Obama’s bow matters because They says so
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to miss this particular controversy, but like a bad case of chlamydia it’ll catch up with you eventually unless you’re hiding under a rock.
So if right now it doesn’t burn when you pee… well, like Serenity says “You can’t stop the signal”. Allow me to be your cultural agent of memetic virulence.
Back in mid-November President Obama was caught bowing to the Japanese Emperor Akihito during a trip through Asia. If you’re on the Right this is just another sign of the President displaying submission to foreign monarchs; if you’re on the Left, it’s an opportunity to laugh at the dumb hicks who don’t realize that a bow in Asia has about the same ammount of obeissance as a handshake. And while the two sides either laugh or grumble, you’re all missing the real story here – the story about why any of you are worrying about this in the first place.
You see, I’m not going to blame Joe from Indiana for not knowin’ so good about for-in cultures. Yeah, on the one hand I find his ignorance laughable, but on the other hand I don’t know the protocol for a NASCAR rally; that doesn’t mean I hate NASCAR fans any more than it means that Joe hates foreigners, it just means we’re not interested. You might want to look at the walls of your own house before you start throwing Left wing stones.
Joe puts on his pants one leg at a time like the rest of us, and his sin is the same as your own: trusting the media he listens to. They told him that this bow was a big deal, and he believed it; they told you that the entire Right wing is culturally ignorant, and you bought in. It’s one of those chicken-and-egg questions, which really makes you wonder which story came first, and I suppose enough investigation could eventually pin it on one of the talking heads, but that’s not what matters here.
What matters is that no professional media outlet is so incompetent that they’d know this little about Japan (and no, I’m not counting a Low-power AM radio station in rural Kansas as ‘professional’). Anybody reporting this story with a straight face knows better, and so do the recursive bastards reporting on the reporting. They know this isn’t news, they know you shouldn’t care, and they know it isn’t even information; hell, it’s the polar opposite of information. But they report on it anyways.
It’s as farcical as the donation supported lobby groups; the NRA thrives off of controversy, and has little interest in actually protecting the 2nd Ammendment. They refused to touch D.C. vs Heller case, and even went so far as to actively undermine it; the Brady Organization has no interest in actually preventing gun deaths, they simply exploit every tragedy, regardless of relevence, to advance their agenda; and as for pro-censorship organizations, they do more to promote the filth than any advertising exec could ever hope for. The day a lobbiest achieves their ostensible goals, is they day they have to get real jobs – and if there’s one thing lobbyists hate even more than human dignity, it’s working for a living.
There’s a rule of thumb I like to use when it comes to bullshit artists, whether they be legislators, reporters, or lobbiers: turn whateve they say directly on its head before you try and understand it. Do that and things like the PATRIOT Act start to make sense. For a long time this has been a society of narcissists and marketers; you vote with your ballots, your dollars, and your attention – and you deserve what you’re getting.
I blame the electorate.
There’s actually something that a right-wing radio host mentioned when all this was happening that was pretty dead-on. They said that in our criticism of the left we need to be careful that we don’t become the machine of irrational political ignorance that fueled the Left during the Bush administration.
For those who keep abreast of such things, the right had to endure all sorts of ridiculousness from effigies of the President dressed up to look like Hitler to claims that he couldn’t read, all sorts of nonsense. the gist is this, Obama does enough to screw things up simply on a policy level that we don’t need to bother nit-picking the little things. It’s petty and not at all relevant. So regardless of what we think of this bow shit, or the fact that some media outlets have made a big to-do about this, focus on the platform. It maintains your integrity and with this president, is actually easier.
Aurini: Brilliantly put; climate change skeptic =/= republican, anymore than socialist = not an American citizen. It’s absolutely undignified and counter-constructive to use idiotic rhetoric and ad hominem attacks to try and ‘prove’ your point. Unfortunately, this is what everyone wants to do, and the media does nothing but cater to this wish.
Part of the issue is that it’s the business of politics aswell. At the end of the day, in a world of mass media, politics is as much about show as it is about substance. The people, the masses, tend to react strongly to rhetoric, and glaze over when presented with factual or reasoned debate. Why do you think CNN gets millions of viewers and CPAC is something that alot of people don’t even know about? It’s not substance, it’s presentation.
If we really want to help the world become more “enlightened” the focus needs to be on presentation while maintaining substance, and frankly that’s a cultureal shift, it requires new concepts to be accepted as ‘Cool’ and ‘Trendy’. It’s alot of work, but it’s achievable, just needs to be tried.
The writer of http://www.staresattheworld.com has written a superior article. I got your point and there is nothing to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not disagree with: It takes as long as it takes is a stupid phrase I will be back. My email is joenbaldwin@gmail.com
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