The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by Josh Nossiter
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Of all the smears served up by the Republicans and swallowed whole by the mainstream press, this one stands out for its paradoxy, not to say its imbecility. Are not famous politicians by definition celebrities, particularly if the presidential candidate of a major party? And is Obama to be vilified because he's extremely good at his job? That seems especially worthy of criticism to the GOP. Indeed, only Republican logic can make sense of the celebrity smear.
The GOP argument is this: Embracing who you are is reprehensible. Being gifted at what you do is suspicious. Failing to conceal both conditions from the voters and the press is unforgivable.
Given the Republican leadership, we see their point. George W. Bush has always pretended to be a cowboy boot wearing good 'ol boy instead of a scion of limitless wealth and privilege. He's not exactly gifted at being president. And both his phony personna and his incompetence have always been in plain sight for all who took the trouble to look.
As for John McCain, the maverick myth accords ill with the party-line reality of the man. The folksy "my friends" line of patter doesn't suit the eight (ten?) homes and Gucci loafers. He's a foreign policy expert who thinks Iraq borders Pakistan and that Czechoslovakia still exists, and a would-be president poised to step into an economic crisis who admits to knowing nothing about economics. He's good at crashing airplanes, marrying heiresses, servicing his loyal constituents, but not much else. And as with his president, his record of fakery and ineptitude is anything but hidden.
Considering that the Bush Republican party has come to represent charlatanry and incompetence, and that McCain is cut from Bush's cloth, it's no wonder the GOP is made desperately uncomfortable by a candidate so very different from its own.
*http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/us/politics/29stage.html?ref=us.
©Joshua C. Nossiter, 2008
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A NOTE TO READERS ***Update***
Another three week plus hiatus, from April 30th until May 23rd, again due to Yahoo Geocities dismal service.
There was nothing new at The Nossiter Net between March 3rd and April 26th, 2007, nearly eight weeks. The reason: tech sabotage. Yahoo Geocities, the host for this site, denied access for the entire period. At one point, they even managed to lose all the files. In many discussions with Yahoo staff, no clear explanation was forthcoming. No one seemed able to fix the problem. Ruling out the possibility of Dubbya’s revenge, I finally wrote to Mr. Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc and described the ordeal the page had undergone since the beginning of March. A week later, a helpful Yahooo engineer named Jason called. He had my letter before him. Though he couldn’t do the repairs on on the spot, he promised a fix by the next day. That was April 26th, nearly two months after shutting me down in the first place.
The Nossiter Net apologizes, which is more than I can say for Yahoo Geocities.
