutional privacy rights, a test case involving new surveillance technology.

All this means is that the authorities will have to show cause and get warrants.

I’m neither surprised nor offended that the current federal administration was on the other side. One would expect them to side with Justice, Homeland Security, and the Pentagon, not one of whom gives a tinker’s damn about civil liberties.

Steve Chapman, writing at the Chicago Tribune, considers the frequency with which (mostly rightwing) candidates call for amendments to the Constitution, amendments to mandate a balanced budget, to outlaw abortion, even to repeal other amendments.

He finds them hollow, much like (this is my addition) those who propose them (emphasis added).

So why bother (to call for amendments–ed.)? It’s much easier to demonstrate your fiscal conservatism by voting for a balanced-budget amendment — while opposing the actual fiscal changes it would require. Anti-abortion candidates can endorse an amendment without much risk, since pro-choice voters know it’s not going to pass.

When a presidential candidate vows to amend the Constitution, he may be doing any number of things: dodging a tough issue, pandering to a bloc of voters or trying to sound bold. What he is not doing is telling the truth.

In a long post at Delaware Liberal, Delaware Dem sums up the appeal of Newt the Gingrinch:

I suspect the radicals on the right know, if they are honest, that pigs will fly before this nation elects Newt Gingrich. But they want someone to denigrate Obama, to call him the Food Stamp President, to insult him.

Racism has been part of the underlying appeal of the Republican Party since Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy.

It is now becoming the overlying appeal, as the Republican Party continues to react to the election of a black President by morphing into the Dixiecrat Party.

It will be interesting to see whether Mitt the Flip and the Republican Party’s erstwhile corporate masters can flip the overlying back to the underlying, where they prefer it lie. Dick Polman thinks that Mitt the Flip has a chance to flip Florida.

Mike Papantonio and Chancey Devega discuss how Republicans are channeling Pitchfork Ben:

Via ABL.