Aw, S***, Roy!

[omorka]

Yet another reason to hate ClearChannel:

A large portion of the people who support Bush are the good ol' boys whom Dean correctly but impoliticly described as the white guys with Confederate battle flag bumper stickers on the pickups. As Dean also noted at the time, there's no damn way these Bubbas and Billy Joes should like Bush at all, or have ever voted for him in the first place; not a single policy of his is made with them in mind, except perhaps some of the loosenings of restrictions on firearms. Most of his policies are downright bad for them. And this should be obvious. The problem is that Dubya fakes good ol' boy fairly proficiently, despite not actually being one. (Gore wasn't one, and it was obvious. Clinton was one, albeit a well-educated one, and that was obvious, too - and many of these Bubbas voted for him, or at least voted for Perot instead.)

Michael Moore is from the same social class as they are (a point I believe he makes in Bowling for Columbine, and it's sort of the point of both Flint movies), but he's a Yankee to the core. He's factory, not farm. He'll play well to their economic and social cousins in the middle northern states, but perhaps not so well to the Southern boys - and we need the Southern boys.

You know who was of their class that they did listen to (despite him also being a Yankee)? Who they laughed along with, and thought was on their wavelength? Who they'd turn their pickup radios to instead of Rush? Who can't stand the Shrub, either?

Yup - Howard Stern. The guy ClearChannel recently bounced.

Now, I think Stern is an even bigger dick than Moore, but the Right has so many dicks flapping in their self-generated breeze - Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter - that I'll even take the help of a misogynistic pro-breast-implant centrist right now if it'll mean Anyone But Bush. And of course ClearChannel yanked him right before an election, on the advice of Colin Powell's even more conservative son at the FCC.

Ay.

---

Note that this is also more evidence for the right/left pulpit/comedian comparison I made earlier. So is the fact that the two most liberal networks currently in existence are MTV and the Comedy Channel. The Daily Show is, I hear from those with cable, the closest thing to a leftist news show on the air.

We need a Religious Left in this country, pronto. Oh, wait, we have one and I'm part of it. Except that Dubya doesn't think we're a real religion (nor does Comptroller Strayhorn).

Comments

[brezhnev.livejournal.com]

I must say, I don't think either of the two big parties really have much to offer the common people. The rhetoric is different, but in practice both parties have supported "free trade" schemes which involve exporting jobs to foreign sweatshops so that the CEOs (who are pulling the strings of both big parties) can further line their pockets and pat themselves on the back for giving opportunities to all those eight year olds in China. It used to be a person could get a decent factory job even without a high school education. And these days, being able to really prosper is pretty hard for someone from the trailer park or the inner city who did get a high school education but couldn't afford college.

So the "Bubbas" are stuck choosing between the lesser of two evils. And that's how it's going to be until there's a viable third alternative.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

If you'd said this in 1996 or 2000, I'd've thoroughly agreed with you, although in 2000 I could see the heat lighting from the storm coming already. Now . . . not so much. The Democrats are no tailgate party for the working class, but they're a damn sight better than the Republicans, at least in that they've noticed that offshoring and other things that leave people severely jobless are bad and, worse, make their constituents upset. Yeah, the megacorps own big chunks of both parties and no mistake . . . but I've looked at some lists of which corporations donate how much to which parties, and the ones that donate more than twice as much to the Republicans as they do to the Democrats scare me more than the ones that swing the other way. (Actually, there aren't nearly as many that swing 2-to-1 or more in favor of the Democrats, at least in the financial and energy fields, which might free the Dems a little more from being chained against the industries.) The truly ugly corporations, as opposed to the cheerfully amoral ones, know who butters their bread.

More to the point, the Democrats aren't about to sweep down on Bubba and take his porn away. If he gets a second term's chance to do so, Ashcroft will. And what is Bubba going to do with no job and no porn?

[brezhnev.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, many companies support both candidates, which basically amounts to betting on both ponies. But if you ask me, the fact that campaign money has so much influence is pretty disturbing. Unfortunately, I don't know of a good solution to this. Advertising has to be paid for somehow, and all that. But I'd like to see more debates and fewer 30-second spots. Reasoned consideration of the issues should be what influences the voters, not a flurry of bumper sticker type sound bites.

But addressing the original point, the rhetoric between the two parties is different, and their funding is (to a degree) different, but in the end, doing something to fix the problem is what counts. Talk is cheap. A politician saying he or she is concerned isn't enough -- the poltician should fix the problem, or at the very least raise enough hell so the other party can't afford to ignore it. The Democrats could win the next election if they'd bring factory jobs and high-tech jobs home, but they won't dare to risk their contributions. Let's face it, it's not just Ben & Jerry's and Starbuck's that are paying their bills -- they have charming folks like George Soros holding their purse strings too.

Lastly, if Bubba doesn't have any interesting reading materials, there's always beer. :)

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

In other news: Saddam to be tried by the new Iraqi government, but not for "several months":

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/30/iraq.saddam/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/30/iraq.saddam/index.html)