The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil

Notice: This post includes some hyperbole and vast generalizations. Read on at your own risk!




Are you that myopic? Are you that unconscious? Are you that out of touch? Is your "belt" way too tight...?
(Get it? It's a joke. Belt-Way...? Beltway...?)

I listen to the Punditocracy talk about Pachmann (not Pac-man...Palin/Bachmann) with incredulity as they try to understand why these two "*%#!" get away with the "#!*%" that they spew. Forgive my language but these two women bring out the vulgarity in me.

Palin invokes the slang "WTF" to talk about, incorrectly, the "Sputnik Moment."

Bachmann rewrites American history when she talks about slavery and the Founders.

The talking heads in Washington are amazed that "The Girls" get away with it and wonder how Republicans can take either of them seriously as possible Presidential candidates in 2012.

WAKE UP GUYS!!

The American people aren't interested in facts. They aren't interested in history.
They are interested in sports and television and The Oscars and Brangelina and Kim Kardashian (Full disclosure: Kim Kardashian holds some allure for me too...I will admit that...)

Palin and Bachmann are viable and could very well be nominated and, what's worse, win, exactly for the reasons that the Pundits seem to overlook.

It is because they are ignorant and uneducated that they are appealing. You want to know why, class? ("Are you chewing gum...?")

Because they represent the vast majority of people in this country.

Barack Obama was elected because he was not John McCain who was seen as more of George W. Bush.

We would have elected Mickey Mouse had he been on the ballot just to get as far away from Bush as we could. And you don't get much farther away from a privileged blue blood, Yalie, Yankee (Texan?...Puhleez...! He was born in New Haven and grew up in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine) than a black man from a broken home.

We don't prize excellence in this country. We are satisfied with mediocracy. ("Mediocracy": a society of people satisfied with mediocrity as a way of life...not to be confused with "Mediacracy" which is a society of people made up entirely of people who work for the "Media", or "Medeacracy" which is a society of people obsessed with the story of the Greek mythological character, Medea. Go ahead...refudiate those definitions...I dare ya...!)

We continually come in behind most of the rest of the developed world when it comes to math and science scores among our young people. We have less engineers and less computer geniuses and less talent than the rest of the world because they understand the need for excellence and we don't. We play football in high school while they study calculus. We cut the arts while they learn to play the violin. We yearn for snow days while they go to school all year long.

We think we can rest on the laurels of the past and ignore the painful realities of the present. Sure, we won World War II and the Space Race and we have invented and developed a lot of the technological wonders of the modern world.

But "that was then and this is now..."

We are behind and it doesn't look like we're going to catch up. We are eating nachos in front of our big screen TVs while the rest of the world is studying and learning English and lending us the money we need to keep going. How many kids do you know who speak Mandarin? How many Chinese kids do you know who speak English? You take my point??

So stop wondering why Pachmann is so powerful and has such staying power.

It is because the establishment is singing the same old tired political song of the past while the Tea Party is shouting about the inherent failure of our current governmental society.

And it is because so many Americans are so uneducated and driven by popular culture that uninformed personae (Latin for "people"...pompous of me, I know, but fun...) like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are so popular.

People look at them and see themselves. There is "resonance."
They can "relate."

They look at Obama and Romney and Pawlenty and Hillary and they can't relate. These are intelligent men and women, regardless of their political ideology.

They are anathema.

They are aliens.

They are so 1960.

We are doomed.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the Super Bowl. Pass the pretzels would ya...?

Go Packers!