The Tea-Bags of Wrath

I’ve never met Rich Perlberg, the executive editor of the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus, and sometimes knowing someone helps to understand how and why some sort of kerfuffle blows up around them. Sure, I’ve been reading his editorials for years but he never really struck me as someone committed to the kerfuffle business.
Mr. Perlberg fancies himself as a conventional moderate in a county that considers Bill O’Reilly a bit left-leaning. He took a little heat back in 2007 for allowing the newspaper to be one of the sponsors for an Ann Coulter speech, but in Livingston County, Ann’s just a moderate.
I do feel a little bad for him, though. They say you’re judged by the company you keep and poor ole Rich is kind of stuck between companies right now. Progressives know he’s not about the kind of change they’re hoping for, and now conservatives have turned on him like he was working for ACORN on the side. Which I pretty much doubt, but like I said, I don’t know the man.
Back on Sept. 13 Mr. Perlberg wrote an editorial in The Daily Press and Argus in what I would call a breezy style. You know, not lots of hokey gravitas like a Southern politician would use. You could kind of see him smiling as he wrote it.
But man, the hounds of hell slipped their chains that day. Apparently, breezy is not an approved conservative literary style. In the following days Letters to the Editor column a Mr. Nelson wrote that it was written in a “childish …style” (Letters, Sept. 17) which may explain why Mr. Prystash wrote that even his 5 year old understood what the heck was going on (Letters, Sept. 17).
The game changing event Mr. Perlberg covered in his editorial was a party given by a group of non-partisan Republicans at the Brighton Millpond. August celebrities attended such as Joe the Plumber, who’d better get back to plumbing or he won’t have to worry about taxes at all anymore. Actually Joe seemed to be about the only one skipping work that day. There were stay at home moms with their (precocious) tots, retirees and small business owners, but I couldn’t see a lot of people who might have clocked out for an hour or two to attend the party. You know, guys in mechanics clothes, pressmen with inky fingers or even a McDonald’s uniform.
It’s too bad they missed it because these parties are such a riot that there’s even a band of groupies with a bus and everything following the parties around the countryside organizing these spontaneous events wherever the voice (or school video) of President Obama might be heard.
Apparently the parties are open to the public so long as the public answers the question, “Did your heart explode when you awoke last November 5 to find out McCain lost the election?” by saying “God yes,” an invocation of complicity.
Although he was in attendance, Mr. Perlberg chose not to debate obvious (at least to him) facts like the government already runs your healthcare if you have Medicare. He may have felt that if you didn’t believe that to be true, rational discussion was clearly not going to rear its controversial head. So when he got back to his office, a breezy style was adopted.
Too bad because it shows that the whole point of the party eluded Mr. Perlberg much the way the statements of Sonja Sotomayor eluded old white judges.
The point was that there were 4,000 people with 4,000 complaints and they were hoping Mr. Perlberg would make it 4001. He could have joined Joe and his rants about his deep affection for his fire arm, the retirees who promised there would be no government-run health care, the birthers who spoke of secret dark conspiracies, or even joined the people of non-color warning everyone else that, for now, they are still in the majority.
It’s too bad Mr. Perlberg didn’t reach out to these poor souls disaffected by society. They were clearly hurting and reaching out for understanding. Breezy just didn’t do it.

Thanks, Joe Wilson (No Lie!)

Like 99% of the American populace, I’d never heard of Rep. Joe Wilson before his now famous outburst. But after reading a few articles on the internet about him I realize I owe him a debt of gratitude.
Joe is a cracker from South Carolina who isn’t actually a Joe at all. He’s an Addison, and like many people from South Carolina Addison Graves Wilson Sr. seems fixated on an era that doesn’t exist anywhere but in the minds of his neighbors and him. The era is one when African American citizens showed deference to white people, acted like they enjoyed working in the homes of white people, and had no rights to vote, go to the local school or even grab a sandwich at the soda shop downtown.
A couple of years ago my daughter was considering two out of state employment opportunities. She visited Columbia, South Carolina and Denver, Colorado to get a sense of not only the job but also the culture.
During the ensuing family discussion of the pros and cons of each, I had to tell her that if she moved to South Carolina I’d be hard pressed to visit her. South Carolina didn’t make my list of a million places to visit before I die.
She was incredulous. How could I be so arbitrary? I explained that it wasn’t just South Carolina, but most of the confederate states missed inclusion on my list. South Carolina stood out because of their insistence on flying a flag at the state capitol from a war that ended 150 years ago.
Germany ditched the Swastika flag, Japan got rid of the Rising Sun but the confederate flag officially flies in Columbia.
Much of the credit must go to Addison Wilson who, as a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans was one of only seven (all Republican) Senators who voted to continue to fly the confederate flag on the capitol roof in 2000. However, the compromise to fly the flag on the capitol grounds did little to mollify this Son of whatever.
Prior to that, Addison Wilson had served as a page for the 1948 Segregationist party’s presidential nominee, Strom Thurmond when Thurmond served in the U.S. Senate. After Thurmond’s death in 2003 Addison was shocked when an African American woman named Essie Mae Washington-Williams came forward with the news that Thurmond had supported her mother and her after impregnating her then 16 year old mother.
Addison was distraught. He called the revelation “unseemly” and wondered aloud why Ms. Washington-Williams hadn’t kept the news to herself.
Addison, like Nixon and G. W. Bush, believes that actions have no meaning, that the illusion constructed around the action is all that’s important.
Addison’s outburst came during a speech on health care reform by President Obama. In fact, before Addison converted his campaign website into a plea for contributions, it headlined “JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!” Like so many other confused people, however, Addison forgets that his entire family is covered, at no charge, by TRICARE, a government run health care program for some servicemen and veterans. He calls TRICARE “world class care”.
And to prove that only faux aristocracy like him deserves free “world class” care, Addison has repeatedly voted not to include all reservists and National Guard members in TRICARE eligibility.
Wilson claims his outburst was spontaneous. I suppose maybe it was. He sat there being lectured by a black man, who happens to be the President of the United States of America, and just couldn’t take it any more. He needed to let people, especially his South Carolina constituents, know that he would not civilly listen to this uppity black.
Addison’s outburst was intended to show those people whose self worth is based solely on their skin color that the old southern biases are alive and well in Columbia.
For that I thank him. My daughter, still in Denver, now understands why there are parts of this great country I’ll never visit or pass through.
I prefer looking to the future and the possibilities it holds to wallowing around in regret and recrimination over a war that ended 150 years ago and a culture that’s best days are behind it but still flatters itself by dehumanizing others.

