Noxious people

My involuntary and unwelcome routine exposure to US broadcast media (HWMBO is an avid follower of many Talking Heads - one of his few imperfections, IMHO) and my recent encounter and ongoing experience with a truly noxious weed, poison ivy, led naturally to this post.  It is a very uncomfortable thing to realize that, along with noxious weeds which are a fact of life, my country also harbors some truly noxious people.  The fact of its harboring such people is one thing.  Noxious people can be, and are, found elsewhere in the world and often in much greater numbers than here.  Giving such noxious people credibility and a daily forum from which their cockamamie ideas can be paraded as mainstream and tolerable, however, is simply not an acceptable function for broadcast media, IMHO.  This is particularly so when so many other meaningful issues are either being ignored or censored outright in order to advance right-wing agendas.

Just as in the summer of 2001, when the US media could not stop obsessing about missing intern Chandra Levy and her politician lover - who had nothing whatsoever to do with her murder - instead of paying attention to real issues of national security, the US media are letting us all down once again.  They keep giving air time and newsprint to truly noxious people in an effort to create and intensify political dissatisfaction in a manner that is truly frightening - and disheartening - to witness.

The definition of noxious weeds, with some paraphrasing, could certainly fit such noxious people:  typically, noxious people are those humans whose inane and fact-challenged pronouncements grow aggressively and multiply quickly without natural controls (an attentive press; accountability when they do lie, etc.).  They adversely affect other humans around them as well as their habitats.  Finally, they are injurious to other humans and native fauna through repeated exposure to their toxic words. 

One of those currently at the top of my Noxious People list is the former candidate for Vice President of the United States, Sarah Palin (R-naturally).  Fortunately, I am not the only person who believes firmly that John McCain demonstrated an abysmal lack of competence by selecting such a person as a running mate.  For that ill-considered choice alone, he does not deserve to be re-elected to the Senate this year, just as he did not deserve serious consideration for the Presidency.  Obnoxious as McCain may be, however, he does not quite fall into the category of a noxious person.  At least, not yet, although recent indications are that he is striving hard to achieve that designation.

The Guardian newspaper (UK - of course) reports that Ms Palin has amassed a political war chest that appears to position her nicely for a Presidential run in 2012.  That is, assuming that she manages to get the Republican nomination, which is not necessarily a sure thing even given that the majority of the Republican Party appears to have gone insane.  The fact-challenged word-salad specialist recently had an interview with Bill O'Reilly on the Faux News channel that makes me suspect that even O'Reilly may be saner than I thought.   AK Muckraker has posted both a video of the interview and a transcription for the bandwidth-challenged here.   The idea that Ms Palin is continuing to receive scads of money, even in these depressed economic times, as well as any credibility whatsoever, proves that just enough people can be fooled ALL of the time that we should keep paying attention to ensure that more people cannot be fooled even SOME of the time.

Ms Palin, of course, is the champion of the self-described largely media-created phenomenon known as the Tea Party.  While all in the Tea Party may unquestionably be frustrated and some genuinely confused, they overwhelmingly do not understand who their real enemies are.  An excellent cartoon in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer nails it.   There are some noxious people among their membership, to be sure.  But I do not believe that all are.  The Tea Partiers, however, have not only been given credibility, but inflated membership by the craven US media.  Had even a small fraction of such media attention been given to the far greater numbers of Americans who protested the illegal US invasion of Iraq, there might have been a different outcome to that disastrous debacle.   In fact, the US media silence about the lead-up to war in Iraq continues to be both deafening and confounding, especially in light of the most recent information provided to the Chilcot inquiry.

Yet another noxious person is Louisiana Senator David Vitter (R-naturally).  Vitter, also referred to irreverently as "Diaper Dave" from his apparent fetish with diapers while cavorting in a DC brothel, sees himself as a "political conservative" and family-values type of guy.  The mind boggles at such self-deception.  Vitter, meanwhile, has recently allied himself with the "birthers" - a truly noxious group, one and all - in an effort to curry favor from the rabid right-wing.  If not certifiably insane, Vitter is demonstrating an IQ at pond scum level by doing so.

One obtains citizenship either by birth or by operation of law, e.g., naturalization.  Period.  To date, no one has credibly demonstrated that President Obama obtained US citizenship other than by birth, thus he is a "natural born" citizen eligible to be elected President of the United States.  There is also ample evidence to demonstrate that his Hawaiian birth certificate is every bit as credible as any other birth certificate offered for any other US citizen by any other US state.  Anyone who believes otherwise is mistaken.  That is simply all there is to say on the subject.

If the US media continue to give credibility or a forum to Vitter, the birthers, or anyone else to discuss the preposterous theories propounded by this group, without clearly pointing out how preposterous those theories are, then they are complicit in spreading misinformation and should themselves be held accountable by us all.

There are, unfortunately, too many noxious people and groups to discuss in one post.  Beware, like noxious weeds, they are alive, proliferating among us and spreading their poison, which is every bit as virulent and dangerous.