Tues. Jan. 24, 2012:
Did anyone else notice the fake crowd serving as Romney's backdrop for his Saturday night "concession" speech in South Carolina? Their acting job was worse than most. Clean, laughing, smiling, wholesome faces -- cheering after Romney's sentence, even the sentences with terrible news in them.
All candidates, Democratic & Republican, have staged these bogus crowds for years. [Harken back to those Nixon young Republicans of 1972 -- "4 more years! 4 more years!"] But in this age of Citizens United, super PACS, obscene millions [which might help pare down our deficits?] spent on ludicrous attack ads, these bought groupies-for-TV suggest even more that the apocalypse is near for democracy American-style. Lies everywhere!
One reason polls are so negative, not only on Congress but on nearly all of the species politicus americanus (-a, -um), is such palpable phony posturing wherever we look. If this is "the last best hope" that a democratic republic can deliver, then maybe we should heed John Cleese's [not really his, but let's go with the urban legend] advice: Leaving the British Monarchy was a big mistake, and are you finally ready to come back in?
But I still believe that we can find a cleansing agent from within. One mildly encouraging sign is a small group pushing for a Constitutional Amendment [it would be #28] negating the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, and banning corporate speech. It takes 2/3 of both Houses, and then 3/4 of the 50 state legislatures. But the effort alone might ignite a heartfelt nonpartisan "Enough" movement.
What say you all?
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