RANGER AGAINST WAR: Sweetheart of the Rodeo <

Monday, May 10, 2010

Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Saw your picture on a poster, in a cafe out in Phoenix
Guess you're still the sweetheart of the rodeo

--Everything That Glitters
, Dan Seals

You're a liar and you're a cheat

And I don't know why

I let you do these things to me

--I Never Loved a Man
, Aretha Franklin

The love that dare not speak its name

--
Two Loves, Lord Alfred Douglas
_______________


We elect politicians to be leaders, but politics has corrupted even that concept.


Take two Governors who have shared the spotlight recently -- Sarah Palin and Charlie Crist.


Florida's Governor Crist is an actively serving governor doing what the people elected him to do, for better or worse. However, due to extreme partisanship, the Republican party has emasculated him and thrown him under the bus just prior to party nominations. All because he hugged a man belonging to the wrong party.


Contrast this to the adulation heaped upon the exceedingly mediocre former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, by elements within the Republican party. She abandoned her elected office and became the sweetheart of the Teabagger Movement, which fancies itself a reformation movement. However, to choose as their figurehead a disloyal betrayer hardly bodes well for their pretensions to integrity and will only serve to further fragment the Republican party.


So one is adored for her
lack of leadership, while the other is scorned while doing his duty and not pandering to the vocal reactionaries. When did forsaking one's duties become a
family value? Moreover, when did reaching across the divide to one's (ideologically separate) brothers become not a Christian value?

America chooses its leaders by mistaking demagoguery for greatness, when it is really a sign of mental midgetry. Where lies integrity when shirking one's responsibilities is transvalued into a New Age positive: "Going Rogue"?

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3 Comments:

Blogger The Minstrel Boy said...

even if i didn't think sarah palin was one of the worst examples of the agressively ignorant buffoons who seem to inhabit our political sphere lately (look, she believes in witches, she discounts evolution, won't pronounce noo-klee-er), the fact that she has never once fulfilled the entire term of an elected office disallows my ever giving her any kind of support and makes it for goddamned certain that i will be actively and firmly in the opposition wing to any run for office she might make.

she ran for the school board of wasila, left that office early to run for city council, left that office early to run for mayor, left that office early to run for governor, left that because, well, she was bored and shit.

crist, by all accounts has been an effective governor. that gets him points. of course, competence and accomplishment seems to count for little these days.

Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:19:00 AM GMT-5  
Anonymous tw said...

Ranger, now you've gone and tainted my favorite Byrds album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Now when I listen to songs from it like You Ain't Going Nowhere, I Am a Pilgrim, The Christian Life, You Don't Miss Your Water, You're Still on My Mind, One Hundred Years From Now, Blue Canadian Rockies (which she can probably see from Alaska) and Nothing Was Delievered, how can I help not think of Sarah Palin. Of course the song Life in Prison will give a bit of wishful thinking.

Seriously though, the scary thing about Sarah is the number of people out there who think she's competent and capable of running this country and the media which continues to give her air time.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 6:45:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

TW,
What a laugh, your cmt was right under a Canadian Viagra ad in my e mail.
Are you all trying to tell me sumpin.?
Sarah proves that we are a sexist society.IMO.
jim

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 7:57:00 AM GMT-5  

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