Old-timey joke below: **
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "boo_lives" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > More on this from Greenwald: > > Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, > trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals -- no > matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no > matter how egalitarian their policies -- are the freakish, > out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. > Right-wing leaders -- no matter how extravagantly rich they are by > virtue of other people's money, no matter how insulated their lives > are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast > rich/poor gap -- are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These > petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and > dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically. > > It doesn't matter what the candidates actually say or do. The > establishment press just waits for the right episode and then > reflexively and eagerly fills in the gaps in the shallow script -- the > script with which they are intimately familiar and which serves as > their only framework for talking about and understanding political > disputes. > **snip to end** Some of the flavor of this is captured in a joke from the time of the Great Depression: A poor young man, down on his luck and hoping for a better future decides to hitchhike out West where he may be able to find work. He walks out to the 2-lane highway at the edge of town so he can catch a ride. After just a little bit a car pulls over, stops and as he runs up to it to get in, but before he can open the door the driver calls out through the open passenger-side window, "Hey, are you a Republican or a Democrat?" The young hitchhiker answers immediately, "Democrat." "Fuck You!" the driver yells and pulls out sharply, leaving the young man alongside the road in a cloud of dust and kicked-up gravel. [To make a long story short (I've got a trial starting this morning) imagine similar versions of the above happening over and over and over -- each time someone stops, they ask him if he's a Democrat or a Republican, and each time he answers that he's a Democrat and then they yell "Fuck You!" and drive off.] Finally, a beautiful young woman in a sundress driving a brand new convertible pulls up and asks him with a big smile where he's headed. "California, miss, if I can get someone to start giving me a ride out that direction." "Well, I'm heading to California myself," she says, "we can travel together the whole way if you'd like." Then she asks sweetly, "But tell me, are you a Republican or a Democrat?" The young man thinks this over for a moment and comes to a quick decision. "Republican, miss." "Hop on in," she says, and he climbs in right beside her. As they travel down the highway the wind rushing through the open top of the convertible starts to push the hem of her sundress farther and farther up her shapely thighs until, after not more than 10 miles of driving, the young man says, "Stop the car! Stop the car! I've only been a Republican for 10 minutes and already I want to fuck somebody!"
