Political Theatre category archive

Marc Lamont explains why racist stereotypes persist as part of U. S. politics. A nugget:

By racializing the poverty crisis, the Republican Party is able to organize poor whites against their own interests. Throughout American history, disadvantaged whites have supported everything from slavery to welfare reform, all of which undermine their own prosperity.

Of course, this works only against the backdrop of white supremacy, a system that makes whiteness a coveted piece of social, cultural and emotional property. Within this system, even the most socially desperate white citizen finds pride in being white or, more importantly, not being black.

As a result, rather than aligning themselves with other poor people, these individuals instead elect to close ranks around race.

Bob Cesca wonders where the yellers went:

What continues to be remarkable to me is the ineffectual tea party. While Ron Paul was second, much of the tea party, and its far-right voices on the radio and blogs, are supporting Gingrich (before him, Cain and Perry). This so-called powerful movement in the party isn’t very powerful after all, as evidenced by the now-obvious nomination of a moderate Republican.

Anyone paying attention realized that teabaggery was an astroturf movement funded and promoted by (you will pardon the expression) the 1%, destined to be discounted when it was no longer a useful diversion.

OhMyGov! runs down the five most common political Twitter mistwits.

Not one suspected terrorist.

Thoreau seems to have reached the breaking point.

Der Spiegel wonders whether Fox News is willing to sacrifice Republican aspirants to the ratings wars. The publication observes that, as soon as someone grabs the front runner flag, Fox tries to capture the flag. A snippet:

Fox News needs sensationalism to maintain its ratings, which is why the Republican candidates cannot expect preferential treatment this year. Because hatred of Obama and the left has become old news, Fox has turned its focus to transforming the Republican primaries into a circus — fueled by Ailes, the Republicans’ shadow leader, who at times wields his power like a dictator.

It’s an interesting read. Follow the link for the rest.

Anne Laurie tells the tale at Balloon Juice. A nugget:

It was a cold grey pre-spring morning early in 2002, and I was one among the hordes migrating through the Back Bay (subway, commuter rail, and intercity bus) terminal. Suddenly a tall humanoid in an expensively-tailored dark tweed business-capitalist overcoat lunged into my meagre personal space and thrust a dark-gloved hand towards my throat. When I automatically pulled back, he bared his top-quality-dental-hygiene teeth in a primate threat gesture possibly intended to mimic a smile. Two or three much younger, smaller drones in cheap knock-off overcoats immediately rushed over and carefully guided the tall humanoid away from me and towards another potential target. One of the little drones tarried to look back at me, arrange his shiny happy features into a frowny-face, and hiss, “That was Mitt Romney! He’s going to be your next Governor!”

There’s no there there.

Yesterday, Bob Cesca posted that the odious Republican Southern Strategy has returned.

I’m afraid he’s wrong. It never went away.

What’s different in this campaign is that the Republicans are no longer attempting to camouflage it; everyone can hear the dog whistles.

Writing at the Guardian, Teresa Wiltz recounts the almost constant appeals to racism by Republican candidates and concludes, quite rightly, that

Some would call this dogwhistle politicking – the cynical use of code words and phrases to rile up the racist base. That’s what Sarah Palin did back in the 2008 campaign when she famously noted that Barack Obama “is not one of us”. But this goes beyond dogwhistling. These are messages that are coming in loud and clear for all to hear. Gingrich, Santorum and Paul can’t be bothered with prettying things up. It doesn’t matter that they’re spreading lies and misinformation. (For starters, according to the US Census, 59% of food stamp recipients are white, while 28% are black. Poor comes in all colors.)

They just don’t give a flying fig.

Gingrich, Santorum and Paul are using the same playbook as DW Griffith did back in 1915 with Birth of a Nation: painting black folks as the boogeymen.

Via the Richmonder, who points out

The Republican Party isn’t so much an association of like minded people devoted to promoting a certain political ideological point of view so much as a complex and surprisingly elaborate spider web of lies.

(snip)

I worry about the depth of dishonesty to which Republicans have allowed them to sink. No matter what the issue, large or small, if Republicans meet with a check or challenge from someone who does not agree with them, their very first instinct seems to be to lie, to trample on the letter and spirit of the 8th Commandment. . . . “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Follow the link for a catechism of the lies.

At Science 2.0, Hank Campbell reports on a study that may shed some light on why Republicans practice the politics of fear.

Conservatives reacted more strongly to unpleasant images, they fixated on those more quickly and looked longer, while liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at pleasant images. Conservatives reacted more to a crashed car while progressives reacted more to a bunny rabbit. Neither is bad, obviously, but certainly different.

“It’s been said that conservatives and liberals don’t see things in the same way,” said Mike Dodd, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “These findings make that clear – quite literally.”

Mr. Campbell is careful to point out that, despite the researchers’ attempts to divine some evolutionary cause for this, correlation is not causation; the study does not explain why conservatives are more fearful than liberals (or perhaps it’s the reverse: the fearful are more likely to lean to the right).

It does, however, help explain why the Republicans tend to pitch their appeals to the dark side of human nature. It speaks to their followers.

Follow the link for more details and a desription of the study’s methodology.

In the Chicago Trib, Steve Chapman considers Little Ricky Santorum’s deep faith in the power of theocratic rule* to save the world. A nugget:

It sounds obvious that when people practice a religion that preaches strong morality and responsible conduct, they will behave better than people who follow their own inclinations. But what is obvious is not always true.

America is a good place to judge the value of faith in promoting virtue. There is a great deal of variation among the 50 states in religious observance — and a great deal of variation in social ills. It turns out that religiosity does not translate into good behavior, and disregard for religion does not go hand-in-hand with vice. Quite the contrary.

Follow the link above to explore the “contrary.” Visit Attytood to explore Little Ricky’s record of public (dis)service.

______________________

*His theocratic rule, natch, not someone else’s.

Via TPM.

Chart via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog; embed via Raw Story.

Read this.

If you can’t read the whole thing, read the scan at the end.

I don’t have anything to add.

Why are Republicans so interested in the sex lives of others?

Maybe it’s the sweater vest (Warning: “Santorum” defined in the video).

As I mentioned yesterday, Libertarianism is the latest iteration of attempts to create innocent-sounding ideologies to serve as sheep’s clothing for wolfish treatment of others.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., cuts to the chase (emphasis added):

Paul has long argued — and reiterated Sunday on CNN — that the Act, which liberated untold millions of African Americans from the tyranny of Jim Crow, “destroyed the principle of private property and private choices.” In other words, forcing a restaurant to take down a Whites Only sign infringed the rights of the restaurant’s owner. A similar argument was made by segregationists in 1964 — and by slave owners in the 1850s.

Maybe, it’s easy to make freedom an issue of “property rights” when you have never been the property.

Click to read the rest.