Maybe Mr. Spock Should Run the GOP

By

Bobbie L. Washington

Maybe there is too much reality television that’s on the air or what s perceived as reality but I’m starting to miss the fantasy world of the Star Trek TV series. This real world has gotten tougher and tougher to maintain a sense of equilibrium as common decency is taking a back burner. A young president is trying to make his country a better place for everyone by offering up health care but there are mass protests based on lies and unfounded assumptions. He wants to give a speech to schoolchildren and the unseen speech is immediately called into suspicion as the first phase in creating children of the corn. He gives a speech in front of members of Congress and for the first time in history he is shouted at with the words “You Lie!”. The look of disbelief on his face was there for the history books. What in the hell has happened to the GOP?

In that fantasy world of Star Trek, Mr. Spock, the half-human, half-Vulcan hybrid was taught the lessons of logic. Perhaps the GOP needs to take a lesson from Mr. Spock and start ruling with some logical points and stop this idiotic rants of fear and loathing for the president.

Sure, you have every right to stand up for the causes you believe in but if you have no solutions to the problem, don’t just call a press conference and whine about what is proposed without offering an alternative. The GOP leaders of Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Chuck Grassley and company have apparently had some sort of microprocessor installed in their heads to automatically reject sound design to America’s burgeoning problems that were created during the last Republican controlled administration. They surreptitiously ignore those eight years that created two wars that are still in play, the looming financial disaster that lead to bank failures, the housing crisis that fostered corrupt practices in major brokerage houses that begat the Bernie Madoff’s of the world that lead to other failures in this political house of cards. They collectively ignore these failures as they scrub their hands with anti-bacterial hand gel in hopes of leaving no trace of their party involvement.

And although the president’s poll numbers have declined, the GOP leadership’s numbers are at an all time low. What the American people are fed up with is the same old tired rhetoric from these individuals who are not providing solution of their own. John Boehner has had more face time at the microphone talking about what he feels is wrong with just about everything that has been proposed by the White House to fix the economy, remove the troops out of Iraq, repair the bailout of banks and with the automobile business and with health care. When asked by reporters as to what his solution is, he and his cronies make the claim that they have provided alternatives but where is the proof? Why can’t you turn over what you have to the news organizations so that they can review your side of the solution? Logic, Mr. Spock, is needed.

And what compounds the GOP’s problem is the number of surrogates that is draped under your wings. The lists of people representing the GOP are Michael Steele, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Fox News. Beck has become a true representative of fear and spreading of hate when describing this president. He has made up enough make-believe stories it is a wonder he hasn’t been tapped to replace Hans Christian Anderson or Mussolini? Rush Limbaugh spares no feelings as he advocate the total failure of this president right at the start of his inauguration. Michael Steele is an example of total buffoonery and plays into the caricature and stereotype from a D.W. Griffith movie.

And then there are the fringe elements of the GOP. These are the ones that are still promoting the phony birth certificate nonsense, the teabagger protesters, and the death panel lunacy. How could the leadership of the GOP fall this far to this humiliating low? You used to represent power and class. You have allowed your esteemed leaders to fall into scandal. You were the ones holding a firm grip on family values. Instead, some of your most staunch colleagues were mired in of all things, sex scandals.

You did yourself no favors by allowing the town hall healthcare debates to denigrate to the point of civil war. Citizens resorted to screaming at one another with enough misinformation about what the government does and does not do, you would have to wonder how other countries viewed this debacle of a democratic process. You sat on your hands and said nothing to dissuade these followers of the GOP from carrying weapons to these events and in one case, the vandalism of one congressman’s sign defacing it with the sign of the Nazi swastika. And Eric Cantor sat on his hand and did not condemn this act.

