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Cyberbullying: Throwing the Tormented Baby Out With the Bathwater
Cyberbullying. The word evokes myriad emotions. Since 2005, according to the NCSL website, 34 states have laws to prevent and prosecute cyberbullies. From Alabama to Wyoming, there are significant efforts to empower schools, review boards, and committees to punish cyberbullies where proof can be delivered for actions taken by one, or multiple, students picking on and teasing another. This was called something else in my day…bullying. You can invent a word, you can admit that technology has provided a new forum, but it is nothing more than what kids have been doing to one another since two or more were put in a small room together. I am not advocating bullying via any means, but one question comes to mind when I think of the scope of these laws: What could be waiting for us at the bottom of this slippery slope?
My mother brought me up reciting the old adage that, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Good advice as far as I could tell. Let the water roll off the ducks back, but I never had feathers. Words can hurt, and they did hurt. I was bullied and teased me when I was in school. I was poor, smart, and overtly awkward and nerdy. I was Sophomore class President, I was in Leadership class, and never went out for sports. I was an easy target, but in my day, if it wasn’t at school, school couldn’t do nothing. You ratted to your mom if anyone.
Bullying today seems to be on another level, or it is made out to be awful. I get the sense, having not experienced schoolyard bullying in more than a decade, that kids today are more articulate, vulgar, and unrelenting in their torment. I don’t know what this says about kids today, but cyberbullying certainly says a lot about the modern conveniences technology provides. Cowards today take to the Twitterverse and Facebook to lambaste and abuse a classmate. Gone are the days requiring face to face torment, technology has allowed for an efficient means to torment from the convenience of home.
Today, there are laws and regulations on the books empowering schools to enforce penalties for bullying outside the school’s direct purview. See this as an example:
Colorado 2005; HB 1036
Requires each school district, to adopt an internet safety plan consisting of a comprehensive, age-appropriate curriculum teaching the safe and legal use of the internet; encourages each school district to use existing internet safety resources available from nonprofit organizations and to work with local law enforcement agencies in adopting and developing the curriculum; directs each school district to identify a person who is responsible for overseeing implementation of the internet safety plan. Includes online bullying as a topic that the curriculum may address.
This is a terrifying precedent to set. The school is empowered to punish a child for what is done off school grounds, off school hours, on the internet? We have put this kind of power in the hands of a state/federal institution? What might be the next step we take after this to curb a misbehaving prepubescent? Perhaps the next step is to make laws allowing the school to hand out detention to a 10-year old for not doing his chores? Schools are here to educate your kids, not raise them. Pandora’s box, ladies and gentlemen…let’s see what inside.
What happened to freedom of speech? You can say what you will for this argument, but don’t minors have freedom of speech, too? When in school, as I understand it, students forfeit most Constitutional rights. How many times have we seen stories of student papers being silenced, shut down, or forbidden from running a story by the administration? I understand the need to avoid offending anyone or potentially undermining administrative authority inside a school, but what’s the deal with infringing on Constitutional rights of Americans for some vulgarity written on a message board?
OK, they are kids. By definition they are mentally handicapped–given the slow development of the frontal cortex–but they still have rights. Freedom of speech should be taken from anyone able to operate a computer up to the age of 18 if they torment someone? I don’t know about all of this. OK, on school grounds you best watch your tongue and look over your shoulder if a teacher is in earshot before you lay in to some poor sap, but to punish for exercising free speech on the internet outside of school? This is a dangerous sword to be swinging around.
As an American citizen I can write or say almost anything I want; almost. I cannot threaten the life of the President of any government official, and without proof I can’t accuse anyone of illegal activity. I cannot say that Rush Limbaugh is embezzling money to fund an illegal kiddie porn ring, but I can say he’s a creepy, pervy pill-popper. One is libel, the other is my opinion. My opinion is covered by freedom of the press and speech; libel is illegal. To call someone an idiot, bitch, whore, slut, asshole, or ugly is simply opinion, and violates no law that I know of. Well, no law until 2005 legislation was passed in Colorado.
