Political Theatre category archive

Like me, Chris Satullo has given up on television news.

I find it annoying, as it rachets between fiction and foolishness.

He is fed up:

In one way, and probably in no other, it occurs to me that I’m like the Millenial generation to which my kids belong: I get my main sense of what the news networks are up to by watching Jon Stewart eviscerate them every weeknight on “The Daily Show.”

Stewart and his staff are brilliant media critics, but I assumed they were giving me a satirically skewed view of how inane cable news has become.

Now, after Boston and West, Texas, and other recent horrors, I regret to report that things on cable have become almost as bad as Stewart says they are.

Read the rest.

Rachel Maddow explains how George the Worst plans to cruise into history.

Scott Herhold explores how politicians’ scandals have become transient and passing things

In recent times, however, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Like Freddy Krueger, politicians have been returning to the arena only a year or two after their fall.

Consider Anthony Weiner, who has announced his interest in running for New York mayor less than two years after an errant tweet showing his underpants led to his resignation from Congress.

Or take Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor of “Appalachian Trail” fame, who is now running for Congress in a campaign being undermined by his ex-wife.

I think he’s got something.

Since making a grainy out-of-focus sex tape seems to be the door to celebrity and to success in “reality” television world, I can’t say this trend is surprising. Also, not long ago, politicians’ private shenanigans were generally kept out of the news, unless the pol managed to go out of the way to put himself there. Anyone who remembers the passing of Nelson Rockefeller remembers those days.

What does appall is that many of the scandalous were caught doing those very things which they oppose in their campaigns, especially those on the “family values” side of the aisle.

That the public accepts them back into the political arena rewards them for their hypocrisy.

Part one:

Choose your own ending:

Via Rawstory.

Fun and games in Virginia’s 85th House of Delegates district.

At this point, there seems to be little to the charges that can’t be explained by Photoshop, but lies speed around the world etc.:

Taylor is calling on Byler to withdraw from the race, says he’s exploring civil litigation for damage to his reputation, and has contacted law enforcement seeking an investigation into possible wrongdoing.

The sordid affair, and the resulting digital whodunit over the veracity of Facebook messages, leave voters with plenty to ponder ahead of the June 11 GOP primary to nominate a candidate for an office that pays $17,640 annually.

While much of this story remains murky, at its core, it’s an example of what political combatants are willing to do to potentially harm to a foe.

At issue are screen shots of alleged 2012 Facebook exchanges between Taylor and a 21-year-old Newport News woman in which an intimate rendezvous and marijuana use are discussed.

Me, I wouldn’t vote for either of them anyway, so I can sit back and enjoy the show.

Eric Garland muses on what would the news look like if U. S. media covered domestic news the way they cover foreign news.

A snippet:

Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter.

Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Montgomery, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult.

Please, oh please, do read the rest.

Via TWIB.

The Booman offers a taxonomy of the crazy.

Poor Mark Sanford.

He couldn’t even scrounge up a chair.

The Booman reminds us that the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq rages on; follow the link:

As George W. Bush prepares to open his 9/11-themed presidential library tomorrow, we should all pause to realize that the hell he unleashed on Iraq has not abated.

Image via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via Raw Story.

Much absolutely hysterically wrong wrongness about Miranda warnings has filled the news and the blogosphere since the suspect in the Boston bombings was apprehended.

David Harris, University of Pittsburgh law professor, cuts through the crap on Miranda warnings.

Let’s start with a clear understanding of the Miranda warnings. Failing to give Miranda warnings does not interfere with the power of the police to make an arrest. Not giving the warnings does not affect the ability of the prosecution to try a suspect. In fact, not reading a suspect his Miranda warnings does not even violate the person’s rights.

The Supreme Court ruling in the Miranda case is actually quite specific: Warnings are required only if the police question a suspect while he is in custody and the district attorney wants to use the answers to prove guilt. That’s all.

If you have been caught up in the miasma of Miranda meanderings, you really need to read the whole thing.

At SFGate, Mark Worfords wonders just whom we’re supposed to hate this week.

Elsewhere, I’ve seen questions as to why DHS and the city of Boston “locked down” a major metropolitan area to search for one fugitive. Not even in the days of Dillinger and open mob warfare was such a step taken for so long a time.

