Rolling Blackouts

Sometimes it’s all just too much to watch and listen to, isn’t it? Spring Break came at just the right moment this year. While I did pay attention to what was happening in Japan, I have ignored most everything else this side of Charlie Sheen and the 24 - 7 news cycle for a couple of weeks. While the world didn’t end, I was a little disappointed that no one wrote to say, “Hey, I miss your blog.” Undeterred by a lack of popular acclaim, there are a couple of items to catch up on.

On his radio show on March 18, Glenn Beck said, "If This President Is Re-Elected In 2012, There Is No Way We As A Nation Survive In Any Form That We Understand". The idea that 10 million people a week listen to this nonsense is worrisome enough, the fact that many of them are driving at the same time is absolutely frightening. And they say texting while driving is dangerous.

So it’s now official. Vegas odds-makers say President Obama is the favorite in 2012. This is good news for Beck. What sort of programming could Beck sustain if the Tea Party has completely taken over America? So really Beck is rooting for the President in the same way Rich Little rooted for Nixon. This is called hedging your bet. My own entertainment aside, Beck’s prophesy on the fate of our nation in 2012 is another across the line example of how un-American that whole movement really is. They clearly never understood the responsibility part of the “Rights and Responsibilities” of Democracy, the tenets of majority rule and a loyal opposition. As long as the Republic has lasted, through civil war and civil rights, it is insulting to the American fabric that the re-election of Barrack Obama could be cast as the defining moment of the downfall of the empire. And in 1964, the same people were saying it was the Beatles.

Is there any credibility left anywhere? Wolf Blitzer just dubbed the actions compelled by U.N. Resolution 1973, “Obama’s War”. This made me laugh out loud until a second or two later I realized he might not be kidding. Either my writer’s wit has lost its way or there really are no good metaphors to describe how crazy that statement makes WB sound. The only thing that comes to mind is a small boy being dragged into the women’s apparel department by his mother and then calling it, “Little Barrack’s Shopping Trip”. By all accounts, the President had to be dragged into this Libyan expedition and the handling of it is open for debate on the right and the left. Calling it “Obama’s War” is nothing but the plundering of a theme offered by PBS on their Frontline Series, which focused on “Bush’s War” in Afghanistan and Iraq and then in 2008 “Obama’s War” in Afghanistan (again) as the new administration  took control of and re-branded that ongoing conflict. Two final thoughts, this isn't a war and if it is Obama's, then the guy who sweeps the popcorn out of the theater also directed the movie.

The credibility, and perhaps sanity, disappeared further in the last few weeks when ex-snake handler, Mike Huckabee, once again repeated the Kenya-myth about the President. He later claimed he misspoke. Now, you are free to believe the President was born in Kenya if you want and many of my immediate family members fought in “Reagan’s War” in Grenada to defend your right to believe as you please, but who in God’s money-green America can actually believe Mike Huckabee misspoke “Kenya” when he actually meant Indonesia, er uh, Hawaii. If you believe Huckabee misspoke on the subject of Kenya and the President, then you probably believe Lee Harvey Oswald was just trying to aim high with a few warning shots or that Huckabee is actually from planet earth. Birth Certificate? I want to see the mother ship.

A phrase that is becoming more and more a part of the lexicon is the term, “rolling blackouts.” While these refer to an actual loss of electrical power, there is an irony laced, subtext to this phrase. One can see evidence of rolling blackouts in the coverage of Charlie Sheen or the obsession with Dancing with the Stars. Or, OMG, the President, in a refreshingly light-hearted moment, picked a March Madness bracket and caused hours of broadcast hissing and gnashing of teeth. While rolling electrical blackouts are costly and dangerous, rolling mental blackouts seem to be a serious national problem.

Recent polls show that Tea Partiers and Republicans now favor the repeal of incest laws to get the government out of our personal business. Further, they are introducing legislation to hang anyone who ever voted in a Democratic primary. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll get around to admitting that I misspoke. What’s the difference? America ceases to exist in any form that we can understand in 2012. With Barrack Obama as President for another four years, Doomsday will have arrived, and Glen Beck will be left to wander through media world muttering, “I can’t understand. I can’t understand.” Now that, will be worth watching.