Dances With Wingnuts

Latest Newspaper Column

I confess, I've never watched "Dancing With the Stars." The idea of has-been and never-were pseudo-celebrities shaking their booties has just never had that much appeal to me.

Lately, however, it's been impossible to escape the coverage across all forms of media regarding the participation of Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol on the show.

TV viewers and entertainment journalists began noting that Miss Palin and her partner, Mark Ballas, kept surviving the cut despite what the show's pro judges, and many watchers, considered weaker performances. Talk began to circulate that viewers were voting for Bristol not out of any particular appreciation for her terpsichorean talents but out of support for her mother, the Resigning Woman.

Some even suggested that the followers of Mama Grizzly were gaming the voting system, rumors that were fed when right-wing radio host Tammy Bruce organized what she called "Operation Bristol" and the wingnut website HillBuzz noted that, while you had to provide an e-mail address to vote online, you didn't have to provide a real one, which allowed people to vote multiple times.

Nonsense, said the show's producer. DWTS, he claimed, uses "a number of security checks" to prevent voter fraud via the Web, text and phone calls.

Still, some people remained suspicious. One particularly irate viewer actually shot his TV out of frustration, shouting "The politics! The politics!"

I certainly understand his frustration at the politicization of the pure and ancient art of the dance on a show that once featured Steve-O from "Jackass" doing the cha-cha. But I've got to say that there are so many things that are more worth shooting your TV over. Those commercials with the talking mucus, for example.

The Palins themselves fell back on their real talent: not for dancing, but for stirring up resentment and the furious certainty among their supporters that somewhere, somehow, there's someone out there looking down on them. They may not know who or where, by golly, but you could stick a finger in their imaginary eyes by voting for Bristol, who told an interviewer that if she won, "it would be like giving a big middle finger to people who hate my mom and hate me."

Even when Bristol came in third in the final episode, an anonymous writer at Hillbuzz claimed a moral victory, saying: "You drove the left crazy for three months. Score!"

Dudes, I hate to break it to you, but no one on the left even watches "Dancing with the Stars," and we certainly don't have time to get our mad on about whether or not one of the numerous progeny of the Quitta From Wasilla took home the trophy.

We're too busy figuring out new and fiendish ways to turn your children into Muslims, force them to marry gay abortionists, ban everything from the American diet except tofu and alfalfa sprouts, and destroy capitalism. (That was a joke, people.)

The Palins and the folks at Hillbuzz were only expressing one of the highest ideals of modern conservatism, to wit: Talent doesn't matter. Competence doesn't matter. The only thing that really matters is annoying liberals. If no actual liberals are involved in the issue, then think about what will annoy the liberals you've made up in your head.

It's the same principle that occasionally motivates some idiot to loudly proclaim that he's going to drive a big SUV and eat a steak, not because he likes those things, but "to make liberals angry." The steak and SUV industries appreciate it, and so do the cardiologists and the oil companies. The rest of us just wish you'd get the heck over yourself, when we bother to think about you at all, which isn't often.

But while I've got their attention, let me just say: You know what would really annoy me? If everyone had affordable health care. That would make me absolutely livid. A sane policy for fighting terrorism that guaranteed that terrorist criminals would face trials and that respected the Bill of Rights? That would really make me mad, too.

Dignity and basic rights for people who love differently from me, including the right to serve openly in the military and the right to marry? That would raise my blood pressure something fierce. A tax policy that gave relief to the middle class and made sure millionaires, billionaires and mega-corporations paid their fair share toward keeping this country running? Man, my head might explode from sheer rage.

Get to it, folks. Make me mad.

Poor Baby

Palin attacks media over coverage of North Korea gaffe

Seems that the most thin-skinned politician in the US today has her knickers in the usual twist over how MEAN people are being to her because she slipped up on Glenn Beck's show and said North Korea was our ally.

Now, a normal person would just laugh it off and go , "Heh, yeah, I misspoke." Not the Resigning Woman, who never misses a chance to stir up resentment and anger among her supporters over how her delicate feelings are hurt. And, of course, she's gone to the old "Obama did it too!" counterattack.

Yeah, Sarah, the President has made a few stumbles, like the time he said during the campaign that he'd been to "fifty-seven" states.

Yes, I cut Obama some slack for a simple slip of the tongue, and you know what? I'd do the same for you, if you and your wingnut dimwit brigade hadn't been clamoring for two years that that slip really meant that Obama doesn't really know how many states there are, or that he meant Islamic states and that that showed he really IS a Secret Mooslim. Or something.

So you can just suck it up, dear. Sauce for the goose, etc.

I cannot WAIT for this woman to run for President. The meltdown is going to be EPIC.

Finally, Enough

Latest Newspaper Column:

After the terrible events of 9/11, airline passengers found that their baggage was subject to greater scrutiny.

Things that were previously allowed on airplanes, including such deadly implements of war as nail clippers, were being confiscated at the gates by the newly formed Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). A few people grumbled, but there wasn't any serious resistance. After all, it was in the name of security.