Alright, it’s a stretch, but I look at this decision the same as people seemed to eye the Patriot Act. In response to fear of terrorist attacks, sleeper cells, and domestic terrorists, we gave up just about every right we have. Under the Patriot Act the government can run roughshod over your life, legally break in to your house without a warrant, and legally detain you without council or charges or trial for as long as they see fit. You might say that if you’re doing nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to hide. I agree, but the issue is that the power wielded can be brought to bear for any reason, on incomplete information, and can be an invasion of privacy and an egregious attack on the Constitutional law some many of the people in this country seem to enjoy and are willing to defend to the death. The Patriot Act still exists nonetheless.
Just as in the knee-jerk aftermath of 9/11, the heartbreaking losses and emotions have run us aground on “Anything is better than nothing” rock. Just as in September some 10 years ago, we are scrambling to find meaning, and to prevent it from ever happening again. Next thing you know, schools will be monitoring activities online. Scares the shit out of me, quite frankly, that this kind of thing is acceptable, this kind of punitive reach of a school, in the lives of young people. An inch can lead to a mile a lot faster than anticipated.
What scares me most about laws like this is what can be next. When you empower an institution to punish an offense, the next step is prevention. To prevent something, you need to know about it before it is happening. What is a school to do? Start monitoring the internet activities of “problem students?” The school does the punishing–expulsion, detention, transfers, etc.–so why not put the onus for prevention on them, too?
There’s the rub. It’s not this step, but the next one. The responsibility may not be on the school now for prevention, but it might one day be on them. Schools are nothing more than federally mandated education institution administering a certified curriculum to students ages 6 to 18 for a 12 year period to get a legally binding certificate of achievement. Now, I understand that we entrust the safety of children to them, but is this really in their purview? In the last two years we have dissolved the collective bargaining rights of some teachers unions, skewered them for their “lavish” salaries, and now after shitting on these people we expect them to not just care for the education and well-being of children, but to be responsible for protecting them, too? You ask too much, sir.
Responsibility implies liability. The public outcry at the next teen suicide attributed to cyberbullying will be for heads to roll…and we’re not talking parents. People love to point fingers. When a death note of a child says they couldn’t take the bullying anymore, all eyes will turn to schools not doing anything, and if they did something well within the law, it will not have been enough. We’ve seen this before in school shootings, and in any case where there is an intractable outcome, the instinct that comes to mind first is who can we blame. We like a scapegoat in this country, and damned if a “lavishly” paid fourth year teacher isn’t a fine thing to hang in public square.
It is not the responsibility of a school to look out for the well-being of a child outside their walls. It is not the fault of the administration if someone is teased or beaten up during summer break. It is not the responsibility of a school or district administration to have to devote so much time and effort to curbing something that passes with graduation. The next step after empowering them for punishment is prevention. Prevention leads to monitoring, and now we’re in a Aldous Huxley novel we’ll never get out of–Brave New World, kids? Hell, you’ll get to it. It was required reading when I was your age. This is not the first step down this slope of administration and educator intervention in the private lives of students and parents and won’t be the last. This is however the first shot over the bow of monitoring internet activity, one PIPA and SOPA couldn’t pull off. It may have taken the suicides of children, but schools have expanded their reach, for better or worse, and it represents a dangerous precedent, and one I am sure many other state and federal institutions are taking notes on. I am just looking forward to the first metaphorical public hanging of a sixth grade teacher as a result.
The Myth That Died a Man: JoePa
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” -Harvey Dent
I suppose I could stop writing with this. As articulate and accurate a quote one might need to describe the rise and fall of the late Joe Paterno. There is more to this eulogy piece than just a pop culture reference and a sad tone of the death of a man; I really won’t be eulogizing anything as tawdry as dirty laundry.
Joe Paterno became a man more myth than reality starting in 1966. He was accessible and real as your average Joe, yet he was anything but. At a school as steeped in tradition as Penn State was, he steeped it further with undefeated seasons, almost three dozen bowl appearances, National and Big Ten titles, and a dedication to the University that saw him turning down NFL contracts for more money and higher prestige. He was Penn State, building its reputation and filling its trophy cases year after year; 46 to be exact.
