We've Been Here Before: The Gipper, The Donald and Punk Rock

I was in eighth grade when we elected an actor with bad hair and frighteningly hateful ideas to the White House. Ronald Reagan made sure we all knew how evil and terrible and frightening the Russians were, that if we didn't stand up and fight they'd infiltrate and destroy us. Illegal immigrants were bringing in drugs and taking our jobs. The economy was in ruins with inflation making everything too expensive for the average joe, but hey, no worries, The Gipper is here to fix it all. His campaign materials used a reassuring phrase: "Make America Great Again."

I remember the media telling us there was "no way" this county would ever elect an actor to the Presidency -- there was just no imaginable way Reagan could win, the pundits insisted.

But he did. Twice.

If there was anything good about the Reagan years, especially during his first term, it was that he was a perfect target for the North American punk rock scene to vent its angry energy toward. The UK punks had both The Queen and Maggie Thatcher to spew their bile upon, but for the first couple of years, this side of the pond had no real galvanizing figure to equal either.  Reagan fixed that.  So much great music was made in protest of that man: D.R.I.'s spat out "Reaganomics," The Minutemen imagined "If Reagan Played Disco," Canadians D.O.A. chimed in from the great white north with "Fucked Up Ronnie."  The Ramones checked in with "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" while Reagan Youth presented an eponymously titled diatribe. Reagan's presidency provided fuel for hundreds upon hundreds of hardcore bands across the country. And for a while, hatred of Reagan fueled nearly everything Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys did. It was perhaps all best summed up with The Pop-O-Pies' wonderful "A Political Song:"

"We don't want your apathy
No fucking government gets down on me.
Can you spare any change? Can you spare any change?
Anti-Reagan and stuff, man, yeah."

So now here we are, 36 years later, and the possibility looms that we may elect a reality-TV star with bad hair and frighteningly hateful ideas to the White House.  Donald Trump makes sure we all know how evil and terrible and frightening the Muslims are, and that if we didn't stand up and fight they will infiltrate and destroy us.  Illegal immigrants are bringing in crime and taking our jobs.  The economy is in ruins and everything is too expensive for the average joe, but hey, no worries, The Donald is here to fix it all. His baseball cap even sports a reassuring phrase: "Make America Great Again."

The media kept telling us there was "no way" this county would ever elect this buffoon to the Presidency -- there was just no imaginable way Trump could win, the pundits insisted.

But he won the Republican nomination, and there are those now saying he could win it all.

So where are the current crop of punks?  Trump is ripe for the same musical evisceration, and they keep telling me punk's not dead.  So far, we've had to rely on those who were there before:  D.O.A. updated their classic as "Fucked Up Donald," and Jello Biafra is at it again with his current band, The Guantanamo School of Medicine, who are now out on the road on their "Nazi Trumps Fuck Off" tour.  The seeds are planted, the way has been shown.

A Trump presidency making America great again? Yeah, I don't think so. But if it happens, it just might make punk rock great again.  Can you spare any change?

My Own "Special Comment"

Image by Travelin' Librarian via Flickr

Let me start here: I don't like Keith Olbermann. Nothing personal against the man; I have never met him. He may be a great guy if you get to know him. But as far as his current role as host of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I find him to be bombastic, overbearing, self-obsessed and hypocritical.

At the same time, a part of me wants to like Olbermann. In his days across the ESPN desk from Dan Patrick many moons ago, he and Dan were easily the most entertaining, most knowledgeable sports commentators on the air; I never missed their show. He is obviously a bright man, quick-witted and, at times, honestly very funny. He is an outstanding speaker, able to use the language almost as a musical instrument.

Yet his skills are used, sadly, to perpetuate the ongoing partisan divide in this country. He is nothing more than the Left's version of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, constantly stirring the pot and fomenting anger and disdain among his audience against the Right. I dislike Olbermann for the same reasons that I dislike Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, et al.: they each contribute mightily to the "us against them" mindset that we find ourselves in nowadays - a mindset that does our country far more harm than good.

But, in Olbermann's case, there's something more. It's the fact that he refuses to admit his role, that he does not see himself that way, but rather as some sort of messianic second coming of Edward R. Murrow, that causes me to want to kick my television in any time I watch his program. His pomposity is simply unmatched, and simply unbearable.

Yet I watch, partly because I keep hoping I'll find redeeming quality in his presentation, partly out of the "train wreck" factor ("What kind of idiocy is he going to spew tonight?"). I watch for as long as I can, until I can take no more and must turn the channel.