After an odd-looking goomer named Richard Reid tried and failed to bring down an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe, airline passengers had to remove their shoes and put them into a grimy plastic tub to be x-rayed if they wanted to get on the plane. A few people grumbled, but there wasn't any serious resistance. After all, it was in the name of security.

After another set of screwups tried and failed to bring down an airplane with liquid explosives, airline passengers had to bring any liquids in little tiny containers sealed in little tiny plastic bags. A few people grumbled, but there wasn't any serious resistance. After all, it was in the name of security.

After yet another loser tried and failed to bring down an airplane with explosives hidden in his undershorts, airline passengers were given a choice: They could walk through a "full-body scanner," which showed everything under their clothes, or they could go through what was called an "enhanced pat-down."

Now, after all this time, people are doing more than grumbling. They're getting downright angry.

It started with the pilot's unions, who began to advise their members not to expose themselves repeatedly to the radiation from the so-called "backscatter" or "millimeter wave" scanners, which they regarded with suspicion, even though the manufacturer insists that the additional radiation is no worse than what they get from a few minutes at cruising altitude.

Let me just stop for a moment and pose a question to the readership which no one has yet been able to answer for me: Why the heck are we screening the pilots for weapons anyway? Are we afraid they'll seize control of the plane? I mean, if a pilot really wants to kill all the passengers and himself, he's not going to need to hold a box cutter to his own throat to do it.

But I digress.

Passengers also expressed distrust of the scanners, not just for the radiation, but out of a suspicion that TSA employees might be getting their jollies from watching their nekkid bodies as they pass through. Having seen the ghostly quality of the images, I actually find it a little hard to believe that anyone could find them arousing, but, you know, there are some really strange people out there.

The Internet and the airwaves are full of stories of people, including children as young as 3, having their intimate areas aggressively poked, grabbed and squeezed by ham-handed TSA officials who don't even buy you dinner first, let alone send flowers the next day.

Finally, it seems, American airline travelers have had enough.

A video of a passenger declaring to a TSA employee, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested" went viral. A passenger's-rights organization declared the day before Thanksgiving "National Opt Out" day, suggesting that people bring the airports to a standstill on the busiest day of the year by demanding en masse that they be given the "enhanced pat down." More whimsical protesters have suggested showing up in the airport in a Speedo or a kilt (sans underwear).

Meanwhile, a Senate subcommittee began hearings this past week on the new policies, during which Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill immediately wedged her foot in her mouth up to the kneecap when she dismissed the "enhanced" searches as "love pats."

I, for one, am glad to see more Americans finally questioning the TSA and the increasingly ridiculous demands of what security expert Bruce Schneier has dubbed "security theater" - measures that claim to provide enhanced safety but do little or nothing toward actually doing so.

And it only took having the government try to look under their clothes or grope their unmentionables to get them to do it. Hey, it's a start.

The Other Talk You Should Be Having With Your Kids

This Just In: Oklahoma Saved From Non-Existent Threat

Latest Newspaper Column:

One of the stranger things coming out of the recent midterm elections was a ballot initiative in the state of Oklahoma that purported to ban any consideration of "Sharia law" in decisions of that state's courts.

The measure, known as the "Save our State" amendment, also banned the state's courts from "considering or using international law" in their decisions.

When I first heard about this, I confess I was intrigued. I wasn't even aware Oklahoma needed saving. Was there some sort of movement afoot to impose Islamic jurisprudence on the good people of the Sooner State? Were bearded imams ascending the bench in Tulsa, Muskogee, and Oklahoma City and issuing fatwas that thieves have their hands amputated and adulterers be stoned to death in public? (And if so, wouldn't those remedies actually be popular among a certain class of voter?)

Well, no. As it turns out, this was another example of a "solution" without a problem. Even the bill's supporters admit that there's never been a case in Oklahoma - ever - where anyone has tried to apply Sharia law.

But, they say, there was a case in New Jersey (a place probably as foreign and exotic to most Oklahomans as Yemen or Dubai) in which a particularly boneheaded family court judge denied a Muslim woman a restraining order against the husband who repeatedly raped her by basically shrugging and saying, "Hey, it's his religion. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong."

Fortunately, the New Jersey appellate court quickly smacked that decision down, ruling, "Hey, doofus, there's a long line of cases saying you can't use your religion as a defense against criminal laws, like the ones against polygamy and the use of peyote in religious rites. Remember those, dimwit?" (I'm paraphrasing, of course.)

But who wants to hear that well-reasoned, well-settled and existing law can deal with the one case in the country where some county judge made the error of looking at what he thought (incorrectly, as it turned out) was Muslim law? When demagogues want to whip that fear up, the fact that there's no crisis should be no bar to the free exercise of religious hysteria.

In the immortal words of a great Western statesman (Mel Brooks' character Governor LePetomaine in the movie "Blazing Saddles"): "We've gotta protect our phoney-baloney jobs, gentlemen!"

Problem is, while "Sharia law" sounds impressive and scary, the people who are most afraid of it probably would struggle to define exactly what it is, other than equating it with "Islamic law."

