While many people have questioned his timing, his case for replacing Obama at the top of the Dem ticket is by far the most compelling one I’ve heard to date:
I’m a dentist and I don’t think this country is headed in the right direction.
But holy fuck, she makes Palin sound like Cicero. If you can watch this short clip without cringing in vicarious shame for a flailing fellow human being—even if she is a crooked, divisive cow—you’re made of sterner stuff than I am:
I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”
Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.
The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.
An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.
I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited: Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.
Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.
This was fun to watch live. Please note that even though Beck has stopped gel-spiking his hair, he’s still no closer to morphing into Phil Donahue.
ThinkProgress and MediaMatters are all over this, but it can’t be viewed enough. Beck squirms like a slug-in-salt any time he’s compelled to retrofit an intellectual framework to a worldview that is largely informed by a bubbling stew of unexamined guilt, fear and insecurity. The sad thing is, his self-satisfied confusion seems to be contagious. If you were ever in AA, you’ve seen plenty of Becks:
Once again I’m coming out of semi-retirement (ha ha! liar! STAY AWAY!!!) to post a music video because Ronnie is just ... plain ... amazing. More videos of him on this highly recommended YouTube channel. Enjoy.
Since tomorrow is probably going to be wall-to-wall blogging about Glenn Beck’s Rubestock Festival in DC, I decided to skip Joe Biden’s convention speech and fast-forward to that fleeting Golden Hour of Wediditude that divided the Waning Light of the Bush Era from the Suffocating Nightfall of Palinism…if only for half a news-cycle.
That vid’s understandably long gone viral (do also check out Dan and Dan’s blog for some more low-key British humor, BTW). Which got me to musing about memes and the similarities between today’s Web and days gone but not forgotten, when song—and, loosely, “folk” song—served a similar purpose in spreading news, opinions, and reactions.
Two years ago tonight, I wasn’t on Rumproast, so I can only conclude I was shaving the cats, out stealing yard signs or teaching my weekly ACORN class in Physical Intimidation & Document Forgery. But had I known Hillary Clinton was about to deliver the most impassioned endorsement of Barack Obama by any respected public figure, ever, I’d have popped a tape in the VCR and set the Signal Decoder to “Orange.”
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will speak at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday on the anniversary of the date when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at that very same spot.
It’s totally a coincidence that Beck scheduled his “Restoring Honor” rally on that date and at that place. He’s just trying to reclaim the civil rights movement. Black people don’t own MLK, you know.
Now, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is perhaps the most inspiring, soaring rhetoric ever produced in the history of this country. That makes it a tough act to follow, even 47 years later.
Are Beck and Palin up to the challenge? Let’s compare and contrast:
I dunno. Somehow I think MLK will still kinda own that venue—even after Saturday.
Two years ago today, I was too preoccupied with countering the pathetic thrusts and parries of my online enemies to focus on the irresistible unfoldment of pageantous Destiny that was the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver.
Despite the subsequent massive upgrades to my blogospheric access and the mysterious bags of swag that appear on my front stoop every time I post an Approved Meme on Rumproast, I will always regret that I was unable to be fully immersed and “in the moment” that week when History washed out of our TV screens on an EMP of Hope & Change. Yet, like Victory itself, the Internet Memory is immortal—and we can, in brief flashes at least, relive the highlights of those Four Magical Days That Changed Everything. Yes we can.
I think Tbogg is onto something here. Citing Palin’s hand-picked protégé Joe Miller’s relentless pimping of his rugged outdoorsy-ness, moose-bloodlust, etc., Tbogg says:
We get it. You’re an outdoorsman and you’re all macho and shit with your manscaped beard, but, seriously, after the last couple of years of listening to that babbling snowbilly grifter natter on about your Alabama-with-a-snowpack hellstate, we’re kinda of Alaska’d out about the Great White North and we wish you guys would just take our tax dollars and shut the fuck up about your bullshit last frontier self-sufficiency.
Yep. And yet, I pity the Alaskans not named Joe W. Miller and Sarah Palin, for they are being stereotyped by the Snowflake Snooki Moose-Killin’, Salmon-Slayin’ Minstrel Show.
I know what it’s like to have your state thrust onto the national political stage because of the antics of a handful of dumbasses. No one who lived in Florida during the 2000 election recount will ever forget the shame of “Floriduh”—the officials staring at hanging chads in slack-jawed amazement, the Condo Commandos accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan, etc.
