Herding Grumpy Cats

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Off to the Polls We Go

Just yesterday, a rocket blew up on the launch pad and Jose Canseco emulated Plaxico Burress by accidentally shooting himself.  Last week, a gunman murdered a Canadian soldier, a fourteen-year-old boy opened fire in a Washington State school cafeteria, and a hatchet-wielding extremist attacked four policemen in New York.  Elsewhere, women are executed for killing their rapists in Iraq and Iran, a landslide kills hundreds in Sri Lanka, Ebola continues to rage in West Africa, and Kim Jong Un resurfaces for a photo-op at a North Korean orphanage that houses no orphans. 

Today, Russia is reported to have cyber-attacked the White House, the head of the Secret Service prostitution probe is himself tied to prostitution, and Sarah Palin announces she wants to run for public office again. The United States elections are still six days away, and we are drowning in negative ads and gasbag predictions. No wonder everyone is grumpy, for reasons profound and trivial.  I’m so grumpy that I’m posting illustrations of cats and Disney characters, neither group being one I find particularly endearing.

GRUMPY

There’s a new barrage of polls showing that the U.S. electorate:  dislikes President Obama, despises Congress, hates gridlock (but also believes that compromise is tantamount to spinelessness), and thinks the country is ‘going in the wrong direction.’  In other words, it’s in an extremely grumpy mood.  So are the candidates.  It seems that not only are the campaigns almost exclusively negative; they are meanspiritedly, nitpickingly, mendaciously so.  Further, we who live in ‘swing states’ are the displeased recipients of constant telephone calls from various groups trying to push us into voting against someone or some position.  After the twelfth call from the Karl Rove American Crossroads PAC, I ended up screaming at the somehow unperturbed automated voice to stop harassing me . . . grumpiness having morphed into rage. 

The only suspense in this cranky miasma is the percentage of voters who will actually vote in order to register their bad temper versus those who will stay home and complain about the results they had no hand in producing.

SLEEPY

Another thing that makes me grumpy:  this election season isn’t really very entertaining.  Two years ago was a hoot, a-bristle with loopy politicians making insanely ridiculous pronouncements (remember Todd Aiken’s legitimate rape?  Herman Cain’s manly man’s pizza?  Mitt Romney’s binders full of women? Michele Bachmann’s defense of carbon dioxide?  Ah, good times . . .).  This year is downright boring. 

Countrywide, Republican candidates resemble alien abductees whose mind-control implants make them repeat the identical slogan – “A vote for [insert Democratic opponent’s name] is a vote for Obama.”  When Democratic candidates try to do the national referendum thing, it’s also consistently shorthanded through mentions of “the do-nothing Congress.”  And, except for hog-castrator Joni Ernst of Iowa, there aren’t even colorful characters.  In my state, for example, we did have an absolutely crazy candidate – Greg Brannon, who ran against fluoridation and food-stamp slavery.  Unfortunately for North Carolina’s political merriment quotient, the surviving Republican Senatorial candidate is as amusing as burnt toast while the Democratic incumbent is dutifully dull.  (To be fair, she does brandish some actual issues that at least bring a certain amount of concreteness to her campaign in an otherwise vaporous political atmosphere.) 

Yes, there’s still Rick Perry stumbling around somewhere, but he’s not running for office at the moment.  I know it’s too much to ask for the return of the spatially and temporally challenged Dan Quayle (“I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix.”  Or: “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history.  I mean in this century’s history.  But I didn’t live in this century.”), but can’t we do better than monotone incantations about ‘growing good jobs’ and ‘getting things done’?  In today’s news environment, where a politician’s misstatement or malapropism becomes an existential crisis, probably not.  Yawn. 

DOPEY

The problem is that downright willful stupidity is not funny any more.  There’s too much of it.  Certainly among the electorate itself, about 30% of which believes that it’s time for an armed revolution, that gay people can and should choose to become straight, that President Obama is a Muslim, and that another war in Iraq is an excellent idea.  In addition, about 30% of our fellow citizens cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a world map, 20% maintain that the sun revolves around the earth, and more can name the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of our government. 

