Lamestream America Blundering Toward Tawdry National Identity

It turned out Sarah Palin was right about the mainstream media being pretty lame.

The mainstream media was so lame, it had actually taken to defending Palin at every turn. The swimsuit-modelling former Alaska governor and present-day peddler of self-branded books, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and DVDs has come under a bit more scrutiny than the usual unadulterated adulation of fawning sycophants, and such august institutions as the New York Times have leapt to Palin's defense, seriously taking to task any number of unadoring books, DVDs and even comic strips that weren't fawning over Palin, the Politico reported.

Which goes to show just how much show biz adores and fawns over its A-listers. Palin is, after all, a television star.

But the celebrity-coddling didn't stop with the New York Times Book Review's scathing rejection of Joe McGinniss' Palin-skewering tome The Rogue, or the Chicago Tribune's censorship of Palin-skewering Doonesbury strips, or Variety's savage panning of Nick Broomfield's Palin-skewering mockumentary You Betcha!

The celebrity-coddling ran clear through the serious pandering to such so-not-ready-for-primetime politicelebrities as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Gov. Rick Perry. And, the celebrity-coddling by no means was confined to the media, lamestream or otherwise.

And to think they used to make fun of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Paul came off like a pipe-smoking Oxford don compared to Bachmann, Perry, Palin and the whole panoply of Republican perps and suspects.

For instance, defacto compulsive liar Bachmann's out-and-out prevarications included, according to Politifact:

• President Barack Obama had "virtually no one in his cabinet with private sector experience."
• "One. That's the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office."
• Small businesses with "$250,000 in gross sales for the business. They're the ones that are looking at massive tax increases."
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "has been sticking the taxpayer with her $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she's flying."
• ACORN will be a paid partner of the U.S. Census Bureau.
• "Swine flu broke out" under Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
• "My husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from (their family's) farm."
• "The President released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve."

Mixing up Elvis Presley's birth and death, untrue accusations that a group of detained Muslim imams were attending a Democratic pols' victory celebration, claiming to be at a family reunion when she wasn't, and telling a radio audience that she'd "just spoke with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs" when she hadn't didn't even make Politifacts' list.

"Maybe she's a little passionate, but she's not scripted. She's real," Iowa state senator and Bachmann lackey Kent Sorenson told the New York Times, lowering the bar for the era of reality TV.

If Bachmann's lies hadn't made her a real A-lister, she'd better jump the couch.

Most recently, Bachmann jumped on the right-wing mental deficients' vaccinophobia band wagon, declaring that the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine caused mental retardation. Bachmann lambasted rival ideo-demagogue Gov. Rick Perry for wanting young girls to get "an injection of what could potentially be a very dangerous drug."

Previous versions of right-wing vaccinophobia included the hysterical ravings led by noted conservative nude centerfold model Jenny McCarthy against the Measles, Mumps and Rubella triple-shot vaccine, which supposedly caused autism.

Incidentally, the phrase 'conservative nude centerfold model' should preclude any necessity for having to buy a vowel while deciphering the exact depth to which the right-of-center movement had plunged of late.

Or the depth of gratuitous celebrity-coddling in America.

Because, despite intervals of lucidity during which nearly seven in ten Americans wanted those making $250,000 or much, much more a year to pay higher taxes to shore up Social Security, or Medicare, or to pay down the nation's debts, Americans repeatedly thronged any square-jawed, blow-dried, right-wing demagogue with a peroxide smile openly calling for the elimination of Social Security and Medicare to fund ever more and bigger tax cuts, tax breaks and tax subsidies for big corporations and the rich.

The problem with lamestream America was by no means confined to the media. The problem with lamestream America wasn't even confined to its politicians.

Lamestream America was lame because an ever rising tide of Americans were lame.

Lamest of all the lame were the lamos cheering for uninsured Americans to die.

On Monday's CNN/Tea Party GOP presidential pretenders' debate, mediator Wolf Blitzer asked Paul if a 30-year-old without health insurance needed intensive care, whether society should "just let him die." Paul hemmed and hawed, but the audience didn't.

Like a surly Roman Colosseum crowd, the audience erupted into cheers and catcalls. "Yeah!" they cried and hooted. Thumbs down.

Like Nazis exterminating the handicapped and the retarded. Like Spartans abandoning the weak. Like the Khmer Rouge, Serbian militias, and Hutu hordes slaughtering anyone they hated.

The Americans in Wolf Blitzer's audience didn't need HPV vaccine to be retarded. The Americans in Wolf Blitzer's audience didn't need MMR shots to be autistic. The Americans in Wolf Blitzer's GOP CNN/Tea Party crowd were lame just the way they were.