The Electron Pencil

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THE QUOTE

“Television is democracy at its ugliest.” — Paddy Chayevsky

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THIS IS THE OPERATIVE STATEMENT — THE OTHERS ARE INOPERATIVE

How can you not love politics?

“He is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”

That was Rick Santorum six weeks ago describing Mitt Romney — a man whom he endorsed yesterday.

Best Friends Forever

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Now, if you’re a Dem or you loathe the GOP, don’t start getting huffy and righteous and say something foolish like, Oh, those Republicans — they can’t be trusted. They’ll say anything to get elected.

Let’s go back four short years ago. Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time wagging her finger at Barack Obama during the Dem primaries. Some of her supporters threatened to — gulp! — go Republican if Obama won the nomination. That’s how deep the animus had grown between the two camps. Next thing you knew, both sides had come together to defeat the McCain/Palin ticket that, by all accounts, induced no Clintonistas to switch parties.

See, that’s why I could never be a politician. First, I have no interest in having the skeletons in my closet bared. Second, I know that at some point in time, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from blurting out, “Jeez, can you believe how full of shit I am?”

BTW: recognize the headline at the top of this entry? That was Dick Nixon’s Squealer, Ron Ziegler, speaking to reporters on April 17th, 1973. Operative statements, in Ziegler’s bizarre argot, were simply today’s lies; inoperative statements were yesterday’s.

Animal Farm

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THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS

Let’s stick with a theme here: How can you not love business?

According to the IDS, a few enterprising students tried to sell ducats online for a c-note apiece to the IU Kelley School of Business commencement ceremony Saturday

An IU spokesbeing issued a statement tut-tutting the scalping deal.

Free Market?

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Making money in a free market is the aim of getting a degree from the Kelley school — except, apparently, when you’re trying to make money selling tickets to a celebration of spending four years of your life learning how to make money in a free market.

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HILLARY AT THE SUMMIT

Back to Hillary Clinton. It turns out losing the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 just might have been the best thing ever to happen to her.

You may recall that Hillary was perhaps the most despised human being in this holy land before Barack Obama came along to wrest the title from her.

WWN Wasn’t Half As Hard On Hil As Fox News

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Remember when Bill Clinton told voters he and the missus were a “package deal”? That she was going to be, in essence, a co-president? Middle America had apoplexy — Hillary was going destroy this sacred society by upending our traditional view of what a First Lady should be.

She even had to stop using her preferred hyphenated moniker, Hillary Rodham Clinton, because too many voters figured a woman who keeps her maiden name is most likely a Nazi abortionist.

And then she came out with that famous quote about not being interested in sitting at home and baking cookies. Millions of Americans became convinced at that very moment that she was a also lesbian communist.

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I never felt particularly warm about Hil. Oh sure, I voted for Bill (and her — I bought into the co-presidency idea) but she always struck me as a privileged white person, no matter how quasi-progressive she claimed her politics to be.

I always suspected she was incapable of dropping a gratuitous F-bomb or wouldn’t know how to drink a shot of tequila.

Park Ridge, Illinois, the Chicago suburb in which Hil was raised, was chock full of prim, holier-than-thou folks — even those, like HRC, who entertained near-liberal ideas.

Still, I’ve always had great respect for her. She’s tough enough in her own way to scare the bejesus out of her serial-philandering husband. Plus, she’s smart as a whip and ambitious to boot.

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Barack Obama saw these same qualities and selected her as his Secretary of State. Oh sure, he wanted to keep her occupied for four years as well, just in case she wanted to challenge him again in 2012. Still, he recognized her strengths.

Anyway, she’s done a fantastic job as a globe-trotting SoS. She’s juggling a potentially nuclear Iran, an uppity China, a schizo Pakistan, a mobbed-up Russia, a broke European Union, Myanmar, India, the nagging Isreal/Palestine issue, the Arab Spring, and too many other hot spots to mention. Somehow, the world hasn’t blown itself apart just yet.

She may not be tough enough to suck down a ounce of Tarantula Plata without gagging but I doubt there’s a male national leader on this Earth who has the cagliones to cross her.

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Why, just yesterday she told the Bangladesh government in no uncertain terms to lay off the Grameen Bank, the innovative microlender founded by Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed Yunus that helps women in south Asia develop small businesses and escape poverty. A while ago, Bangladesh had given the axe to Yunus as boss of the bank. Hil’s now staring that government down, saying don’t mess with Grameen.

Trust me, she’s writing her own entry in American history books.

But had she become president, she would have been savaged for her imagined sins nearly as much as Obama has for his. Who knows what form her “Birther” opposition might have taken. Most likely, there’d have been a constant flow of Hillary’s-gonna-force-our-daughters-into-dykedom “revelations” coming from right wing bloviators and Me Party-ists.

She might have had to spend her precious time denying that she leads a satanic sex cult in the White House basement.

It’s better being Secretary of State.

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INDIANA DEMS HAD BETTER BE RIGHT ABOUT MOURDOCK

Finally, speaking of Me Party-ists, their latest darling in Indiana, Richard Mourdock (“End the EPA!”), looks like a lock to unseat long-time US Senator Richard Lugar in the Republican primary today.

Now we’ll see if the state’s Democratic party theory that Mourdock is a preferable foe for their nominee Joe Donnelly in November holds any water.

Donnelly’d better win. Mourdock has been endorsed by none other than Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann.

She’s Back!

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I know, I know — you’d finally swept that name clear out of your consciousness and now I remind you that she’s still around. Hey, politics is a rough game.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Arts Center — Exhibits at various galleries: Angela Hendrix-Petry, Benjamin Pines, Nate Johnson, and Yang Chen; all through May 29th

◗ Trinity Episcopal Church — Art exhibit, “Creation,” collaborative mosaic tile project; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Art exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

◗ People’s Park — Lunch Concert Series, Starkraven; 11:30am

◗ The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts — Guitarist Erol Ozserver; 5:30-7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall, Room 101 — Secular Alliance Movie Night; 6-8pm

◗ Jake’s Nightclub — Karaoke; 6pm

◗ Deer Park Manor — Steppings Stones’ annual volunteer awards & recognition ceremony; 6:30-8pm

◗ Monroe County History Center — Civil War round table, “The Truth about the Confederate Flag”; 7-8pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Blue jam, King Bee and the Stingers; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — EP release party, New terrors with Prayer Breakfast & The New Heaven and the New Earth; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Coheed and Cambria; 9pm

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