On the one hand, it could have been security theatre, turning out the troops because they can, or life imitating television cop shows, where all arrests seems to be made by SWAT teams any more and no one ever comes quietly.

On the other hand, Pepe Escobar has lots of questions and a theory, and it’s not a pretty one.

I’m not saying I buy his theory, certainly not in toto. In particular, I think that the answers to some of his questions lie more with irresponsible and craven news reporting and the fog of fast-moving events than with official contrivance.

Nevertheless, as someone whose low expectations of human nature often turn out to be too high and who has little faith in those who surveil in the surveillance state, I think his column is worth a look.

Republican campaign strategy:

Via Bartcop.

. . . the central one of which appears to involve being mean for the sake of mean.

Scott Maxwell reports from the Orlando Sentinel:

Last week, I watched two groups of people hold passionate discussions about health care.

During one, doctors, pastors and patients swapped stories of inspiration and altruism, urging everyone to help as many people as possible.

During the other, politicians tried to persuade one another to help fewer. A plan was afoot to help 1 million people. But most of the politicians wanted to scale the help back — by as much as 90 percent.

At one, attendees talked about a moral obligation to help their fellow man and serve a higher power.

At the other, leaders demonstrated their desire to seek higher office.

The first event was a fundraiser for Shepherd’s Hope — a faith-based model of providing health care to Central Floridians that has become a national role model.

The other was the legislative session in Tallahassee, where politicians are scrambling for excuses to turn away billions of dollars in federal money to provide health care for the poor.

Both groups of people often quote Scripture.

Only one of them lives the Gospel.

PoliticalProf says, “Get real.”

sedavis asked: Dear Professor, Maureen Dowd and Nate Silver at the New York Times seem to agree that President Obama could have done more to pass the national background check piece of gun control. What do you think? Thanks. Sara

I do always find it amusing when people presume presidents have magical powers that can overcome any resistance … especially when those people have never held any elective office, much less worked with a Senate in which 60 votes is the default vote these days.

Until we stop electing tools and idiots to Congress, we will continue to be doomed.

Follow the link; read the rest.

Coincident with another attempt by Creationists to use agents of the state to propagate their magickal beliefs, paleontologist Oliver Knevitt lists his candidates for five terms in the public discourse that he thinks should be retired because they mislead the discussion.

Here’s one.

3. Missing link

This is undoubtedly the worst term in general use. There are many, many fundamental problems with this term, as I’ve written about before, but one the main problems is that a link implies a chain; a great chain of being, with the dumber animals at the bottom and clever man at the top.

Yet, there is a much deeper reason why I’d like this term to be dead and buried. It is entirely perjorative. It is only used by those wishing to deinigrate evolution. It automatically implies that we are involved in some sort of gigantic join-the-dots puzzle; that we spend our time desperately poring through rocks trying to find that one elusive crocoduck that will fill in our tree and finally legitimize our ill-conceived agenda.

The reality is that, if anything, it’s the other way round. We have far too many fossils and which ones are closer to the ancestral line and which are further is the tricky bit.

I particularly commend his remarks on “survival of the fittest” to your attention. The phrase was invented by Herbert Spencer and used during the Gilded Age by defenders of the gilded ones to justify economic inequality and exploitation.

It has remained a favorite of the gilded ones ever since, as it enables them to anoint themselves as “the fittest” cats, when, in actuality, they are often just the fattest cats.

. . . as I was couple of posts ago, Chancey Devega has noticed a new one in the deck.

In trying to frame the narrative surrounding Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s supposed actions in relation to the Boston Marathon bombing, the public and the mainstream media–both on the Left and the Right–are grappling with how Chechens are (or are not) in fact “white.”

Given that race does not exist except in the minds of those who see it (“race” based on skin color was dreamed up by Europeans along about the same time as chattel slavery and colonial expansion, by a quite marvelous and no doubt unrelated coincidence) and that it was the Caucuses that put the cacca in Caucasian, this seems to be a particularly stupid attempt to gin up a kerfuffle.

Follow the link for Devega’s comments, then check out his other post on the topic.