Doublewide Trailer Trash

The Republicans Bring the Klan Robes Out of the Closet

Why can’t the Republicans be honest about it and just call African-Americans “niggers” in their ads instead of dancing around the issue? If you are going to be racist, just be a racist. Don’t deny who you are. Be a man about it.
Of course, there is a delicious irony in a gay white man, Ken Mehlmann, the head of the Republican National Committee, the party that hates gay people, appearing on MSNBC and denying that they advertisement the RNC is running against Harold Ford is racist. First, he claims that there is nothing he can do to stop the ad from running, even though the end of the advertisement says that it was paid for by the Republican National Committee. Second, he claims there is nothing racist in the ad. Sure, there is nothing racist about implying miscegenation. Bob Corker, the rich Republican Neanderthal running against Ford says he has asked that the advertisement be taken off of the air, but of course when asked cannot say who he spoke to about having this done. More about this moron later. Mehlmann recently appeared before the NAACP and admitted that Republicans had run racist campaigns and offering an apology. Guess he needs to schedule another visit.
The premise of the ad is this. It actually has a black woman appearing early on, then it consists of a series of fake “man-in-the-street” interviews slamming Harold Ford. In the middle of the advertisement a young scantily clad white woman comes on and says she met Ford at the Playboy mansion. After the RNC logo is shown at the end, the woman appears again and says, “Harold, call me.”
Mandingo was less overt than this. This advertisement is about as subtle as the pictures George Wallace ran against in Albert Brewer in 1970, doctored photos showing Brewer between Elijah Muhhammed and Muhammed Ali. It is far worse than the Willie Horton ad that Bush Senior ran in 1988.
Now it surfaces that Corker is running a radio spot where every time they mention Ford’s name they have jungle drums playing in the background and a choir sings when they are talking about Corker. I shit you not. Listen to it yourself.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/2006-10-25_Corker_Radio_Ad.mp3
Of course, this is the Christian party, the party of the evangelicals. I just wonder what Christ would think of all of this?
Nothing ever changes. My suggestion to the Republicans is to save some money. Just use some clips out of “Birth of a Nation.” How about the ones of the African-Americans in the legislature drinking whiskey, eating chicken, and sitting with their bare feet on top of their desks? Would that work for you?
I wish I believed in hell so that I could hold out hope that these fine Christians would burn for eternity.

President Clinton Tells Us Why the Democrats Will Win

We might all feel that way, but it's a very hard argument to make. I had an eighth-grade science teacher who was one of the most physically unattractive people I ever met in my life. (Laughter.) He had thick Coke-bottle glasses, and he smoked cheap cigars in a cigar holder that caused his mouth to pinch. And he had been a football coach before he became a science teacher, and he gained a little weight after he turned to science, and he still wore the same clothes. (Laughter.)

And I'm telling -- let me tell you why I said this. (Laughter.) One day in class he said to us -- I was 13 at the time, 47 years ago -- he said, "You won't remember anything about science in a few years. So if you don't remember anything else in class that I teach you, remember this: every day I get up, and I go to my bathroom, and I wash my face, throw water in my eyes. I shave, I wipe the shaving cream off, I look into the mirror and say, 'Vernon, you're beautiful.'" (Laughter.)

And by the end of the year, he was beautiful to me. I say that to remind you it is very hard to succeed in politics when you're telling people they're ugly all the time.

