Stand and Deliver, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

February 18, 2013 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

I so much do not want to write about the State of the Union speech.

I mean, it’s a big, constitutionally mandated show.  There’s a lot of theater. Pomp.  Circumstance.  Usually some crazy shit thrown in to see if we’re paying any attention (Mars, bitches!).  And then it’s over and we go back to normal.

When I was a kid, there was just the State of the Union.  Later on, they added the response from the Loyal Opposition.  And for the last several years, when Obama has been President, there is not only a response from the Republican Party, but the Tea Party as well.

You would think that with the well-known liberal bias of the media (<- sarcasm), we might also get an official response from the left.  Bernie Sanders, for example, the Socialist Senator from Vermont, might deliver a few words to balance the ballast from Rand Paul.  Perhaps if Americans heard from a real Socialist, they might realize that Obama, far from being a radical Kenyan Muslim, is actually smack dab in the center.

That would interfere with their narrative.  And the Right doesn’t want anyone – certainly not the media – to get distracted by facts.

The media bends over for this, too.  I’ve heard way too much discussion of Rubio’s drink of water, and not nearly enough about what he actually said.  When I watched his response, I wondered if it had been taped in advance.  Like, two years in advance.  It certainly wasn’t a reply to any of the things the President had actually said.  It didn’t address his proposals to repair our infrastructure, which is good for business, or to encourage public/private partnership to develop new jobs, or the possible benefits of universal pre-K for all four-year-olds.  Rubio was arguing with positions that hadn’t been taken, by Obama or anyone else who spoke that night.

Unless Rand Paul brought it up.  There isn’t enough liquor in the world for me to voluntarily watch Rand Paul.

Most of the pundits I saw agreed that the highlight of Obama’s speech was the last part, about the victims of gun violence, and how they “deserve a vote” on the legislation he proposed to Congress.  The audience stood, Democrats and Republicans alike.

And then this happened.  Wayne LaPierre, claiming to speak for 4 million NRA members (the majority of whom, in fact, support most of the President’s proposals), lays out one of the most paranoid visions of modern life that I’ve ever read (and I’ve read Philip K. Dick).  In LaPierre’s America, marauding hordes of swarthy drug dealers and terrorists arrange hurricanes so that they can rape your women and steal our stuff.

That is, if the government doesn’t do it first.

He claims that the problems we have with gun violence in this country are not the result of guns, but of our violent media, with the video games and the rap music.  Never mind that other countries with video games and rap music (but with stricter gun laws) don’t have the problems we have.  What’s most disturbing is his willingness to sacrifice the First Amendment for the Second.

The First Amendment is my personal favorite, but even it is not absolute.  I cannot say whatever I want.  We have laws against libel and slander.  We have laws that regulate advertising claims, so that cigarettes can’t claim to cure obesity.  We can’t make certain kinds of threats against our fellow citizens.  There is no reason the Second Amendment is more sacrosanct than the First.

LaPierre has every night to hold this belief, and to try to convince others to join him.  However, it would be great if our “liberal’ media would ask him to prove his claim that 4 million NRA members agree with him when they don’t.

And it would be even better if they’d ask Marco Rubio whether his party agrees with LaPierre about the savage gangs of Mexican drug dealers.

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Media Goddess Martha Thomases doesn’t have any weapons more lethal than a bread knife in her apartment.  And a cat with wicked claws.