Addressing the Whiners, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #212 | @MDWorld

January 22, 2013 Arthur Tebbel 2 Comments

Dear Art,
I hope you watched the Inauguration earlier this week so you can understand how outraged I am.  That insufferable man in the White House spent his inaugural address preaching political rhetoric instead of reaching across the aisle and offering an olive branch to his opposition.  He talked about equal rights for women and gays, he alluded to the need for gun control, he even talked about global warming.  Where does he get off?  This isn’t the place for this kind of political grandstanding.  Certainly you agree.
-Darrell Issa, Representative from CaliforniaDarrell,
A responsible journalist would go and look up the texts of some other presidents’ addresses and come back with some sort of objective proof that President Obama’s address was no more or less political than any other.  Instead I’ve chosen to explain to you why seeing this speech as political is proof of how completely fucked our political discourse has become.

I’ve seen the most vitriolic stuff about the President calling for a solution on global warming.  No serious scientists are still debating the reality of climate change.  There are some debates about what exactly can be done and how but the right in this country is sticking their fingers in their ears and just flat-out denying it’s happening.  That’s not a serious conversation we can still be having.  Calling for global warming initiatives when we keep having record hot years, severe droughts and crazy hurricane seasons should not be viewed as a political season.

If you thought that was a ridiculous thing to still be a contentious issue the next thing that seems to have Republican lawmakers up in arms is his contention that women should receive equal pay and that gay people should have the right to get married.  I have some news for you guys, public opinion is firmly on the left’s side on one of those issues and is rapidly turning on the other.  You can’t keep treating these things as contentious issues.  It might win you primaries and get you kudos from the right-wing media outlets but it isn’t going to be a winning issue for you anymore.  I’m a young person and I know a fair amount of conservatives including a couple staffers for a municipal Republican and none of them give a crap about gay marriage.  Let your older crazier voters die off and get with the fucking times.  It’s not like if you cave on that one thing and keep being religious nutcases on everything else these people will start voting Democratic.

I got a few letters on this topic.  I almost printed one from John McCain because, let’s be honest, he’s got a much higher profile than you do but then I remembered what you’ve done as the head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  You have used this position of authority to investigate every stupid little non-scandal you’ve ever gotten wind of.  You’ve conducted hearings on Solyndra and Fast and Furious and every other paranoid conspiracy theory that was more or less business as usual.  You have used a serious position to be a partisan hack at every opportunity and you have the nerve to complain about a single speech?  Get bent.