Posts tagged ‘Christine O’Donnell’
Something Silly and Something Serious
Today I bring you two videos. One is silly, silly as the candidate that it mocks. The other is serious.
First the silly one. Christine O’Donnell never sounded better.
Now the serious one. Sesame Street has a grand tradition of taking on subject matter that is tough for kids and maybe even tough for adults to discuss with kids. I remember years ago when actor Will Lee died, the producers of Sesame Street killed off his character Mr. Hooper. It was left to everyone in the neighborhood to explain this death to Big Bird and in the process introduce the concept to pre-schoolers who were watching.
One of the things that many little black girls do once they meet little white girls is wonder why their hair isn’t straight like that of their friends. Some get the idea very early that they have the “wrong” hair. In fact, comedian Chris Rock devoted an entire documentary, Good Hair, to what grown women go through to deal with their hair. My own daughter had her hair mocked by a classmate and was then told it was bad to be black. So I got a major kick when the Sesame Workshop decided to tackle this subject with a black girl Muppet who sings about how happy she is with her hair.
I’m pleased to say that my daughter has survived the mocking and takes great interest in her own hair-do’s, fully accepting that it is not straight (or “flat” as my kid would say). Still it’s nice to see videos like this help kids with their self-esteem.
You know it’s silly season when more social commentary can be gleaned from a Muppet video than the current crop of political ads (and the spoofs they inspire).
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Notes from the Fringe
What is it about 2010 that each political headline seems wackier than the previous one? Here are some random thoughts on some random wackiness.
Gay is Disgusting but it Pays the Rent
Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for New York State Governor, has a major problem with gays. In fact, he thinks taking your kid to a Gay Pride Parade is one of the worst things you can do — letting your kids see those queers bumping and grinding. After Carl expressed his disgust in public, he then issued an apology to the gay community. Could it have anything to do with his owning properties that house gay bars? Well I have to be honest here. I find Carl and his antics a breath of fresh air. If we overlook this minor hypocrisy, Carl has so far called ‘em like he sees them, politics be damned. Pundits have remarked that this is a by-product of people new to politics not knowing what to say or when to keep their mouth shut. But seriously, how can you resist a guy who in this PC age, says he finds the gay lifestyle revolting, tells a reporter “I will take you out”, and then asks for your vote in the next breath? Plus, if you close your eyes and just listen to him, it sounds like Andy Sipowicz from “NYPD Blue” is running for office.
Speaking of Gays, We Can Give Thanks for the End of DADT to … The GOP?
That’s right folks, the plaintiffs in the court case that may have ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, were the Log Cabin Republicans. How lame can our Democratic run government with our Democratic President be that it took a group of Republicans (albeit gay ones) to put an end to DADT? Well this really should not surprise us too much. President Obama has never done a particularly good job of hiding his disdain for the gay community. Whether it is his refusal to recognize gay marriage or his refusal to use the power of his office to end the practice of DADT, it is abundantly clear that gays offend Obama’s Christian sensibilities. It doesn’t win him any points with the moral majority conservatives because being born in Kenya trumps being a fellow homophobe in their book.
Christine O’Donnell Should be Running Against Alvin Greene
It is plain as day that neither Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell nor Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene are in a fair fight. O’Donnell, with witchcraft in her past is being slaughtered in the polls by her challenger Chris Coons. No one has yet figured out how Greene won the Democratic primary in South Carolina much less how he could possibly beat Jim DeMint. However, the two are such priceless candidates that it would be much more fun to see them square off against each other.
On Lawrence “Crazy Larry” O’Donnell’s new MSNBC show, The Last Word, Alvin Greene got his opportunity to speak to the issues. No slick subterfuge from this man. To almost every question Lawrence asked him (like where he got the nickname Turtle), Greene replied “Jim DeMint caused the recession.” Never have I seen any politician so doggedly stay on his talking points. DeMint could learn a thing or two from his opponent. Maybe if Jim stayed on a narrow script, he wouldn’t say dumb-ass crap like gays and single women shouldn’t be school teachers.
