Saturday, May 16, 2009

Memo to Michael Steele: Shut Up!

The GOP's Great Black Dope has just emitted another verbal turd: Gay marriage will burden small business. Eeyup. All those partners will now be entitled to the same benefits that traditional partners have had for many years. God help this country if we actually make an effort to make sure that everyone has equal stature in the eyes of the law. Hey, how's this for a republican meme: "Workers burden businesses." If you're not a business, you're welcome to die. Because you're certainly not helping this country by, you know, working and doing stuff and buying things, and demanding all sorts of ridiculous perks like retirement, health care, and wages and stuff. Can you imagine how profitable business could be if we didn't have to pay for all those useless workers?

At the beginning of the year I thought Steele was a harmless, well-intentioned goof. I got pretty exasperated with what struck me as unreasonably vicious attacks on him for what struck me as trivia. At this point, I think the only person that's more dangerous to the emergence of a healthy republican party is Dick Cheney. And yes, Limbaugh is in there, but I'd put him at third, because so many republicans see him as a fringe figure. Cheney is the "how can I miss you if you won't go away" face of republicanism that has been trashed in public opinion; Steele was the attempted reboot to a kinder, more tolerant face of republicanism. But he just keeps ripping the mask off and revealing the living core of modern republican beliefs: a horrific and mindless disregard for the needs of anyone, and a horrific and mindless enslavery to the wants of the well-off.

BTW, I've been a little confused as to whether the parties should be capitalized or not. I have more or less settled on not, but sometimes I do mindlessly capitalize one or the other. Any thoughts? I will say, I'm not writing "republican" and "Democrat" as a 2nd-grade mentality razzing. I'll leave that kind of nonsense for others. I would sure like for conservatives to put together some coalition worthy of respect, and I'm willing to offer such respect pre-emptively. If it should be "Republican," please tell me (a citation would be helpful), and that's what I'll use.

On further thought, maybe I should go with dick(less) cheney and michael (needs to) steele (a brain).

1 comment:

Dean Wormer said...

As you point out- the exact opposite of what Steele said will come to pass. Especially for those in the wedding industry.