Why has the GOP become the party of complacent temperamental losers? They have completely lost focus on the fundamental principles of what the American people want. It is not about their needs that are apparently entwined with their egos. Their party lost the election and now the American public must suffer the slings and arrows of their misery. Should the American public become even more economically stagnant because you have a predisposed ax to grind with the opposing party? And it is not because what they have to offer is radically outlandish it is merely because it is a Pavlovian response to the conditioning. There is nothing wrong with what is being presented in any of the packages the Obama administration is proposing. It is not the GOP’s idea even though an open door policy is in place for them to offer up any viable alternative. The Obama administration intended purpose is to fix this country. Why is that particular edict such an obstacle for the GOP to get around?

It is pure and simple logic that needs to be in play with the GOP. Mr. Spock and his society lived by the rule of logic. It’s a simple concept. Rethink your base. Disassociates yourself from the radical movements of the Hannities, Limbaughs, Becks, Coulters, and Palins. The American public is not complete morons regardless of the tempest flare up from the town hall meetings in the summer of 2009. You allowed the worst of the 2008 GOP presidential campaign tactics to linger on into the New Year. It was described as political fair play and was colored in veiled hypocrisy, race baiting and fear mongering of false allegations. Now you’ve allowed continuing in the same manner. And at what price did you pay?

You’re election into was a hiring of the people to do a job. You were not hired to pay favor to the lobbyists and major corporations. The millions of people who have lost jobs, homes, and health do not have the afforded luxuries that you have with the tax dollars that pay for your salaries and health care. The GOP has moved past the point of no return if you continue to pursue this direction.

Spock tells us that time is not on the American citizen’s side in his world of logic. We cannot be placed in a state of suspended animation as this crisis continues unabated. How much time have we wasted on this? Deadlines have come and gone and what is there to show? Voices are raised in anger and for what? Just to be heard or show the folks back home that you made a point? An early diagnosis of cancer is being missed right now because you called the president a liar and you’d rather continue to fund the military complex and two wars costing billions of dollars just to carrying on the legacy from eight years in the past.

Invite Spock to the party. Live by his principles. Comport yourselves to understanding that we are not in a civil war and discontinue fanning the flames of intolerance and hate from your narrow-minded allies who are getting paid a fortune for doling out bad advice while they hide their own superior short-comings.

Jon Stewart & Company VS. the Formidable Utopian Conservative Knights Unified Partisan Society

By

Bobbie L. Washington

The hot dog days of summer ebbs into the autumn days of copper and gold leaves. A couple of hurricanes graced the east coast but nothing came of it. Perhaps it was afraid to come near and coastal land as the summer was filled with the constant hot air of race baiters, nut jobs and whackos who were creating a pocket dome that forced any natural climate change from occurring. And while this went on, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert went on vacation giving the most radical of conservatives a field day to say and do as they please without challenge.

Glen Beck took it upon himself to create the new “Barack black army” brigade. It was Youtube footage of edited clips of black children participating in organized school and after school programs. Some of these children wore camouflage pants and black T-shirts to show uniformity and marched in straight lines. For Beck, it was if it was a factual documentation that the Barack black armies were gaining strength in numbers and he made sure that his monologue was pointed in a way to inure to these false assumptions.

And if that wasn’t enough of the screaming and shouting over health care and death panels, somebody in the temple of extreme conservatisms decided that the speech President Barack Obama was about to give to school children across the country was an indoctrinating mind puzzle for future Manchurian candidates. Members of the far right have publicly stated that they were pulling their children out of school on that day to avoid this pandemic speech that will cause children to grow up and have a sense of purpose. How dare he instill virtue on these minds of unformed clay? More protest ensues. Why is there no challenge to this nonsense from the established news organization? Where can we turn for a slap back to reality? Quick, shine the comedy light into the sky for salvation.

Whenever these politicians find themselves in the comedy spotlight due in part to their own misfortunes, it is the quick-witted comic who turns their foibles into political satire. And it is always fascinating how these satirist, and that’s with a capital S, are always discounted for not being intelligent enough to hold a conversation. However, as a person who used to write comedy for seven voices in a given period, comedians are the most well read individuals, especially when it comes to political satire. Newspapers are read from article to article to get the facts. And when these political punching bags come on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or David Letterman, many are surprised by how the interviews are conducted. As much as Letterman acts like a bewildered old fool with often-repeated gags, he is a poker player holding aces up his sleeve during interviews. He has been witnessed asking some of the most pointed questions to George W. Bush, John McCain and other noteworthy cable and network talking heads that has been pointed out as being better than the established news figures.

