CSotD: Politics, urban legends, watermelon: What else you want?
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Glenn McCoy leads off the weekly foray into politics with a plain statement about where we're at.
People who bridle at having to vote for the lesser of two evils might be tempted to stay home in November, except that the Republicans are providing two strong motivations for voting: Hatred or fear of one of the likely candidates.
One by having spent the last quarter century or so stirring up delusional hatred for the Clintons, an effort, I might add, buttressed by political cartoonists only too happy to mock Hillary's claim that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy, when, in fact, there sure was.
Granted, if Hillary had arrived on the scene through her own charisma rather than his, it wouldn't be so easy to have amassed such dislike for the woman.
And I say that as someone who held his nose and voted for her in her first Senate run, chiefly because of Reason #2, which is that the Republicans have served up a continuous menu of unacceptable candidates, including the interchangeable sock puppet who opposed her then.
That's not just progressive claptrap on my part: Mainstream Republicans are finally admitting they agree, though it seems a bit late.
John Cole's commentary sums up more than just the failure of Jeb Bush's campaign. As many observers on both sides of the aisle have noted, the rise of talk radio demagogues and the election of candidates who reflect those anarchistic values have combined to create a situation where it's hardly surprising that the GOP has not been able to rally to stop the Trump campaign.
It appears that the Republican Party is divided between those depicted by Scott Stantis …
… and those in John Deering's cartoon …
… and that, if you didn't step up in time to fight it with politics, it's way too late, as Nick Anderson suggests, to fight it with logic. At this stage, logic has nothing to do with it, if it ever did.
The blame is not entirely on talk radio or the Republicans who fostered this division, either. As Ed Hall notes, the media has luxuriated in the marvelous sound bites of the Donald, and this, too, is a more modern factor.
Every campaign I can remember has begun with stern, cautionary warnings against "horse race coverage" and immediately deteriorated into breathless stories about who's currently in the lead. That part isn't new; the term "bandwagon" has been around since the middle of the 19th century, and there are plenty of voters who want to know who's winning because — and this is not entirely sarcasm — they are not clear on the difference between "voting" and "betting."
But there was a time when I would have objected to Hall including "ad revenue" in that clutch of golden eggs, because there were only a minority of publications in which that was permitted to be a major factor in coverage decisions.
However, the emergence of click-bait media has changed that, and there are plenty of websites that not only feature Donald Trump as often as possible, but run ridiculous, illogical, unsubstantiated "political commentary" on, for instance, the dire things that will happen if Bernie, Hillary, Trump, Rubio, Cruz, any or all of the above, gain the nomination.
It may be gormless drivel that would embarrass the most sodden, loudmouthed barfly at the corner saloon, and journalistically akin to stories of the Bat Boy, but if it gains some clicks and perhaps a share on Facebook, it's worth posting.
Meanwhile, even ostensibly responsible outlets have bought into the "passive conduit" school of journalism, which is that whatever is out there is of equal value and should be passed along, coded with "many say" to mask the lack of context, whether it is the "controversy" over climate change, or Donald Trump's proposal to build a 1,989 mile long wall, or the contention that, before you could submit a proposal for single-payer health care to Congress, you would have to pave the way by ending the Affordable Care Act.
In order to avoid seeming too political, I'll use that climate change controversy to speak to the issue.
Many say that we have met the enemy and he is us.
And speaking of challenging the so-called "science experts":
Deflocked not only comes up with a funny strip on its own, but then adds a bit of dunderhead nostalgia in the last panel by referencing one of the first and still best viral Internet jokes that too many people took seriously.
In those days, Snopes was still a small folklore society and only had to speak on global foolishness once in awhile. People never believed the "I Like Monkeys" piece was real, but they certainly believed in various Mrs. Fields/Nieman-Marcus cookie legends and they felt deeply for poor little Craig Shergold.
Today, however, not only has the Internet grown considerably, but the willingness of both click-bait sites and political parties to cash in on the gullibility of the American public can be gauged at least in part by a visit to the Snopes "What's New?" page, which — given how many of them are as patently ridiculous as that piece about monkeys — seems a grim, ever-updating counterpoint to the notion of universal suffrage.
Top TV Listings for Tonight:
I haven't watched the Oscars in years. I don't believe in awards, including the ones that I have won, which were never for my best work. So the criticism of racial representation in the nominations is a bit of a shrug to me, a response that Darrin Bell has used as a jumping-off point for the topic of race in films generally, which, by contrast, is a topic worth taking up.
That's only the first two panels: Here's the rest.
Instead:
Skip the Oscars and watch this. I couldn't find a place to stream it for free,
but Google it: It's around, it's inexpensive and it's well worth it.
Honest — it got some nominations, but it didn't win a damn thing.
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