Redneck, White, and Bigotted

The pandemic of zany on the right just continues. Okay, that is probably being too kind, since much of this behavior is not comic but more on the fringe of certifiable in civilized company. Perhaps it is no wonder that the number of self-identified repubes has now dipped below 20% I believe I heard.

It's hard to fathom that the state of South Carolina allows any of their politicians out in public or especially near a microphone these days without large muscular handlers. (Okay, yes, that is a disturbing image, though, who knows, perhaps not far from the mark.) The "makeover" that state is going to need before nose-breathing folks with a post-elementary education and the ability to stand erect choose to move there goes beyond imagining. Do real people who I could get to know and become friends with actually elect representatives like this? The self-abasement is painful to observe.

Oh, South Carolina. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “there you go again.”

After a South Carolinian Democrat accused Senator Jim DeMint of failing to bring home enough federal funding for the poverty-stricken state, two county GOP leaders rushed to the Senator’s defense, crafting an op-ed for for a local paper yesterday in which they fell back on this antiquated, but still very offensive, analogy:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

The poor dears, bless their hearts. They just can’t help themselves, can they? Jews love money? No shit, Shylock! They also love charging usurious interest rates, diamonds, and global media empire-building! Wait, give me a few more minutes, and I’ll come up with more asinine stereotypes.

Every time the South Carolina GOP lets spill another racist or religious slur–and their well seems bottomless–they only serve to reinforce the negative stereotype the rest of the world harbors of Southern Republicans as inbred, chaw-spittin’, rusted out pickup-drivin’, “anybody not like them”-hatin’ crackers. I find it remarkable that the state manages to function at all, with so many pea-brained yokels in positions of power.

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But I admit to some misgivings about the original complaint from the Democrat, too. Not enough pork-barrel for you? (I'd love to be reassured that this was a genuine complaint at failure to attend to actual human needs.)

And I'll close with this, although the samples and examples go on and on these days. Here we have Oklahoma, with a good long rap-sheet when it comes to intolerance and bigotry, alas. This is US Senator Tom Coburn, with apt subtitle under his mug-shot of

Does it matter whether Dr. Tom is a pathological
liar or is just too stupid to know better?

And, just so you know, hidden in the "clip" below is mention of Jon Stewart. Not to be missed:

This has no doubt been reported but just reached my attention via this item from Al Kamen in today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

Waterboarding for kids?

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) must be feeling stressed these days over the travails of his pal, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). For those who missed it, Coburn took to the Senate floor last week to decry federal deficits, which are not, for him, an abstraction.

"It is deeply personal with me," Coburn explained. "I have five grandchildren. I look in their eyes, and I see the potential of their lives and all of these other children who are out there. You know what? We are going to waterboard them. That is what we are going to do. We are going to waterboard them. We are going to flood them with debt. We are going to shackle their opportunities. We are going to limit their possibilities because we don't have the courage to make the difference for their future."

Wait a minute! It's just a dunk in the water.

The Constitution, of course, is notoriously sketchy about qualifications for the offices it established -- citizenship and age, and that's about it. And in the theoretical part of the brain, we all recognize that this is a good idea. The qualifications of candidates for public office should be judged by the voters, we always remind ourselves.

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Now we have our good friend Dr. Tom Coburn achieving the special feat of annihilating reason on two urgent and seemingly unrelated issues, the economy and U.S. government practice of torture. Sometimes I think it might be nice if an orator in such circumstances might be required to declare whether he knows better, and thus speaks for the Party of Liars, or truly doesn't, and thus speaks for the Party of Morons. There have been times in our history when the press felt some responsibility for at least sorting out fact from fiction, but those times seem safely past.

So we still depend on this imperfect instrument of letting voters set their own standards. A certain number of the liars and morons have indeed been shown the door in the last two national elections, but not necessarily on that particular ground. And I'm afraid the evidence continues to indicate an alarmingly high level of tolerance for the Dr. Toms and Joe Wilsons.

Sigh.