Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun: Campaign Strategists
Posted on
Monday, November 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Political campaigns bring out my stabby side. From the carefully constructed, focus-grouped to death, faux personality masks worn by all the candidates the closer to victory they come, or the sheer deluge of lies spewed forth by proxy from the Mr. Ed-like mouths of mouthpiece candidates, election season is a time that breeds pure, violent cynicism so concentrated, it could be cooked on a spoon and shot into the veins of junkies everywhere. Such distilled essence of jaded hatred would induce murderous rages in everyone exposed to the narcotic byproduct of our nation's grand democracy illusion. With that in mind, I find myself wanting to place a number of people into a giant pit, filling the pit with cement and then firing the said missile of maladjusted, loosely-defined humanity into the heart of the sun. The people deserving of my ire this day are the various campaign strategists on all sides of the American political spectrum.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
Labels: Elections, Government Corruption, Humor, Presidential Campaign 2008, Television, Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:35 AM
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