Despite the revelations of the last year, Joe spent his career instilling moral fiber, ethics, and academics in to his student-athletes; he placed a premium on education first. Joe was a character, always good for a pull quote and a smile on game day. It took serious injury to keep him off the sideline and the practice field. In his last few years he took quite a few hits, including a cracked pelvis, I think, and injured himself while trying to show a 19-year-old football player exactly how to block…he was more than 80 at the time.
Joe lived for Saturday, for every practice, and clearly loved that University and what it stood for more than just about anything. He gave graciously and deeply of his wealth back to the school. He opened his home to students happily. He was a tenacious competitor and a man who literally loved what he did to death.
Many thought he was done coaching a few years back. Injuries, health complication, just the frank starkness of the numerical number of birthdays he’d celebrated on this planet. He never wavered. He signed that extension that stood, in my eyes, as the last contract he ever intended signing; it was the contract that guaranteed he’d be the active Lions’ coach when God finally took him.
We now know this isn’t the case. He left the school almost as fast as he left the good graces of the public. I would love to sit here and argue for Joe. I would love to spin a tale of a personal code and a man who came from “a different time.” “He’s old school” just doesn’t seem to cut it in this case, but I feel that I could build a decent defense for a man who molded men with a moral and ethical code that he may have lacked at his deepest principles.
One can’t ask him, can’t interview him, and he can no longer defend himself; so inference is just hearsay and presumption. I instead want to focus on the fact that it wasn’t the lung cancer that finally got ol’ Joe off the sidelines. He lost football.
Football was his elixir of life. His fountain of youth was turf, pig skin, and running out of the tunnel. His years were reversed with the never-ending odyssey of getting better, winning, and coaching up the best team he could. Time stopped for Joe when he was on the field.
In his later years, I think football didn’t just keep him young, it kept him alive. You hear of a man passing shortly after their wife of 50 years dies. You hear of people seemingly hanging on just long enough to see their grandchild born, or their only child finally married off and blissfully happy; and they do it despite all the odds against them. And lastly you hear of the men, the women, who spend their entire life in a career they love, and shortly after retiring, kick off. This wretchedness is what fell JoePa. He was a man stripped of a love of his life. Purpose keeps many men alive, and without Penn, the tides of time came washing in and claimed the years he’d cheated from Death.
I dare not speak ill of a man who embodied something as righteous as an institution that is not the buildings, not the board, not the trustees, but is the alumni and the student body; just as the church is the congregation, not the building. Everyone has their secrets, and JoePa almost made it to the grave with his. Had he died but months earlier, then he could have died a god, but instead he wasted away like any other man. This might be the thing that hurts many the most: He was just a flawed man and not the myth that had developed around him.
Joe was a man of small stature but inexplicably seemed to cast a shadow that all too many fell in; he was flesh and bone legend. It all came crashing down around him, for choices made; and as suddenly as he looked forever invincible, to look upon him after revelations was to see a now frail, aged, and near helpless man who seemed crestfallen and beleaguered in shoulders that once bore the weight of all the hopes of Penn State faithful every Saturday with not a second thought.
Joe was once a pillar of a community, now defiled and tagged with smeared graffiti at his own hand, and seemed to every year baffle analyst and people as to his ability to keep coming back despite injuries and illness. He kept getting back up when men his age had been in the ground for a decade, but once they pulled the life support from him his strength could bear the weight of debts owed no longer. His warped loyalty lost him football. Football was what kept him alive. A tragic suicide, but one to be held in some semblance of respect. No man should be judged by any one event. He is a culmination of all his actions, and the balance of the good done in his years will far outweigh the debt of his inactions when his life’s sums are counted.
“The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.” -William Hazlitt
NITBAFS: Obama, the NBA, and China
Washington D.C.
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Saturday August 20, 2011
NIKE and Obama Falter in Brokering Deal with Chinese Basketball
by Wesley Bauman
In the last week President Obama has been quietly speaking with both the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, and official representatives for the Chinese Basketball Association on the possibilities of brokering a deal for encouraging NBA players to join CBA teams during the NBA lockout which began July 1, 2011 at 12:01am. After the initial raising of the debt ceiling, and with President Obama frustrated that no new revenue streams were discussed seriously, the President contacted the CBA and Premier Jiabao to see “if the use of NBA superstars could benefit the strained financial relationship” between China and the US, said sources close to the situation. After Friday’s announcement by the CBA that players under contract would not be allowed to join domestic Chinese teams, a source inside the White House said that the President was “visibly annoyed.”
