Bill Hobbs, The Gift that Keeps on Giving

If we overlook for a second the fact that every time Bill Hobbs puts fingers to keyboard he’s making the state of Tennessee look like a scary backwater unfriendly to all outsiders and the TNGOP look like a bunch of bullies, it’s hard not to enjoy his antics just a little bit.

So, yes, we’re still talking about the whole TNGOP v. Michelle Obama mess and what a hilarious mess it is.  First was the nefarious YouTube clip in which the TNGOP attempted to call into question the patriotism of a woman proudly married to a US Senator who is running for President, which to many folks looked like Hobbs and Smith taking cheap shots at the man’s wife, while also attempting to continue the whole “they aren’t like us” meme, which is, at the end of the day, all they really have, since their candidate is, well, John McCain. 

And now that they’ve yet again embarrassed us on the national stage, we’re into the next-day “can’t you take a joke” spin.  For your enjoyment, I bring you “What?  Everyone we polled at AOL said it was okay that we acted like schoolyard bullies” complete with this awesome line:

Well, at least with the views of the AOL audience – which, incidentally, is known to skew heavily to the Left.

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  Oh, yeah, you find all the hipsters and cool cats on AOL, don’t cha know?  Are they even still in business? 

I swear, I know the TNGOP is going to do what they like and apparently they like the attention Hobbs and Smith bring them, but if I found my communications director trying to pass of AOL as a hotbed of liberalness, like that’s conventional wisdom, I’d spend the weekend questioning whether I was getting my money’s worth out of him.  Once he spouts crap like that, would you ever trust him to give you the truth about how the internet works?  I doubt many Obama supporters even know what AOL is.

What’s next?  Is Hobbs going to complain about those kids today driving around listening to that heavy metal music in their Oldsmobiles?

And then the “I’m just a dottering old man who doesn’t like these kids today with their loud music and their brash wives” complaining continues on the TNGOP’s own site:

Judging from the temper tantrum they’re tossing today over our light-hearted video holding Michelle Obama accountable for scripted remarks she made on two separate occasions on the campaign trail on behalf of her husband, the answer is “yes.”

See, it was just light-hearted.  Just a joke supposed to show what an uppity bitch Obama is and to remind Mr. Obama that he needs to keep his wife in line.  You know, it’s so light-hearted to joke about a man needing to learn to keep his wife in line.

Except, that it is kind of funny, but not for the reason the TNGOP intends.  I mean, here we are living in a state in which the Democratic party is a bunch of corrupt, out-of-touch nimrods and the best the Republicans can do to counteract that is to position themselves as the party of mean old people who hate everybody.

It would be sad if it wasn’t so damn funny.

(See Tiny Pasture.)

What?! No Jimmie Rodgers?

EW has the 25 country albums you should own even if you don’t like country (or some such similar conceit).  I point it out only because a.) I’ve heard a lot of shit about what the Country Music Hall of Fame will or won’t do and I myself have maybe even a time or two been known to grouch about the bizarro choices the Hall of Fame makes and how they make them (starting with their utterly stupid and making-impossible-to-take-them-seriously insistence on people referring to it as the Country Music Hall of Fame ™.  Talk about making you look third rate.), but I have never heard that Gram Parsons has no chance of ever ending up in the Hall.

Is that true?  And, if it is, what’s to stop Gram Parsons fans from making a plaque, smuggling it into the hall, and supergluing it to the wall?  It’s not like someone goes in there every day and counts the faces.  The reverence with which people treat institutions they have little respect for just kills me.

But that’s country music for you, right there, folks.

And b.) that article, if you look beyond the mere words, is a perfect illustration of how country music works.  Here, for your edification, is a brief history of country music.

Group A: But we’ve always done it this way and we like it.

Group B: Too bad.  It’s our time now.

Group A: You have no respect for tradition.

Group B: But we’re rich, so we’re right.

Group C: We’re going to try something new.

Group B: But we’ve always done it this way and we like it.

Group C: Too bad.  It’s our time now.

Group B: You have no respect for tradition.

Group C: But we’re rich, so we’re right.

Group D: We’re going to try something new.

And so on.

