SHAME ON THEM ALL

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

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I thought they could sink no lower than their sound and fury over the manufactured controversies, during the six week Pennsylvania primary overload, whose fires they helped stoke. Once again, find me guilty of consistently underestimating the depths of shameless, absurd and — given the stakes — utterly, unforgivably immoral behaviour to which they could sink.

And by “they,” I mean Senator Clinton, the corporate media, and each individual who responded to the Reverend Wright brouhaha as anything but a bathetic, pointless, insulting distraction from the actual serious business of conducting a primary campaign for the chance to run for President of the United States of America.

And I include in that latter category the usually sensible Senator Obama, who responded to this latest tempest in a teapot with all the naivete of a playground schoolboy taking the “Your mother wears Army boots” bait.

His acknowledging — let alone accepting — the Wright issue as even mildly legitimate may be a minor misstep. But better we start wagging our fingers and raising our complaints now, lest Senator Obama stumble already bloodied into the national election only to repeat this foolish offer of credibility to absurd criticism in the campaign against the predictable artillery of the right wing attack machine.

Obviously, Senator Clinton bears responsibility for once again dragging a non-issue into this campaign in her desperate flailing to find anything with which to assail a virtually bulletproof opponent — the latest being this risible accusation of “elitism” against a man so clearly out of her league in that department. That desperation, however, somewhat mitigates her as the principal guilty party, insofar as she is deeply embedded in this campaign with likely very little rational perspective remaining (though the same cannot be said of those paid to advise her, and shame on them all, too). To make matters worse, Clinton is a 60 year old member of the entrenched Democratic “leadership” (and never was a word less appropriate for that sorry group of spineless, self-seeking do-nothings); presumably Clinton lost any semblance of honour, dignity or even common sense somewhere between her years as a beleaguered First Lady and the moment she failed to uphold her duty as an American Senator to act in the interests of the American people instead of hedging her bets in the most craven “Yes” vote of her short career as a Senator.

But the bulk of responsibility for the insultingly asinine tenor of the last act of this Democratic primary season must be laid firmly in the laps of the only entity capable of spinning totally irrelevant soundbites, events and analyses into what amounts to a wholesale campaign to destroy the campaign of the only candidate with a snowball’s chance in Tikrit of defeating McBush in November: the American corporate media.

Despite the valiant efforts of Keith Olbermann — and, to a lesser (and less effective) extent, Bill Maher — to inject something resembling sanity and objectivity into the miasma of these media-driven faux controversies, said media has been gleefully complicit in this year’s patented right wing “Swiftboating” of the (presumptive) Democratic nominee. Hell, they couldn’t even wait till the actual nomination took place; as tasty to their ravenous drama-addiction as this drawn-out contest proves, the classic American attention deficit disorder the media both perpetuate and share with their audience will not be denied the opportunity to multitask — hence the breathless declarations, disingenuous hand-wringing and fraudulent analyses of their fictitious controversies in service of two masters, Ratings and Il Duce Corporati.

I have my thoughts as to the veracity of Senator Barack Obama’s stated beliefs and opinions, but once again — as happens every four years come national election season — prefer to restrain my more ruthless insights for the time being, in service of what I hope to hell is the greater good. He may not be the Messiah, but he’s all we’ve got, and I refuse to tie another anvil to his already vulnerable campaign. It will either be John McCain or Barack Obama inaugurated next January; time enough for unsparing criticism once the greater of those two evils has been averted.

I will say this, however: I am absolutely gobsmacked to witness what ought to be the outright laughable and transparent right wing attack machine’s tactics once again transformed into a veritable juggernaut by virtue of its opponents’ apparent total inability to counter it with what ought to be unassailable: the motherfucking TRUTH.