Jon Stewart has been bestowed as the most trusted man in news in a recent poll. And you have to give him the proper respect for earning that reputation after going after dome of the most convoluted full of themselves pompous and arrogant mouthpieces out there. Surely some of the interviews he has given have been replayed in journalism courses across this land. How could a person like CNBC’s Jim Cramer ever look at himself in the mirror after being called on the carpet for his advice in the beginning of the most horrific financial collapse in these modern times? Stewart has challenged the status quo of CNN and Fox News in the way they go about in reporting the news.

He has crawled up under the skin of the far right that he has become the beacon of cable television’s northern light. In this current state of organized chaos where preachers are advocating killing a president, protesters are carrying weapons to rallies and a GOP Congress have no other reason to oppose a president other than just to piss him off, Stewart, Colbert and Letterman are needed as much as possible.

Many of the late night hosts were perplexed as to what would they do with a new president who is a little more aloof and smart, something totally opposite of what they had in material from the last eight years. Sure, there’s Joe Biden, but Biden has not turned into the comical foil that everyone had anticipated. But then, the far right came out and there was the gift. Dick Cheney had something to say about the current administration and the virtues of torture. Chris Wallace of Fox News interviewed him as if it was a love in. And Letterman took Chris to task for not pursuing a line of tougher questions by turning the footage into a love fest with popping hearts abound their faces. Jon Stewart takes on Betsy McCaughey, the woman who started the death panel rumor in the health care proposal. She flitted about with the health care bill in her possession in the vain hope of proving her point but could never reveal proof in the healthcare bill that it said anything about death panels. She subsequently resigned her position as a board of director of Cantel Medical Corp.

And with the newest member to this social club of nitwits, Sarah Palin has used her Facebook membership as her sounding board without having to face her liberal mass media critics. Sure, she went after Letterman for a joke she ripped right out of the Republican dirty pool playbook She twisted the entire meaning of a joke and turned it into rape and pedophilia. A poor fight to begin with and showed her thin-skinned personality before she left office. That episode will be looked at with clearer eyes somewhere in political classes as what not to do when you find yourself in a fight with a comedian who can lay back and rope-a-dope you until he comes out swinging.

John McCain learned that lesson well after bailing out on Letterman and looked more and more unreliable during the presidential campaign when it came to crisis management. After a month and a half of comedic punches, McCain relented and returned to Letterman with tail between legs and a bit more humble but the damage had been done. His political fortunes were frittered away by his lack of judgments with the looming financial crisis and his choice of a running mate with questionable intelligence.

Colbert challenges NASA in a naming contest for a new section of the space station module and wins. NASA capitulates and names a piece of equipment after him. The power of Colbert rallied his forces to vote online for the naming rights. However, the power of the vote meant little, as NASA, a government agency paid with tax dollars, could not bear to have Stephen Colbert’s name on a space station module and settled naming a treadmill after him. The power of the satirist prevailed for the people have spoken.

And as the leaves begin to fall off the trees and the seasonal holidays approach, where will we be? Will health reform come to pass or be the latest casualty of the vindictive right? It seems like we are avoiding the “R” word in these discussions as the code language persists in these approaches of opposing this president. Two wars are still at hand. The country has record unemployment and the financial mess is still looming in the horizon as the burdens of a country and the rest of the globe sits squarely on the president’s shoulders. The only thing we can hope for in these new forms of bigotry that attempts to stifle this president is for the Satirist to be a little more aware as the growing bile from the maddening crowd is drowning the other voices out.

Why Obama is Working Twice as Hard

By Bobbie L. Washington

American history has a way of revisiting the times that we live in. During the close of the 2008 Presidential campaign, Senator John McCain, in his concession speech, mentioned that it had been 106 years since a black man was first officially invited to the White House. And that footnote slipped quietly under the collective radar of the network talking heads with no explanation of whom Senator McCain was referring to. After a few clicks with the mouse here and a Google query there, you soon come to find out that he was referring to and that was Booker T. Washington being invited to dinner by Theodore Roosevelt, one of Senator McCain’s heroes.

