You can almost hear the goose stepping coming up the street. The reelection of Barack Obama is less than two weeks old and already his acolytes are wasting no time marching the losers to their demographic graves. Beaver Cleaver is doomed; Opie and Donna Reed are right behind.  read more »

Veterans Day was originally established to mark the Armistice ending World War I, the “war to end all wars.” Sadly, hundreds of thousands of young Americans have died in subsequent conflicts since that time in Asia, the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe. Let us take a moment to honor their duty and sacrifices in their quest to preserve the freedom of Americans and millions of other people throughout the globe.

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AP / Stephen Morton

They stood in lines, sometimes for hours, to cast their ballot for a man whose leadership vision is to do more of the same. With a vengeance. Unabated by the shaky economy, these voters are younger, more ethnic and less religious than ever before, and according to exit polls, carry a grudge for the very rich.

Stunned at Mitt Romney’s butt whuppin,' conservatives are trying to figure out the meaning of it all; meanwhile Democrats are both giddy and cocky in their celebratory fervor. It is over, they say: 2012 marks the death of the Republican Party. For the 57 million Americans who voted for self-reliance over self-indulgence, the quick disposal of their values is a punch to the gut; in the course of a day traditionalists have been deemed culturally irrelevant.  read more »

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away was a media dedicated to providing facts to the American public. Editorially, newspapers had a partisan slant but the best prevented bias from spilling over to the news coverage. We shared our dinner hour with Walter, David and Peter and although all three were unapologetic liberals, viewers didn’t feel misled and patronized by the anchors or correspondents. Overzealous young reporters like me would be kicked in the rear for using adjectives and pronouns. By design our press was adversarial; they weren’t propagandists for any political party.

My, have things changed. Despite their cries to the contrary, the majority of establishment media today makes little attempt to disguise their elitism, political leanings and out-and-out disdain of most Americans. When inconvenient, scandals and corruption are ignored; intolerance is fine—even funny—when it’s aimed at the “other.”

In the electronic age, however, we derided “others” have a platform all our own. And we’re using it. In light of the disgraceful coverage of the 2012 election and the press blackout on the Benghazi terrorist attack, welcome to our WEEKLY MEME MASH: lapdog media edition.  read more »

Chances are you don’t go through life questioning your self-identity. Our culture, a melding of family and community values, religious convictions and where we grow up—determines who we are. Always has, always will.

Yet to some, this is simply not so. They divvy our identity into hyphens and asterisks; using gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity to carve a crevice into our essential character. Lizzie from Peoria is redefined as a hyphenated Indian-American, asterisked single parent. In one rhetorical stroke, Lizzie is fragmented into pieces detaching her from the greater population; a rank tactic long used by demagogues to foment suspicion and hatred.  read more »

Being decent has its drawbacks—just ask Mitt Romney. The New York Times dedicated two pages in last week’s Sunday edition to his lack of cool, jeering the Governor’s “1950’s language” and “Gomer Pyle routine” for being “old timey.” We beg to differ. American values are not fickle; our core beliefs are not seasonal like Baskin Robbins’ flavor of the month.

For that reason, we are poking an eye at the stereotypes of conservatives and dedicating our WEEKLY MEME MASH to images that celebrate our gosh-darn exceptionalism as well as satirize the critics of "old timey" American culture. Because, to quote Huey Lewis, we believe “it’s hip to be square.”

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Our nation is more than $16 trillion in debt. With stubbornly high unemployment, 23 million Americans are out of work while millions more settle for part-time jobs; half of college graduates can’t find work at all and are moving back in with their parents. Nearly a quarter of homeowners are underwater with their mortgages. The Middle East is in a free fall, Iran is fast-tracking its nuclear capability and instead of Al Qaeda being on the run, they are killing our ambassadors and grooming more terrorists. Medicare is going broke yet it is being pillaged to help fund Obamacare.

Regardless of political leanings, reasonable people can agree that we need a serious dialogue on how to confront America’s myriad challenges. Instead what are we getting—particularly from the supporters of President Obama—are fabricated fripperies irresponsibly disseminated in the mainstream media, instant websites, memes, Twitter hashtags, and Facebook pages. Vile comments and images are spreading like maggots on roadkill. Call it the Fluking of America.
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Leaders who pander to a select ethnic or cultural group by demonizing others are hardly new. The United States has a long history of such ignoble characters—Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Al Sharpton among them—who gain power by lighting a flame of blame and revulsion on a dangerous “other.”

In years past, we called them demagogues, rabble-rousers, race-baiters, and bigots. Such fear mongering was considered shameful and despicable. Until now. Demagoguery has been reinvented to fit a new era: Welcome to Identity Politics, 2012.

In popular media, the image of an intolerant extremist is cliché—a populist white social conservative from flyover country who objectifies women and hates gays, minorities and smart people. In truth, too many Michele Bachmanns and Todd Akins still exist, but thankfully more and more conservatives are disavowing their worst actors. As they should.  read more »