Holy Bile: Good Book for the Age of Nutbaggery

Having thrown in the towel when it comes to actually living according to the teachings of the Bible, the Right Wing  and Values Voters noise machines have come up with an entirely new edition that departs from the early Judeo-Christian tome. This one is called the Holy Bile and cites chapter and verse the blatherings of the new leaders of the conservative movement in America. Some selections:

Beck 33:64

Suffer not the clucking on the Left when citing scripture of The Ronald, for He was there in the Beginning and set down the rules for the Right and dozed endlessly with righteous dementia. And thus emerged Nancy of Ronald with astrology to guide the ship of state during Iran-gate following the October Surprise and subjugation of the southern peanut farmer.

Clusterfox 11:11

Oh fear ye not the bloated white whale of the airwaves for it is Limbaugh whose gross, distended belly doth reflect the rage of the Right; he of the rambling diatribe, he of the double tongue and of the double chins who doth speak the truths though they be of his own creation, and even while possessed by the demon Hillbilly Heroin he doth chide and scold and rankle the purveyors of fact.

Olbermanium 22:12

And lo, the missiles of Stinger were handed down to Bin Laden by The Ronald through clandestine machinations of Oliver cum North, and thus did they arm Mujahadeen in the before times intending the defeat of the Bear within the Graveyard of Empires. And thus was there gnashing of teeth in decades unforeseen when Mujahadeen did take up the mantle of Al Qeda, and bin Laden did vent his rage, felling two towers in the land of the infidels at the opening of the New Century during the revelations of My Pet Goat.

Hannity 23:12

If thy neighbor’s tongue doth annoy with truth, then louder thou shalt speak, for to bloviate intemperately and at volume without pause is the way of the Right, so sayeth Hannity.

Teabaggers Blow off Steam

Saturday, September 12, for those of you who don’t know, was Glenn Beck’s “Day After 9/11 Grass Roots Rally of Millions”. Raging against the Obama administration on his dysfuntional television program, Beck had challenged the current president on everything from healthcare to government run concentration camps for citizens. “Just how stupid do you think we are, Mr. President?” had become the rallying cry at the end of the program each evening, as he urged supporters to show up in overwhelming numbers for his march on Washington, DC.
A week before the event it was pointed out that the catch phrase was too long to fit conveniently on a bumper sticker and it was shortened to “How Stupid?”  But when polling among Beck’s supporters indicated that the abbreviated phrase was more than most of the target audience could remember, the phrase was cut back further ending up as, “Stupid?” Punctuation not being a strong suit for those actually showing up on the 12th, most of the hand lettered signs simply bore the message, “Stupid!”
Herded onto buses for the trek to the capital, Beck’s supporters, upon seeing the Washington Monument for the first time, spontaneously broke into their trademark song, “Take This Job and Shove it into a Cargo Container Bound for China.” By noon the Lincoln Memorial was crammed with hundreds of protestors chanting, “how stupid are we, how stupid are we,” and chowing down on deep fried lard bars provided by Freedom Works, a non-profit entity funded by Phillip Morris and health insurance giant, Metlife. At noon the crowd began chanting, “speech, speech, speech,” until it became obvious that no one was slated to speak and worse, no one knew what they were supposed to be protesting against. One attendee shouted out, “I want my country back,” but by then the enthusiasm of the mob had cooled as had the lard bars. An hour later a federal park ranger cleared the memorial so that a work crew could begin its scheduled clean up of pigeon droppings and the rally stuttered to a close. Most of the pent up anger against the government was redirected when it was discovered that the tour buses had pulled out before noon, leaving hundreds of disgruntled citizens muttering about the incompetence of Obama’s federal bus system.

