What’s Good for the Golden Goose…Not So Much the Michigander

Pompous hypocrisy and opportunism go hand in glove — or mitt, if you prefer.  In politics it is both a perk and a prerequisite.  There’s almost no such thing as a good slogan, soundbites are so ubiquitously regurgitated the words become reduced to drivel (to say nothing of the sincerity of the sentiment), and either we throw ourselves to the thrall of Revival-like electioneering crusades at the expense of our better judgment and reason, or we close our ears to it like classically trained cynics (no less at our rational expense); we tune in or tune out the tinny prattle of campaign patois, depending on our preset dials.  Along with the grandstanding, posturing, preening, and pandering, this is all to be expected.  But there is a tenuous snapping point to a candidate’s inconsistencies stretched beyond the torque of mere contradiction when he becomes not merely a raving, flaming, laughable fraud, but something troublingly worse: a man with no meaning.  Such is the rhetoric of Romney.

 

Slick Rick Slipping a Michigan Mickie

Earlier this month the state senate in Michigan, in response to the tragic rise of deaths attributable to bullying in America — at least ten of which occurred in Michigan alone in the last decade — passed “Matt’s Safe School Law,” a measure that requires school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies.  Unless the bullying is done out of “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction”; then it’s A-OK, whether you’re a school employee or school volunteer, a student or the parent/ guardian of a student.