A little bit a politics
Mar. 5th, 2010 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meirwen_1988So, yesterday there was the "news" that the GOP party bigwigs developed some fairly tasteless images to use as...conversation starters...yeah, we'll go with that term. ;-)
By now most of my readers know that I tend to sit just left of the center line on most issues except the defense budget, where I'm firmly in the "and how many zeroes do you want on that check, General?" camp (yeah, deal with it), and the marriage issue (where I think the government should just restrict itself to the contractual parts and let the moral parts be handled by, well, the religious bodies, because that's their job. Which I guess makes me a Pinko on that). And I'm a registered Democrat, and don't see that changing.
Still, the histrionics about these images have me rubbing my head, very puzzled. How is putting the current Commander-in-Chief in theatrical makeup, or styling the Speaker of the House as a Disney villainess any worse than making art of the then Vice President in brown attire consistent with Berlin ca. 1939 or styling the then Commander-in-Chief as the best-known character from MAD magazine, to speak nothing of styling one as a famed ventriloquist (father of "Murphy Brown") and the other as the best known of his...dummies.
I see them as differences in specifics, not differences in kind. And, frankly, in the long history of American politics, these sorts of tactics are pretty mild.
So, people, get a grip. It's political rhetoric--all of it. And since all of national government seems to be more about style than substance lately, you'd think it'd feel comfortable. It's not like this is interfering with all their posturing. It's not like it was making them do any real work. Why, then they'd actually have something to complain about.
By now most of my readers know that I tend to sit just left of the center line on most issues except the defense budget, where I'm firmly in the "and how many zeroes do you want on that check, General?" camp (yeah, deal with it), and the marriage issue (where I think the government should just restrict itself to the contractual parts and let the moral parts be handled by, well, the religious bodies, because that's their job. Which I guess makes me a Pinko on that). And I'm a registered Democrat, and don't see that changing.
Still, the histrionics about these images have me rubbing my head, very puzzled. How is putting the current Commander-in-Chief in theatrical makeup, or styling the Speaker of the House as a Disney villainess any worse than making art of the then Vice President in brown attire consistent with Berlin ca. 1939 or styling the then Commander-in-Chief as the best-known character from MAD magazine, to speak nothing of styling one as a famed ventriloquist (father of "Murphy Brown") and the other as the best known of his...dummies.
I see them as differences in specifics, not differences in kind. And, frankly, in the long history of American politics, these sorts of tactics are pretty mild.
So, people, get a grip. It's political rhetoric--all of it. And since all of national government seems to be more about style than substance lately, you'd think it'd feel comfortable. It's not like this is interfering with all their posturing. It's not like it was making them do any real work. Why, then they'd actually have something to complain about.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 07:27 pm (UTC)