But once you start doing the most basic research, the first thing you find is that Muslims themselves argue all the time about what religious law requires. The Sunnis have one view, the Shi'ites have another, and even among those two main groups, there are sub-groups like the Hanafi, the Wahabi, etc. etc.

I thought Protestants were argumentative about fine points of doctrine, but they're practically monolithic compared with Muslims. And don't even get me started on the Sufis. Now that I think of it, maybe that is a good reason for banning even the mention of Sharia law from our courts. The ones we have are complicated enough.

As so often happens, however, laws that seem like a good idea on the surface may well have unintended consequences. A University of Oklahoma law professor has wondered if, since the law purports to ban consideration of "precept[s] of another culture and another nation" in court decisions, wouldn't it also ban consideration of the Ten Commandments? (Contrary to what some people seem to believe, Moses was not an American.)

More seriously, some legal scholars have wondered, how does the prohibition against using other countries' law in the decision process affect the interpretation of contracts with overseas businesses? Are German, Dutch, Japanese, etc. companies going to be less willing to deal with companies in Oklahoma (thus costing the state jobs) as a result?

As of this writing, a federal judge has stayed implementation of the new law, pending further review, on First Amendment and other grounds. So a law passed in the heat of emotion and fear will receive scrutiny in the cold light of the Constitution, while the people who claim to revere that very Constitution scream about "activist judges."

Hey, what's more American than that?

Here Goes Nothing

Latest Newspaper Column:

So now the Republican Party has won back control of the U.S. House but failed to win the Senate. Nancy Pelosi has lost her job as speaker, while Harry Reid, who’s almost as hated by the GOP as Pelosi, remains as Senate majority leader.

Networks and pundits are all talking about a “historic shift in power.” The only debate seems to be about whether it’s a “hurricane,” a “tsunami” or an “earthquake” for the Democrats.

I keep reading about how historic a change this is, but I keep getting the nagging feeling that I’ve heard all this before.

In 2006, we had a Republican Congress and a Republican president. The voters said, “That’s not working too well,” and presto! We had a “historic upheaval” resulting in a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.

Two years later, the voters decided, “That’s not working either,” and so we had another “historic power shift” that gave us a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president.

Now, in 2010, people look around at a sluggish economy, with high unemployment, and they’re mad that things still don’t seem to be working.

Here’s the thing: It’s easy to get tunnel vision when it comes to Democrats vs. Republicans, liberals vs. conservatives. I’m guilty of it myself. But when it comes right down to it, the vast majority of people don’t care about that. They want a country that works. And their sole criteria for that is how well they think the economy’s doing. If that’s not working, they don’t care which party’s in power. They just want that party gone.

As a couple of Senate races showed, however, there’s a limit to how far voters will let anger take them.

The defeats of tea party favorites Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware demonstrated that when your one and only criterion for vetting a nominee is “she’s not a professional politician,” you’re going to get some amateurs who’ll flail around and blow what should have been easy GOP pickups.

Voters took a good look at the seriously loopy O’Donnell and the far-right extremist Angle (who warned that people might resort to “Second Amendment remedies” if her side didn’t win) and said, “You know what? We’re not that angry yet.”

So what’s likely to be happening in the U.S. Congress for the next two years? My prediction: a whole lot of nothing.

The Republicans don’t really have an agenda, other than “stopping Obama.” Oh, they talk a good game about cutting spending, taxes and the deficit.  But they’re always maddeningly evasive on which spending they’re going to cut. Medicare? Social Security? Defense? Those are the biggies, but good luck with that.

When anyone in the lazy media actually presses for an answer (a rare occurrence), they fall back to the same vague bogeymen they’ve been using for years: “waste” and “pork” (now known as “earmarks”).

But they don’t really get specific on those either, since what “pork” really means to a congressman is “spending money in someone else’s district.” Cut taxes without cutting spending, and up goes the deficit.

 House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, in line for the majority leader position, claims that the first thing the Republicans are going to try to do is “repeal Obamacare,” but it’s going to take more than a House vote to undo the recently passed Affordable Care Act.

They don’t have the votes in the Senate — which, as we’ve seen, is the place where legislation goes to die. There certainly aren’t enough votes anywhere to override the inevitable presidential veto. And as it turns out, people actually like some of the provisions that have taken effect, such as the one that says you can’t be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

Oh, and while you’re at it, Mr. Cantor, good luck on getting any compromises or bipartisanship. Not only did your party run on demonizing Democrats, but the only Democrats that the GOP could hope to sway were the ones in normally Republican districts, who might have seen some political benefit to making deals. Now they’re gone.

On your own right flank, you’ve got your newly minted tea party “allies,” some of whom have sworn to shut down the entire government rather than compromise. That’ll make you real popular when Grandma can’t get her Social Security check because you and Speaker Boehner can’t get a budget passed.

 And so we head toward another “historic upheaval” in two years, when the voters decide that this isn’t working too well, either.

So how’s that “change” thing looking now?