So, how does this relate to President Obama’s work ethic? Well, in doing the research on the first invite of an American black into the White House, I decided to write a stage play on that dinner invitation between Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt and his family that I have since completed. The research required reading on as much source material that you can find on the topic. One of those pieces of source material was Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery. It was interesting to read what went on in American history with the state of slavery before and the state of slavery afterwards with the newly freed American blacks from Booker’s point of reference.

From his writings, he was ingrained to prove himself to his slave masters and as a free man, to his white contemporaries. It was his believe and his edict and writings to tell all freed men that in order to prove their worth in the eyes of the white man that the new American blacks had to work twice as hard in his deeds and actions in society to show that they were not a burden on this society. Although a lot of Booker’s black contemporaries, such as W.E.B. DuBois, did not agree with Booker T. on many contemporary issues when it came to equality of the races and what approach to take, Booker was more of a passive nature while DuBois was more assertive, they held to the notion that they had to work twice as hard to prove themselves to the whites.

As a child, I have always heard about this philosophy from my elders. I never questioned it but the belief continued, as I got older and more conscious of my surroundings. The branding of being a “first” carries more than just your pride into a workforce but the generations that preceded you. And this cultural belief became a subconscious way of life amongst my generation of friends. This belief system of subconsciously working twice as hard to prove yourself was germinated from the ideals of Booker T. Washington. I don’t know if this should be considered a remnant of the old Jim Crow system or just a slave mentality condition that the newly minted freed American black could not separate themselves from? Either way, you can sense it in this new President. And perhaps he doesn’t realize that he is doing it?

The debate raging in America is, “Why is Barack Obama working so hard?” Perhaps he too was subconsciously conditioned to prove his worth in the office by working twice as hard. His literal education taught him many things but his societal awareness in this American life said that there are two Americas, one that the whites have lived in and refuses to part from narrow conventions and one for the collective rest to scramble for the leftover portions.

This President has a deficits problem, he has two wars, he has health care, he has bank failures, he has car failures, he has home mortgage failures, he has tyrant third world leaders, he has environmental problems, he has half of Congress refusing to go along just out of spite. And his plate has spilled over on to the table at least eight times while he uses an eighth of a teaspoon to pick it up.

He has to prove himself with the people out there who are wearing blinders and are listening to the Palinsanites, the Hannitians, the Limbaughcutioners, and the Becksillies that instruct them to follow their every move and treat this man as if he’s aligned with some of the most ruthless dictators and despots from the last century. They tell them to ignore history and the last eight years and consider this President as a Hitler disciple and a socialist. They protest health care and fear him speaking to their children as if he’s some cult leader asking them to drink the poison laden punch while speaking in tongues.

So in order for him to dispel the many false and inciting hate speeches even from some GOP politicians, he spends long hours putting out fires of banal rhetoric that any kid from are you smarter than a fifth grader can easily decipher as false. Do we wonder why we are losing the rankings in world education when this health care debate rallies results in showcasing the utter stupidity of its citizens including those who pack weapons to these sideshow carnivals? This President will work hard, take little vacation time and what little vacation time that he has taken so far have become working vacations. He was elected by a majority of the people to serve all of America but there exist a reality that he is working twice as hard to prove himself to a small constituent of people who see all of his effort in trying to right the last eight years as nothing more than political grandstanding and wanting to punish the Bush administration. Punishing the Bush administration is not on the agenda, saving this country from itself is.

For some of you, maybe this is a foreign concept to you but when you have grown up on societies other side of the track, these things are real. Many of the downside of America’s woes has been lived by the children of this nation. It is always difficult and challenging to enter a new area as the “first” and not having to feel that you must prove yourself as being worthy enough to be there. I’m sure the new Supreme Court Justice feels that way.