Political Theatre category archive

Dick Polman notes that public buildings, such as schools, in Moore, Oklahoma, right smack at the intersection of I-35 and I-Tornado, do not have storm shelters, because freedom.

But Moore is hardly unique in Oklahoma; it takes its cues from state government, which doesn’t require storm shelters, either – all this, in a region that gets hit by tornadoes more times than anywhere else in America.

Maybe I’m just a blue-state guy posing a blue-state question, but I have to ask: Isn’t it the prime responsibility of government to protect its citizens, and provide for the common good?

Apparently not in red-state alley, because this is where Freedom comes in.

From the Roanoke Times:

Contempt is not a Christian value

Reg Henry is fed up with talking points:

Amazingly, a simple time existed not long ago when people just asked other people for the facts. Can you imagine it? The facts! Just the facts, ma’am. What’s the story, morning glory?

But then some chronically political person decided that the plain story would never do. It would be better to arrange the salient facts into a persuasive sequence in order to win arguments. The talking point, its hour come round at last, slouched toward Washington to be born.

It is important to understand that talking points are not neutral. They serve an argumentative purpose. If repeated enough, people’s brains throw a tiny rope out of their ears and slide down to a less tedious environment. At that point, political victory can be claimed.

Read the rest.

Via C&L.

The usual warning: Language, no taste.

Lyrics at the YouTube link.

More here.

More about TWIB.

Bloomberg’s Cass Sunstein explores the how wing nuts (and he applies this to both wings) think.

The short version is they think what they want to think because they want to think it.

Here’s a snippet:

For wing nuts and their many fellow travelers, there is a serious obstacle, and it goes by the name of “motivated reasoning.” When people have a strong emotional attachment to their initial convictions, they tend to heap ridicule on anything that runs counter to those convictions and to give a lot of weight to anything that supports them.

Motivated reasoning helps to account for two defining characteristics of wing nuts and their fellow travelers: a readiness to attack people’s good faith, rather than their actual arguments, and an eagerness to make the worst, rather than the best, of opposing positions.

Daniel Ruth considers the case of a “sovereign citizen.”

He has a lot of fun in the column and, indeed, sovereign citizens may reside in the “People’s Republic of Stupidstan,” as Ruth suggests, but they can also be dangerous.

You know, the one white folks don’t want?

It ain’t happening in Martinsville either.

F. T. Rea publishes a parable for our polity.

Called here.

Marco Rubio wants the Commissioner of the IRS to resign.

There is one slight problem.

There isn’t one.

The IRS commissioner during the probe was Donald Shulman, a holdover from the Bush administration. He left his job last November. There’s an acting commissioner right now, but he assumed his acting role well after the Cincinnati probe ended. The position of IRS commissioner is vacant, which may explain why Rubio’s letter calls for “the IRS Commissioner’s resignation” but doesn’t name whom Rubio wants to resign. Does he want the acting commissioner to resign? The old commissioner to re-resign? Appoint a new commissioner and then force that person to immediately resign?

I haven’t said anything about the IRS “scandal” because I don’t understand it.

Let Lawrence O’Donnell explain it to both of us.

As I suspected, there seems to be rather an absence of there, there.

Via The Richmonder.

The next six frames are crucial.

You remember, of course, that, for something to be Sanfordized, it must be taken to the cleaners.

Afterthought:

I think the speculation about Hilary Clinton’s running in the next presidential election is Firebagger wishful thinking combined with Republican paranoia and a dash of news media desperation.

She’ll be 69 years old in 2016. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t do it either mentally or physically, but I think it’s unlikely that she’ll want to.

Just my two cents.

Some of you may have heard about this incident in Martinsville, Virginia. A summary:

In a video posted to YouTube, students were describing the quilt when Councilwoman Sharon Brooks Hodge began expressing concerns about one particular square.

“The small black person represents us before we learned all the information about it, and then the bigger gold person is how he feels after we’ve been enriched with all the different knowledge,” a student says in the video.

Hodge replied: “Excuse me, why is the small black person the negative image?” When the student tried to explain, Hodge said, “I take offense to that.”

I heard the YouTube video on a podcast. The student was unable to explain because, clearly, no thought went into the color choices. The gang at TWIB (I can’t find the exact podcast) thought that the council woman was too hard on the student.

In the Roanoke Times, Wendy Kellam has a thoughtful piece on the incident. A nugget:

I don’t believe any of the students meant any malice in the presentation, but we can’t disregard the feelings of black people either. Our black children are sadly faced with negative stereotypes and oppositions from childhood.

We have to continuously reinforce to our children they are just as good as other races. But when our sons are of the age to drive, black parents have to inform them, by way of the dreaded conversation, what could happen to them if they are stopped by certain police officers. We have to tell our children the story of Emmett Till that happened in 1955. We have to explain to them in 2013 that what happened to Trayvon Martin could happen to them solely because of the color of their skin. Those two stories don’t even begin to scratch the surface of racism directed toward the black race, so I appreciate Hodge addressing the issue she had with the quilt.

One of my mother’s favorite terms, in criticizing my (and others’) behavior was “inconsiderate,” closely followed by “thoughtless.”

She could not abide behavior that did not anticipate its effects on others. She saw no excuse for it.

Those who argue, as many white folks are bound to do, that Not White folks should “just get over” it do two things:

• They attempt to render their own history invisible, and
• They are profoundly inconsiderate and thoughtless of the history of others.

I suspect that they are purposefully thoughtless and inconsiderate because they don’t want to think about and consider what their ancestors and perhaps even they have done (and, perhaps, continue to do).

Like my mother, I see no excuse for thoughtlessness and lack of consideration.

Via Bartcop.