Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Fadduh Smiff sez on 02.25.12 @22:09:
Santorum is mighty odd, though. Obie is a 'snob' because he wants everybody to go to college? That weird word just popped out of his mouth, like a demoniac expectorating a toad. What strange labyrinth of thought led him there? You'd think a snob would want to keep the rabble out. It's a schoolmaster who wants to herd 'em in...

Seriously, man... Obama claims to support universal access to a university education, and for this, frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter Rick Santorum calls him... a snob? D'ahh ha ha ha ha ha ha haahhh. Jeezus, that is some fucked-up shit.

I haven't had a chance to peek in on the bedroom TV to hear what the Liberal babblers at MSNBC have had to say about this -- I don't know if these remarks were delivered towards the end of the regular evening MSNBC babbling cycle -- though I'm sure that Rachel Maddow will be crapping her panties in indignation over Frothy's latest Tourette's outburst.

As loony as Santorum's latest nocturnal emission is, it's even more amusing that All Good Liberals will certainly be filling their pants in shock and surprise over it -- and that's even more fucked up, when you consider that this kind of zaniness is normal for Santorum and his ilk. I mean, c'mon, Liberal America... a known nutcake like Rick "Frothy" Santorum responds to an issue by predictably cranking up the Crazy Knob to 11, and you're surprised? By this time, most of us have gotten used to it; in fact, I'd be downright disappointed if Frothy didn't blurt out shit like this at every opportunity.

As Claude Rains might have said, "I'm shocked -- shocked -- to find that Rick Santorum has broken the Goofy Meter again!"

Y'know, now that I think of it... I wonder if Spiro Agnew was one of Frothy's big heroes, and this remark is his way of paying homage.

I was about thirteen when I heard that famous chunk of Agnew's "effete corps of impudent snobs" speech on the radio, and I can remember at the time thinking jeezus, what kind of dressing does Agnew like on his word salad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utGlgpI9tLw

Human sexual fecundity is such that there will always be ditch digging candidates. Poor people need more money, not more education? Access to money should not be related to value added in the labor process? "Should", always the loaded word.

When money just arrives at the mailbox, the things people eat wear drink etc. can just be "bought" with that money. 'Cause the earth provides what is needed without labor.

This is going to be a hard sell to actual working people. Much education will be needed. Will they "buy" it at SMBIVA or will it be offered free? But then how will they be induced to swallow it.

It's simply the Lego logic that a mediocrity like Santorum believes in: higher education = liberalism = elitism = despotism. It would follow that if you want to go to college, you're a wannabe apparatchik or one of their dupes. Q.E.D.

As our host says, a snob wouldn't want to share the riches, such as they are. A critic will talk as if a movie were so great that one's life is incomplete without having seen it. He trusts, all the same, that most people won't see it; this thought may not displease him.

This stab at higher ed is a bummer of a strategy, one would think. Don't the majority of Santorum's hearers want their children to go to college? And yet they agree with him, I suppose, out of frustration. College bills are quite the bastard. People would like not to incur years of debt for a devalued piece of paper. They would like to blame someone, anyone for this. Santorum, querulously pompous as ever, has tossed them a name.

The "curdled doughfaced decrepitude" of the crowd is eerie. They laugh, clap and cheer without looking either pleased or even interested. And yet they know, like the audience at the taping of a sitcom, when it is that they're expected to applaud. They do so, always, and on cue. It helps them to feel that they've heard what they wanted to hear. Politicians and their handlers are as wretched as expected: it's the crowds that are much more dispiriting. Instead of acting as if the candidates were there for them, they act as if they existed for the candidates.

There are many who would rather not go to college. They were hoping that graduation from high school or getting a GED would end their scholastic servitude. They know, however, that they would do better with a college diploma. It's the same reason why you're required to have experience to cook fries or scrub dishes: you don't need it to do the work, but the boss wants reassurance you've been a listless drudge and not a wind-bourne tumbleweed.