I Dare You Not to Laugh

Really, it brings a whole new twist to the shade tree mechanic phenomenon.

more cat pictures

Attention, My Fellow Feminists

Many of you are yet again threatening to not vote for Obama, should he become the Democratic nominee, because he is a sexist pig.

I must remind you that there is a world of difference between “sweetie” and “cunt.”  And as much as I despise being called “sweetie,” I hate being called “cunt” a whole lot worse.

If Obama is the Democratic nominee and you don’t vote for him, you will be helping to elect a man who calls his wife “cunt” in public.  You will be helping to elect a man from a party that thinks taking cheap shots at a woman not even running for office is acceptable.  You will be helping to elect a man who can’t imagine ending this war, which has been devastating to the women of Iraq and a grueling strain on the women of the armed forces (and the wives and daughters of the men of the armed forces), until 2013 at the earliest.

You want to play chicken with our future?

Fine.

I can issue ultimatums, too.

If you help to elect John McCain, who is running as a Bush 3.0, if you help elect a man whose every campaign promise seems to share a core of increasing suffering in the world, history will view you as idiots.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is a perfect candidate.  But either of them is one million times better than McCain.

I don’t care how you do it.  Hold your nose.  Promise yourself you’ll do this one thing and then you’re seriously moving to Canada.  Get so drunk you won’t remember voting for Obama.  Vote for Obama and write in “Fucky McFuckerson (D)” for every other race.  Vote for Obama and then print yourself up a bunch of “Chelsea Clinton 2016” shirts and start campaigning.  Whatever you need to do to get yourself at peace with it.

But you have got to make an effective vote against McCain.

If you don’t, his presidency is on your hands.

Radical Leftists, in Context

I just got off the phone with the recalcitrant brother who is rapidly becoming the radical leftist among his group of friends.  I can’t tell you how funny this strikes me, but apparently knowing your Bible and a little bit about Malcolm X makes you a commie in his world.

He’s down there in Georgia trying to drum up support for Obama (there is no talk among his peers of voting for Clinton, the idea is so preposterous to them, for what it’s worth) but his peers are all afraid that Obama will “let the Muslims into the country” and the recalcitrant brother said that he blew their minds when he told them that there were white Muslims.

He also reports that many of them feel like a vote for Obama would be wasted because none of them believe he’ll live to serve out his whole presidency.

I was listening to NPR last night and they were talking to the guy who wrote the Washington Post story about the racism that Obama workers have encountered when out there drumming up support for Obama and the reporter was talking about how this is a kind of underreported story.

The interviewer asked him about the destroyed campaign headquarters and why that didn’t make more national news, why the Obama camp wanted to downplay it.  And I forget what he said, basically something like they didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

But I was thinking back, too, to back when African Americans were so wary of voting for Obama and were still throwing their support behind Clinton and the sense I got, at least among folks down here, was that they didn’t believe he ever could serve as president, that he would be killed either before he got into office or while in office.

And remember that that was one of the reasons Colin Powell’s wife asked him not to run.

I think that the Obama campaign has been trying hard to pitch a message that is something like “Yes, we are all different, and yes, we have our disagreements, and, yes, there is racism in America, but it’s not like it was, and we can all come together.”

Shoot, even I was arguing that the West Virginia vote wasn’t about racism.

But, I don’t know.  I talk to the recalcitrant brother and it reminds me that these divisions are still fresh and ugly and potentially violent, that there are folks who saw the assassinations of King, Kennedy, and X* as effective means of making their political points.  And I think it’s reasonable for other folks to be concerned about that.

But you don’t want to give into fear, I guess, too, right?

I don’t know.  To me, that’s why it’s so important to speak out about the racism that has permeated this whole race, because there are people out there who believe that assassinating someone is an effective form of political protest and then there’s a larger group of folks whose racist beliefs help aid and comfort and reassure the first group that it’s okay to take that step.

Well, I’ve gotten off course.

My point was originally just that it’s funny that the recalcitrant brother is by far the most conservative person in our family and yet is somehow the most radical person in his peer group.

*None of the recalcitrant brother’s friends–black or white–believe Malcolm X was killed by black men.