Spiral of Silence

No one has asked me my opinion on this, but when has that ever stopped me before, so today I want to post some comments on my opinion about what might happen in the upcoming election. My gut feeling says the Democrats will gain control of both the House and the Senate despite the structural constraints that favor Republican control of the House of Representatives, more specifically their successful gerrymandering of key states after the last census. Most will remember how the Texas legislature was gerrymandered two years after the previous redistricting to create new Republican districts and protect Republican incumbents. This effort was Hot Tub Tom Delay’s swan song before heading off to federal prison. Though less publicized, similar efforts took place across the country, making it harder to unseat Republican incumbents. Coupled with long term efforts by the Justice Department to ensure African-American representation in the House, the upshot of all this becomes a situation where only twenty-five of the four hundred and thirty five house seats are seriously contested. Folks, that is eight percent, which is shameful and has helped contribute to the polarization of political parties. By the way, gerrymander is pronounced Gary, not Jerry, and yes, everyone else who pronounces it Jerry is wrong.
The past few weeks have not been kind to the Republicans. Bush’s poll numbers are dropping even in the polls that naturally favor Republicans, like Fox News and Gallup, and conditions are unlikely to improve in the coming weeks. The Foley scandal only proves that Republicans will screw other things besides the country, but is unlikely to have anything more than a “piling on” effect. The gay angle only serves to heighten the controversy because the Republicans have been so adamantly opposed to gay marriage. If the Republicans decided to discriminate against gays in employment, let’s just say there would be a lot of Baptist churches in the south without a music director. Also, has anyone ever seen Ken Mehlman, the head of the RNC, on a date with a woman? If you have, that woman was a beard. What the Foley scandal does is wash away the moral high ground from the Republicans and permits other changes in attitude to take effect, changes I will discuss shortly.
The study of public opinion is quite complex. It was one of my areas of study in graduate school and remains an interest of mine, so I would like to offer a few reasoned comments.
In the post mortem period after the election, you may hear the term “spiral of silence” tossed about. The term was coined by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German lady who founded the Allensbach Institute, the German equivalent of the Gallup organization. Drawing from sources as distant as John Locke and Rousseau, her main premise is that people conceal their opinions when they believe their opinion represents a minority view. The converse is true; people are more expressive of their opinions when they believe they hold a majority view. The reason this holds is that people fear becoming socially isolated from others when they hold opinions contrary to the majority opinion.
Polling is an inexact science, but the theory has been tested many times and holds true in almost all cases. The most interesting studies have been in cases when a person is asked to express their opinion contrary to the clearly erroneous opinion of another person in close proximity. What those studies show is that people are willing to accept the wrong opinion to avoid isolation from the other person.
The 1980 presidential election is the most famous example of the “spiral of silence.” There was a pronounced shift in public opinion toward Reagan during the final days of the campaign. Previously isolated people began to believe that Reagan was going to win and became more expressive of that opinion. Democrats began to understand that Carter was going to lose, became more isolated, and some even switched allegiances to become part of the new majority opinion. The shift suppressed Democratic turnout and and a close race became a blowout overnight. There were many similarities to today’s situation. There were the Iranian hostages and the failed attempt to rescue them weighing down the Carter administration, and the pessimism they engendered is similar to today’s recent events. Here’s how this will work in the election.
The Bush administration stays on message, consistently claiming a connection between Iraq and Al-Queda, that the war in Iraq is progressing, and to this day you still hear Cheney echoing the outrageous neocon theory that Saddam supported terrorism as far back as the 1993 WTC bombing. But over the last few months polls demonstrate that public opinion has shifted. The American public eventually connected the dots and now understand that the Iraq-Al-Queda connection is a fiction, evidence has shown that the Bush administration missed all the warning signals about 9/11, and the public understands that the civil war in Iraq has begun despite what the government tells them. People see evidence of the latter every night on the news.
What has shifted is the fear of isolation people held for expressing sentiments that have been painted as “unpatriotic.” The old assertion about “my country right or wrong” still holds sway with the public and is a condition of the foundation myths that citizens cling to about the United States despite a clear, sustained tradition of public dissent dating back to the first attempts at colonization. The American public desires to support the government and will continue to express that support until given strong reasons not to. Now the public has those reasons.
The public now believes that the Democrats are going to win in November. You hear it on the news; you hear it from other people; the isolation has ended. The key event was when television began to question the Bush administration’s view of the world and began to posit a different state of affairs. Television is a key component in the creation of public opinion and the “spiral of silence.” Noelle-Neumann goes beyond “agenda-setting” as the role for the media, saying that the media also tells us what everyone else is thinking. Television creates public opinion along with transmitting it, something that the Bush administration has successfully exploited in the past through the relentless (and wrong) world view espoused by the Fox network.
The turning point came, I believe, with the recent Clinton interview. That is when it became mainstream to challenge the Bush view of the world. When he became angry and defended himself, the contrast with the Bush administration with their automatonic insistence of correctness was striking. Clinton humanized the struggle against terror. When Clinton said I tried and I failed, but at least I tried, that is when the landscape changed. People understand making mistakes and failure; they make mistakes and fail every day, and they love to see vulnerability in their leaders because it makes them human. This is something that the Bush administration has never understood, and one reason I think control of the Congress is about to change, with the “spiral of silence” as the explanation.

Mark Foley's iPod Playlist

The entire body of work from the Butthole Surfers
Politician (Cream)
Too Drunk to Fuck (Dead Kennedys)
Save the Children (Marvin Gaye)
The Christian Life (Byrds)
Crazy Love (Poco)
Everybody Hurts (REM)
Baby Let Me Bang Your Box (Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts)
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
Favorite Son (CCR)
Catch My Disease (Ben Lee)
Life in Prison (Byrds)
This One's Gonna Bruise (Beth Orton)
Love Me Tender (Elvis)
If I Should Fall Behind (Bruce Springsteen)
The Hurt (Cat Stevens)
Phone Call From Leavenworth (Chris Whitley)
Turn Your Head Now Spit Me Out (Collective Soul)
Into Temptation (Crowded House)
Let It Whip (Dazz Band)
Burning Love (Elvis)
Young at Heart (Sinatra)
Celebrity Skin (Hole)
Can't Keep It In (Cat Stevens)
Shake a Tail Feather (James and Bobby Purify)
He Don't Love You Like I Love You (Jerry Butler)
Why Don't We Get Drunk (Jimmy Buffett)
Let's Just Get Naked (Joan Osborne)
Thing Called Love (John Hiatt)
Creeps Like Me (Lyle Lovett)
Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye)
The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
His Latest Flame (Mary Lou Lord)
Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
Use Me Up (Bill Withers)
Tightly (Neko Case)
Breaking the Law (New Pornographers)
Skin Tight (Ohio Players)
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
Drunk and Fucked Up (Ryan Adams)
I Am a Rock (Simon and Garfunkel)
Throng of Blowtown (Mary Loud Lord)
Hurting Me, Hurting You (Steve Earle)
and my favorite,
Back Door Man (Howlin Wolf)