POLITICS AND NATURE

"Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!"   

Winnie the Pooh: Quoted by Benjamin Hoff; The Tao of Pooh

The Last Stand and Irrelevant Musings

Finally Fred Thompson sauntered away from the Presidential race. It wasn't soon enough for Huck, the man, the myth, the legend from Hope, Arkansas to pick up Fred's voters in South Carolina, leaving Mike Huckabee adrift and broke on the campaign trail, hoping Mississippi and Alabama will save the preacher's campaign and bring the big money in from the southern donors. It is an interesting strategy to say the least. Now, anyway, Fred will head back home, whichever house he chooses to go to and lick his wounds, raise his two young children with his second wife, and hopefully teach them not to cheat on their spouses if they get to be rich lawyers and character actors.

Anyone who has read the ideas laid out here in Politics and Nature will know, I am not sad at his failed run for the White House. Nobody even has been able to figure out why he ran in the first place. Somehow, he wanted to be some form of re-birth of the Gipper, the ghost of Reagan inhabiting his southern soul, and all of this. However, he just looked like he didn't care, and for this, he deserves all the fun poked at him by millions of bloggers and viewers of the campaign who believed he was a dunce and a fool. Reagan, after al, was the governor of California and he may have made B movies but he was, at least the star in them, and he was the president of the screen actors guild, pointing out unfriendlies while traveling the nation selling his image for GE. Nope Fred was no Ronald Reagan and people saw through his cheap imitation as soon as he ended speculation and joined the race. He wasn't happy with the barbs being thrown his way at the end, he defended his record and intelligence vehemently but to no avail. So long Fred.

I was so excited by the news of Fred's departure, I headed to the mountain this morning for a bit of a celebratory ski. Actually, this had nothing to do with Fantastic Fred but it sounds funny to me. Anyway, after driving out to Lockett Meadow and getting my truck stuck in an icy patch and some deep snow, I decided to head up the mountain with just my camera to a point overlooking the Navajo Res and certain areas of National Forest and National Park. The plan was to take some pics of the sunrise, ski back to the truck, get other gear, and head back up the mountain. The "best laid plans" however and all that. By the time I got to the overlook, the sun was still not high enough in the sky to take any pictures. Aside from being a poor photographer, I can't seem to hold a camera still enough when the shutter stays open for any length of time. 

Subsequently, the only shot coming out of this portion of the endeavor was a close-up of my skis and poles taken with the flash. Not very exciting, I am afraid. Probably not intensely interesting to most people but it is all I got at that time of the morning. A tripod is an important tool in such instances, but alas, I did not have one. It's too bad because it was really beautiful. The stillness of the air, the sun rising on one side of the horizon while a full moon shone across the sky, Venus (I assume) shining brightly in the heavens, and the neverending line of cars coming in from the Res off in the distance. Magnificent, really. Nature is astonishing.

But politics really spurred this article and to politics we shall return. The Republican race is heading to Florida while Dems look to South Carolina and, more importantly, super Tuesday, February 5, when something like 22 states vote for their candidate of choice. Meanwhile, media sources continue to focus on race and gender and then wonder why people are thinking about race and gender, filling Democrats with a deep divide which is really a non-existent element of a campaign between two worthwhile candidates. I still don't know who to endorse or adopt when I enter the voting booth. They are both fantastic, in my opinion. Of course, John is still hanging in there because, as I read someone in Newsweek put it, "he has nothing else to do." I think that is so funny! Alas, poor John has no chance but he vows to fight on and he did by far the best of the three in the CNN debate the other night. I hate to admit it, but the more I watch CNN's "best political team on television" the closer I come to Rush Limbaugh-like disdain for the Cable News Network. Actually, they do have a pretty good team of analysts, but listening to Wolf Blitzer say those words every time he goes to commercial, which is an obnoxious amount of time, almost makes me prefer Fox News. At least I know Brit Hume is too humorless and pugnacious to continually predicate every five minute break between commercials with such insipid phrases which really just iritate the news consumer and insinuate we are all too foolish to understand what we are watching. But, they make the money and I will, in all liklihood, have to head back to some job or other, where I will try and make money but not for my astute political analysis so what, really, do I know about it.

The Media

There are many facets of the media I am starting to despise with a passion. Back when I was in College, CNN had a 1/2 hour of news called the good news hour (it may have been an hour---I can't remember for sure). Anyway, the show did not last. Why? Nobody watched it. Nobody cared about what was happening in the world which is good and pure and honest and true. I don't remember how long it was before they went off air, but it didn't seem to last very long. Consumers force the news channels to act as they do. People like the combative style of the Fox News contributers and AM radio listeners like to give it to somebody for the problems of the world. It is easiest to say it is all the government's fault. Lou Dobbs has a commercial playing constantly in which he is quoted as saying something along the lines of "don't we deserve a government that works?" He's as pissed off as any of the other guys.

The inevitable influence of media on debate and deliberation is not a bad thing but it can be depressing. The thing that gets me is, in their ever expanding efforts to never offend a conservative due to conservatives being offended by just about anything that doesn't go their way, the mainstream media is unable, or unwilling to point out the obvious........if government doesn't work, it's the Republicans fault...........they have controlled it all until one year ago and even in the last year, they have enough votes in the Senate to uphold Bush's newfound reliance on the Veto. So, government may be broken, but let's lay credit where credit is due. But no, because if anyone on CNN were to question the Republican leadership of the past decade, they would get blasted by the radical right wing fanatics on talk radio and if anyone on Fox questioned anything other than a "liberal" they may very well get fired. Except of course Alan Colmes, a token liberal who is so amazingly willing to take the most ridiculous positions to help Hannity prove his points, it is difficult to see him as a true liberal. There is an ad on Fox supporting their talk show guys.....O'Reilly, Hannity, and a third guy, maybe Brit, I don't think it's Shep Smith, but it includes a picture of Alan Colmes back behind the other three. It's a blatant anti Colmes position but apparently he's ok with it so who am I to judge. It certainly shows the network bias.

In any case, a resurgent Democratic Party could reduce or even eliminate the pre-determined, self-proclaimed righteousness and security claims of the Republican Party and their media allies. New Democrats like Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Montana Senator Jon Tester, both conservative Democrats who pulled out victories in 2006 against the odds and heavily favored conservative Republicans. This is all to be seen. And it will take a great deal of effort on the part of people throughout the nation to elect either Hillary or Obama and to send a message to whoever wins that the country is watching over what they will do and how they will conduct themselves while being the people's representative. It's a tall order but it is assured the people will not lay down after the attacks on justice emanating from the right wing control of everything for the past eight years.

There was a different kind of politics even in the '80s. Respect for division was the norm and people talked of gridlock and the terrible way government ran but this monumental divide wasn't there. Much of it, sadly, is the fault of the media but there are alternatives out there for people who look.