Even a twerp like Santorum knows that it's hard to get a job without a degree; but as someone running for office, he's only interested in scoring points. He's a candidate for nostalgically-minded know-nothings; as usual, they're spoiled for choice. Whatever happened to that little red schoolhouse? Why can't your mother stay at home, where she ought to be anyway, teaching you the Bible and some Chick Publications? Santorum's moralistic groanings require a big leap back: perhaps to the seventeenth century. Nostalgia for other people's pasts, to borrow a phrase from Edmund White.

he's as progenitive as Mr Quiverful in Barchester Towers.

As Henry James remarked, he could believe that a man was named Mr. Quiverful or that this man had fourteen children; but he couldn't believe both.

Top picture caption
This is how you get 14 kids

It's not the arrows in the quiver it's the bow in the hand

Rick is a great favorite among
The " ya ...I'd fuck that boy scout " crowd

Mike F: You know who wrote the 'effete snobs' speech (as well as 'nattering nabobs of negativism')? Bill Safire. Yes, the same guy whom the Times had for years writing a column titled 'On Language'.

If team Obama could have designed a trademarked Republican to run against, it would be a Santorum model 2.0.

And I have the slightest of quibble with "nothing would change."

Obviously, the liberals would immediately become opposed to Iran-War, almost overnight.

'It's not the arrows in the quiver it's the bow in the hand.' Does this mean that 'one in the hand is worth two in the bush'?

gosh i actually watched and listened

i agree with SANCTY'S line completely

a very efficient message to "the base "

the choice of the word "snob" is perfect

the lower orders of the middle class hate wind surfing university mandarinized
"double dome snobs"

sure its aninnocent inclusive wish
barry is being like
cal coaster mike love
singing

" wish you all could be california girls "

but the assumption of superiority is there
none the less

arrogant if not exclusionary

espeially for those old bald tires
in his audience
"too far gone for a recap"

-------------------------------
the contrast between liberal college indoctrination
and honest skill producing
hard work ..equally aces

----------------------------

and the remake the next generation
in "his" image
versus in your own image

a bull's eye

-------------------

not enough regular upset white folks
out there
to win against
a sitski-ite liberal colored president

more like a feel good voting opportunity

very McGovern like that

antonello sez on 02.26.12 @05:23:
The "curdled doughfaced decrepitude" of the crowd is eerie. They laugh, clap and cheer without looking either pleased or even interested. And yet they know, like the audience at the taping of a sitcom, when it is that they're expected to applaud. They do so, always, and on cue...

...which is why, when the announcer proclaims at the beginning of the episode, "(insert sitcom name) was recorded in front of a live audience" as if somehow having real people provide the laugh track instead of recorded laughter, my immediate thought is d'ahh, big damn' deal; so they got a bunch of trained chimps to laugh when they're expected to laugh, at lines which are delivered as if they were jokes but aren't actually funny, because they've seen so many goddamn' sitcoms on TV that they instinctively know when they're expected to laugh.

Somehow, now, I'm reminded of the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen is visiting his friend in L.A. who's made it big in TV, and is hanging out with him while he directs post-production on an episode of his sitcom, hanging over the dubbing mixer's shoulder at the console instructing him to "...OK, gimme a real big laugh right here..."

Jack Crow sez on 02.26.12 @08:46:
If team Obama could have designed a trademarked Republican to run against, it would be a Santorum model 2.0.

Obviously, the liberals would immediately become opposed to Iran-War, almost overnight.

No shit, Sherlock. They'd fill the streets immediately, appearing as if out of nowhere, like cockroaches when you turn out the kitchen lights.

If any good came out of the installation of the Boy Emperor in the White House, it was that it showed us who was serious about opposing war, torture, and imperialism, and who was just an opportunist poseur:
"You just wanna be on the side that's winnin'!" --Dylan

At the beginning of the '12 GOP nomination shitfest, I was rooting hard for one of the Teabagger faves -- and the crazier, the better -- for the sheer cheap laffs value, and to see the smile wiped off of Mittens' spoiled rich preppie face... basically the same mistake I made by rooting for Obummer to take out Hillary (mind you, I'm "rooting" for candidates here in the same sense that I used to "root" for any team playing against the Dallas Cowboys on any given Sunday).