Then there is my new sweetheart, Christine O’Donnell. For the past two years I have been criticizing Rich Lowry of The National Review for his entirely penis-based support of Sarah Palin. It took some time but when Christine O’Donnell gave me that sideways look while the pretty music played in the background and she said “I’m not a witch. I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you.”, well my readers, my heart went all aflutter. In the space of a few weeks, O’Donnell has made Palin yesterday’s news. She’s pretty without the snark. She’s chirpy without the nagging Palin voice. And most of all, she is truly media savvy. After more than a decade of appearing on TV (mostly on Bill Maher’s old show Politically Incorrect), O’Donnell knows how to make love to a camera. I watched a few minutes of her debate with Chris Coons this evening and I have to admit I liked her. Unlike Palin who is dumb and sounds dumb, O’Donnell might not know jack-sh*t but she sells it. When she couldn’t name a recent Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed, it came off as honest, not idiotic. And when Wolf Blitzer volunteered Roe v. Wade, she reminded him that it wasn’t a recent case. I almost want her to win just so I can continue lusting after her for six years. Then again, several insiders say she’s not in this to win it in the first place. She just wants that contract at Fox News. So, heck, I may get to watch her anyway. (Please keep this between just you and me … I don’t want my wife to find out!)
If Only He Had Been a Confederate Soldier
Rich Iott, running for the House from Ohio made a splash with photos documenting his participation in a WWII reenactment “club” that he and his son bonded over. How could a little father-son bonding be a political football? Well it gets a bit tricky when Daddy plays a Nazi soldier in the reenactment and expresses admiration for WWII Germany as the little country that could. The other night, Chris Matthews used his MSNBC show Hardball to call out Iott and dismiss any comparison of WWII reenactors to Civil War reenactors. Sadly, that is where Chris missed the ball altogether. Civil War rebel soldiers are our Nazi’s, civil war era plantations are our concentration camps and blacks of the day are our Jews. You’d never know this by visiting the South. The last time I was in Atlanta the hotel TV advertised tours of plantations to give us a slice of Southern culture, with no mention of the degradation that went on there. I don’t know which is the greater American sin, the peculiar institution itself or our lack of true shame over our past. Perhaps we need to take a lesson from modern-day Germany which shows its remorse and, in fact, makes dressing up like a Nazi illegal. That’s serious regret. They don’t offer nostalgic tours of Buchenwald.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
The Age of the Nutjob Candidate
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What do the three folks pictured above all have in common? Bingo … they are all batsh*t crazy! Now imagine our Congress and Governor’s mansions occupied by carbon copies of these lunatics. Could never happen in America you say. Well, if the November elections go the way conservatives want them to, you would be wrong. Ignore for the moment the policy related insanity of Rand Paul who questions civil rights legislation, or Sharron Angle who thinks “2nd Amendment” solutions to our problems might be on the way. In 2010, they are the sane ones.
Last night Rachel Maddow featured a segment that if it were not so side-splittingly funny would have been truly horrific. These four candidates are either just plain silly or suffer from dangerous delusions of grandeur. Either way you slice it, they’re unfit for office.
- Christine O’Donnell, GOP candidate for Senator from Delaware claims that her participation in various social advocacy groups gave her access to classified information that warns of China’s secret plan to take over the US. We shouldn’t be fooled by any friendly gestures. They all have ulterior motives!
- Carl “I’ll take you out” Paladino claims he was used as a hostage negotiator at Kent State in the 70′s. Carl is running for New York State Governor.
- Dan Maes, the GOP candidate for Governor of Colorado, says he was a mole for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Guess what? He wasn’t.
- Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West claims his army security access was higher than that of the President of the United States. If they’re telling stuff to Allen that they’re not sharing with the Commander-in-Chief, we should be afraid …. very afraid!
It is not liberal snobbery to say we have a dumbed down electorate. We are not talking about primaries here folks. We are talking about people who are one election away from running their respective states or running our country. Can conservatives be so disgusted with the current state of affairs that they would turn to just anyone as an alternative?
In another month, we shall see who prevails. In the meantime, I give you the GOP candidate for US Senator from the great state of Connecticut, a woman seen on video kicking a man in the crotch in front of a screaming audience: the one and only Linda McMahon.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
You Say You Want a Revolution
The little engine that could roared into the station last night stunning all the naysayers. Delaware political fixture Mike Castle was defeated in his bid to be the Republican nominee for Senator by perennial loser Christine O’Donnell. Unlike prior attempts to win state-wide office, this year O’Donnell had the Tea Party and Sarah Palin behind her. The GOP establishment is beside itself convinced that the very odd O’Donnell doesn’t stand a snow ball’s chance in hell of beating Democratic nominee Chris Coons. Karl Rove has been vocal in his opposition to O’Donnell on the grounds she has a checkered past. Sarah Palin is telling the party to grow up.
