Week of 06/13/2011

Don’t Feed The Political Egos
– by David Matthews 2

“Don’t Feed The Animals.”

That’s a sign you’ve probably seen in a zoo, and there are various reasons why you’re asked to not do that.

Maybe the zoo officials are afraid that you’ll give the animals something that would poison them. Maybe it wouldn’t be intentional. Some animals have a delicate stomach. Maybe they’re afraid that you might give the animals something that would get tangled up in their insides, or maybe something that they’re allergic to.

Or maybe it’s a matter of conditioning. If the animals are used to having a human provide them with food by coming through a specific door, and then another human starts giving them food from over a railing, they MAY decide to demand food from the humans on the other side of the railing. That would not be a good thing if the animal in question is, say, a bear, and the human in question is a small child.

Apparently the same holds true when it comes to politicians.

Okay, so there are a few guys… and so far one woman… that think that they should be the GOP’s “chosen one” to take on President Fail… I mean, President Obama… for the 2012 Election. So they’re out on the campaign trail, doing speeches and showing up on FoxNews and doing debates, and trying DESPERATELY to get the one thing that they need right now… which is attention.

You see, all of these wannabes and never-can-be people have two SERIOUS obstacles that they have to overcome at some point in the next twelve months.

The first one is obvious. They have to actually appear to be CREDIBLE. Right now they’re just names, and some of them aren’t even GOOD names. Some don’t really know if they want to be GOP candidates, Tea Party candidates, Evangelical Dominionism candidates, or try to be all of the above. Some of them have HUGE impediments to their campaigns, like former Governor Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and his previous “Romneycare” program. Some can’t even get the support of their own advisors, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

But they also have another huge and serious obstacle in their way; an obstacle that is sucking the life out of their infant campaigns like a fifty-ton leach. It’s an obstacle that is so huge it travels in a custom tour bus.

That obstacle is Sarah Palin’s ego.

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, the small-town media personality (I’m trying really hard to not use the first four letters of “TWITTER”), is supposedly NOT running for president… or least, NOT RIGHT NOW. But she claims that she has a “fire in her belly” (or maybe it’s just indigestion), and she’s using that to go on tour to promote… herself… or maybe it’s the forthcoming documentary about her called “The Undefeated”…either way she’s out and about and the media is following her around like lovesick puppies, catching her every word and repeating every mistake she makes. They’ll count the number of pizza slices she eats and how often she gets American history wrong.

Meanwhile Tim Pawlenty is trying to get people to recognize his name. Newt is trying to find new senior advisors after they all bailed on him at the same time. Romney is trying to get people to forget about the last time he ran for the White House. Herman Cain doesn’t know which neo-conservative media personality he’s speaking with (he keeps confusing them with his friend Neal Boortz). Congresswoman Michelle Bachman is finding out the hard way that Skype is a bad substitute for physical appearances (not to mention she’s still getting schooled by high schoolers). Rick Santorum is complaining about Google users linking him to some foul-smelling substance (that’s only been a running joke for a decade now). And Ron Paul… well he’s used to being ignored on the campaign trail.

ALL of them can barely get a couple of words from the media, because the media is busy following Sarah Palin’s ego-gratification tease tour. They’re all following her around, waiting with baited breath for her to tell them what they really want to hear… that she would be actually running for the White House. And even when she’s complaining about all of that attention, the media still would rather follow HER around than to try to make sense out of any of the people who are ACTUALLY trying to run for the White House.

But methinks the media personality doth protest too much. If she didn’t want the media to chase her around, then she shouldn’t have picked up the TOUR bus that looks very much like the kind used by politicians on the campaign trail. She shouldn’t have had it decorated with Jiffy-Pop campaign slogans and pseudo-patriotic images if she didn’t want the attention she is getting. It would be one thing if she had an actual BOOK that she was promoting, or if she actually was touring around to promote that “documentary” about her, but, no, it’s just about HER and her EGO, and MAYBE, just maybe, she might say something about 2012.

And don’t think for a moment that the air-fluffed ego-driven media has an unwilling role in all of this. They’re following Palin around on purpose, because the less that can be said about the ACTUAL candidates, the better for President Fail… I mean, President Obama… in his re-election. It’s rather devious if you think about it, but it is also a real pity that Obama and his team of fail really are not using this opportunity to improve their own sorry standing. This whole political tactic of being “just not AS bad” is just not acceptable.

Let’s get brutally honest here… a decision needs to be made in the GOP, and that’s whether they should watch the media continue to feed Palin’s need for attention or to back up the GOP contenders that ACTUALLY are running for the White House. If Palin really, REALLY, wants to run for the White House, then she needs to make the announcement sooner rather than later, or else take the tour bus back to the garage, because she is neither helping the GOP nor the Tea Party crowd at this point.

While many of the active GOP contenders are not going to survive the first few primaries, the one thing they all need between now and New Hampshire is TIME. They need to be able to show why they are a sound alternative to the Obama Fail instead of continually saying that they are. They can’t do that if the media is continually fawning over the Wasilla Wonder and wondering if she’s there to play or if she’s just stringing people along like Donald Trump briefly did.

And perhaps I would suggest a new slogan be painted on Palin’s tour bus if she is planning on continuing this tease. It could be done in the same style as you’d find in a Yogi Bear cartoon… a simple cartoon sign with a simple statement on it… “DON’T FEED THE EGO.” Maybe then the media will get a clue and focus on the things that REALLY count.