The GOP's fascination with death

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY - the party of Lincoln's towering wisdom and of Reagan's Morning In America and of the earlier Bush's Thousand Points of Light and of the later Bush's "compassionate conservatism", remember? - has now become a party preoccupied with death. It has been the source of such terms as "death tax", which, when applied to, say, an unemployed assembly line worker, would heavily tax the surviving family's fictitious multi-million dollar estate upon his untimely death. Having settled that question of liberal fatalistic policy, the GOP turned to "death panel" , courtesy of Sarah Palin, the Party's new Aphrodite who is certain that her infant son would be dead in the hands of the New Socialists out to reform health care. Other Republicans have mindlessly tacked up similar death notices for Ted Kennedy and Stephen Hawking.

Most recently arriving is from the lips of Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, who has plastered the health reform issue with the term "death counselor" . This is not to mention the rowdies who argue that democracy is ready for extreme unction or the fellow who said the best immigration reform would be to send Mexicans back home with bullets in their heads.

America's frontier days have returned as bold gun toters, covered by law, turn up at town hall meetings to prove they can rightfully bear arms.

One strains to find a Republican on Capitol Hill who has the courage to stand up and say this is not to way to find common ground on significant issues. The place is crowded with Faustian characters who are willing to trade their souls for personal gain and the most convenient distance between two points is paved with lies.

Yesterday, for example, there was Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican rising at a public meeting to denounce the White House's health reform efforts. Grassley, a member of a committee drafting health care legislation, bowed at the altar of Sarah Palin by declaring that the White House was out to "pull the plug on grandma." I would think he was kidding, but he is an older white guy who doesn't appear to smile very often. (Only, perhaps when he receives another big chunk of money from the health insurance companies).

Republicans, of course, like to point tot he Blue Dog Democrats as the major obstacle to Obama's ideas - some of whom are also on the A-list of these companies. That's true and equally despicable, but they don't show up at meetings to petrify their audiences with death threats. The only effective rhetoric that has benighted so many people these days has been coming from the GOP since the November election. Often inflammatory with a carefully staged undertow of racism, it suggests that the Republican operatives in D.C. have nothing more to offer Americans than persuading them that the world is flat or that the Russians are coming.

In a profession, which in some precincts could be considered the oldest, where exaggeration, hyperbole and free-style fudging by both sides are more than acceptable behavior, the modern Regional Republican Party has ventured well beyond that to offer us one of the most shameful performances in modern history. Disgraceful, to be kind about it.

If you are a true believer in your party's direction, and this angers you, I can assure you that I'm not the problem. It you want to know where the trouble lies, look into your mirror.

A quiet week in Lake Grump-begone

LET'S SEE...Where was I before Time Warner abruptly darkened my Internet screen and cut off the phone service for a week-long ...eh, outage. Well, with apologies to Garrison Keillor, it was a quiet week at Lake Grump-begone. Oh, there were the countless calls to the company demanding Service on Demand instead of Movies on Demand. But it soon became obvious to me that Warner Cable was in charge, not me, and the cable savants would fix the problem whenever they were damned ready.

Meantime, I could only spend the down time wondering whether the Indians would call up another relief pitcher from a sandlot down south and how I could be so obtuse not to appreciate the seismic consequences of Michael Jackson's death. On some days the media coverage far exceeded President Obama's discussions with the Russian front office on nuclear weapons and the worsening war in Afghanistan. It is anybody's guess what horrendous world event would have been able to draw our attention from Neverland.

But the late Mr. Jackson's fullest measure of media coverage did serve as a another glimpse of desperation by newspapers and television to sustain or increase their audiences by whatever it takes regardless of the relative consequence to the world. It has sadly become a truism that for all of their problems, the media's front offices have yet to define journalism as a means of making a profit. And my hunch is that at this late date, they never will. There are not enough Michael Jacksons to advance the media to the next level of professionalism, if indeed that is the medium's sublimated goal.

But I did find more than enough time the past week to follow the perils of Palin. Sarah, that is. Hearing her out on her resignation as the Alaskan governor, I realized that if there was a hidden massage in her rambling comments, I was too unsophisticated to discover it. I did, however, gain a tad of satisfaction by reading some national commentaries that appeared to be as much in the dark as I was. As a blazing-comet political celebrity, Palin has become as much a curiosity as a wannabe national political force.

I could only add to the Palintology that a loopy Alaskan politician with her national aspirations could come along not more than once in a lifetime. For that, we should all be thankful.

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Scanning today's Op-Ed columns in the Beacon Journal, I caught up with one that was headlined Sarah Palin, victim of media sexism. It was a lament by Marie Cocco, a Washington Post columnist that strongly traced Palin's problems to a male-dominated media empire. That, to say the least, is a tearful stretch. As a white male writer who has spent 99 pct. of my complaints on incompetent white male politicians, I figure I should be able to say a few unkind things about Palin, too. I'm quite astonished that a national political columnist like Cocco could bring her comments down to such an adolescent level (which, I suppose, exposes me to being a sexist re Cocco.) Ms. Cocco, the same rules apply to anybody stumbling up the tower in the political arena which includes Mark Sanford, John Ensign, etc. etc. etc. And if Helen Thomas or Maureen Dowd decide that George Bush is a adrift, I would hesitate to blame it on sexism.

Sarah Palin happens to be a woman. She also happens to have said and done a lot of foolish things. And I am a male who happens to think she is fair game.

Folks, it's good to be back!