So it was that I found myself watching last night. I tuned in at about the halfway mark, and so was able to grit it out to the end of the program, and I'm sorry I did. Last night, Olbermann delivered another of his histrionic "Special Comments," extended editorials he prepares when something particularly goads him. You can read the transcript of last night's Special Comment here.

Again, I want to enjoy Olbermann's work. From a strictly linguistic angle, his Special Comments in particular are damn near poetic in their rhythm, structure, and evocative use of his extensive vocabulary. In content, however, their disingenuous, often factually inaccurate assertions and questionable leaps in logic drive me right up the wall!

If Olbermann is able to use his widely viewed soapbox to wax linguistic against those who get his dander up, then I hope he (and you, my readers) don't mind if I step up on my considerably smaller soapbox and, in the style of the self-appointed Master, vent my Olbermann-induced dander.

As promised, my own "Special Comment":

Mr. Olbermann, if this is, as you suggested in the opening lines of your Special Comment Monday evening, a "terrible time in American history," rest assured that you, sir, are culpable as surely as those folks you chose to call on the carpet.

Yes, you, Mr. Olbermann. You wield your Special Comment as though it were King Arthur's sword, a weapon so powerful and mighty as to only be employed in times of dire need, when the skies are bleakest with despair, and you the only one who can remove it from the stone in order to wield it. Armed, obviously, with your intelligence, skill in speaking, and penchant for the overly dramatic; armed, obviously, with your knowledge of cultural and literary touchstones; and armed, obviously, with Roget's Thesaurus, you drive your verbally acrobatic blade through the heart - what you must believe is the very black heart - of those you demonize. Indeed, you are so driven to rid the land of your enemies that you are nearly brought to tears as you speak of their heinous misdeeds, nearly brought to alarm as you consider where the roads they pave may lead, nearly brought to frenzy by your anger so strong that you spit out their names rather than speak them civilly. It is so convincing an act that those who blindly follow you, sir, are pulled into the visceral maelstrom even if they don't quite understand all the big words.

It is an act, isn't it Mr. Olbermann? Your outrage, your fervor, your nearly bursting into stage tears; it must all be done to drive home the seriousness of your message. You know just as well as Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Beck that you can't rally your troops through factual reporting and thoughtful critique alone. You've got to let them hear the sizzle before they'll buy the steak, right Mr. Olbermann? You've got to make them FEEL it, you've got to find their hot buttons, you've got to sell it. And, just like Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the movie Network, you've got to convince them to "go to the window, open it, stick [their heads] out and yell 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"

You do it in small ways night in and night out, don't you Mr. Olbermann? By demeaning those who represent opposing views; by giving them diminunizing nicknames such as "Comedian" Rush Limbaugh, "Billo the Clown," and "Coultergeist;" by smugly sitting in judgment of those you declare "Best" and "Worst" Persons in the World (and how telling that your Bests are really nothing more than another round of Worsts). In doing so, you imply that you, sir, and by default, your followers, are somehow better, more civilized people. You imply that you, sir, and by default your followers, take the higher, more thoughtful road than these obvious heathens.

But, sadly, the opposite is true. You are no better, sir; no more civilized, no more thoughtful; you do not take a higher road. Instead, you hypocritically wallow in the same muck, employing the same tactics of fear-mongering, alarm-sounding hyperbole to whip your supporters into a frenzy as the tactics you decry the targets of your venom for using. Perhaps you veil it less thinly, but not by much. You shame Limbaugh for comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler, yet you freely compare Sarah Palin with the participants in a racist lynch mob, somehow making the leap from her unfortunate "Death Panel" Facebook comment to that comparison - a comparison not based in any logical thought progression but based merely in the need to make sure your followers get mad as hell! You mock Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs for not being able to "let go" of their arguments with you on their programs, yet you remind us with excruciating clockwork-like regularity of how many days it has been since President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." You, sir, are no better than they.

You are correct about one thing, Mr. Olbermann. This is a terrible time in American history. It is a time when I find myself fearing the road we as a nation are traveling. It is a time of some the sharpest, deepest divisions in values, morals, and beliefs that I have ever seen in my 42 years. It is a time when I see the country I love being torn asunder; a time when it seems we can accomplish nothing because the partisan rift has become so deep and wide as to seem incapable of being bridged; a time when the mantra on either side seems to be that of the Hatfields and McCoys: "If'n ye ain't fer us, ye must be agin us!"