Liberals might delight at this internecine warfare but I’d be cautious. O’Donnell was not the only strange bird to win a nomination last night. Carl Paladino, best known during this campaign season for forwarding pornographic pictures via email beat the well-known, if not well liked Rick Lazio for the GOP gubernatorial candidacy in New York. When we add this on top of the emergence of Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, we have more than just isolated odd cases. We have a trend. The question is defining the trend accurately.
I think the trend goes beyond throwing out incumbents. I think the trend goes beyond a Republican tsunami in November. I think the trend is evidence of the extreme anger of the American people. They are so pissed that they are deliberately choosing in-your-face fringe candidates. They don’t just want to “throw the bums out”. They want to remake the system. They want to put folks in charge who say things we haven’t heard in decades like Rand Paul’s questioning of 1960′s civil rights legislation or O’Donnell’s stand against … wait for it … masturbation. It is almost as though the more of a crackpot the candidate is, the better this new breed of angry voter likes it.
My smug liberal friends dismiss the Angles and the O’Donnells. I used to also. But when a man whose name was synonymous with Delaware politics, a Gopher thriving in a Dem state, can be sent packing, all bets are off. In other countries when the people get angry, violent revolution is often the result. I am beginning to think that this country might be due for its own revolution and the voters’ insane rage will not take the form of violence but will instead take the form of electing fringe candidates who will lead our country down who knows what path.
Last night
I saw the fire spreadin’ to
The palace door.
Silent majority
Weren’t keepin’ quiet
Anymore.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
2010: Return of the Whigs
I’m well-known for saying that at current rate and speed, the Republican party is on target to be the Whigs of the 21st century. Based on last night’s election results my prognosis may have been premature. Then again, was it? If you listened to the victory speeches of Rand Paul and Marco Rubio you did not hear the defiant declaration of Bush-era Republicans returning to the helm. On the contrary, you heard a rejection of a political party that had lost its way. Rand indicated he was going to make the Senate “deliberate” on a thing or two. Marco reminded his audience that last night was not a vote FOR the Republican party but rather a rejection of the current leadership.
After listening to a good six hours of talking heads (yes I’m obsessive) I came away with a few perspectives on last night’s mid-term results which I shall share in no particular order:
(For the most part) Nutjubs, Racists, and Misfits Need Not Apply
A few weeks ago MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow mourned the demise of the “macaca moment”. It was her assertion that the type of gaffe that could destroy a candidate the way “macaca” destroyed candidate George Allen in 2008, seemed to go unnoticed and completely forgiven in 2010. Alas Rachel was being a bit melodramatic. One thing we learned last night was that if you send pornographic photos via email (Carl Paladino), use blatantly racist campaign ads (Sharron Angle), declare that you are not a witch (Christine O’Donnell), dress up like a Nazi on the weekends (Rich Iott) or can barely complete a sentence in an interview, with a sex-offender accusation pending against you (Alvin Greene) then you are not going to be elected dog catcher by Americans in 2010. I cannot overestimate what a relief this was to me as I watched the results come in last night.
It’s The Economy Stupid
Liberals will burn me in effigy for saying this but if last night taught us anything it was that we wasted eighteen months on health care reform that most of the nation didn’t want when we should have had a full court press on job creation. Before you stick your pin in my voodoo doll, let me distill this for you. I walk up to you and say I am going to ensure that your employer can provide you with health care and that you cannot be rejected for pre-existing conditions. Your reply, “that’s fine and dandy but I don’t have an employer. I haven’t worked in two years. I’m about to lose my house.” And then I say “but I insist it’s your right to have good health care!” Then I wonder why you don’t vote for my ass in the next election.
There are those who say there is never a “good time” to introduce health care reform. That may be but I can damn sure tell you there are some particularly bad times to do it. If Obama presided over a booming economy, he would have still encountered philosophical opposition to HCR but at least he could have made it a reasonable priority. Whether or not it makes sense, people prioritize earning enough money to keep their home over good health. That is a social and political reality that the Obama administration, most liberals, and I ignored. Yes, I admit it. I fell in love with the Utopian idea of health care for everyone. I did so ignoring my own underemployment. I was a fool. We liberals paid a price for our principles last night and I’m not at all sure it was worth it.