I've learned my lesson from '08, though, and am now rooting hard for Mittens, as I realized it'd be far more entertaining to watch two nearly-identical rich, entitled, over-educated preppies -- one of whom stole his healthcare "reform" program from the other -- twist themselves into pretzels trying to differentiate themselves from each other, not to mention showing the voters in no uncertain terms what a cruel joke the hallowed Two-Party System™ is (already I'm hearing the jokes about "Obomney").

My DW is frightened of Santorum because he's a crank who thinks universal access to a college education is a Commie plot, and that Obama is a Satanist. I'm worried about Santorum -- I can't really work myself up to the "frightened" stage -- solely because his nomination would reinforce the persistent myth that there's a difference between the GOP and the Donkeycrats.

Go, Mittens, go!

Mike
You have to ask yourself

Why the GOP corporate elite might gladly let the yahoos nom the sancty ?

The answer gives a view into the GOP brain trust

And it very much shares your twiddle Dee twiddle Dum perception
Of ohbomney

The gold water parallel is often made

Now in my lift time only one non elite ...possible winner
Goya big party nom

Reagan in 1980

But Ronnie signaled his willingness to let big wallycratic types
share power by taking bush as vp

Sharing power of course with the wallycrats
Is like sharing your sausages with a Bengal tiger

Romneymight still get the nom
But I put his chances as inversely proportional to ohbummers shoo in status

A close race
And we get mitt
Or an elite backed dark horse
---something not seen since Wilkie ---

Otherwise the re elect bray band wagon rolls over
The designate yahoo

Ouch. I just realized I left a phrase out of a sentence a few comments up the scroll and rendered that whole sentence entirely useless. Where it says:

...which is why, when the announcer proclaims at the beginning of the episode, "(insert sitcom name) was recorded in front of a live audience" as if somehow having real people provide the laugh track instead of recorded laughter, my immediate thought is...

...it should've said:

...which is why, when the announcer proclaims at the beginning of the episode, "(insert sitcom name) was recorded in front of a live audience" as if somehow having real people provide the laugh track instead of recorded laughter makes the reactions genuine, my immediate thought is...

Apologies to anyone who actually bothered to read my stuff. The DW and I leave for Vallarta on Wednesday morning, and while I'm trying to make lucid comments on SMBIVA, my brain is going da dah dah da daah da dahh dah, da dah dah da dahh da dahh! TEQUILA!

mike even with a live audience the laff track gets jiced up
by canned gaffaws etc
i once knew a guy who did this

its like playing the organ
a key board he customized

father S might like that bit
as a veteran organ player

no not your "one pipe" organ mike

the multi pipe organ
found in "choych "

Any fool can see that the problem with poor people is that they don't have enough money; it takes a highly-educated liberal to conclude that their problem is that they don't have enough education.

I take great pride in being exactly that kind of fool. My solution, appropriately, is foolish too: give them money, until they have enough. Problem solved—until they spend it on education and become liberals. But everyone should be free to choose their own folly.

I liked that line of father S 's too Al

But I over looked the straight forward rectification you out line

Means tested Grants on demand
Are self limiting
The next cycle last cycle's grant recipients
no longer qualify

The liberal hysteria over Santorum sancti is inexplicable. Were he to be the nominee, Nobama would run the tables. He'd be Allah's gift to the Muslim socialist and his minions.

I think it's just an appeal to political tribalism; Santorum reminding the GOP base that Obama is - as you Mr. Smith put it - "a highly educated liberal" of the "merit class." Or at least that he is the chosen representative of that demographic. To GOP RedStaters, the political "other."

Santorum's way of telling the GOP base he's one of them - criticize Obama for being exactly that demographic GOP cons hate.

