19 September, 2012

A week watching Fox and listening to Limbaugh

My Embed in Red:
You don’t have to agree with these people’s politics to see they have a compelling beef. They are true believers in a minimalist American government. They see Obama’s economic record as a golden opportunity to throw him out. They helped propel Ryan, a dogged champion of conservative ideals, onto the national ticket. And they saw all of that jeopardized by a Republican National Committee and Romney campaign that muted and dumbed down the message in its tightly disciplined, highly scripted game plan to win over the tiny and elusive percentage of American voters who hold no strong views at all. It’s no wonder that the only authentic moment in the convention was also its only improvised one. When Clint Eastwood implicitly inserted the words “Tell Romney to fuck himself” into the mouth of his imaginary “Obama,” he tapped, however artlessly, into the raw id of the right as nothing else in the convention did all week. For an instant, his off-message and off-script gesture of profane disrespect for the president captured the grassroots anger that went largely unacknowledged by the mainstream press and Fox alike.