According to reports, the President had spoken with the Premier and the CBA to see if the signing of major NBA stars like Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, or LeBron James, would interest China. It seemed to the President that if new taxes were not a viable possibility and cuts were being made in social programs, then he decided that what resources the US had in abundance were unemployed basketball players. Obama felt that if the “deal was sweet enough,” according to insiders, the President would speak with players to encourage them to play in China.
“This is not slave-trading,” the President was quick to point out. “My job is to help America, and struggling Americans without jobs. I love basketball, and these incredibly talented stars, and if I can help them find work during a heated labor dispute, then I am all for it. I mean, the owners? Really? They are just behaving like knuckleheads.” Obama apparently was doing his best impression of hall of fame basketball star Charles Barkley.
The deal was to be two-fold for the President. In one act he could ease tensions with China, our largest debt-holders at approx. $907 billion; and would drop the unemployment numbers by at least three individuals.
“People don’t have jobs. That is my number one concern as President. If I have to personally find a job for every starting player in the NBA, I will do it. I have honestly given up trying to get anything done with our current Congress. So I am taking my skills to South Beach, to get LeBron James to take his skills to East Asia.” said President Obama on Thursday at a stop on his bus tour in Illinois.
He also drew a clear line between James and the President. “His approval rating is even worse than mine right now.” President Obama laughed. “I mean, people may think I didn’t come through on many of my campaign promises, but he had (Dwayne) Wade and still choked! If anyone needs a couple points in the polls, it’s the two of us.”
President Obama extrapolated his point in an Illinois roadhouse to a room of about 35 truckers and waitresses. “If I can improve the job situation for any American, even the ‘coddled’ über-rich, then I will do what I can. I don’t like to ship jobs overseas, to foreign nations, but it is imperative that we get these struggling athletes, and Americans, back to work. If that job is waxing glass and grabbin’ ‘boards overseas, then I will do what I can to make that happen. If an American can drop a triple-double at will, who am I not to do everything in my power to let him do that? Behind the near extraterrestrial athleticism of LeBron James and the likes of Kobe Bryant, and CP3 of course, then I think America can begin to win the future, and maybe a couple CBA titles along the way.”
Critics of the plan had called it nothing more than pandering to middle-American sports fans and even chastised the plan as big business lobbyists at work. They are referring to the apparently simultaneous urging by NIKE for those athletes who merchandise with the company, that if they are to play overseas then they should do so in China. China has the largest possibility for advertising potency of any foreign market.
After Friday’s announcement by the CBA baring any contractually obligated player from joining the league, Obama took his ball and went home. He did so in his $1.1 million-dollar luxury bus, codenamed “Behemoth.”
John Boehner on Friday evening said that the deal was “nothing more than political horse-trading.” Boehner immediately retracted his statement saying he in no way meant to liken NBA athletes to horses, or black people in general. “I love those guys with their style and the, what is it, swagger!” He then entered an elevator and let out an audible sigh before the doors closed completely.
With this possible deal gone for the administration, Karl Rove on the O’Reilly Factor on FOXNews said, “Well, the President got posterized by China. Totally worked on this one. He wanted to flaunt his skills, and the guy might have a sweet 20-foot J, but he doesn’t get back on D like he should, baby. If he was half as savvy on his economic planning as he is on his crossover during pick-up games at Rucker Park, then we wouldn’t be in this terrible mess. Pres got his ankles broke on that fake-out by the CBA! No question, baby!” Karl Rove made this statement in his best Dicky V voice.
Obama is still trying to find work opportunities for the unemployed NBA players. He is currently trying to negotiate a deal with legendary streetball tour, AND1, to see if they would fund public works projects, shovel-ready jobs, in low income areas in return for short-term contracts with major NBA players. Obama said he would even be willing to cut short his upcoming two-week vacation at Camp David, or make available Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to broker the deal. Reached for comment, Hillary Clinton simply said, “and one what?”
