Saturday, July 23, 2016

The GOP Convention Summary


Was one of the headliners really Ultimate Fighting chief Dana White, head all swollen and shouting into the microphone like a man having a road-rage dispute?

Was that really General Hospital star and Calvin Klein underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr. warning gravely that "our rights have been trampled and our security threatened" by President Obama's policies? And were there really two soap stars in the lineup, the second being Kimberlin Brown, of The Young and the Restless?

[...]

There were four categories of speakers. First, the Trump family members, including poor wife Melania, whose speechwriters pushed her into a media buzz saw on opening night.

Then, there were even a few Republican politicians who seemed to want to be there voluntarily, people like crazed Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who came off like a shaved and slightly angrier version of Yosemite Sam. Ex-candidate Ben Carson emerged from a grain-storage chamber somewhere to connect Hillary Clinton to Lucifer and say things about transgender people so outrageous that even Orrin Hatch rushed to their defense.

[...]

The nominee seemed to mine the very bottom of his Rolodex for the exercise, to the point where we even heard a testimonial from Natalie Gulbis, the world's 492nd-ranked professional woman golfer.Then there was Scott Baio. Scott Baio, ladies and gentlemen! Not the Fonz or Richie or even Pinky Tuscadero, but the man who played Chachi, a gimmick character in a show about an America that never existed, a time when there were no black people and the last gasps of our apartheid state were called Happy Days.

[...]

Make America's Days Happy Again!

[...]

"Let's make America America again!" is how Baio put it in his speech.

[...]

It didn't get any better when the so-called professional politicians spoke. As if in one voice, they all repeated a mantra more appropriate for a megachurch full of Rapture-ready Christians than a political convention: We are not safe, the end is nigh, run for the hills and vote Trump on your way out.

[...]

Thirteen million and three hundred thousand Republican voters had defied the will of their party and soundly rejected hundred-million-dollar insider favorites like Jeb Bush to re-seize control of their own political destiny. That they made perhaps the most ridiculous choice in the history of democracy was really a secondary issue.

It was a tremendous accomplishment that real-life conservative voters did what progressives could not quite do in the Democratic primaries.

[...]

The once-divided media class now came together to gang-troll flyover America for its preposterous decision, turning the coverage of the convention into a parable on the evil of letting voters make up their own dumb minds. This was the Fatal Attraction of political coverage, a warning disguised as a story: Look what happens, you rubes, when you step outside the lines.

  Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone
Read the whole article describing the amazing GOP circus event here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Regarding the article itself:




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