Sometimes “the news” is so utterly obvious that I find myself shaking my head and scratching my behind at the same time, because this is what I do when I am befuddled, while trying to figure out just what makes it news in the first place. Has this ever happened to you?
For example, remember last week when some poll came out that determined that the Tea Party Movement demographic was primarily Republican, white, married, male, married and over forty-five? Did we actually need a poll to determine that? That’s news? Couldn’t we have just looked at a few photographs of a Tea Party protest and made an educated guess?
But I guess today was simply a slow news day because a few of the stories to come out today seemed painfully obvious to me.
In the first instance, Tuesday night in remarks delivered at Depaul University embattled Republican National Chairman Michael Steele announced that African Americans have not been given a very good reason to vote Republican. And this is news?
Perhaps the real exercise here is determining if Steele unwittingly told the truth in saying something he should not have said that the party will take him to task for later, as is his usual habit, or if Steele has somehow grown a backbone and stood erect and decided to just tell it like it is. Hmmm.
Speculation from those I have talked to on this end ranges from Steele having to make a humiliating and obsequious retraction by week’s end, as is his usual habit, to an angry, disgruntled Steele getting touch with his inner Tupac Shakur and giving the GOP the middle finger. I wonder if he has Republi-Thug Life tattooed on his chest. It would be so cool if he did.
However, just as I was contemplating the Steele un-news, I ran across a piece in which an anti-illegal immigrant advocate and conservative Michael Gheen accused Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham of being gay and exhorted him to “come out of the log cabin closet.”
Senator Graham is gay? You mean a somewhat effeminate fifty-five year old life-long bachelor just might be living an alternative lifestyle? Who would have thunk it?
But I have long had the notion that Senator Graham just might be gay. The only thing is I never thought much of it. In fact, until recently when he seemed to fall under the evil spell of the far right as has most of his party, I had a healthy respect for Senator Graham. It didn’t matter to me if he was gay; that’s his business.
However, Gheen is positing this whole spookish, CIA notion that as long as Senator Graham is gay and in the closet, others will use his alleged homosexuality as leverage to coerce him to vote as they want him to vote. Another example of completely inane statements spoken at a Tea Party rally, but is it news?
Lastly, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s Daily Show has spent an almost inordinate amount of time and effort pointing out the hypocritical, cynical, disingenuousness of Fox News. But is that really news? Is that something that is so utterly obvious?
Perhaps the fact that fact that Fox News commentator Bernie Goldberg finally had to acquiesce and admit the truth after being confronted with video evidence is the real news; someone at Fox actually can tell the truth.
But anyway, Stewart’s crusade against Fox does make for good entertainment. I’ll leave you with the latest clip of him giving Fox the old tried and true FU once again:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bernie Goldberg Fires Back | ||||
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