Joe Biden has proposed a different idea. The Vice President met with Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks, Tuesday to possibly start a professional trashcan H.O.R.S.E. league. “Hell, I could be a coach or something. I can bounce a ball off almost anything. What do you think I do all day? Trashcan basketball. Jay Carney is my bitch!” Vice President Biden then dunked a wadded paper ball on this reporter before “shaking it off” as he backed out of the oval office. We were told through a White House press release that the Vice President only uses 100% recycled paper for his trashcan H.O.R.S.E. games in an effort to “green his games.”
It is not yet clear if the White House is taking his proposal seriously, but Biden will be participating in an exhibition office match against White House intern Stephen Milhouse of Sioux Falls, SD. The match will air Sep. 3, on ESPN3.com and ESPN Deportes. Check your local listings.
NOT INTENDED TO BE A FACTUAL STATEMENT
Bachmann Wins in Ames and Yet Still Draws the Short Straw
or: Ron Paul sees his shadow, six more weeks of political futility
What is that rustling in the distance? Wait, no, it’s not a rustle. It sounds more like a bubbling. Yes, I can hear it now. A riling and rolling boil. It pops and hisses like so much scrumptious white noise. It is musical almost. That can only be the sound of deep-fried butter logs which means it’s summer time in Iowa! It is time once again for the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines and a rootin’ tootin’ good time buyin’ up votes in a completely innocuous and non-binding straw poll in the beautifully portly town of rotund Ames, Iowa. There is nothing the people of Iowa love more than to slap on a button, shake a hand, and promise to vote for a candidate in an entirely meaningless exercise in showmanship related to nothing more than a gob-stopping festival of stump speeches, cheap tricks, all washed down with domestic beer and mediocre barbecue. The straw poll in Iowa brought us a winner, as all superfluous polls do, and her name is Michelle Bachmann. Now before we go crowning her queen and sacrificing goats on an altar before a marble statue of her likeness, just remember that this win has no bearing on anything except her popularity in a right-wing, evangelical state, in which anyone with her kind of crazy eyes can win. Oh, and did I mention she grew up there? Maybe that played a role, but we’ll see.
- and apparently the courage to sit down, too
Yes, the Ames straw poll has come and gone and now we are left with the results. What can we take from our little stint in Iowa this weekend? Well, besides the need for a really good cardiologist, I think we can see that this GOP race has a few clear front-runners for the nomination. Real quick, hats off to the withdrawal of “candidate” Tim Pawlenty. Not a shocker. The man looks like he should be selling vacuum cleaners door to door in Post-war, suburban America. We owe China a lot of money, and we need a president that looks like he won’t get rolled between classes in the boys’ room and cough it up like a pansy. OK, now that we have bid ado to that, back to Michelle. What a massive win for her campaign. This is the kind of win you can only hope to get in a scenario you darest not dream in a million sleeps. I must say that this gives her great traction in future stops in Iowa and on through to the caucus and eventually the primaries…oh, who am I kidding, it’s fucking Iowa.
No one gives a shit about the straw poll. Rick Perry got over 700 write-in votes and he wasn’t even really present. People are already talking that Romney can crush her for the nomination and that Rick Perry can crush even him. If all indicators are pointing in the right direction, then this is the last thing Michelle Bachmann is gonna win. Seriously, there isn’t even a scratch-it ticket in her future. The straw poll is just a giant popularity contest/barbecue where voters promise to vote for the candidate in the poll if they will pay the $30 entrance fee to get in on the party. That’s it. It is a popularity contest highlighted by celebrity appearances, air-conditioned tents, and other flashy bullshit to just show the patrons a good time. It has no bearing on anything except that Iowans can be bought for $30, and if that is by the pound then by the looks of some of those guys corn-holing butter logs by the pair, these people are the cheapest Americans you can buy per pound. Not like Nebraska folk, they’ve got Omaha steaks, motherfucker.
So Michelle paid off some good, honest, hard-working, God-fearing, Americans that are tired of Washington getting it’s hands in their lives and pocketbooks, who just want to stick by the constitution as the founding fathers would want, and to raise their children with good values and stop passing all this debt on to them, and end this terrible, job-killing Obamacare which is ruining the economy…Wait, what happened? I blacked out there for a second. Did I cover all the talking points? Oh good, I thought I was having a stroke. No wonder she’s got the crazy eyes, if I had to repeat that same bullshit in every speech, every day, for the last 48 days since entering the race I’d probably start to look like I was trying to keep my tongue from leaping out of my head to kill itself.
