Death by gotcha

Oh, Hillary.

If only you’d resisted the temptation to jump on the Reverend Wright faux scandal bandwagon. With your extensive campaign experience, surely you must’ve known that the ritual denunciation of various left-leaning and/or crazy religion-adjacent types by Democrats is a political trap. Every four years the press, frequently aided by RNC talking points, have trotted out yer Farrakhans, yer Jacksons, yer Sharptons, etc., and demanded that Democratic candidates denounce their opinions, their associations, their donations, their track suits, their hairdos, etc.

Senator Obama does not support the use of lye for chemical "relaxing."

Never mind that the Republicans are not really held to the same standard. Understand, they also are endorsed and affiliated with religious nutjobs that have, for instance, blamed 9/11 on America. It’s just that while the Wrights of this world have blamed powerful white America, the right-wingers blame homo feminist abortionist ACLU-card-carrying America.

Interesting, what it says about the press, isn’t it, that when the right-wingers launch their screeds, they are mostly laughed off by campaign reporters, while the ranting of the black left-wing clergy is taken very seriously by that same press, even when it is committed by figures as similarly pathetic when compared to their right-wing counterparts as Farrakhan is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Farrakhan isn’t powerful. I’m just saying he’s fucking nuts. And so not worthy of the attention. Just like Falwell and his ilk on the right. They’re all paranoid whackjobs. The Farrakhans of this world are paranoid because they’ve been fucked over too many times. The Falwells are paranoid because they’re afraid that if the white man loses his monopoly on power, then they are going to start getting fucked over - and fucked over in front of the people that they used to fuck over themselves.

If you don’t understand how scary that idea is to those people, then you are, no matter what Jeff Foxworthy says, definitely NOT a redneck. Rednecks have a powerful, powerful fear of “losing” this country, folks. And if you ask me, that is zackly why they have mostly deserted their own economic interest and left the Democratic party. Fear makes people do funny things, like support John “Expert on Foreign Policy” McCain, even though after 5 years and 4ooo soldiers dead he still cannot get it straight who are the fucking Sunnis and who are the fucking Shiites.

Look, at a minimum, a presidential candidate ought to be able to point to a map of the Middle East and go “Sunni, Sunni, Shiite, Sunni, Shiite, REALLY Shiite…”

I can do it. Spooney can do it. Hell, my fucking cat could do it, and she’s not even particularly interested in foreign policy.

"meow meow Bernanke lowering interest rates again?? meow meow"

Where was I going? Oh, yeah. It would have been so nice if Hillary had refused to take the bait on Rev. Wright, if she had refused to utter pious claptrap such as “he would not have been my pastor,” and “you don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

Because what else happens when you do that, is that inevitably, someone digs out something like this:

Yeah, that’s Bill and the Rev at one of those post-Monica “forgive this poor sinner” prayer breakfasts he used to host.

Not that it proves a damn thing about Hillary. It’s meaningless that her husband once shook that dude’s hand. And yet it feeds the beast, don’t it, Hills? It feeds the beast. And if you hadn’t gotten up on your high horse about Wright, then the Obama campaign wouldn’t have called “I’m rubber, you’re glue” and released the above photo, and America would not have just died a teeny tiny little wee bit.