Shame On You!

Thanks to a crazy December schedule, my usual plethora of blogs has been dramatically reduced; hence this will be my one and only entry for the month of December.

With that in mind, I decided to make this blog count with the first annual Shame on You Awards. There were many contenders, but I think you’ll agree all the winners were quite deserving of the prestigious honors.

And now the envelope please.

1. Fox News. Everything that has been said about this “news” organization has already been said. From the corporate-sponsored Tea Parties where correspondents acted like cheer leaders and riled up the natives, to “news” stories with Fox employees acting as their own sources, to the wingnuts that fill the prime-time slots, Rupert Murdoch’s garbage disposal was in rare form throughout 2009. No matter what was going on in the world, chances are after watching Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy or Chris Wallace, you’d be convinced it was Obama’s fault. I fully expect one of 2010’s “news” stories to be “Obama to blame for common cold.” Fox’s poison has already resulted in rot spreading throughout the mainstream media as rivals attempt to lure back some of the customers they’ve lost by resorting to some of their own mud-slinging. “Fair and Balanced” my foot.
2. Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Levin, et al. If this were a law firm, you’d be better off throwing yourself on the mercy of the court. Unfortunately for us, they don’t represent a law firm, they represent the “cream” of the lunatic Right, which has defined conservatism in this country. Their incendiary rhetoric has dragged American politics right into the gutter and badly wounded the Republican Party. Nothing is off limits and anything goes with these ideologues. They hide behind their First Amendment rights while spitting on the very Constitution they claim to uphold. They speak of liberty and freedom but know little about either. If 2009 was any indicator, 2010 should be quite a spectacle.
3. The Tea Party Movement. Of all the machinations of the paranoid Right, none were more devoid of any semblance of credibility and wreaked of outright gullibility than these deplorable nincompoops. When they weren’t chanting socialist and holding up signs of President Obama sporting a Hitler mustache at fake rallies, they were taking hostages at the August Town Halls. At heart they were symptomatic of a growing trend throughout the country, which says if you don’t like something, no matter how rational it might be, just shout it down and intimidate anyone who opposes you. Their conduct bore close resemblance to the Storm Troopers that ran roughshot in Nazi Germany. The worst part is they don’t seem to be going away. If anything they will likely grow in numbers next year as the mid-terms approach. Saints preserve us.
4. Sarah, Michele and the Rest of the Republican Party. Or as I prefer to call them, dumb, dumber and dumbest. It’s bad enough that the likes of Rush and the gang have become the mouthpiece of conservatism in this country, thus virtually eliminating any serious check on Democratic political hegemony, the Republican Party has apparently decided to kidnap itself and bludgeon its own future. Banking its hopes on a sluggish economy that they feel will steam roll them back into Congressional power in 2010, they have become the Party of No, that is when they aren’t busy embarrassing themselves. Can you say Whig Party? I knew you could.
5. President Barack Obama. A surprise entry here. Yes, he inherited the worst economic mess since Roosevelt, and yes he has managed to stave off what would’ve been a global collapse, but this president has simply been unable or unwilling to take the bull by the horns and bring the change to Washington he campaigned on. Whether it was continuing the domestic surveillance program that Bush unveiled, or not listening to economists like Paul Krugman who predicted correctly that the stimulus would not be big enough to drive the recovery needed to create job growth, or off-loading the healthcare bill completely to Congress, thus allowing the Right to define it and eventually strip it of most of the reform he promised last year, Obama has put both his Party and the nation into a precarious position. If the Republicans manage to win significant gains in both the House and Senate in 2010, it will not be because they brought anything substantive to the table; it will be due to a president who for most of his freshman year in office looked like a rookie pitcher getting lit up on the mound. He has managed to both rile up conservatives and drive away progressives all at the same time. Quite a feat. He wants to be the next JFK; the nation needs an FDR. If he doesn’t recover and find some kind of moral compass soon, this will be a one-term presidency.