Have you seen the cozy little ads on TV by The American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of Big Oil? They feature a Meredith Viera wannabe, who strolls about a canyon of enormous, misleading slogans. She purrs fun petro-facts, all in an attempt to make Americans feel almost downright lucky to be financially raped by, say, ExxonMobil, a company that squeaked through the gas crisis by making $4,635,845.00/hour in profit last year!
Well, in the interest of honesty — and never overlooking an opportunity to be snide, — I reedited those ads to make them a bit more candid. Watching it, you will have a taste for what it would be like to live in a world where businesses — and politicians — told the truth once in a while . . .
PUSH PLAY. Then go get a couple of lovely, hot coffee while CBS rudely bombards you with ads for their foolish shows. Then, fast forward this Katie Couric inverview to 5:24.
COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time. Not to belabor the point, specific examples in [John McCain's] 26 years [in Congress] of pushing for more regulation?
PALIN: I’ll try to find ya some — and I’ll bring ‘em to ya!
BETTY: Darling, we’re looking for a Vice President, not a secretary.
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
For all of John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s schoolyard taunts, swagger and self-professed gutsy ability to take on the Big Boys in Washington, there is one thing that scares them more than facts: a microphone. The campaign rigorously keeps Palin in a perpetually coddled state of silent smiles. Her handlers treat anything with a question mark like it might a sniper, tacitly acknowledging that the more she says, the less people are going to like her or think the is competent. Yes, the snarky moose-killer, afraid of anything that can fire back, is petrified at the thought of getting a question that might shatter, not the glass ceiling, but the brittle mirage that currently colludes to create her image. Honestly, if all pit bulls were this meek, cowering in the corner lest a feisty toy poodle cross its path, they’d be a lot more popular outside of the Michael Vick set.
Now comes news that her Profession War-Hero™ running mate is trembling over a few questions, too. After a week of inopportune financial news, and falling poll numbers, John McCain is cowering behind his podium, waving a white flag that he keeps telling everyone is actually star-spangled. He is claiming that he is too afraid, ur, concerned to debate this week. You see, there is just isn’t time. No, he can make time for a silent photo op, but not the American people.
McCain claims that fixing the current financial crisis is more important than the election. But what he is really afraid of is that the election is about fixing this financial crisis. Tellingly, “McCain took no questions after reading his statement.” Honestly, if our own party’s candidates can be sent running by the prospect of a few “why?”s, Iran should just dismantle its nuclear facilities and pool the money to buy a camcorder!
Pity the Lord Jesus doesn’t whisper down to the manager, “Yo, fattie at the desk! I appeared poor so I might inspire my flock to live without riches. You may want to try appearing thin so you might better inspire your clients to live without pound cake.”
In these troubled times, it is comforting to know that there are a few constants you can rely upon. Crazy, yet dull, Kate Hudson will bring a new boyfriend to each, progressively more inane “romantic comedy,” a film that, for those of you tenacious enough to stay, will prove to be neither. And the Southern Baptist Convention will make us all feel nostalgic for the 50s. The 1850s, that is.
Now that the Internet has spared Baptists the chance embarrassment of being seen leaving an adult bookstore, a new brand of porn has sprung up in Christian bookstores. Just like Victorian porn, this smut features smiling gals on the cover – and must be sold under the counter.
The twist? They are fully clothed. And pastors. The problem? They have vaginas! So, the Southern Baptist Convention, which owns 100 Christian Bookstores (What Would Jesus Franchise?) has pulled Gospel Today because its emphasis, apparently, was too much on the today part of its title.
The SBC is appalled that a magazine sold in their stores would show women in a position of power over men — like Bettie Page in a wimple. (Note: As people with entrepreneurial consciencies, they have not refused to sell it – just not display it.) Of course this is the same group that is giddy over the notion of electing female President Palin. Is it just her love of censorship? As a Baptist, I don’t ask why; I just ask for it in a brown paper bag.
I’m beginning to think that we should swap billing on the GOP marquee. And not for the reason you may be thinking, that nobody shows up when it’s just John McCain on the bill. No, it’s because I have adopted the truth and logic of the ticket. You see, I have a weakness for logic, which you might find odd, as I am, after all, a Baptist.
John McCain’s campaign’s official position is that Sarah Palin has more “executive experience,” and is thereby automatically better suited to be either VP or POTUS than Barrack Obama. And why? Because she spent a couple of years as the mayor of enough people to fill a theater and the governor of enough people to fill one-tenth of metro Dallas.
Frankly, Jesus and I find this a rather precarious position to take. After all, John McCain has never been a mayor or a Governor of anywhere. So the official McCain campaign position must be this: Sarah Palin is more qualified to be either Vice President or President than John McCain! And to put the campaign’s opinion of its ticket in further perspective: According to one of the campaign’s highest profile voices, Carly Fiorina, even Palin isn’t qualified to run a business. Heaven help us!
Last night, I interviewed Sarah Palin for “The No Sin Zone.” And it didn’t go well. Frankly, the ratio of pit-bull to Mary Kay was shockingly steep. Coming off her smarmily inept ABC interview with “Charlie” (a name now welded to my consciousness, as if by a nervously wielded pneumatic rivet gun), I suspect Sarah thought she was in for the type of pragmatic obliviousness that springs from a “Winning First” approach to facts. And the notion that reality should spring from party politics, not the other way around. Truly, it’s been a long time — OK, 4 years! — since a politician so ruthlessly benefited from “values voters” turning a carefully choreographed once-censorious, now-blind eye to any value other than not spending the next four years with the name of a loser on their bumper.
Fortunately, I have the gift of discerning coy sins less careful Christians — and my inattentive Savior — routinely overlook. And as founder of Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers, one sin pings my values radar louder than an incoming sortie of foul smelling demons: Narcissistic parents who irresponsibly spit out babies they have neither the interest nor time to care about. That’s the problem with people who regard birth as simply the end of a pregnancy, rather than the beginning of a life. Birth marks the start of work, not a self-congratulatory furlough. Absent through either a preoccupation with stoking a ravenous blast furnace of an ego (Mrs. Palin) or simply because they’d rather be fishing (Mr. Palin), the Palins selfishly make a shambles of their children’s lives. Drugs, sex, alcohol, vendetta’s and arrests! Honestly, it all sounds a bit like Gossip Girl, only in a pioneer setting with a wardrobe by Sears.
What is most telling about all this is not that abandoned teenagers sometimes make bad choices, but that they are not always the most irresponsible people in the house. Mr. & Mrs. Palin responded to missteps by teenage strangers in their house by shipping them both off to live with someone with more time or patience for undergoing the bother of raising children. The daughter was sent to live with an aunt. And the son was jetted off to live with a family in Michigan! Honestly, do any of you believe American jobs would be safe under a President Palin, someone who outsources even her own parenting?
Well, the gals at B.I.T.C.H. don’t go for that slapdash approach to the well being of America’s children! We are rather concerned that Sarah is running as a “Hockey Mom” and a “PTA Mom,” but when anyone dares to look into what type of “Mom” she actually is, we are told that her children’s lives — and the trail of discarded beer and OxyContin bottles behind them — are private, personal and not to be used for politics. That is, of course, unless their “Me First!” mother needs them as casting call props, either in photo ops or her endless, shamelessly opportunistic reminders that her eldest son has enlisted — and they had a “ceremony” in case the point was lost. Given the arresting circumstances that provoked such an enlistment (probably greeted with the same enthusiasm Bristol’s boyfriend is now regarding being drafted into marriage), you would think Sarah would at least have the grace to blush each time she merchandises either her parenthood or patriotism.
