Burnout

There hasn't been much here lately, and I can't say with any confidence that there's likely to be much here in the near future either. It's not a matter of my having been busy; I'm neither more nor less busy than usual. It's more a matter of not having anything to say that I haven't already said over and over again for the past, what, six or seven years. I think I'm pretty much burned out.

The country in which I live has launched yet another war against Muslims, motivated by more or less equal parts oil lust, fealty to the Israel lobby, fealty to the "defense" contracting lobby (lots of overlap with these last two), and the bloodlust of our current Nobel peace laureate president. Clinton is the last president of whom I said "it can't get any worse." What a stupid thing for me to have said. Dubya emphatically demonstrated that yes, it can get worse, and O'Bomber has certainly shown that it can get a lot worse yet ... and who knows what's next? Chucklebee? The Mittster? Barack 2.0? The one thing I'm fairly confident about is that it will indeed get worse.

Yeah, well, anyway ... I've toyed with the notion of dumping the blog, but that's silly, too ... in a week or two I'd just experience a resurgence of "piss and vinegar," as my old father used to say, and I'd have to start another one. And if there's anything the world doesn't need, it's a new blog. So I'll stand by and wait for the return of inspiration. Or whatever it is that makes me write posts; "inspiration" sounds a little grand. "Motivation" is probably more like it.

Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!

Heads are rolling at "National Public Radio" (more aptly, Nationalist Corporatist Radio) because some of the Best & Brightest got caught on sting-camera, suggesting that the Tea Party does not lack representation from the racist and know-nothing communities:

The resignation comes at a dicey time for NPR. On Tuesday, a video featuring former NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation) came to light. In the video, the work of conservative activist James O'Keefe, Schiller is heard demeaning tea party supporters as racists and "gun-toting" Christian fundamentalists who had "hijacked" the Republican Party. Schiller also said that NPR would be "better off in the long run" without federal support.

Vivian Schiller had already taken significant heat for NPR's dismissal of commentator Juan Williams last fall, after Williams confessed to apprehension when seeing Muslims on airplanes. Williams' ouster became a cause célèbre for conservatives — and helped spark the O'Keefe project. NPR's top news executive, Ellen Weiss, resigned in January as a result.

Well, this seems to call for fair, one-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand sort of commentary, so here goes. On the one hand, whoever says the Tea Party includes among its supporters a fair number of racists, toters of guns, and fundamentalists (suitably defined, I suppose) is speaking the truth. Such a statement has all the usual shortcomings of any generalization, and certainly does not apply to every individual Partier, but there it is.

On the other hand, it is delicious to see a few high-ranking smugistas at NPR fall afoul of the unanimously-accepted American Law of the Gaffe: some things simply cannot be said, and truth is no defense. Live by the sword of prissiness, die by the same. Gotcha!