By Jim Hoover
Political campaigns — long, cumbersome, intrinsically boring, and wordy – are covered by the media and bloggers, both having the job of making money first, and if their coverage informs the public, that’s an accident.
Online especially, all media, including bloggers, thrust with titillating verbal cuts to get attention.
Gawker’s Max Read (on Facebook) gallops ahead (mixed metaphor) on a runaway Texas steed to declare, “Rick Perry Wants to Execute Ben Bernanke.”
You don’t follow? It’s very simple.
Rick Perry said, “If this guy [Ben Bernanke] prints more money between now and the election (it’s OK after the election), I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa (Perry’s posturing in Iowa [another alliteration]) but we (Texas Swaggerers) would treat him pretty ugly (like a red-headed stepchild) down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”
OK, the punishment for treason is capital punishment, and Perry officiated in 235 executions during his terms as governor. So perhaps, Max Read didn’t gallop too far astray?
Many women think Rick, with an avid stare, crooked smile, his signature red tie, and ample locks (some say they’re fake ample) is cute. In other words, he’s a male animal with a degree in animal science, and not intellectually imposing with a GPA of 2.2.
Everything’s big in Texas, including the area of his childhood. They call it the “Big Empty,” a rural community called Paint Creek on a tenant farm in the West Texas plains.
Shades of George W. Bush? Well, you judge. He followed George as governor in 2000 and still serves. He’s about the same stature, but with a little bulkier build. He has a Texas twang and swagger. He would probably swing his hips and swagger while getting out of Air Force One (a common video of George W, even yet). Oh yes. He says that he thinks he was chosen by God. Does that sound familiar?
Perry is a Methodist, attending an evangelical megachurch. He hosted a large “Nation in Crisis” prayer rally, whose goal was to prayer us into prosperity, but one suspects that far-right fundamentalists next to him are praying for a white, male, Christian America.
Now with Obama in the White House, Republicans can demonize government, even though their party has a majority in the House of Representatives — their nasty, “big-government” finger-pointing still works, even with the mess caused by their own sabotage.
However, Perry ran as an outsider, pitting Texas against Washington, even before national Republicans did. Washington is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt, Perry says, even speaking secession from the union. This was more than a year ago, but around the time he was accepting the federal government’s stimulus money.
He’s a big money-raiser and a hard charger. Well, maybe his ideas aren’t so big, especially for solving problems with government help.
But there is that “D” word. He once was a Democrat. Still God chose him, just like George W. Bush.
But maybe this time God won’t allow the Supreme Court to appoint him president.