And you are also correct, sir, when you call the names of the Palins, the Becks, the Limbaughs, and others as those who should be held accountable, at least in part, for the bile that is ever eroding that partisan rift further. Though it may not seem like it based on what I have said so far, I am no apologist for the Right. I do find their tactics of fear-mongering and panic-inducing hyperbole as distasteful as you claim to.

But, Mr. Olbermann, I suggest that you take a good long look in the mirror, for you too, sir, are partially to blame. You too, sir, use many of those very same tactics while simultaneously decrying them. And, to paraphrase your own words, if someone is hurt at one of these Town Halls, pro-Reform, anti-Reform, or, most likely, as these things tend to play out in real life, sir - if the hurt befalls an innocent bystander - you will have contributed to the harm.

If you truly wish to bring about a change, a healing, in this country, I beseech you, Mr. Olbermann, to reconsider the way in which you are doing it. Sadly, however, I suspect that is not your goal. After all, you have your job to do, and that job is to get ratings. Because, sir, ratings equal dollars for that parent company you work for, don't they? And therein lies another similarity between you and those you demean, another measure of your hypocrisy: at the end of the day you too, sir, are beholden to a corporate boss, just as those you call out for serving their corporate bosses over serving the greater good.

The Tea Party Guests Who Aren't Being Served

Rolfe Winkler hit a bullseye with the article he wrote at Option ARMageddon about the recent Tea Parties, "CNN Misses the Tea Party Point."

Wasn't just CNN who missed the point, it was virtually all of the Left Wing. CNN just happened to have the most egregious example of "if it doesn't fit our view, we ain't gonna report it" party-line journalism - the type of unbalanced reporting I'd expect from either Fox or MSNBC, depending on the party line. (The video is included in the article, and it is a sad commentary on the state of journalism and news reporting today.)

But the point here isn't the obviously biased reporting - that's merely a symptom of a larger issue; an issue that many are not yet recognizing in their zeal to mock the Tea Parties. Winkler notes,

"The lefties and the righties are still so blinded by their hatred of each other, they don’t see the emerging super-majority in the middle. They don’t see (yet) that they are actually in violent agreement, incensed as they are with nonstop government spending, in particular the bank bailouts.

Anger over the bank bailouts unites virtually the entire country. And how very ironic that this inchoate union of right and left is forming in opposition to Mr. Post Partisan himself, Barack Obama."

This observation is supported by the first reader comment, which in part reads, "...there is a building of all the people in the middle that are sick of the business as usual regardless of Rep or Dems." Indeed there is - I know because I am certainly a part of that ever-growing political demographic.

The party that best addresses the concerns of this middle-ground group will have the strongest position gong forward - assuming either party gets their heads out of their behinds and begins to address these concerns instead of spending all their time and energy in this ongoing political pissing contest.

#44

The pomp and circumstance has not yet begun to wind down in Washington DC tonight. There are balls to be attended, more speeches to be made, and celebrations of what many are hoping will be a new, better chapter for our country. Once the party is over, however, the hard work begins.

As I noted during this morning's live blog (thank you again to those who were here), I did not vote for Barack Obama. I happen not to agree with his politics. While I think all Americans want to see the same ends achieved, I personally don't believe the means by which Mr. Obama seeks to achieve those ends are the proper way to go. Still, I want to see President Obama succeed. I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong, for if I am, we as a nation will be in a much better place.

President Obama is outstanding when it comes to delivering speeches full of sweeping emotion and go-get-em attitude. His "Yes we can!" slogan and his calls for "hope and change" are straight out of the Positive Affirmation playbook, and his speech today fell right in line with that attitude. To hear him speak today and not be caught up in the enthusiasm would have been impossible. To hear him speak today and not ask "How can I help President Obama rebuild this country?" would have been unthinkable. And, as I noted earlier today, that speech was pitch-perfect as far as what he needed to say...today.

Where Mr. Obama has always fallen short, in my eyes, is when it comes time to get to the detail. How, exactly, are we going to face the challenges before us? What, precisely, is the Obama Administration going to do to bring about the change and maintain the hope that he has talked about for these many months? It's great to shout to the rooftops that the old internal political divisions that have sometimes cuffed our hands are obsolete, but what does President Obama do when those obsolete divsions inevitably cuff his hands from the things he wants to accomplish? Is he prepared for those battles?

I do not envy President Obama the job he has begun today, and I hope that he does have a few tricks up his sleeve for when the going gets tougher, because it will. And it will be in those toughest of situations that we will learn whether this change is one for the better, or whether we have once again fallen for the old "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" routine.