Green is good. People like green.
I admit that I’ve done it. Gone into a voting booth to vote for a presidential or mayoral nominee, and then, faced with a long list of unknown candidates for lesser offices, gone down the line flipping levers. I admit too that the rationale of my lever flipping has sometimes been fairly random, or at worst, based on knee-jerk biases. I used to, for example, go for the unknown women candidates, feeling certain, in the days before Sarah Palin, that increasing the number of women in politics was sure to be for the good.
In my defense, I’ve never voted randomly for a United States Senator. Whatever you think of government, these people have power. Whatever you think about politics, all politicians are not the same.
And now we have Alvin Greene, an unemployed vet, living in his father’s basement, with an obscenity charge against him, winning the Democratic primary by 60% in South Carolina. This might not seem completely unusual if Alvin Greene were a talkative, attention-getting, barnstorming, issue-oriented kind of guy. But in his first free media exposure, he seems extremely taciturn and more than a bit evasive.
Some, wondering how Greene came up with the $10,000 filing fee, have suspected that he is a Republican “plant”. A bigger question, it seems to me, is how he won 60% of the vote .
I suspect that both political operatives and marketing executives are studying this one. What about Greene lured voters? Could it just be dislike of his opponent, Victor Rawl? But did the voters, who seemed to know nothing about Greene, know enough about Rawls to kick him out? (No one’s mentioned any major scandals—only that Rawl has been in Congress for several terms.)
Were voters basing their votes on race? Did they know the candidates’ race?
Jon Stewart, in a pretty hilarious skit on the Daily Show, suggests the victory arose from the alphabetical order of the names. Greene was first on the ballot.
Then, there’s the benefit of a color name. People like color names—there is something innocuous, common, unthreatening about them. On the same Daily Show discussing Alvin Greene, Stewart had unrelated segments about Robert Green, the British goalie in the U.K.-U.S. World Cup game, and Betty White.
And, frankly, if you have a color name, green is a good one—the color of money AND the environment. (Granted, it may be slightly less good after the U.K.-U.S. soccer match, but it is unlikely that that game had any impact on the South Carolina primary.)
Then, of course, there are the echoes of popular music—the singer Al Green v. the singer Lou Rawls. In my mind, Al Green wins that contest hands down. (“I am so in love with you” sounds a lot better to my ears than “you’ll never find another lover like me.”)
Green (Al) is also alive, unlike Rawls (Lou), and has recently become a very good gospel singer.
Keep in mind, that I am not saying that Alvin Greene may not be a good guy, just that no one seems to know.
I, for one, am going to be a lot more careful in the future to leave all unknown levers unturned
ManicDDaily 
Jon Stewart On O’Reilly – Fending Off the Rudeness and Hypocrisy Factor
February 6, 2010Energized by anger today. Well, anger, a good weekend night’s sleep, four or five cups of strong tea, and chocolate rice cakes.
Part of this comes from the recent Jon Stewart interview on Bill O’Reilly’s the O’Reilly Factor. (Note—you have to pay to watch it on O’Reilly’s website, but it’s free on the Fox News site.)
I don’t much like Bill O’Reilly. I don’t much like any news opinion show. To tell the truth, I don’t much like TV news. (Make that TV.) So, it’s difficult for me to watch these things.
Part of the problem is that I’m not used to so much rudeness. Stewart, the ex-stand up comedian, is the one you would expect to be profane or interrupting, but he is polite, amicable. Although he’s certainly not a pushover, he does not lower himself to O’Reilly’s barrage of dismissive and reductive ridicule.
The other part of my problem with watching is my own rudeness. I have a nearly uncontrollable urge to hiss things like ‘a——————‘ every time O’Reilly opens his mouth.
I did stay quiet enough to focus, however. This is partly because Stewart clear, as well as engaging, made points which have not been adequately stressed by the more mainstream, and less comically-gifted, powers-that-be. (Caveat– I’ve modified Stewart’s points somewhat while trying to stay within their spirit.)
First, Stewart noted the issue of hypocrisy–all the conservative commentators (and politicians) who screamed treason at any criticism of George W. Bush, while commander in chief of a nation at war, who now treat Obama as if he were not even a true U.S. citizen.
Secondly, there’s the issue of hypocrisy: all of the conservative commentators (and politicians) who allowed Bush to spend and untax the country into the biggest deficit in history who now call themselves fiscal conservatives.
Third, there’s the issue of hypocrisy: all of the conservative commentators (and politicians) who allowed Bush to spend, untax, deregulate, and ignore, the onset of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and now blame it on Obama.
Fourth, well, you know, hypocrisy—all the conservative commentators (and politicians) complaining about a lack of bipartisanship who filibuster even relatively low level appointments.
(There is a ton more that could be said about hypocrisy and O’Reilly personallybut I won’t go into that here.)
The American people, unfortunately, seem to expect miracles. They seem to believe that Obama should be able to undo years of damage, in a few swift strokes. Fox news encourages this view, while at the same time making a huge outcry when Obama undertakes any stroke at all.
The conservative media feeds a notion that only one basic change is necessary—the poof! disappearance of our problems. They foster the notion that this change could happen by, as Obama put it in the State of the Union, simply continuing the same policies that got us into this mess; they (crazily) imply that Obama caused the damage. (I would remind them that Lehman Brothers fell in September 2009.)
A repair with no actually fixing involved. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s sort of like the idea of a country waging two expensive wars while cutting taxes.
BackStroke Books was founded in 2009 by Karin Gustafson. Karin lives in downtown Manhattan, with a dog, husband and, occasionally, two grown daughters and a variety of nephews. They all give her lots of ideas, especially the dog.
Karin writes poetry, fiction and the ManicDDaily blog. She also draws pictures. These are, currently, mainly of elephants, but Karin is slowly branching out to other species. (Her dog thinks that’s a very good idea.)
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Tags: Fox News Fables, Hypocrisy of Conservative Commentators, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart on O'Reilly Factor, manicddaily, O'Reilly, Obama, Rudeness of O'Reilly, Rudeness on TV
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