Vintage Violence

Since the trouncing the Republican party received in the 2012 election, all these TV political pundits keep doing is saying the party needs to do this or that to regain their diminishing support.  They have to embrace minorities (um, ick!), they have to learn to compromise, they have to be responsive to women's concerns, et cetera.  I say to these pundits, stop!  Let them commit their political suicide!  But then again, the more you suggest they need to change, the less they will change.  That's just their nature, so maybe I'm wrong.  Keep it up, pundits.

This debate over gun control is a prime example.  They will not budge, and the more they are asked to budge, the more loony they get.  Wayne LaPierre is Asshole of the Year, as far as I'm concerned.  This jerk had barely any respect for the pain the people of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut have experienced, living through the most horrifying damage a community can face, when La Pierre appeared on Meet the Press with David Gregory.  Gregory is not even the most left-leaning of the press he could have talked with, but on this day Gregory was grilling LaPierre pretty good, trying to get him to admit that if Lanza had been unable to obtain large capacity magazines, he might not have been able to butcher as many people.  He would not concede it.  In fact, I don't know if anybody else caught it, but he even, in a subtle way, threatened Gregory's life.  He started saying that the solution was to have armed guards at the schools, which is ridiculous but predictable, and in a quick aside mentioned that he noticed that they don't have armed guards at the NBC studios.  Do you think that agitated gun owners, afraid that the Black President is going to take away their firearms, might become unhinged seeing their gun mentor being treated in this way by the "evil, liberal media", and now knowing that there are no guards at 30 Rock, might possibly decide to start shooting up "the problem"?  This is the caliber (pun intended) of person we have to deal with all across the board in this country now, and all of those Republicans are in lock-step.

They've done it to themselves, though they try to blame "the Liberal Media", which is anything but.  The Media, in case there is any doubt, is owned by people and corporations with lots of money.  Unfortunately it is not in the best interest of their profit margin to be all that "Liberal".  Yes, Republicans have done it to themselves by screeching the "Liberal Media" myth for so many years through Fox News and all that talk radio.  Case in point: Glenn Beck.  It is well-known to people in Conneticut that in his earlier days in local Connecticut radio that Beck was a notorious coke-head.  An addict.  Addicts are known to do or say anything to get what they want.  Is it a stretch to believe he is the way he is because he is beholden to be by some rich entity who may have helped him out of the mess he made of his life?  Or Limbaugh.  It has always mystified me how intelligent people on TV could knowingly say wrong things.  What's their motivation?  Who are they protecting?  Themselves in some sick way, I suppose.

So the way it has gone is that through the screeching of these Right-Wingers in the Media and their willing cheerleaders in the Republican Party, all other Media has been forced, to try to avoid being labelled biased, to always offer the most crazy, unpalatable viewpoints as balance, no matter how wrong they may be, even often leaving it as the last word on many segments on the news.  What this has done is make the debate so UNBALANCED that as many Democrats get more conservative, the Republicans have to oppose things that they may have supported years ago.  If a Democrat supports it, they MUST oppose it, to the ridiculous extent that we see Mitch McConnell filibustering his own bill!

That's right, Republicans, keep on digging in.  That pile of detritus so conveniently placed right next to the hole you're in is looking awfully inviting...