If you've got a good internet connection and some time, check out this week's Daily Show available for streaming online here. It'll cost you 90 minutes to watch all four episodes.
I'm not sure I've seen them hit on all cylinders for an entire week of episodes like this batch.
They make hay of Larry Craig, 'small town values', 'choice', and uncountable layers of hypocrisy. Amazingly, both Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee come on to face down the hypocrisy.
The small town values report that ends the week is hilarious, with Republican delegates almost universally unable to define what that phrase actually means.
As a former resident of Iowa, and someone who considers himself 'from Iowa', the notion of small town values for me is definitely filled with contradictions. Many of things that epitomize small town values - hard work, helping your neighbor, etc - are worthy of praise. Others carry with them a very strong caveat, mostly that small town values are reflective of a deep homogeneity. So long as everyone thinks and does as everyone else does, small town values avoid the traps hidden in the minds of the most vocal advocates. As soon as you step outside the bounds of that stark homogeneity, watch out. The movie Pleasantville was a great rendition of this particular phenomenon.
Clearly Republicans are strong proponents of homogeneity, just look at the 8% minority attendance among delegates of the RNC (though every minority was featured prominently in the TV coverage). People who spend their entire lives in places with little or no diversity have reason to be skeptical of people who are 'different'. It's certainly natural to fear change, but to define an entire ideology around the notion that change is scary is deeply flawed.
Republicans (and Americans of all sorts) have mythologized the immediate post war era as the epitome of American greatness. As if the image of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver were the height of human aspiration. I find this concept both painfully simplistic and deeply disturbing. And much of that thinking is what is at the core of 'small town values'.
3 comments:
I loved this line after someone rattled off such small-town indicators as "real values": "Could you be more generic?"
Palin's line "we grow some good people in our small towns" sounds a bit too much like Soylent Green.
Hey, I grew up in several such towns. Yeah, people are nice 'n stuff, but so what. This is the end-run before the election, and the GOP is going "small town values" as yet another smoke screen to mask the issues.
Some apple pie with your bullshit, senator?
You're right, of course. It's a total smokescreen, one that I foolishly choose to engage on its merits, rather than just calling it out as what it is.
It occurs to me how strategic that technique is.. should Obama push back, he takes time away from the message. If he doesn't push back, he gets Swiftboated. My thought is, call them out, neutralize it, and then hit the message twice as hard.
The goal of the GOP at this time is to get enough bounce in the polls on Monday, as it will then trigger the pundits to say over and over how that kind of bounce usually decides the winner.
Expect the pundits to make that statement tomorrow, even though this is so historic a campaign that too many intervening variables are present.
As for me, I'll be catching Obama on "Countdown."
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