Our Dumb Politics

Rachael Ray, the television chef famous for her 30-minute meals, came under fire recently for appearing in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial. Right-wing pundits were enraged at the donut and coffee business for having Ray appear in the commercial wearing a black and white scarf.

That’s right. A scarf. Supposedly the scarf resembles a kiffiyeh, a type of headgear worn primarily in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat wore one.

The loudest and most obnoxious of the pundits, Michelle Malkin, wrote on her website about the “hate couture” (one of the most sublimely idiotic phrases ever written) and suggested Ray was unpatriotic and Dunkin’ Donuts committed some kind of sin against the United States. Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad, which will only make the idiots think they’re more powerful.

But, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a scarf is just a scarf.

Dumb and Dumber

Idiot politics have been on the rise for a long time. Around-the-clock cable news coverage of the most mundane, non-newsworthy events doesn’t help. Whenever a politician misspeaks, it’s headline news.

Barack Obama, for example, said his uncle was part of the American forces that liberated Auschwitz at the end of World War II. A mock controversey erupted moments later when the bloggers, pundits, opposing politicians, political groups, media, and everyone else with nothing better to do rose quickly to…well, do something.

Obama’s uncle didn’t help liberate Auschwitz; his great-uncle helped liberate Buchenwald. Yes, a gaffe of epic proportions that will surely sink Obama’s hopes of…wait, what’s that? Nobody cares?

Of course nobody cares. It was a harmless slip of the tongue and the only reason it got any play at all is because of our top-down TV-dictated culture of idiot politics.

Which of course leads us to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had it all. The media adored him for his ratings-boosting abilities. He single-handedly saved Fox News’ February ratings. As a controversial preacher who said some pretty crazy things, he was a gold mine for the idiot punditry and was elevated to national renown by way of his sermons.

Who cared? Only the people who would never vote for Barack Obama anyways.

Now we have Reverend John Hagee, who said Adolf Hitler was a prophetic hunter who drove Jewish people to Israel, and Rod Parsley, a televangelist and mega-church leader who said America’s divine purpose is to exterminate Islam. John McCain sought their endorsements before rejecting them once their own words came to light.
Now John McCain will have to deal with the idiot punditry on yet another non-issue.

Get Smart

Hillary Clinton didn’t kill Vince Foster. George W. Bush didn’t cause the September 11 attacks. Barack Obama is not Muslim (a campaign of idiocy offensive on a whole other level as well, considering that nearly all of the world’s Muslims are good people).

There are many more examples of dumb politics and not nearly enough ink to express the disbelief that they could be considered honest-to-God controversies.

Many of the journalists covering these events have degrees. One would think they possess some small portion of common sense or the ability to put things in context.

But in the age of 3-second sound bites and an audience that spends an average of 3 seconds per story in a newspaper, maybe it’s a natural reaction to our declining attention spans.

But there’s a way around the dumb politics. Switch off the television, turn off the computer, and focus on the candidates and their positions. Discern their values and ideas and judge them on their merits.

Don’t boycott Dunkin’ Donuts because Rachael Ray wears scarves. Don’t vote for a candidate because they misspoke once or know someone.

Take a step back, take a deep breath, take a chill pill. Do whatever it takes to ignore, for as long as you can, the idiot politics dominating our airwaves.