Calhouns Can(n)ons

Another Letter To The Editor That Will Go Unanswered?

Over at www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com, Ron Crawford's sent along an interesting question to Sandra Duerr, ("My Open Letter to Tribune Executive Editor Sandra Duerr"). Shall we place bets that she'll answer it in her nifty little Let's Ask The Editor column that runs once in a while in the Trib? Bets? Any bets? No?

Mark Your Calendars, So Far

God willing and the creek don't rise, the League of Women Voters will be moderating a LOCSD candidate forum, October 13 from 7 - 9 at the Community Center in Los Osos. Come one, come all, the League does a teriffic job at these things and it's a chance to meet and hear and submit questions for the candidates.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi strikes again

Peck's bad-boy, political writer Matt Taibbi, has been turning in some hilarious, take-no-prisoners reporting on the campaign trail, and this week's (Oct 2) piece is no exception since he's met the perfect subject (Sarah Palin) for his snarky, dead-on-the-mark observations ("Mad Dog Palin. The scarierst thing about John McCain's running mate isn't how unqualified she is -- it's what her candidacy says about America." Oct 2, 2008).

Taking no prisoners, Taibi notes that Palin's speech before the gathered Republicans was ". . . like watching Gidget address the Reichstag." Then goes on to note, with savage glee:

"Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It's the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.

"Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into thepages of history with her seminal crack about the "difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick," blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a hustkof government cheese.

"In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set -- who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else's wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review -- seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We're used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She's all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It's just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn't the most qualified candidate, that the party 'went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narrative.'

"The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or agains them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech, but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education."

Gidget and the Reichstag, indeed. Bwa-hahahah. Get a copy, on newsstands today! Read it and weep.