I'm not even sure what to say anymore, hence the almost non-existent posting level these days. For a long time I attributed my dwindling output to the rigors of school and work, and to a great extent those things did and do occupy a great deal of my time.
But it's also a lack of knowing what to say anymore. When I started this little thing back in 2005, I figured there was a niche for this sort of parodying and lampooning of public figures, especially politicians. And there still is, though The Daily Show handles much of the heavy lifting, in terms of knocking out the easy meat most reliably. (Maybe I should have become a writer for TDS, if I had any clue how; at least once a week I'll know what Stewart's going to say before he says it, or predict the comic headline.)
Everything about this nation has simply become impossible to parody at this point -- our political choices and sentiments; our pop-culture touchstones; our propensity to put up with the viciousness and abuse of a corporate media structure that runs interference for the robber barons who have burgled this country's future for themselves. The media is such an easy target, over and over again, because it is the correct one. They engage, in the aggregate, of polishing corporate turds, and presenting them to you, gentle viewer, as something worthy of attention.
Anything and everything, from the interchangeable chlamydia-ridden Joisey Shore mooks, to the daily "missing attractive white woman" updates on The Today Show, to the sculpting of whatever manufactured crisis crops up next on the nightly news radar, is presented as equally important, equally meaningful, equally impactful to our lives, when in fact very little of it is. Maybe our (and by "our", I mean the majority of 'murkins) critical faculties have just been irreparably dulled, worn down by attrition, from the daily -- hell, hourly pummeling of this contrived nonsense.
Next week, media-wise, will especially suck -- starting with the tenth anniversary 9/11 remembrances, that day where everything changed, but we all went right back to doing what we were doing, and changed nothing about ourselves, certainly not in the collective sense. Nevertheless there will be interminable, mawkish plaints to the sky, and any number of other modes of emotional manipulation.
Then on Thursday we get Obama trying to compete with the opening of football season with yet another proposal that will require fruitless negotiation with the Boehner gang. Assuming that Obama even has "good" (meaning those he campaigned on) intentions anymore, or if he's even permitted by the rentier class to retain them, it is all for naught if he does not learn to negotiate with even a modest amount of skill.
Again, giving Obama some small benefit of the doubt that he has not a completely owned tool of Wall Street at this point, let us sketch out a reasonable metaphor for his pattern of negotiating things. I've probably used this one before, but whatever.
Let's say you are dealing with somebody who insists that 2+2=6, and they will brook no disagreement, will not discuss the issue, will not listen to entreaties of empirical reason and cold rationality. You know that 2+2=4, and no amount of magickal thinking on the part of you or them or anyone else is going to change that. However, you also have to figure out a way to work something out with your idiot opponent. What do you do?
Well, whatever you decide to do, one thing you most definitely don't do is open with, "Well, what if we compromise and say 2+2=5, and work from there?". You may, after long and hard-fought debate, eventually be forced to concede something along this line to move things along and get something done, but only an asshole does this as an opening gambit.
Yet this is what Obama has done and continues to do with every major economic initiative. He doesn't just punt on first down, he routinely concedes before the ball has even been kicked and the clock has started ticking. I would not at all be surprised if he fucks over the entire next generation (or more) on Social Security and Medicare, and grants yet more bullshit "job creating" tax cuts (because the ones he's given up have created so many already) just to get some hopelessly-compromised "job bill" going.
This is how the man does every blessed thing. It does not seem to occur to him that granting upfront concessions to an irrational opponent does not defuse the antagonism of the negotiating scenario, it emboldens the opponent. If you give up that much without even so much as a fight, before the bell has even rung, how much more will you give up when you take a right cross to the nose. Over and over, again and again, Boehner and Cantor and their merry little friends delight in playing Lucy to Obama's Charlie Brown, getting that sadistic frisson every damned time he lands on his back, not knowing or caring why he can't ever seem to believe his own lyin' eyes.
And of course the Thankralphers are already scuttling out of the woodwork, reminding us all of the burn-at-the-stake heresy of even murmurs of dissent at how Mister Man has chosen to make good on any of his campaign promises. You're getting a shit sandwich either way; Rick Perry's will probably come with one slab of stale crust, but other than that, essentially identical.
It's not that that isn't true and correct, mind you, that as awful as Obama has been and continues to be, and his inability and unwillingness to fight has wrought his current stature, he's still preferable to an unrepentant knuckle-dragger like Perry. But it should beg the question of why this is our "choice", why this is always our choice, why it is we, every bit as much as Obama, who plays the Charlie Brown sucker role, whatever and ever, amen.
Friends 'n' neighbors, that helpful little graph at the top of your screen is the answer to all of those questions, why your politics, culture, news, economy, and so much more is just a big box o' turds. It is that, and absolutely nothing more, I promise you. And it is never, ever going to change until we do something about it.
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