Op-Ed: Jaundice, cruelty, and wit in the heartlands

[palomaki]

I know that you don't need another reason not to vote for Bush. But the folks over at TheRawStory.com (the site responsible for unearthing the proof of Bush's AWOL episode), have just posted a great op-ed by D.A. Blyler that makes it oh so easy to pull the lever for the right candidate. Forward it on to your fence-sitting friends. You can find the op-ed at this link:

Jaundice, cruelty, and wit in the heartlands

[yellowcanine]

1. Link doesn't work for me.

.

[checks-n-balances]

2. That link didn't work for me - please check it. Thanks n/t

[palomaki]

3. Link Fixed

Sorry about that. The links is fixed. Cheers.

[papau]

4. Great piece - 4 paragraphs below:

Voters have it tough. Few have the time to sift through all the issues, conflicting statements, vitriol and rhetoric to make a balanced assessment of the candidates. No longer can they look to the press with less than a jaundiced eye. Although veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas remains blessedly defiant, her younger colleagues have long discarded their responsibilities to the voters in vigorously questioning public servants, having handed down that thorny duty to Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and HBO’s Bill Maher. Perhaps it’s best that the most trenchant analysis of presidential politics is served up now by comedians, considering how silly the public arena has become. It would be downright funny if it weren’t (as 9/11 showed us) so downright serious.

So, how is one to make a choice? If polls are correct, more and more eligible voters are grappling with this question than ever before. In the choreographed and mind-numbing game of contemporary American politics, it is (more often than not) the off-the-cuff remark that gives the game away, the loose-lipped sally that reveals the essence of the man. Hang the policies, platforms and promises. All of that takes its inertia from just what type of man we have in the oval office. And the differences between the candidates in the 2004 election are striking.

Whenever anyone asks me why I will never choose to vote for George W. Bush, I remind them of the 1999 Talk magazine article written by CNN Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson. Riding in a car with the then Texas Governor, Carlson recounts a conversation dealing with the death penalty wherein Bush purses his lips and mocks the alleged plea of recently executed Karla Fay Tucker, whimpering “‘Please, don’t kill me,” to the shocked conservative pundit.

Ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner is unarguably cruel, but what makes the episode especially revealing is that Bush, a professed born-again Christian, was ridiculing a woman who had gone through her own Christian conversion on death row. <snip>