And the hate must be made to flow the other way too. That's how you achieve "Divide and Rule." And that is why the liberal reaction to Santorum is so mindless and devoid of political calculation. It's something atavistic, programmed into liberals by the propaganda system. By their flavor of Two Minute Hate.

op sez on 02.26.12 @13:36:
mike even with a live audience the laff track gets jiced up
by canned gaffaws etc
i once knew a guy who did this

its like playing the organ
a key board he customized

Y'know, I somehow could've guessed as much.

I recall five or six years ago, seeing a big deal in the news about how all the pastoral, pretty tweety bird sounds were dubbed in over the live audio on coverage of pro golf tournaments.

There was also a similar brouhaha over the discovery that delirious cheers were mixed over the waves of boos that greeted President Chimp in TV coverage of him at public ceremonial functions like throwing out the first ball, etc.

Kinda reminds me of one of my favorite old Three Stooges bits, from You Nazty Spy. Check it out at about the four-minute mark, the balcony speech scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg_3qEf3ahU

A commenter who shall remain nameless, in a thread on this same topic over at Mock, Paper, Scissors, says:

I truly wish all Americans could be made over in Obama’s image, educationally. (Canadians, too!)

If every North American had their knowledge deepened and their horizon’s broadened by as much formal education as he/she could retain, we might not be in the sorry mess which we now face. At least our exertions to extricate ourselves from the said mess might appear more plausible.

I would, however, suggest that a better model be chosen to base our backbones upon.

Must... control... Fist...Of...DEATH...!

Mike Flugennock sayeth:

"Kinda reminds me of one of my favorite old Three Stooges bits, from You Nazty Spy. Check it out at about the four-minute mark, the balcony speech scene:"

Well, I went over there and was about to drag the slider to the four minute mark and listen to the speech, when the opening scene with the war profiteers came on, so I watched that, too. Very scary. No kidding, it's like The Onion. Totally ridiculous, but absolutely true to life.

A traditional snob could want to keep lower castemen out of university, but a traditional snob could also be a fraudulent do-gooder busybody who uses calls for the rabble to go to university to increase her/his own social standing.

In this case, Santorum's right: Obama's ridiculous posing is quite snobbish. He doesn't care about the people; he's just trying to look good by pretending to, just as when Lady Strotham made a big show of volunteering at the soup kitchen for half an hour last year.

Brilliant essay; keep them coming.

>>>I truly wish all Americans could be made over in Obama’s image, educationally. (Canadians, too!)

Leave the Canadians out of it! Why on earth would they want to be made over in Nobama's image??

MJS says that he is a "great believer in education."
No sentence that has ever started with "I'm a great believer in..." has ever ended with anything but a fleecing of the mark. Hold on to your wallets - the "great believer" means some dubious product is about to be sold to some gullible lower order.
I'm not a great believer in educamation, except of the self-variety, and basically it's just a pastime.

If memory serves, the topic was college, mjosef, not edumacation in general.

He's absolutely right.

And I think Santorum could pose a potential threat to Obama, actually. He has an economically populist/protectionist that the other GOP candidates lack (he's also at least marginally more pro-union than the other three).

On the other hand, after blowing it at the Arizona debate, I doubt he'll be the nominee, not to mention the anti-Catholic right-wingers have been starting to bash him on the blogosphere.

Someone economically populist, protectionist, socially moderate, relatively indifferent to identity politics, and sufficiently wrapped in the redwhiteandblue could pose a threat to Nobama. But that person isn't Santorum Sancti. And that person would have to wage the mother of all small donors' campaigns.

There's a potential opening for a real populist, not the "socially liberal/fiscally conservative"/Tom Friedman's wet dream candidate. Not, in other words, NY media darling Mayor Mike. Actually a fiscally liberal, socially moderate patriotic protectionist would do the trick.

Jimmy "The Rent Is Too Damn High" McMillan and Vermin Supreme have my share of the SMBIVA stamp of approval. I'd give a lot to see Obama forced to debate either of them—with a slight preference for Vermin Supreme, the only honest Democratic Party candidate.

Al,

I happen to know a neighbor of Jimmy's, and she says he's a really good guy and takes a deep interest in his neighborhood and community.

One thing's for sure: You know exactly where he stands. (He also has the benefit of being correct.)