If, just two years after giving Obama the Presidency and Democratic control of both the House and Senate, voters are about to hand Obama the longest lame duck phase of a Presidency in American History, why aren’t the paid journalists explaining this turnaround to their readers?
Skeptics might question the assertion that "America is being trained to accept all unexplained phenomenon without asking any questions" and demand some evidence to back it up because nature abhors a vacuum and people just naturally want answers when the "Why?" question pops up. On the other hand, if they are being trained to do that, they might not bother reading this column.
Can anyone who is not one of those conspiracy theory lunatics provide an explanation for phenomenon such as:
Building Seven falls down.
No photos of the airplane hitting the Pentagon have ever turned up.
Bush really thought Saddam helped al Qaeda and had WMD’s so an invasion was necessary. Now, reasons seem so irrelevant.
John Kerry was going to protest the Ohio results, next day his attitude had suddenly become: "no problem."
Candidate Obama disapproved of Americans getting killed in Afghanistan, after being sworn in, it was suddenly a case of needing a new application of the surge strategy.
There were other times when nagging questions went begging.
First accounts of the flight 800 disaster contained descriptions of a missile being seen, then it morphed into "explosion in the fuel tank."
A swarthy gentleman who got away was reported to be part of the group of suspects for the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma, and then it became more of a "lone gunman" type operation.
Howard Dean was an inconvenient frontrunner. He whooped it up at a victory party, and then John Kerry was quickly anointed as "frontrunner." Did the press ever try to explain that clever bit of politics?
Democrats were concerned that the electronic voting machines were suborning democracy, and then Senator Obama became the first African American to be elected President. The attitude changed to: "No worries mate."
Immediately after President Obama was inaugurated, the media went wild with conjecture about the prospects for the Republican Party to survive. Now, the press calmly reports that a shift back to a Republican majority in the Congress and the Senate is to be expected. What ever happened to the old concept of a "nose for news"? Isn’t any reporter going to attempt the monumental challenge of explaining just how that big of a change occurred (stealth style) so fast? If they value a regular paycheck, they won’t.
This columnist notes that no one has resurrected the old cliché about "charisma" to explain the baffling aspect of the Alvin Greene win in the South Carolina Democratic Primary. Hey, that as good as any other explanation available to the public.
The next "elephant in the room" question seems to be: If the Republicans have said that they will (in effect) play a passive-aggressive game while Obama is President, why would America opt for a two year stalemate during hard times? (The Stephanie Miller radio show recently played a sound byte of Republican John Boehner saying, at the time President Obama was sworn in, that the Republicans would in effect use the passive-aggressive tactic to sabotage the Democrat’s entire term in office. ) The prospect of a reversal in Congress and the Senate back to a Republican majority carries with it the implied prospect for giving President Obama the longest "lame duck" period in American History. Why (the ***k) would America want to do that? Oh, sorry we forgot: "don’t ask don’t tell."
Does the prospect of the longest lame duck period in American History during tough times conjure up the image in the news photo of a fellow holding off police while pointing a gun to is own head?
Here’s a bonus question: If we have just raised some valid points, why the heck is it up to an online pundit, who would much rather be taking photos at this weekend’s Second Annual San Francisco Presidio Concours D Elegance auto event, to bring up these questions?
If these are valid points will my readers send a link for this column to their favorite paid pundit? If that’s the case, then shame, shame on the media stars for too many job failulrues.
If these are not valid points, and if I hip my readers to some interesting obscure items (and resurrect some forgotten musical memories) while asking irrelevant questions, we have to ask: Is there any harm in that? Don’t school teachers say that the only stupid questions are the ones that folks don’t ask?
Did someone just say that this columnist can’t produce interesting items that haven’t already appeared on the the Huffington Post website? Has the Huff-po covered this: while looking for a website for sharing bus-spotting photos, we discovered that the bus-spotting site was hipping their readers to the Deutsche Welle story about the old folks homes in Germany that are finding it useful to build faux bus stops out front where the old people can sit contentedly while waiting for nonexistent buses to arrive? We passed that along to the Jalopnik tips editor.
In the July 8, 2010, hard copy edition of "The Daily Californian," we found on page 2 a story by Rebecca Xing detailing how hard the recession is hitting hotels in the San Francisco bay area. When we went to e-mail a link for the Internet version of the story to a Berkeley neighbor, we discovered that the story wasn’t available at that paper’s online website. We were about to ask our self: "Why?," but we successfully stifled the impulse immediately.
If (note the use of the subjunctive mood – we don’t want to be labeled a conspiracy nut) the country is being set up to experience the longest lame duck phase of any presidency in the country’s history, why don’t the paid pundits have to explain this anomaly? They have no reluctance on election eve to say authoritatively what the voters were thinking, so why are they just ignoring this big (apparent) U-turn in the public’s attitude? So along comes this big turnabout and the paid pundits worry about a little ole oil spill instead? Sounds like a diversionary tactic to this columnist.
In 1968, in his standard campaign speech Senator Bobby Kennedy, used to end by using a George Bernard Shaw quote: "You see things; and you say: "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
The press used to use the quote as the signal to head to the press bus to go on to the next stop. As an inside joke, one time the Senator changed the wording and switched it to " . . . I dream of things that never were; and I say, ‘Head for the bus.’" The press got the joke; the audience was baffled.
Now the disk jockey will play the Who’s "The Magic Bus," Pat Boone’s "Why Baby Why," and Marinanne Faithful’s "Why’d ya do it?" We have to head for the bus going to SF (with a flower in our hair?). Have a "Why ask ‘Why?’" type week.