But let’s not let politicians off the hook.  Congressman Phil Gingrey (Georgia) maintains that immigrant children from Mexico and Central America can carry Ebola over our ‘unprotected’ southern border.  Rep. Louis Gohmert (Texas) holds that caribou enjoy the warmth of oil pipelines but that foreign aid to China will make that country sell us food with dogs and cats in it.  Governor Jan Brewer (Arizona) claims that “life begins from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” And whereas Gov. Paul LePage of Maine believes that climate change will be good for his state, most other oil-funded politicians either deny that it’s happening at all, falsely argue that there’s no scientific consensus about it, or – when asked directly if they believe that climate change exists -- weasel out with the ‘I’m not a scientist’ dodge.

DOC

They may not be scientists, but they sure can be medical doctors . . . whether it’s male politicians pontificating on women’s health or ambitious governors ignoring public health professionals’ advice and confining medical workers returning from West Africa to makeshift quarantine yurts. 

It’s shameful how Ebola is being tricked out as a campaign issue.  Ironically, ‘Dr.’ Rand Paul is among the most egregious, stating that the Obama administration’s devotion to ‘political correctness’ has warped its decision-making about the disease, worrying that ‘whole shiploads’ of American soldiers may become infected, and (no doubt relying on his self-certified expertise as an eye doctor) disagreeing with the head of the Center for Disease Control about Ebola’s transmissibility.  Lesser lights are content with blaming the president for lack of leadership on the issue, although some (with a worried glance toward 2016) also blame the State Department’s lack of vigilance.  Speaking of 2016:  Governor or should we say Doctor Chris Christie (New Jersey) – he of the big, tough quarantine decree – is now engaged in an unseemly verbal battle with the woman he clapped into an isolation tent, evidently trying to rebuild his image as an oversized Joe Pesci who don’t take no guff (or advice) from no one, no how.  Show the respect, will ya?

SNEEZY

These maneuvers would not work without the bloated public panic Ebola has engendered in the United States.  I’m too grumpy to go into the irrational fears and counterproductive actions this panic has caused, particularly irritating when considering the very real horrors the disease has brought upon Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.  One example will suffice: despite overwhelming medical evidence to the contrary, some people are convinced that Ebola has ‘gone airborne,’ or soon will, making it as catchable as the common cold. Suggestion:  invest in whoever makes those fashionable surgical masks favored by the Japanese.

Although condemned as tasteless, Ebola-themed Halloween costumes may be a good thing, as they suggest that not everyone is quaking in their Tyvek suits, organizing parents’ groups to ban students of Rwandan or South African heritage from attending school.  You can buy a ‘sexy Ebola nurse costume’ for only $59.99 (boots sold separately).

BASHFUL . . . Oh, sorry:  CASHFUL

Here’s where I can be grumpily bipartisan.  Both Democrats and Republicans are floating on a giant tide of cash:  small-donor contributions, millionaire-funded PACS, greedy special interests, dark money from god-knows-where.  My state has the dubious distinction of hosting the most expensive Senate Race in 2014 -- $100 million and counting.  This obscene amount of money has bought over 90,000 unpleasant ads, 89,999 of which I’m sure I’ve seen at least once.

A lot of the blame goes to the Supreme Court and the noxious Citizens United ruling, augmented by this April’s McCutcheon decision.  But it devolves upon us, too . . . as we continue to wring our hands at the influence of ‘monied interests’ while we continue to elect politicians in their thrall.  This is one of the main reasons I’m determined to vote (even if poll watchers demand my birth certificate, vaccination record, and tax returns from the last ten years) and will mostly vote Democratic . . . I truly fear what will happen if the Supreme Court becomes even more conservative than it now is.  Whatever happened to campaign finance reform? 

HAPPY

Election Day is November 4, and I for one will be happy to see it go.  Even though some races impacting control of the Senate may drag into December (or later) due to slow tabulation, lawsuits, and run-offs, at least the onslaught of political ads and political commentary will stop, as party operatives can stop herding the grumpy cats that comprise this year’s cantankerous electorate.  I’m happy to turn my thoughts to the upcoming holidays and trade non-unionized dwarfs for Santa’s elves, crabby felines for Thanksgiving turkeys.