The Age of Stoopud

You can lead a horse to water but when you get there he’s still a horse. Or is he? Maybe he’s teabagger/death-er/birth-er. “The Age of Stoopud”, a new documentary by Michael Moore, explores the vast wasteland that exists between the ears of everyday Americans as he follows them on their coast to coast  odyssey for purpose.  Living in the age of unreason, which began with the election of Ronald Reagan, Americans have seen their fortunes wane and their values warped by the phenomenon of “conservative” radio, television and daily newspapers wholly owned by corporate interests determined to mold their gullible target audience into unknowing dupes. As becomes blatantly obvious in the film, the America of our forefathers has been sliding inexorably into the toilet bowl of history. The country whose manufacturing base and standard of living used to be the envy of the world has become the planet’s largest exporter of jobs and Treasury IOU’s with a shrinking middle class that depends on credit cards to support its downwardly spiraling  lifestyle.
Touring the nation’s schools, Moore interviews teachers and administrators who acknowldege that they have given up on education in favor of teaching students to pass multiple choice tests. “Those who can’t do, teach, says Merlin Ferguson, superintendent of education in Akron, Ohio, “and those who can’t teach usually wind up teaching high school students how to completely fill in the little boxes and circles on the answer sheets.” Economists point to statistics that reveal American schools turning out semi-literate burger flippers while China and India crank out engineers and physicists like link sausages. “It’s getting more and more difficult for U.S. high school graduates to find work, says leading economist Paul Krugman, “there are only so many minimum wage jobs to go around and most of those are being taken by undocumented workers who don’t demand outrageous perks like bathroom privileges.”
In an attempt to understand the netherworld of right wing broadcasting, Moore goes undercover to discover how Fox News develops its daily portions of nonsensical gibberish for the masses. “I was able to walk right into one of their editorial  meetings where they decide what to cover each day. You see, because I’m morbidly obese and pasty white they naturally assumed I was one of them.” Moore goes on to reveal how subjects like healthcare reform are picked apart in order to find out- of -context quotes and scary sounding subject headings that can be manipulated. “End of Life Choices” for instance, which covers living wills and hospice care , becomes “Government Ends Your Life: You Have No Choice”.  A red telephone in the center of the table at the meeting connects directly to John Boehner (pronounced Boner) the House minority leader to make sure that all talking points are locked in. Corporate sponsors who fund Fox News are the same as those who donate to Republicans in congress, so the “follow the money” strategy of journalistic investigation is amply demonstrated in the film. “You might think that Americans are too smart to be manipulated like first graders on a special education bus, but it turns out that those on the bus are light years ahead of this country’s right wing population,” said Moore.  He points out that for decades the GOP has been able get average Americans to routinely vote against their own self interest. Representative Boehner himself has gone on record in this regard. “The GOP voted against the 40 hour week, against paid overtime, against paid vacations, against workplace safety, against Social Security, against Medicare, against Medicaid, against unions…. and yet we tell the yokels that we’re ‘the party of the working man’ and they believe it! It is truly remarkable. Of course, we have a lot of help from ex-carnival barkers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, these guys could sell condoms to the Pope.”
Moving on, the documentary touches on the influence of  the weird and supernatural on the least educated of the populace. “Shows about ghost hunting and UFO’s have replaced wrestling and roller derby on TV these days”, says David Ackerman of Northwestern University’s communications department, and the same people are watching them, a can of beer in one hand and a remote control in the other. Corporations that want to divert attention from  their pollution of the environment and poisonous food products sponsor these as well as the ever increasing flood of ‘reality programs’ where witless viewers  watch even more witless participants being tortured and humiliated during prime time. It’s like the last days of the Roman empire where the population was held spellbound watching gladiators at the Coliseum while the barbarian hordes sacked the cities.”

Moore ends the film on a lighter note, showing statistically that in the 21st century, America’s melting pot is more likely to contain frijoles than mulligan stew, and that the street names and store fronts are becoming unintelligible to the dwindling white population as Koreans and Chinese snap up the properties that once were considered strongholds of the Anglo Saxon demography. As the credits roll, white elementary school students are shown struggling to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish and Korean while their unemployed parents carry signs outside on the sidewalk  raging impotently against a tidal wave that has already swept them out to sea.