So now the mental midgets of the right wing, having failed to convince sane people that President Obama is Muslim born outside the United States, now babble about his childhood in Hawaii, calling it a “foreign place” and “far from mainstream America.” Meaning exactly what? The same can be said about New York City or California. Well, what the daffy right wingers are trying to do is to make people feel that being from Hawaii is somehow un-American. What, Jack Lord, Don Ho and Bette Midler aren’t Americans?
Worse than messing with Jack Lord, his bionic hair and his “book-em, Dano,” mantra, however, is disrespecting the Americans who died defending that American island on December 7, 1941 from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Nobody back then dismissed their sacrifice as the meaningless defense of some exotic foreign land. Hawaii was then and still is America soil. Anyone born there or living there lives under the American flag. American law and the United States Constitution rule Hawaii, just like the other 49 states of this Union.
Is the right wing so short of ideas and policies that personal attacks are all they’ve got? Attack the man’s politics, his failures to deliver on campaign promises, his naivete and inexperience, that’s just fine and the American way. But to attack his patriotism because the guy grew up in Hawaii? What the fuck is that all about? How friggin’ stupid do you have to be to go that route? Do any of them have any better ideas or solutions to America’s many pressing problems? If so, they’re sure keeping them a huge secret.
There’s only so many times you can genuflect at the altar of Saint Ronald Reagan before people start remembering how dumb and dishonest he was too. There was a guy who campaigned against Big Federal Government and, once elected, proceeded to triple its size. He talked about being a tough guy and when the U.S. Marine barracks was blown up in Lebanon in the opening salvoes of the Terrorist War against the West, what was his response? He cut and run like the French Army, then diverted attention from his cowardly act by attacking Grenada, a tiny island less lethal than some of our own urban neighborhoods! His trickle-down economics exposed the conservative right’s view of their fellow Americans as so many dogs fighting for scraps under the dinner tables of rich men. This daft fool is their hero?
He must be, since they’ve been promoting as their leaders and standard bearers some of the stupidest people around in recent years. Sarah friggin’ Palin? Paris Hilton is smarter! How about that underwear model and nude cover boy they just got elected as a Senator from Massachusetts? Wow! Talk about the bottom of the barrel. And what about the media people elevated to political guru status by right wingers. Flush Limbaugh? Bull O’Really? Talented entertainers, perhaps, but completely bereft of any original ideas, unless “I got mine” passes as a policy and belittling the poor and minorities is in their view an original thought.
If they feel, like many people who backed him, that President Obama doesn’t have a stiff enough spine to implement his agenda even with a commanding majority in both houses of Congress, let them say so. Don’t go after his Hawaiian (American) roots. You can’t fault the guy’s intelligence or his personal life, since he was a law professor and is a good family man, but his performance as president is sure fair game. Why the personal attacks and the libel against Hawaiians? Could it be that that’s all they’ve got?
At least they’re not stupid enough as to ask Ms. Palin for any ideas. The last time she had an idea it was to join a political party that advocates Alaska’s secession from the Union. That’s not exactly optimum presidential candidate resume material, so now she’s spoon fed ideas by slightly less stupid right wing political operatives before she is allowed to speak in public (at $100,000 a pop!). The only other idea coming out of the right wing is from former dictator Shotgun Dick Cheney (If anyone thinks Bush The Younger was anything but a puppet, guess again. Talk about stupid!) and that is that all our problems can be traced to the current administration’s unwillingness to (!) torture people. That from a guy on who’s watch 9/11 happened, and who threw New Orleans an anchor while it was drowning!
When you have nothing to offer but desperately want to be in power anyway, the only way to go is the low road; the repeated lies, the unfounded personal attacks and the scoundrel’s last refuge, phony patriotism. The fact is, though, that a steaming pile of dog shit wrapped in an American flag is still a steaming pile of dog shit, and now you have to wash the damned flag under which we all live, even Hawaiians and Alaskans. The right wing would be taken more seriously if they could enlist some smart people to their cause. They could start with a few slightly-above-average recruits and build from there. Meanwhile, lay off Hawaii, where many brave Americans died defending this nation.