Grouchy Old Paranoids Keep Students Home: The Country is Saved!

Hallelujah! This morning dawned without word of the takeover of the United States by armed 8th graders or camouflaged guerilla 10th graders. There was no looting the rich and handing it out to the poor. The President spoke to school children and the nation survived!
Of course, the President of the United States of America addressed only those students whose parents don't belong to the Grouchy Old Paranoids (GOP) party.
Just imagine the relief of American bigots like Glenn Beck who was so concerned that a black man would be speaking in lily white schools that he urged parents to keep their children home on Tuesday.
Or William Skilling, Superintendent of Oxford Community Schools whose blood pressure got so high he became confused about what President Obama was speaking about and proclaimed "It is not the role to indoctrinate our students in either politics or religion.". Lordy, that Obama must be some speaker to do all that indoctrinating in 15 minutes.
How did parochial school administrators deal with such a "controversial" video?
Randy Speck, superintendent of Oakland Christian School, admitted that the right wing opposition had grown way out of proportion to the video and allowed his high school students to view it. "This kind of outrage gives conservative Christians a bad name," he said.
And although neither the outrage nor his statement changed my opinion of conservative Christians one iota, I now suspect William Skilling isn't one of the sharper pencils in the cup..
Other Republicans didn't seem quite so threatened by the video. Newt Gingrich thought it was "a good speech and...good for students to hear."
Laura Bush said, "There's a place for the President of the United States to talk to school children and encourage school children."
The far right wing, of course, feared what they most fear about all education: free thinking and analysis. Had the President spoken of independent thought, the next generation of unquestioning ditto heads might be contaminated.
Oh well, sooner or later Americans who aren't proudly ignorant ditto heads will figure out that bashing Obama in advance of his actions says more about the Fox News Channel and Reactionary Radio than about the President. Plus, he's not the real thorn in their sides.
Over 60% of Americans voted for change last year and we intend to have it.

Republicans Won't Let the Truth Kill a Good Story

The party of the Grouchy Old Paranoids (GOP) has employed P. T. Barnum's philosophy for years to woo the gullible into the big tent of the wealthy. In America there is indeed one born every minute and the Republicans voter precentage wouldn't break into double figures without them.
Why else would former V. P. Cheney still walk around telling people that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and someday we'll find all the weapons of mass destruction he's just about positive must be in Iraq? Other world leaders assume he's daft but actually he's just wearing his team's colors.
And last year's Presidential campaign? Really! He's Muslim who goes to a Christian church that has an atheist preacher? His fist bump with his wife was really a terrorist signal? His Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake? God these paranoids are hilarious when threatened.
Now there's a yard sign in my neighborhood that proclaims "Obamacare = Euthanasia for the Elderly".
Ignoring the obvious fact that President Obama does not have a health care program and has asked Congress to create one, this old folks euthanasia fable feeds right into the Grouchy Old Paranoid fantasies, doesn't it?
This right wing scare tactic is another cable news fact that has been discredited everywhere but on the Fox News channel.
For the record, the facts are written here (Newsweek) and here (Wall Street Journal).
Of course loyal Republicans wouldn't dare follow these links. They're ditto heads and ordered not to look for the truth under any circumstance.
There is one GOP lie that I wish was true...that Democrats will have the power to deny health care to Republicans.
Imagine Limbaugh without his oxycontin.