Stairway to Freebird, RNC edition
By I’m on the RNC’s blast email distribution list, so I get an involuntary daily glimpse into the workings of The Scream Machine (I rarely read the emails themselves, but the subject lines are invariably masterworks of terse meaning, much in the way the title “Snakes On a Plane” tells you all you need to know about the essential mise en scene of that film in four monosyllables).
Without bothering to either search my inbox or google, I will try to recall from memory some of the many Obama administration “scandals” the Machine has recommended to my attention (readers can no doubt remember more):
The family without health insurance that had granite counter tops.
Solyandra (sp? Never found out what that one was about. Something lobbying favoritism boondoggle something).
The slut young lady who wanted the government to pay for her birth control.
The IRS persecuting people who file for 501(c)(3) status because they were conservatives.
Standing up for thugs in hoodies.
Bengahzi
The government web site that didn’t work.
Releasing Dangerous Terrorists just to get back a no-good deserter.
Like I said I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch, but anyway this play list is kind of lame. The problem here I suspect is that asking why the Machine is constantly revving up another fake scandal is like asking why a classic rock station keeps playing I Can’t Get Enough of Your Love. It’s just what they do.
And I bet the reason it “pays” to do it is roughly similar: because there’s a built-in audience for the nostalgia value. All these stories are attempts to re-live the magic of the Year of Lewinsky just one more time, in something of the same way that hearing something off Led Zeppelin IV for the 10,000th time is supposed to take the audience back to their own magic moments.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)