Current Comedy: Debunking Dr. Gosar’s Snake Oil Remedies
Recently, I told the editors of the Payson Round Up I’d spent 20 years writing political humor when they asked me if I wanted to give a look at a Paul Gosar op-ed piece they had and make an op-ed of my own. At first I almost said no. It is my tendency, as much possible, to avoid prolonged exposure to rightwing talking points lest they addle my brain as has happened to so many over the years. But I gave it a shot and, after making my way all the through, I had to admit it: this kind of writing is exactly why guys like Gosar, Gould, and all their ilk must be defeated: even the Grandest of Canyons can only hold so much BS.
I say I made my way from one end to the other of Gosar’s piece, but I did not say it was easy. Like most times when a Republican lies, the lines are so lousy they’re laughable. Gosar parses the Orwellian doublespeak of the GOP like a dutiful propagandist: All things evil come from Obama, all things good come from tax cuts. The paragraphs are little more than mash-ups from the Karl Rove songbook Arizona-ized by the glow of Gosar’s pet uranium mines.
His opening line is a killer for example: “Recently the Obama administration celebrated the fact that the national unemployment rate remains at 8.3 percent.” As they and we all well should. As hard as the GOP has been working to scuttle the economy and impoverish the populace over these past 4 years, with their bank bailouts and mortgage fraud defending ways, public sector job destroying Wall Street ways trying to milk both ends of the system, it is a wonder unemployment is not at triple that.
Obstructing or gutting every single major measure introduced during the Obama administration, Gosar has carried water for the same guys who’ve been deconstructing your lives and erasing your liberties for these past four decades. The Republican claims otherwise are at best ludicrous and Gosar’s pretense of moral superiority are among his biggest laugh lines.
The comedy comes from the kind of high density hypocrisies that can only be sold with a doctor’s prescription. Only a true party hack that would craft a line like “when bureaucrats are not killing our job-creating solutions with unnecessary regulations,” and then go on to be proud to be part of the crowd that created Homeland Security and spent the past two years introducing over 900 state laws around the country to attempt to control people’s vaginas.
“That is why Congressman Trent Franks, Jeff Flake and I, have introduced the “Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act.” No, it’s because you are in the pocket of the energy and mining interests and aiming to bilk the public out of some more of our most precious resources so they can be siphoned off to your cronies while everyone is supposed to be distracted by the flag you wave. Then he asks us to feel sorry for power plants because that mean old Obama won’t let them pollute enough.
The most outrageous claims come as Gosar attempts the GOP trope of innocent offense at Democrat barbarity. When Gosar, another of the Tea Party talking heads aping plutocrat claptrap, warn of Dems using “heightened rhetoric surrounding this issue … scare tactics, not facts,” it is particularly rich since AZ’s contingent of capitol hill corporatists are an intensely fear mongering bunch.
McCain, Kyl, Franks, Flake, they’ve all got a war to sell you and a thousand ways to tell you that killing foreigners for profit is somehow patriotic. Gosar has already rattled a saber or two since making it up to the hill. But as any veteran could tell you, whenever they’re trying to sell you the notion that a war could be a good thing, we know they’re lying. It’s a prescription for disaster. Time to tell the right they’re wrong. And just not funny anymore.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
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