Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The Bill Cunningham embarrassment.

My work schedule was late night, 4:30 to close at my retail store. So, watching CNN for most of the day, the big headlines that weren't all about a massive power outage in Florida that necessitated that the nuclear plant at Turkey Point be shut down, it was instead about Bill Cunningham, a Cincinnati loud mouth for a talk radio host who took some time before McCain was to show up for a campaign speech to deliver an attack ad against Senator Obama and the news media in general. Well, this seems to be the second time that McCain ends up with someone who embarrasses the hell out of his campaign. First it was a female admirer in McCain's audience calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch." And McCain failed to act as he could have, until he got a lot of flack for it. Then, even though his campaign staff had to know all about Cunningham, they still set up with the guy to "warm up" the crowd before McCain arrived. And the McCain crowd laughed and applauded away as Cunningham made a fool of himself. Which begs the question, who were the bigger fools here? Cunningham with diarrhea of the mouth? Or the ones listening to him? So, McCain gets briefed and then publicly repudiates the lack of respect that Cunningham gave his potential opponent in November. Well now, why allow the guy on stage in the first place, knowing that he will vent, get ugly, etc. Later argued, Cunningham was enjoying the controversy that he created. I am sure. The guy is narcissistic, why not? So, Cunningham turns on McCain for repudiating him. On this, Cunningham may have a point, McCain's people did invite him on stage.

Now for some specifics: Cunningham has no problem recognizing the significance of Obama's recent wins and by large margins. That even McCain doesn't manage to draw the voters that Obama does. But, instead of preaching to a greater audience what he may legitimately fear of a "tax and spend" Democrat, he preaches to the choir. Never mind that this country is facing recession, the Bush administration has managed to create a massive debt for the next generation, up to their ears. And that should we have a McCain presidency, would the next generation have pocket change, never mind the greedy adults among the McCain supporters. I want my low taxes now, who cares who has to pick up the tab for them later. It is going to take something, unfortunately taxes, prioritized spending, to begin bringing this country back to any kind of prosperity.

Or that Obama would have cookies and cream with the world's worst leaders and they would be singing kumbayah. Wow. Guess he doesn't take a hard close look at GW doing Kumbayah dances with Saudis who are known to cater to the extremist Wahabbi sect. By the way, the Saudis are indeed despots when it comes to the rights of the people. They actually don't really have any.

When he wasn't lashing out at Obama, Cunningham attacked the news media as the Clinton News Network for one. (Aside note here, I always wondered where that came from.) Presumably, Bill Clinton got softer treatment from the news media than poor, poor GW had. I actually have to disagree. The news media certainly reported on GW's obvious obnoxious and criminal behavior because of how public it was, but actually challenge him on it? No way. With the exception of Lou Dobbs. Whereas, with Clinton, the news media that was so upset that it couldn't play the morals cop effectively enough to knock another immoral Dem out of the race in 1992, was all over any salacious scandal and failed to ask the questions of the GOP as to why they were hyping something that any president does when coming to office. That is, clean out the people who had worked for the last one and bring in his friends. No one took note, when GW did the same. But we can take note of the major disasters that came about because GW brought in his friends, and it had nothing to do with the petty sniping by a gal at the Travel Office trying to get revenge because she got removed from her post. Make that, you are doing a heckuva job, Brownie, in the aftermath of the horrors of Katrina. It took Katrina before CNN could finally bring itself to challenge GW on anything, or even to take a closer scrutiny of him. So now, CNN becomes the Clinton News Network because it finds scandals bigger than Monica Lewinsky finally newsworthy enough to discuss. Scandals that were erupting from day one of the GW White House.

For Cunningham's benefit, I sincerely hope we do have a tax and spend Dem in the White House.

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