Michele Bachmann's History Lesson

I was upset because Egpyt erupted into chaos and knocked off the State of the Union and the Republican and Tea Party rebuttals from the Sunday morning political shows. I wanted to hear Chris Matthews call Michele Bachmann a balloonhead again. And then there was Sarah Palin's sputnik moment when she conflated 30 years of history into one sweeping incident. Bachmann is really showing herself as an attention whore. She tried to get a major position in the Republican-led House. When they turned her down, she reached for another gambit--appointing herself head of the Tea Party and rewriter of American history.

The sad thing is the media is bypassing a perfectly legitimate concern of the Tea Party types--the deficit--and drowning it out by spending hours and hours concentrating on the fact that Bachmann looked into the wrong camera and gave a whacko interpretation of the last 300 years. I commented on it on the Huffington Post and some right-wing nut responded that the National Embarassment from Minnesota was technically right. Huh? In her speech in Iowa, Bachmann said the founding fathers worked tirelessly until slavery was eradicated. She specifically sited John Quincy Adams. First of all, JQ was not a Founding Father. His dad John Adams was. JQ was an anti-slavery advocate and did work to get slavery outlawed in the District of Columbia when he was a congressman, after losing his second term from President to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson--I loved the musical.

Maybe she saw Amistad and got confused. That was that movie with Anthony Hopkins as JQ Adams where he defends the hot model who was playing a slave who rebelled. Or maybe when she was a little girl, she watched The Adams Chronicles on PBS with William Daniels who played JQ. The same actor played the father John Adams in the stage and movie version of the musical 1776 and they did try to outlaw slavery in that show, but the mean old Southern representatives put a stop to it. But somehoe I doubt Bachmann saw 1776 on Broadway; maybe she saw the movie on the local Minnesota channel on the fourth of July.

Anyway, she made it sound like all the Founding Fathers worked to end slavery. Sorry, but they didn't. Some were against it, but the institution didn't end until the Civil War, several generations later. The FFs kept it in the constitution and counting slaves as three-fifths of a person was NOT a meaure to start on the road to equality, but to get the Southern states bigger representation in the Congress. Glenn Beck actually ranted on Chris Matthews for calling Bachmann an idiot. Beck actually said he thought Bachmann could become president. Now I know he's nuts.

Failing the Purity Test

Repubs continue to eat their own. Newly elected Mass. Senator Scott Brown voted with the Dems on the jobs bill (along with Collins and Snowe from Maine and the guy from Ohio). Immediately Glenn Beck and the right-wing horde pounced on him for betraying their trust. Reportedly Brown's facebook page was inundatded with hate comments from Tea-baggers. I couldn't comment myself unless I became a fan. So I did, though I am not a fan in the strictest sense, I just wanted to tell him how I felt. So this is what I wrote:

"Scott, I became a fan just so I could say this: I am a NY Democrat and hated it like hell when you won against school librarian Cokley. But I'm glad you voted with the Dems on this and it shows you are not just a rubber stamp Republican. You want to get things done and don't want to just say "NO!" to everything Obama does in order to make him look bad--which is all Bohner, McConnell and their pals want to accomplish in this congress. Good for you. Like Republican governors Crist and Schwarzenegger, you realize that it's okay to support the prez when you think he's right and not just toe the party line and be Glenn Beck's lap dog."

The reference to Repub governors is about how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist both came out and said it is a lie that the stimulus package did not create one job, because both of their states benefited from it and they aren't afraid to say so. The GOP is cracking with people like Michelle Bachmann wanting to get rid of Social Security and Medicare calling for the heads of reasonable people like Arnie and Charlie.

Beck's CPAC speech is a further example of extremism pushing and shoving its way to the center of the conservative movement. He says no more "big tent" in the Republican Party, America is not a circus or a clown show. Yeah, Glenn, just have everybody think exactly like you: no taxes, no government regulation, no laws, everybody owning their own home with all the money they save from all those taxes they save. But no trash collection, state parks, highways, public libraries you like so much (OK, I got that one from The Daily Show), no regulation on big business, etc.

