The Next Non-Issue

Atrios said something this morning

What we have to look forward to over the next several months is the following scenario repeated over and over again: somebody says something dumb, it gets elevated into a pseudoscandal, cable news freaks out, there are calls for various people to denounce whatever or whoever, and then eventually the whole thing calms down until the next time, likely because somebody was eaten by a shark somewhere.

So I see that Ted Nugent is threatening to shoot members of the Obama Administration if the President is re-elected. Or else he’s threatening to shoot himself; it’s a bit hard to tell. I’ll let the Secret Service sort that out.

So already people are calling on Mitt Romney to denounce Ted Nugent. just as there have been calls for President Obama to denounce Hilary Rosen and everyone else in North America who has ever said anything that upset the Right.

And y’know what? I don’t bleeping care if Mittens denounced Ted Nugent. A politician should be held responsible for many things; what some brain-damaged gasbag says is not among them, unless the gasbag is on his staff. We’ve got more important stuff to be arguing about.

Wanker of the decade is Tom Friedman, btw.

Dignity of Work for Thee, but Not for Me

I got a kick out of this segment from last night’s Maddow show, hosted by Chris Hayes.

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Throughout human history the upper classes have always believed the lower classes have to be forced to work. That’s what’s really screaming out at me in Hayes’s commentary. It’s the attitude coming from upper class people who see themselves as inherently virtuous, just because, looking down paternally on the less fortunate and thinking you will prove your worth to me by working your ass off for me.