My girlfriend, Catboxette, unlike yours truly owns a TV, so I'm sitting here watching it this morning, re-acquainting myself with the reasons I generally avoid it.
There's something going on now called the Conserative Political Action Conference, which provides one more opportunity for Republican candidates to make nebulous, totally unsubstantiated claims about who and what they are.
"I'm really, really actually very conservative" says Mitt Romney.
"Shut your cake hole, Willard," groans Newt while cracking his knuckles and rolling his eyes. "I'm the real conservative here."
Then Mrs. Santorum's favorite son Little Ricky chirps up: "But I was tea party before tea party was cool."
As their voices echo deeply from within history's garbage can, it seems that this kind of clueless posturing has become a competition and a performance art. It also seems to me that there's a very fine line sometimes between comedy and tragedy, as these guys compete for the votes of cross-eyed, foaming, fanatical lunatics wearing three-cornered hats with teabags dangling off them.
Boy, whatever happened to Joe Sikspak?
Meanwhile, Obama has confused everyone this morning by muddying the water around the contraception issue, and saying the new rule will be modified to "accommodate" employers who are also religious institutions. Nobody knows what that means, exactly, but that's OK, because the object of the exercise is to confuse everybody so we can't focus clearly on the issue. This is classic Obama, and one of the reasons I really can't stand him.
We desperately need some real leadership in this country, and instead we've got a bunch of damn politicians. I guess we're going to have have to just forget them, lead ourselves, and make our own damn future. Without TV.
Well, how about if I change the picture from Goering to Mussolini? That would probably be more accurate anyway. Present-day American Republicans are a lot more like Italian fascists than German Nazis.
Anyway, my point was there's nothing to inspire confidence in our present or our would-be leaders, that we're going to have to lead ourselves, that culture and government are bottom-up propositions, and that revolution begins at home.
