It Must Be a Bad Dream

Just a Bad Dream

Since the Democrats reclaimed Congress in 2006, reality has taken a beating, and the truth has been as hard to find as an honest politician. The media - print, audio and video - split into bitterly opposed camps, and veracity slipped into a coma. Once Barack Obama completed the Democratic triad, someone pulled the plug, and probity passed into the Great bye and bye.

I'm reminded of Dallas, a prime time soap opera - conceived in the '70's, and launched in 1978 - about a Texas oil family. Patrick Duffy played the role of Bobby Ewing, the younger brother of J.R, played by Larry Hagman.

In the 85-86 season, Duffy decided to leave, and the producers killed off the Bobby Ewing character. The remainder of the season centered on his grieving wife Pamela (Victoria Principal), woven into the other plot lines. Ratings dropped off because Duffy's was a popular character plot, his marriage to a daughter of the Ewing family's arch rival mirroring Shakespeare's Montague-Capulet tragedy. The producers had to bring Duffy back.

In a move that drew disbelieving howls from fans - even those who were Duffy's biggest fans - the show opened the 86-87 season with the scene where Pamela Ewing awakened to the sound of Bobby in the shower. The entire previous season, in which Bobby died, was just a bad dream. I was not a big fan of the show, but its influence was inescapable at the time. Everyone talked about it on the job, and I found myself incredulous at the move, as well.

Now? Now, since 2009, when major news organizations such as ABC News have succumbed to the charms of Obama, I find myself praying that the past two years have been a bad dream. I hope to awake one morning to the sound of George W. Bush in the shower, figuratively speaking of course. The reason for this is the latest piece on an ABC News blog titled The Note.

Written by Michael Falcone and Amy Walter, the piece titled Obama, Palin And Arizona: A Tale Of Two Speeches briefly mentions Obama's speech in Arizona about the tragic shooting there over the past weekend. The rest is a whining complaint about Sarah Palin and her gall in hitting back at the ridiculous claims that she bears some culpability in that shooting. At the end of this pathetic tag-team rant, the duo offers a summary subtitled The Bottom Line, in which they make the most absurd assertion imaginable.

Their conclusion begins thus:

Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story. And she may well face further criticism for the timing and scope of her remarks.

That one nearly had my brain banging against the inside of my skull as a result of the involuntary and vigorous head shake that ensued. I believe I may also have alarmed my wife with a barely audible shout of "WHAT?!?"

Before the shooter in Arizona was even identified, commentators were dragging Palin and others into the story, blaming them while agonizing over some desperate motive for the actual perpetrator, seeking to portray him as a victim of an ideology opposed to their own. To now suggest that Sarah Palin had somehow thrust herself into the middle of this - when she was probably shooting her TV show from Alaska - is somewhat akin to blaming a bear for getting caught in the trap that you set.

Ah, Sarah would get the reference. Meanwhile, I just want to wake up in the real world, if it still exists.

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Political Profit From the Pain

Liberal Talks Calm Face

I purposely avoided writing about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting because I felt it unseemly to take advantage of such a tragedy, particularly in light of a nine-year-old girl having been killed. Conservative talk shows probably would have shown the same reticence if not for the disgusting exploitation exhibited by the Liberal side.

Left wing pundits and politicians were instantly seizing upon the opportunity to ride this vehicle of violence until the wheels fall off. Nearly orgasmic were they in their unbridled glee at the chance to advance their agenda at the expense of every victim of Jared Loughner, the perpetrator responsible for the girl's death and Giffords' critical condition.

Now we are being treated to a relentless barrage of admonitions to mind what we say, and Conservatives are being accused unjustly for somehow encouraging Loughner to commit this heinous act, when the facts point in the opposite direction. Projecting their own culpability on the Right, people such as the Reverend Al Sharpton are demanding "civility in discourse", but only from the Right. The Left continues to feign innocence, and the media are willing accomplices in these baseless accusations.

The Ruins of Freddie's Fashion Mart

It is particularly ironic coming from the likes of Sharpton, considering his complicity in past incidents, actually and more directly resulting in death, acts for which he was never criticized by the media. Let's examine some of the past deeds of the good Reverend, who now seeks to be the voice of reason, shall we?

It was 1995, and Freddie Harari of the Bronx, NY was a business owner who rented a retail building on 125th Street in Harlem called Freddie's Fashion Mart.  The landlord, The United House of Prayer, was a black Pentecostal Church. They had asked Freddie to evict his subtenant in order to expand. That store was The Record Shack, a black-owned business that had been there for quite some time.

Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction, saying, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." On December 8th of 1995, one of the protesters, Roland J. Smith Jr., entered Harari's store and shot several customers. He sprinkled a flammable liquid and ignited it before turning the gun on himself. He was among the eight dead at the scene.

Yankel Rosenbaum

Four years earlier, it was also Sharpton's rhetoric that fueled the Crown Heights Riots, which lasted for three days. When it was all over, 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 27 vehicles were destroyed, and 7 stores were burned or looted. And Yankel Rosenbaum was dead.Now he wants others to tone down the rhetoric?

Appearing on the Ed Schultz Show after the Arizona shooting, Sharpton said that "there are some very unbalanced people here, in this country, that anything can trigger". I guess Sharpton is suggesting that the rest of us, who are not "unbalanced",  must walk on egg shells as a result. Of course, that only applies to Conservative speech. The music that Loughner listened to is immune from such scrutiny and causal effect, despite the violent nature of the lyrics. It has not been demonstrated that he listened to Sarah Palin, or read any of her work, yet she is the object of the Left's angst.

And Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) actually suggested that the reading on the House floor of the United States Constitution - which he said was "uncalled for" - somehow contributed to the Arizona shooting. This is a member of the party that held a political rally in 2002, disguised as a memorial service for Paul Wellstone. The same party whose president said they would bring a gun if we brought a knife. And the same party that is once again pushing to censor freedom of speech in the name of the Fairness Doctrine - a misnomer if ever there was one - on the back of Gabrielle Giffords, and the memory of 9-year-old Christina Green, and the other five dead.

John Green, the father of Christina, asked that his daughter's death not be used as an excuse to remove more freedoms, saying, “We don’t need any more restrictions on our society.” I agree wholeheartedly, and condemn the greedy opportunists who refuse to heed his grief-stricken words.

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