I got motivated to do this blog by another blog called
"Left of Center" and in an entry entitled
"Elitist" he posted a link (with excellent commentary) to a stunningly bad, almost Shatner-esque 'poem' by right-wing bloviator Sean Hannity.
It can be viewed
here:
I was so amazed at its puerile platitudinousness that I had to comment, which I'll copy here (slightly edited) as well...
Eat your heart out, Rod McKuen.
Boy, it just burns me up to hear these guys trying to appropriate "moral values" for themselves, as if they hold the patent on them (although I wouldn't put it past them to try!)
Really, there's so much to work with here...
"shop at Wal-Mart", do ya? yeah, you're really concerned about the small businesses that Wal-Mart obliterates in every community it steam-rollers into due to its total world-wide domination of bulk buying, which no small-town store can possibly compete with, and the baby-sitting wages it pays its workers...
"we raise our children as best we can"
Good for you, Sean - personally, I loathe mine and send 'em out to play in traffic on a regular basis.
"we fly business class"... now just what the h-e-double hockey sticks is THAT supposed to mean? Too good for coach, or too cheap for first class? That one's a puzzler, Sean.
"we'll help anyone who really needs it" ...and, let me guess...you'll be the one deciding who really needs it, won't you? Notice how quickly the catch-phrase (or oxymoron) 'compassionate conservative' was tossed aside after the 2000 election? Sounds a lot like the noises from W that were his feeble approximation of conciliation: "With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I will reach out to
everyone who shares our goals" (emphasis mine)...don't say he didn't warn us.
"We expect to be able to watch a football game with our kids and not have to worry about the content of the half-time show"
No sir, no breasts for your kids, eh, Sean? Just plenty of good ol' fashioned beer ads to encourage the budding alcoholics in all of us. Kids LOVE beer ads - the funnier and more engaging and entertaining, the better! That's the American Way!
"farms, ranches, small businesses"? - not for long if Big Business continues to merge and consolidate... How's your little farm going to compete with ConAgra? It's not - not if Big Business' best li'l buddy has anything to say about it!
Well, I could go on and on, but I won't - the hardest thing about it was actually going to that site and having to look at that smug, self-satisfied so-and-so. There was quite a bit of time when I forced myself to listen to guys like Hannity and O'Reilly (although I couln't quite manage Limbaugh), because I truly wanted to know how they see things, how they can take the same basic set of facts and come up with a completely different worldview, but I just had to stop. It's too awful. It's too illogical.
I'm not sure I have it in me to read an actual book by Hannity (or Coulter, O'Reilly, and their ilk). I'd like to try, just for the moral exercise, but I'm afraid I'd get all junkyard-dog during the first chapter, and a perfectly good $20 book would be on the floor in shreds, covered with little flecks of foam.