Old, White, Gringo, and Clueless
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012, by matthewwalkerA few days ago, before the USA Presidential election, when right-wing and even mainstream TV networks were still trying hard to sell the image of Obama-vs-Romney as a “tossup” or, worse, a Mitt Romney win, I kept visiting Nate Silver’s election-analysis FiveThirtyEight blog to keep my facts straight. 
Sure, I sometimes visited the big TV-news operations for occasional comic relief, but the fun fades fast when you realize that everything on commercial television is always a tossup, or down to the wire, or too close to call, etc. It’s like daytime “talk-shows” (mostly overweight folks bashing each other endlessly with folding chairs). Why do the networks roll like that? Hello? – TV networks depend on advertisers, who just want lots of audience eyeballs, and audiences are not going to watch a fight if everyone knows how it’s going to end. Got it?
So add to this media unreality a simple sociological fact: Republicans, conservatives, and hardcore evangelicals are all about FAITH. That would be just fine if, for example, the Bible expressly forbade “abortion” (not even mentioned), but in practice it mostly means that even moderate Republican candidates for public office must endure trial-by-fire just to get nominated. There’s always the wild-eyed Christian zealots to fend off before normal Republicans can try for “consensus.” By the time an election actually happens, Republicans have shed a lot of their own blood just trying to prove who is the true believer. It helps if you really believe.
No surprise that so many old white Republicans were shocked that black liberal Democrat President Obama (what’s his middle name again? ain’t he actually from Kenya?) got elected to a second term. What? Say again? How did this happen? Very few news outlets nailed it as well as an article in CBSNEWS.com: “After Romney loss, GOP soul searching begins.”
Let’s see….
In a tight economy, the Republicans offered candidates for President & Vice President who were (just say it) REALLY WHITE, really rich, also just hopeless on the subject of women’s rights, and clueless about what used to be called “minorities” (add up all the minorities nowadays and what do you get?). I mean, would Romney know a chimichanga if it hit him in the head? Meanwhile Obama appoints a Latina to the Supreme Court, and so on and so on. The election was tight, but it wasn’t a fair fight – contrary to what the talking heads said on TV.
We have been thrashing intermittently on the Worldwide Web for many years, with occasional breaks due to reasons such as parenthood, medical leave, summertime (you should always celebrate summer), and the election of a U.S. President with a brain (hint: he’s got game). The reason we have reappeared this time is that another Presidential election is coming up, and we intend (again) to strafe the bozos and support the righteous, using the power of the Internet. We hope you’ll join us.
