11/22/2010 America's New Entertainment: Political Shenanigans
By Don Monkerud
A senator has an affair with the treasurer of his election campaign
and political action committee, gives her a no-interest loan of
$40,000, and pays $15,000 for her children's private school
tuition. After their affair becomes public, he fires her, gives her
husband a lucrative lobbying job to keep him quiet, and his parents
give her $100,000 as a "gift."
The Federal Election Commission found no evidence that Senator John
Ensign, Republican of Nevada, did anything wrong. His lawyer claims
the decision is "one step closer to the truth." Ordinarily this
would be considered corruption, but in today's world we accept it
with a smile.
At a time when Americans are depressed, under and unemployed,
unhoused, and their welfare is ignored by Congress, the political
elite works overtime to keep citizens entertained with a strange
type of twisted black humor.
If only this were an isolated case, but it's not. Politicans are
taking tips from reality TV to aim at the lowest common
denominator-more like a pie in the face than keen wit. Take, for
example, the new Congressional Tea Party Caucus, with 53 members,
founded by newly elected Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann.
Her recent gaffes include: tirades against "gangster government"
usurping private enterprise; attempts to employ a born-again
evangelical minister to teach Congresspeople about the
Constitution; and claims that Obama's trip to India cost taxpayers
$200 million a day. She goes through staff members like she puts
runs in her nylons.
Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor from the University
of Minnesota, explains that she's not just some off-the-wall kook,
but speaks "in code" to a "conservative, grass-roots" base. Her
crazy statements merely show her authenticity. Do people find this
embarrassing? No. It's acceptable nuttiness, given our right-wing
extremists.
Republicans are not the only ones jumping on the humor bandwagon.
President Barack
Obama is pushing hard for a new nuclear arms treaty. In order
to get rid of nuclear weapons, he supports building new factories
to build more and better nuclear bombs.
The factories will produce over 80 new bombs a year and have an $85
billion price tag over 20 years-despite a single building in the
complex that broke ground in 2004 for $660 million and wound up
costing almost $6 billion, a sort of
knife-in-the-ribs-of-the-public humor. Forget that the chosen site
lies within a mile of a major earthquake fault. We need to know
that the bombs will actually work when we use them, except we won't
use them because we are trying to get rid of them. This type of
black humor straight out of Dr. Strangelove.
Even minor politicans wield humor with behind-the-back parlor
tricks. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York wants to appoint
Cathleen Black, a wealthy media executive, to run the troubled city
school system. Her children attended expensive private schools and
she has absolutely no experience in education, yet she's eminently
qualified, according to Bloomberg. Her qualifications include her
seat on the Coca-Cola board, as it fought attempts to end childhood
obesity by discouraging school children from consuming sugary
drinks, and her role as the newspaper industry's chief lobbyist in
upholding their right to encourage consumers to smoke, get cancer
and die.
Bloomberg is joking when he talks about transformative change
because what he really means is drastically cutting public school
budgets and eliminating thousands of New York City teachers. How
can he keep a straight face? When you're worth $18 billion, spend
over $200 million in three terms to get elected, and give your
campaign workers almost $3 million in bonuses, no one tells you
that you're full of BS.
Even Tea Party true believers are in on the shenanigans. Take their
stand on race for example. They were nowhere to be seen when the
Supreme Court appointed Bush to the presidency instead of ordering
a recount, or when Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, wiretapped us
illegally, shipped six million jobs overseas in the interest of
"globalization," or went $10 billion in the red after arranging a
$2 trillion in tax cut for the wealthiest one percent. Only after
Americans elected a black president did they begin foaming at the
mouth and demanding that we return to the Constitution of
1779-although so far they remain mum about slavery.
Now they deny they are racist and fight back with quotes from
Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, claiming white people
are the ones being discriminated against. Hard to believe but it's
revealed by a Public Religion Research Institute Poll of hundreds
of thousands of online polls designed to detect prejudice. Over 60%
of white tea partiers, 56% of white Republicans, and 50% of white
independents claim that they, not minorities are being
discriminated against today. U.S. minorities must find these
assertions rolling-in-the-aisle funny.
Without even getting into the corporate-generated opposition to
global warming, fundamentalist nonsense about "the Rapture," or the
U.S. printing money to buy our bonds back from ourselves, the joke
is on us. Our standard of living may be headed for the toilet, but
we can still laugh. It's as if Marie Antoinette said, "Give'em
humor."