Monday, October 22, 2007

Must Be The Season of the Witch

Ahhh! The Republicans came to the healing waters of the "value voters" on the Sabbath of their god, and the candidates did lay out their gifts like bread upon the waters....

Besides their usual debate strategy: A linguistic simulation of carving off large chunks of meat from the carcass of some dead mammal and throwing them into a cage full of ferocious wild beasts to rip and gobble up -- i.e., all the Republican talking points, domestic and foreign, stoked on greed, selfishness, fear and anger (What? You hadn't noticed?) Each Repub candidate tries to cut off an even larger, bloodier chunk to get the ferocious beasts to frenzy all the more -- they did a NEW THING (at least according to the way media- and blog- receptors portrayed it...)

And no, I didn't watch the debate: Gad, I can't even handle the Discovery channel. Hell, to be honest, I just can't handle the teevee at all anymore -- as they say, "teh stupid, it burns."

So the NEW THING, the new Fall rollout, was puttin' the target on the Clinton-with-cleavage -- the only Vaginal-American -- running for the prez spot. There are juicy videos elsewhere on the web: tbogg's got the one with a roomful of Hillary-haters off the FOX coverage, and holy baby jesus if they don't spread the seeds of hate all over the place. They might come off as dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers (or a bag of Sean Hannitys, as tbogg would have it) but friends: these are your neighbors -- or these are the people who will socialize with your neighbors over the next year... and guess what? We've never seen the likes of swiftboating until the anti-Vaginal-American, anti-Hillary machine starts rolling downhill, if she secures the nomination...

So we got the certifiably insane Republican presidential candidates all atwitter over The Hillary during their Jeebus-loves-me-me-me debate. And there are probably a bunch a reasons for that, though the obvious one is that she has her machine fine-tuned and humming, and the media is perkin' away at her "framed" "narrative" of inevitability. Let's get the woman, that vessel of sin, that great metaphysical Other...

So my question is: Can the Republicans 'pick' Hillary, and then go out and beat her because sexist America will never vote for a woman for president? -- particularly after the Republican machine plays the biggest pipe organ of productions in swiftboating The Hillary.

Just thinking about all the hooks they'll have in misogynist and misClintonist hatred gives me a bellyache.

And is she set up for this? Going all "third way" centrist, with the triangulation that may end up the best weakening of her own opportunity. Because being Repub-lite isn't going to get it, if whoever gets the GOP nomination goes all Eisenhower-Ford-Rockefeller and the myth of Reagan -- as Bob Moser suggests in his Nation magazine series on this year's entertain-election. It's the building "frame" for the 2008 "narrative," and according to Bob, even Romney or Giuliani could beat The Hillary if they carry off the "back to 1956" scenario...

But I've been worried about THE TOTALITY since my daughter -- insightful but too busy by far mother-of-three to pay much attention to this pre-2008 circus -- listened to my spiel for about five minutes, my unreserved optimism about the Dems shoe-in to the White House in 2008.

"Papa, you really think this country will elect a woman or a person of color to be president?" It was my daughter expressing in a matter-of-fact tone an obvious query -- as if her three year-old had said that the sky was green. She arched her eyebrows -- as though now was the time for my first early-geriatric, "base" neurological test.

My sweet, uncynical-to-the-Nth-degree, Eugene OR daughter, calling me back to earth for a reality test. I had a searingly complex feeling of embarrassment, disorientation, and terror. I stammered, stuttered, dropped the subject for awhile...

So now, I find myself able to evoke that feeling anytime I want to: In 2008, are we thinking that Hillary (or Barack) will be greeted with flowers and candy, you know, like Baghdad 2003?

Yeah, it could well be that 2008 is the gateway to the next bigger nightmare.