Some Hispanics, Our Youth and Minnesotans Have Got to Go
If you don’t know when you’re being insulted, you deserve everything that’s coming to you. 30% of Hispanic voters in Nevada voted for Sharron Angle after she portrayed them as a criminal threat to law abiding white folks. Guess what 30%? That makes you a bunch of nimrods, oh pardon me, estupidos! Marco Rubio was right to call out Harry Reid when he wondered aloud how any Hispanic could vote for a Republican. Harry should have wondered how any of them could vote for Sharron Angle.
Apparently our young voter count was lower than expected. You know what? All I hear the Tea Party Movement and other conservatives say is how terrible it is to leave all this debt to the younger generations. Well, I don’t feel one shred of remorse today. They came out in droves in 2008 to vote for the rock star like it was some friggin’ edition of “American Idol”. Now when policy and our future is at stake, they had better things to do. Until the lazy selfish bastards stop texting their BFF’s while watching the latest installment of “Jersey Shore” and get out and do their civic duty by voting, they can choke on my debt.
Finally, Minnesota. What to do about Minnesota? OK I know they like colorful characters. Just look at Prince or Jesse Ventura. And yes I can forgive them for electing Michele Bachmann the first time. But now that we know what a show-boating brain-dead, rhetorically dangerous woman this is, how in the name of all that is good and decent, could she be re-elected? There is only one solution but I will limit this solution only to the sixth congressional district of Minnesota because unlike the average conservative Islamaphobe, I don’t smear the whole with the faults of the few. The solution is that the sixth district of Minnesota must be sold to Canada. I don’t know how much we’d get for it, but it would certainly help bring down the deficit that Ms. Bachmann is so fired up about.
Two Lib Losses that Don’t Upset Me That Much
A good number of our lib heroes survived last night with nary a scratch. Icons like Barney Frank (yeah conservatives … SUCK IT), Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Barbara Boxer and that other boxer from Searchlight, Nevada, Harry Reid. Even that old example of political decay, Charlie Rangel lived to see another day. However there are two losses that don’t have me all that bothered. The first is Alan Grayson from Florida. I have maintained almost from the beginning that Grayson was all show and no substance. In a political climate where there is too much heat and too little light, Grayson generated a lot of the former. Was it great for catharsis? Damn straight it was! Did it move the ball forward in any meaningful way? Not one bit. Grayson was doing an audition to replace Ed Schultz on MSNBC but he was doing it on the tax payer’s dime. I’m not shedding a lot of tears that the audition was canceled.
The other loss that I almost cheered was that of Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania. When Sestak unseated party-switcher Arlen Specter for the Senatorial nomination he made a huge self-righteous ruckus about how the Obama administration tried to buy him off so he wouldn’t run. Honest-Abe Sestak rejected the “bribes”. All this did was fire up the “impeachment” advocates claiming that Obama had authorized political dirty tricks for which he should be punished. A good Democrat would have kept his big fat mouth shut but no, Joe had to prove to everyone what a virtuous guy he was. I nearly vomited at the time and I found him equally obnoxious in his concession speech last night. By the way, his daughter was obnoxious too …
Most Obnoxious Performance on Election Night
That award goes to Joe Sestak’s daughter Alex. Yes, I know I’ve been beaten up on this blog in the past for prodding at politician’s families but I’m sorry, this kid needed a good swift kick in the ass. As Joe attempted to give his concession speech, not five seconds would go by without Alex interrupting him with some pithy comment. Her mother smiled ear to ear with that look you’ve seen on mothers who mistake their children’s rudeness for “just being precocious”. Joe seemed slightly less amused and I was expecting him any minute to scream “I JUST LOST THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL RACE OF MY LIFE …. WOULD YOU SHUT THE F**K UP?????” Instead, Joe just grinned and carried on. At the end of his speech he lifted his “little girl” up in the air and for a split second, I thought he was gonna throw her into the crowd like Alice Cooper throwing a chicken into a mosh pit. No such luck.
Later in the week, I’ll share my thoughts on where progressives should go from here.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
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November 3, 2010 at 5:23 pm Rutherford 453 comments