Click here to subscribe today or Login.
We are living in strange times.
A black male rapper who was once openly despised by white conservatives for rudely grabbing a microphone from a white female singer is now cosying up to a white Republican president and has suggested slavery was “a choice.”
He later apologized. Then later tweeted about abolishing the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Then he clarified that statement. Through it all, white conservatives have rallied to his side.
Good thing someone has, because America’s only black president previously wrote the guy off as “a jackass.”
The current president invited him to the Oval Office. I’ve watched the video over and over, and I’m still not sure what the rapper-turned-statesman was talking about. Maybe neither was he.
Oh, and the white female singer that rapper once so publicly dissed? She has become a pariah among some of the conservative Caucasians who once came to her defense after she recently urged voters to support Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterms.
In a separate storyline, an actor known for playing the president on TV said Sunday that voters need to peacefully “overthrow” the federal government and toss the Republicans out.
The actor, a Democrat, was upset about many things. Among them: How the president — who also used to play himself on TV — proudly defended a speech in which he mocked a woman who accused his Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault, boasting: “It doesn’t matter. We won.”
Not quite sure who “we” is there — Republicans? The president as third-person royal we? Or overgrown frat boys who have a God-given right to grab women by the you-know-what as long as their policy positions suit the long-term agenda of Evangelicals who can forgive a few indiscretions by fellow GOP’ers if that’s what it takes to create God’s Kingdom on Earth?
At the same time, cable TV pundits and other talking heads were wasting precious air time and credibility Monday by suggesting that the president owes a certain U.S. senator a million dollars now that it’s clear she has Native American ancestry, amid his allegations to the contrary and an alleged bet over the matter. Glad to see everyone’s priorities are clearly in order.
Back here in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, we have a Republican gubernatorial candidate who last week vowed to stomp all over the incumbent Democrat’s face with golf spikes.
That, the challenger later clarified, was only a metaphor.
Despite how many Americans claim they want a return to civility in political discourse, the truth seems to be that many of us want no such thing. We’ll say we do, but what we actually watch and talk about and spout off about on Facebook reveals that was a lie, as Maury Povich would put it.
We want bread and circuses. We want drama. We want government that stays out of our lives — yet gives us everything we want — led by political brawlers who smack down those we disagree with like WWE wrestlers in expensive suits. Most of all, we seem to care way too much about what celebrities have to say regarding national affairs — but again, only if they agree with us.
Every week in this warped political landscape is just another dry run for the next “SNL” opener.
We have greedily consumed “reality” television, bad soap operas and other trash for so long that their low morals have seeped into the foundations of our democracy, replacing what was left of effective governance with a neverending sideshow that keeps us fat, dumb and angry at one another while shadowy donors with their hands fully on the levers of power ensure that the corporate agenda prevails over all else.
How else to explain a country in which so many voters cheer loudly for politicians who supported the idea that insurance companies can deny them, the very same voters, health coverage due to pre-existing conditions?
“It doesn’t matter. We won.”