Thursday, November 29, 2007

A Forensic-Scatological Analysis of the Republican Debate

From the INDYPENDENT

Out of some combination of morbid curiosity, depressive masochism, and journalism as forensic scatology, I watched the Republican CNN/YouTube debate Nov. 28. If this nest of bigots and psychos (both the candidates and most of the questioners) seriously represents a significant portion of America, I despair for my country.

The GOP mantras of God, gays, guns, and “read my mama’s labia, when I was born the afterbirth spelled out ‘no new taxes’” are still ubiquitous, but the main story is that Latino immigrants are now Public Enemy #2 with a bullet, surpassing marriage-minded queers, bumping black dopefiends down to #4, and conceivably even threatening to knock Muslim terrorists out of the Number One spot. “Sanctuary city” is the new Two Minutes Hate buzzword. Oh well, when the Democrats abandon any vestige of being a pro-labor party, the “populism of fools” will fill the vacuum.

The debate within the Republicans on immigration comes down to one question: “Should we pander to our corporate backers’ need for cheap labor or to our political base’s fear and hatred of Mexicans?” Door #2 seems to be ahead.

Rudy Giuliani tried to prove his anti-immigrant bona fides by talking about how he sent Haitians back (to the Duvalier dictatorship or drowning) after the others attacked him for not barring illegal immigrants’ kids from public schools, not denying them emergency-room treatment, and not deporting ones who reported crimes. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney raved about deporting them all, but defended hiring illegals to work on his lawn by saying he had outsourced the job to a contractor and he shouldn’t investigate who they hire.

As the Mexican band Molotov said a few years ago, “No me llames frijolero, pinche gringo puñetero.” (Don’t call me beaner, fuckin’ gringo jerkoff)

Romney is one of the most thoroughly smarmy and phony human beings I have ever seen. The man would say absolutely anything to get elected; if the Republican party were dominated by born-again Satanists, he’d be proclaiming his conversion to the dark side and lambasting his rivals for wearing their pentagrams crooked. John McCain did nail him, though, when Romney said he was against torture but wouldn’t ban waterboarding because ‘terrorists shouldn’t know what we can or can’t do to them’ and ‘it’s not my place as a presidential candidate to be that specific about military tactics.’ (Also, Romney could probably stand on the Gloucester docks for three hours in a raging northeaster without a single hair blowing out of place.)

Even though I lived in New York under Giuliani’s regime and know what kind of demented, racist authoritarian he is–the prospect of the Duce of Gotham becoming President makes me wonder what life would be like as a bartender in a pot coffeehouse in Amsterdam, despite my Dutch being limited to “yes,” “no,” “thank you,” and “asshole”–seeing him live is still shockingly scary. The man could conceivably out-Vader Dick Cheney. His two facial expressions are a wife-beater scowl and a jowl-splitting smirk. But it was amusing watching him try to explain why Afro-Americans should vote Republican. He cobbled together some babble about education and school choice, sounding about as sincere as a husband calling his wife to say he loves her seconds after his mistress (or the male escort) closes the motel-room door.

Giuliani never got more than 20 percent of the black vote in any election. If there was a God, the vengeful ghosts of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond would have materialized out of the wall of logos and shoved a broomstick up his ass.

McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul all showed degrees of humanity, though it was largely cancelled out by hypocrisy and nutcasery.

McCain spoke unequivocally against torture, but he’s solidly pro-war–and also against gays in the military, despite the presence in the crowd of a former brigadier general who came out after he retired. (The guy was a bit too doddering to make his point fully, though.)

Huckabee is the only one who seems to have any conception of what life is like for working-class people, never mind any sympathy for them, but he’s a religious fanatic who essentially said that God told him it was OK to execute people. (What would Jesus do? He probably wouldn’t be the Roman soldier out there with the old hammer and nails.) And in the name of “fair taxes,” Huckabee would replace the income tax with a massive national sales tax.

Paul is strongly against the Iraq war–and got some applause for that–but he comes off a bit wacko, like he’s spent far too much of his life listening to far-right conspiracy theorists rant about the Trilaterals and the North American Union, and he’s absorbed both some of their beliefs and their apocalyptic style.

If brains were dynamite, the guerrillas in Iraq would not use Fred Thompson for an IED.

Tom Tancredo is the American Jean Marie Le Pen. When a mother in Pittsburgh asked what he’d do about lead paint on Chinese-import toys, he went on about blocking… illegal immigration. (I think that when he says “problems assimilating,” it’s code for “spic.”)

Duncan Hunter looks like he has some porcine DNA… and the first achievement touted in his commercials is his role in building the Berlin Wall along the Mexican border.

The looniest questioners included one who inquired if the candidates believed “every single word in the Bible.” (It was entertaining watching Giuliani fumble for phrases to express his deep and abiding faith while denying the literal fundamentals; in the 30 seconds he took, I thought of four commandments he’s broken.) Another one wanted to know which candidates owned guns and what their favorite model was, delivering the question in a tone of voice that sounded like what he really wanted to ask was, “did you ever caress your gun and rub your hands up and down the barrel until the cold steel got harder and harder, and…”

And I did all this stone sober, on no drugs but a small espresso. Hope you appreciate it. The public must know. It’s not as gross a job as being a bovine proctologist. The varieties of taurine excreta that we deal with are both more metaphorical and more pernicious. (That’s the editorial ‘we’–there’s no platyhelminthine voice in my gut going “eat, mine Host, eat for the Self.”)

One silver lining: I don’t think I heard Giuliani say “9/11″ more than twice.

1 Comments:

Blogger nolocontendere said...

I've heard the whole exercise was a propaganda psy-op with fake questions. Nothing would surprise me anymore.

3:00 AM  

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