zell, the RNC and that pesky election thing
I've been busy with work/school/writing this last week...I thought about it a lot, and who couldn't, after hearing Zell Miller speak at the RNC? I didn't catch the live speech, but I heard snippets of it on NPR while I was driving to school one morning. I thought something along the lines of "wow, that was a little loud and hate-filled", and made a mental note to write something about it. Now, when I got home that day and read through my blogroll, I found that plenty of my very intelligent regular reads had already posted with mucho gusto about ol' Zell:
Dan Gillmor,
David Morgen,
Mac at pesky'apostrophe, among others. So, I'll just say "what they said!" and move on.
Now, David Morgen posed the question "Why are you wasting time reading my blog when you could be reading Michael Bérubé?" to which I thought "by golly, you're right!" Seriously though, David's blog,
scrivenings, is really quite good. So David, I read your blog because it's well-written, interesting as heck, you have cute kids and seem to be a good dad. I like to support folks like you, with the linking and the reading and what not. But back to Bérubé, he had written
this post way back in May, which includes:
"I've devised a handy pop quiz that we can distribute to Bush supporters, in order to discover (in the best traditions of Gramscian cultural studies) the continuing appeal of the Bush presidency.
What is it you like most about the Bush administration and its policies?
___ I like the lying! It turned me on when the President spiked that EPA report on the toxic air quality around Ground Zero, thereby consigning thousands of firefighters, police, Guardsmen, rescue workers, and ordinary citizens to debilitating lifelong respiratory illness! If people are so worried about a few tiny particles floating around, let them buy those little fiber masks, for goodness' sake! Every Ace Hardware sells 'em.
There are eight other "reasons" that really, any swing voter (hell, any "committed to Bush" voter) ought to ponder. For example, my parents, who live
in a battleground state, are apparently on the fence. Upon hearing this, I was suitably appalled. Not that my parents and I agree on much of anything, but I still don't understand how anyone could (with a clear conscience) vote for Bush. My folks, and any of their like-minded swing-voter friends, ought to read Bérubé's quiz. Actually, given that Bérubé teaches right over the mountain from this enclave of swing voters, I wouldn't mind if he sent one of his students over the hill and plastered the damn thing on telephone poles. Hell, if I lived there, I'd do it myself, but luckily I live in a Blue state.
