Allison Hantschel

For what it’s worth, I have zero problem with people buying each other gifts or going out for a nice meal, if that’s what turns your crank. I have a major, major problem with yet another potentially sweet holiday being turned into a festival of misogyny and meanness.

This has got to be my all-time favorite excuse for racist behavior EVER. “I wasn’t insulting black people, I was insulting Asian people! Also people with ears, as regards the Linkin Park thing. What, that’s no cool anymore?”

Our paranoid culture of rooting out fraud and our fear-mongering media that makes every anecdote a proof the system is corrupt, make it harder for people who need help to get it.

The public wants better news than it’s getting.

This is a war. Which is why you don’t start them in the first place. Which is why you don’t start them unless you absolutely have to. Unless you know you have no other choice. Unless you know how to end them as quickly as possible. Unless you’re ready not only for what will be done to your enemies, but what doing that will do to you. Unless you think you can carry that, because you sure as hell can’t prevent it all.

That’s not what Loesch meant, but it is what she said, however unintentionally.

This is a war.

Now comes this pampered suburban dick who is ever so concerned that the constant reminder of people who are poor and screwed will upset everybody. Why, people will just be unable to get out of bed, if they have to hear mean ads describing exactly how Republicans wrecked the economy and tried to blame the goddamn janitors for it.

Since we’re all apparently doing it wrong when it comes to the Star-Spangled Banner (and really, as a good old drunken warbling tavern song, it has its moments, but it’s not the only good old drunken warbling tavern song out there), what would you choose for America’s New Kickassingest Theme Song?

One of my least favorite media criticism dodges revolves around the idea that, though TV and newspaper pundits are powerful opinion leaders with massive megaphones through which they can amplify any point of view they choose, they are simultaneously powerless to resist the tastes of the public and must slavishly follow the directions of their reader and viewer masters.

A school district getting screwed over by the state of Illinois’ relentless desire to give tax breaks to corporations that don’t need them had the temerity to point out that this was total crap, which of course upset the guardians of decorum.

I keep saying over at my home base that I don’t, actually, have anything against you making money and going home and enjoying your in-ground pool or your Lexus or whatever. Just don’t come to me and bitch about tough things are for you and ask for another tax cut. That’s all I ask.