17th
Yeah, But Will it Play in the Asylum?
Have you ever seen those guys that hand out pamphlets outside the DMV? Maybe the guy on the street corner with “THE END IS NIGH” sandwich board? Maybe the guy that even knocks on your door because he has some urgent information about…whatever?
Have you ever found yourself in a bar and realize that you accidentally got into a conversation with the absolute wrong person? Like, all of a sudden the conversation goes from who would be a better point guard for the Dallas Mavericks to Zionist conspiracies? And you take a good look at the guy spouting this nonsense and you see this charge in his eyes and you realize that you would rather be somewhere, hell, ANYWHERE else?
Last weekend, a huge congregation of those folks all came to my neck of the woods.
It was “Teabagfest Mark 2,” in which people came to Washington to roar about how upset they are that all of their taxes have gone up even though none of their taxes have gone up. It was where people with signs calling the President a Muslim and a terrorist and a communist and a socialist and a killer of old people came to D.C. to protest the fact that their freedoms are at risk, even though you have to figure that if you are in a country where it’s perfectly okay to carry a sign calling the President a Muslim and a terrorist and a communist and a socialist and a killer of old people, your freedoms are humming along pretty freaking good. They came to protest rampant government spending, which has honest to God never happened in America before. Seriously.
Come on, Cleetus, we know it isn’t just the spending. It’s those two peripheral factors about the spending that are bugging you. Your first problem is what the gubmint happens to be spending the money on. You had no problems with that level of spending during the W Administration because they were spending money on stuff that you liked. Shiny things that go boom. Giving Halliburton seventy gajillion bucks so the troops could have fresh rainbow colored sprinkles at the new food court sundae bar. Tax cuts for the people that laid you off. Good thing too, because when you win the lottery you sure as hell won’t want Uncle Sam digging in your pockets. Any day now, any day now…
Problem number two is, let’s face it, the uh…complexion, shall we say, of the guy doing the spending. Sorry. I saw too many Dixie flags and heard far too many comfortable utterances of the word “nigger” for me to believe otherwise.
This was not the march of principled, thoughtful conservatives. If it were, there sure as hell would have been more than 70,000 people. Do not let it be spun that the media was just focusing on the bad apples. It was ALL bad apples. It was those guys at the DMV. The street corner prophets. The wrong guy at the bar. The guy knocking at your door. This was the march of the hot new demographic. The batshit crazy. The fanatically uninformed. The conspiracy freaks. The cheerful bigots.
Which is what Fox News has figured out. Somewhere in New York, some bright young thing in marketing said, “You know what? Those guys in the tinfoil hats probably eat breakfast cereal, too. And there are just enough of these folks to make catering to them profitable.”
So you have shows where every single dingbat rumor culled from the scum traps of the internet are given credence, graphics and lots and lots of camera time. And all those dingbats, those nutcases, those paranoid, delusional and Yes, Virginia, utterly racist bozos are RIVITED to Fox News now. And in order to keep these folks glued to the screen, they are going to have to get weirder and wilder, just like on Lost. And Obama has only been in office 9 months. If you think those talking heads and talk radio hosts are crazy now, just wait until this time next year.
