There is a great story about an editor at UPI long ago, back in the 1970s, who inserted advice to journalists in a foreword to that organization's style guide for writers: A burro is an ass, a burrow is a hole in the ground: you are expected to know the difference between the two.
What great advice for Republican candidates vying for their party's coronation! These guys are already phenomenally low in wattage as illumination of any real issue goes, so, that simple advice should be hugely helpful to them, too! Anyone claiming to be a journalist today should take a brush-up quiz on that one, too -- along with the mandate to keep opinion out of news, to just report the facts without endless analysis, rather than slip in personal notions, dressed up as The News. But then again, that Fox case says mainstream media's free to lie, so, what's the big deal -- opinion is much easier to cover and generate, for sure.
Candidates, meanwhile, always dress well, even though they have no place to go. Given their utter lack of destination when they begin to speak, and the no-confidence vote from Destiny on these bobbleheads, they could show up at the debates in plaid leisure suits, modeling the newly made garments, a leisure service product of La-Z-Pol, their home brand, calling them "Relaxed-Fit, Leisure Suits of the Rich and Famous." It would no doubt be a smash hit, boys -- just make sure they're dribble-proof, have super-strong zippers for self-containment of their puffed-up selves, and have a flap in the back, like on long, wooly underwear.
Not one of these GOP runners could have gone a round with the Founders -- even our grandparents or Crazy-but-Kind Uncle Louie -- in any actual debate of ideas. They would have been torn to ribbons and shreds in any discussion regarding actual and urgent issues facing this nation, instead of responding to everything as they do, participants with no hunger for Reality. These guys are bland, pressed meat, just ham in a can, no Intel inside. This lot would barely squeak by as contestants on a new game show, Posers and Hosers! Run for President? Are we all hallucinating this bananas-republic stuff wholesale now, right here in the USA, to somehow save on shipping costs?
It is certain these candidates could not pass the Burro-Burrow test even if they wrote on their hands, Palin-esque, or double-teamed the problem, pooled their resources, and took the plunge, finally, via the GOP-patented, Eeenie-Meenie (R) method of logical selection. Their inability to pass this test must be why we haven't seen it performed via live, televised debate so far, even though just about everything else has.
Well, wait, now: We haven't yet seen the monster-truck, hay-wagon, mud-wrestling races, with a pie-and-hot-dog-eating event tossed in for good measure, along with a round of pie-faced baby-kissing, right at the end. That right there, it would be no-miss-teevee!
The winner would receive, from a grateful nation, a real, imitation-leather Bible and choice of assault weapon, complete with rock-and-roll-bolt, and a lifetime supply of ammo and other great munitions: The perfect prize for religious nutbags who love shooting off their mouths, always trying to pretend they really relate to everyday people's pleasures and problems, while out there on Campaign-ful Roads. Then, they can relax, get back to their usual interests and pursuits: no-holds-barred, horn-blowing, riotous self-interest.
In their clownish motor-scooter sidecars as reluctant sidebars -- riding shotgun so far, not wanting to be seen in the driver's seat -- is the singular drive to exclusively represent interests of the filthy rich, and filthy corporations, too. Beep, beep! Money is speech, out of the damn way, make a hole! Here comes a whole lot of speech looking at you, kid!
Where are the Democrats during these bizarre, musty, GOP-tent shows, where the liquified insanity flows like oil and bank money down a purposefully-bent pipeline, plunked right into Super-PAC pockets, ker-plunk and ker-plunk, just like clockwork?
Democrats must already understand that trying to use facts, trying to reason with any GOP audience is a hopelessly lost cause, as Dems never bother to try. Instead, the thinly-veiled GOP attacks based on race continue -- the one of our President, naturally, not the presidential race itself, of course. The diatribes, the steady drumbeats of barely-subsurface, nauseating racists, running riot in their free speech, run and run, on and on, ad nauseam. There's never a battling-back on this level of filth -- nor on any of the lying, hysterical, equally-filthy cheap shots -- regarding the President's religion. No matter what anyone's actions or historical event can show, no matter what activity and action clearly can demonstrate -- it's so much simpler to be hysterically ignorant, let your peers drive the Beserker Bus, let your superstition and stupidity ride up on top of the bus, shouting directions and insults to passers-by.
Taken at this level of reality, the GOP debates become perfectly clear: Rouse the rabble emotionally, screw the facts. GOP goals now become clear: They know their base, know facts will go nowhere -- but, bigotry, intolerance, sexism, prejudice, religion gone amok? Perfect: This way, the playing field is unfair, unmarked, unhinged, and unbalanced -- but it's sure as hell ready to rock for the ongoing GOP freak shows.
Democrats wouldn't, couldn't, and won't say Boo! even if they had mouthfuls of ghosts. It would be interesting speculation to wonder aloud why it is Democrats play it so straight amid so much bald-faced hate from the Wrong-Wing side of the tracks. Fear of nuclear retaliation by those who can buy all the ad time there is, like there's no tomorrow? Not having access to their own language-twisters, no Frank Luntz wannabes in stock? Not wanting to respond in kind, not dive down to GOP levels, wanting to be nice and polite? Simple awareness there's no use trying to discuss the real, rocky, and direly urgent issues facing this nation -- not with people who have acres of rocks salted away in their heads? Or, more conspiratorially slinky now, is it just that the script, written by the world's heavyweights, in their isolated, lofty spires and belfries, have decreed it be this whacked-out, religious jubilee, this kind of brain-dead, brain-freeze melee?
If we correctly guess the real reason, will we all be placed by GOP architects into their Ex-Files, just be killed, right on the spot?
Democratic party silences and its many failures to energize and engage are very confusing, especially as the Dems' symbolic Party animal, so to speak, are so similarly represented in that long-ago test for the sane processing of reality. Could it be Dems can't tell the difference between burro and burrow, and have flunked that excruciatingly simple test, too?
