Everyone seems to be having a field day skewering the McCain/Palin ticket these days. There is, after all, such a wealth of material to choose from. David Letterman’s having a field day. But then again, the Republican candidates seem to be skewering themselves as well, as any number of clips from that infamous Katie Couric interview will attest.
I often wonder where all the good politicians have gone. Did we ever actually have any? How many presidents in the 20th century had no slimy dealings in their political lifetimes? They weren’t all as bad as Lyndon Johnnson and Richard Nixon, but they weren’t all that much better, either. They associated with crooks, got involved in shady deals, cheated on their wives, tried to use the power of the presidency to form imperial fiefdoms for themselves, were obsessed with other countries who were no real threat…  the list of idiocies is a long one.
The biggest problem today is that so many people have fallen for the anti-intellectual world view, in which any kind of higher learning is suspicious in and of itself, and there’s no point in knowing anything about any history farther back than yesterday. (George Wallace would be proud to see what he hath wrought.) “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know,” said Harry Truman. I think if ol’ Harry could see We The People today he’d be sick.
Too many people get all their information second hand from broadcast blowhards. They don’t read (and undoubtedly can understand why Sarah Palin doesn’t either). They don’t check facts. They agree with anything that sounds logical and rings true with their biases.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the media blowhards could be compelled to defend their positions against people who do know what they’re talking about? Live on national TV. No rehearsals, no commercial breaks, no “lifelines.” Let’s put Vincent Bugliosi up against Rush Limbaugh and Gore Vidal against Bill O’Reilly. No, it wouldn’t be “fair and balanced” because the windbags couldn’t stack the deck.
Katie Couric was a softball interviewer and Sarah Palin still fell right off her spike heels and onto her face.  Isn’t it time someone took on the ignorant right-wing blowhards and knocked them off their wingtips as well?
photo credit: GregPC
