As I read this article, I was struck by the sheer lunacy of it all. Hard right religious reactionaries "eating their young" in the person of devout Mormon and Disneyland animatronic candidate Mitt Romney, while they attempt to paper over Fred Thompson's formerly moderate-conservative profile and reinvent him as the "born again" commander-in-chief of "family values" thought and sex police.
Today I read a strong essay by, of all people, Paul Craig Roberts, a former member of the Reagan Administration and a bona fide conservative, comparing our corporate media's complicity in Bush Administration propaganda to the "Ministry of Truth" in Orwell's 1984: the constant revision of facts, events and history to fit the latest propaganda line, no matter how outrageous; the absence of any rational "connect-the-dots" logic or factual perspective; and the flushing of exposed, obsolete propaganda "down the memory hole." The Big Lie taking full root and flower in our so-called "free press."
The expert use of these reprehensible techniques has been honed to a fine point by the "Ministry of Right Wing Truth" personified by the likes of Dobson, Perkins, Glenn, Carter, Weyrich, and a host of other very saavy, nevertheless suffocating, maniacal zealots on a collective mission from "God" (I put God in quotes because their "God" rings the bell atop the Irony Scale-of-Life).
Frankly, after listening to these fruitcakes as background "white noise" during the Reagan and Bush years, then having them thankfully recede a bit back into the woodwork during Clinton--only to have them re-emerge from under their collective rock and take center ring during "Bush the Destroyer of Worlds"--is too much for this moderate-libertarian soul. I am fed up with their monumental hypocrisy, their sanctimonious self-righteousness, their veiled cynicism masquerading as piety, their dark bigotry and blanket vilification of anyone who isn't struck in their predominantly white, so-called Christian, reactionary, Bible-thumping image, and their use of the "memory hole" to simply rewrite history and events, both long ago and last week.
I can't stomach Mitt Romney's candidacy, but even he doesn't merit the squalid treatment described in this article, about a multibillion-dollar industry (porn) in which and from which many of these pious hyporcrites may directly or indirectly own stock, and derive income. You can access pay-per-view porn in almost every chain hotel in this country, anywhere there's cable TV. Since it's "pay per view," you can simply not pay, and voila!, no view! Why not train their legions of "family values" acolytes how to install Parental Controls on their TVs and PCs, so their kids can be protected and watch only the ION channel, Disney Family and Hallmark, thereby transporting them back in time to the zeitgeist of 1953, with all the cultural and social "enlightenment" that entailed, before Pleasantville was poisoned by the evils of pot, vile antiwar protestors, civil and voting rights and worst of all, the sexual revolution--free love.
Romney is as transparent an opportunist as Hillary Clinton, but presidential politics took a very wrong turn when Kerry was "swift-boated" in '04, failed to come out strongly against it and therefore legitimized its use, so now we've got to live in the depraved PR world where this kind of Orwellian tactic is routine, and tolerated like bleeding in seventeenth-century medicine.
These liars and charlatans directly challenge the intelligence and attention of thinking Americans every day with their intrusive, hypocritical drivel. David Vitter's recent chutzpah-laced press conference is a good example, where he and his ballsy wife asked for privacy from the "intrusive media" in their sexual scandal, after making their bones invading the privacy of others on the same subject, including President Clinton, and exploiting the voracious media on a daily basis to elevate their own profiles. Does this make you want to puke, or what?
Enough with the sex police, the thought police, the values police. They need to be brought up on charges and dismissed. Hand over your badges...you don't need no stinkin' badges!
Stewart Braunstein
Port Washington , NY
07/18/2007 @ 09:28am
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