Look, CPAC-ers, I am a chablis-drinking, brie-munching, NPR-listening, show tune-lovin' gay boy and I am just as much a part of America as you. We're equal. As Aunt Eller sang in Oklahoma: "I ain't sayin' I'm better than anybody else/But I'm be danged if I ain't just as good!"

Nightmare Scenario for 2012

I've stopped watching the political shows because I'm so disgusted with the scene--particularly the Democrats who have allowed their supremacy in Congress to slip through their fingers in a year. They've still got a big majority, but now they're so scared of filibusters, they won't do anything. I recently found a New Yorker from 2008 with Norman Mailer's letters chronicling his attitudes towards the changing political scene from 1945 to 2005. In a letter to Sal Cetrano (I have no idea who that is) in 1999, he sums up my feelings:

"While the Democrats, and Clinton first, disgust me with what I call their 'boutique politics'--a little bit here, a little bit there, and served with loads of bullshit slathered over it--the Republicans are a psychotic monstrosity. On the one hand, they're God, flag, family--although few of them would know Jesus Christ if he were standing at the next urinal pissing along with them--and an astonishing number never served in the armed forces nor heard a bullet, and being politicians they cheat like jackrabbits on their wives and families."

Some members of the left are furious because Obama has not remained pure and will probably go more centerist as he loses ground. There was a post today from a gay website about punishing the democrats and the president for not eliminating Don't Ask Don't Tell. Yes, let everyone know your displeasure. But in the next election, who else are you going to vote for? Republicans will never support gay causes until they think it will help them--which is never.

The way things are going, here's a possible nightmare scenario: Scott Brown, the new Rep. senator from Mass., gets real popular. He runs for President in 2012 on the platform: "Hey, I haven't been in Washington long enough to be an insider. I'm an outsider just like you, middle America. I've been in the Senate about as long as Barack Obama was, and besides, I'm hot, sexy, and white! Vote for me!" Maybe he'll get Michelle Bachman to be Vice President, sort of a sexy dad and mom thing going on. They throw cases of tea into Boston Harbor. It gets played all over Fox. There are enough idiots who buy this crap that the best government is no government. "Brown and Bachman: We Won't Do Shit for You!" They are swept in on a tide of anti-government resentment. They dismantle the entire Congress except for a Bureau of Morals to contain homosexuality, capitalists do whatever they want, we return to the Gilded Age with no unions, medicare, social security or abortions, and Pat Buchanan dies happily.

Mass. Culture High and Low

We spent the weekend in Massachusettes, experiencing the heights of culture in music and art as well as the lowest of entertainment--and you know what that means--comics. Friday we drove from Stockport, NY to Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. and experienced a beautiful Beethoven concerto with soloist Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (Before leaving we had a visit from the animal guy who set the live traps from the woodchucks. We did not have to resort to used kitty litter--see previous post. He had caught the two young ones, but the mother was still at liberty. I asked where the father was. He replied "Oh, he's a runaround" meaning the males gets the females pregnant and leave them to raise the young under people's houses.)

I can still recall a concert with Ax playing a Chopin piece at Avery Fisher many years ago. The delicacy of his playing was beautiful.

The next day was spent in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts viewing their special show on the rivalry between Titian, Tintorento, and Veronese. Separate admission tickets and everything. I liked the Tintorentos best, particularly the Temptation of St. Anthony.

We had time to look around Boston and Cambridge which I like very much. Boston is so orderly they even name the Alleys. Street signs read Public Alley No. 253, etc. The area around the museum--the Back Bay--is charming in a way that no part of New York is any more. Perhaps the Village was at one point, but I fail to see it. Maybe I'm jaded. Here everyone seems rushed and self-involved. They appeared more at ease in Beantown. But it's probably just my own feelings being projected onto others.

I visited Comicopia on Commonwealth Ave. where they have many indie titles and bought False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story, a wicked satire of the Minnesota congresswoman who's been making such an ass of herself on cable TV news--she's been spouting conspiracy theories about Obama taking over the economy and making us all into socialist zombies. Cambridge's comic book store is called The Million Year Picnic, which is the title of a Ray Bradbury story. The name is cooler than the store. Not many grabby back issues, but I did find a Jimmy Olsen with Curt Swan art from 1968 and a Marvel reprint special with the Fantastic Four teaming up with Sub Mariner, with whom they are normally at odds.