This was the Iowa straw poll, and it means everything in that it means everything if we change the meaning of everything to nothing. I mean, the only person who could draw 28% of the non-official popularity vote would have to be destined for the White House in 2012 or would have to…I don’t know, ummmmm, be from Iowa? Well, in a crafty political move Michelle Bachmann happens to be from Waterloo, Iowa. Trust me, she won’t let you forget that she’s from Waterloo. She won’t even let the people of Waterloo fucking forget that she’s from Waterloo. Well, her and John Wayne…Gacy. Oops, thought I forgot about that didn’t ya, Bachmann!? Yes, in a shocking turn of events, a right-wing Lutheran wife of a man who can pray the gay out of homosexual deviants with five kids and a hard-on for the constitution in it’s founding fathers form (still not clear if that is founding fathers pre or post abolition) was able to clutch victory from the gaping maw of defeat and take this win back to Waterloo to rub in the face of the small town diner waitress who teased her in high school…that is what she did it for, right?
All this hullaballoo aside, this is simply a moral victory in a battle that featured candidates that didn’t really differ morally. Ron Paul is crazy, he doesn’t count. Ron Paul is like the Bob Dole of the Ross Perot of the Rumpelstiltskin of the GOP race; he is loud, funny, weird, and will do nothing but mess things up and steal votes from a legitimate candidate, no matter the fact that he is just awesome. Pawlenty? About as offensive as a silent fart in an elevator. Romney? Barely tried. Herman Cain? I think he served pizza and only handed out three-fold napkins. Santorum? Alright, ya know what, I’m just getting annoyed that this guy is still around with a name like that. So who was she really facing? Perry was a write-in. He is bypassing the whole thing deciding to worry about getting the votes for the GOP nomination. Another Texan, a major job-creator, and shoulders square enough to measure a contracting job by? I hear the GOP saying “yes, please.”
Bachmann is this year’s Palin, even though Palin still seems to be this year’s Palin. Her damned bus tour got rolling just in time to arrive in Des Moines to see the historic Ferris Wheel which in 1778 road through town for…ah, fuck it, she’s stupid, we get it, I’m tired of making jokes. If Palin jumps in then Bachmann looks like some kind of Wal-Mart knock-off of the Palin-brand K-Mart crazy. Bachmann is just not up to the task of taking on Perry with his billion-dollar buddies on one front, and Palin and her Alaska reality show of a family on the other side. Shit, Perry is like a 20+ term sitting official and Palin’s daughter is more famous than Bachmann is, so it really is no contest. Perry has the clout, experience, and the chiseled jaw line to take the nomination, which is the real prize, unlike the straw poll which is like getting voted most-likely to “go places” in your high school yearbook. Romney can’t win with Romneycare and his being…ya, know…a mormon. Perry is gonna run away with this thing, but that’s just the nomination, the general election is an article for another time.
Bachmann shoots down the argument that she doesn’t have the experience to be President by talking about having been alive fifty-five years. If that is a qualifier then that makes me exactly half as qualified as you to run this country, which even I know isn’t the case. She also explains that raising five children and 23 foster kids is qualification enough and being married for 30+ years is icing on the cake. Being married? Raising children? These are qualifiers for being president? I know people with five kids, but that’s because they are stupid and made the same mistake five times. What’s your excuse? She also totes her tax law education and her years as a tax attorney. She worked for the IRS. I doubt she’ll ever get that specific since leaving it at “tax law” doesn’t bring about the same bristle and zeal as being associated with the only government office that even the fucking DMV looks down on. Her experience is in question and she sites that she and her husband have been running a business successfully for years. What business is that? A mental health facility. Well, technically it’s Bachmann & Associates Christian Counseling Practice…where the Bachmanns deny that any conversion therapy for homosexual behavior goes on…even though it does, according to a former patient and some hidden camera footage. Hell, video evidence is never admissible in court, so you can’t believe that…oh, wait…
So, what has Iowa left us with? Indigestion for one and political nausea for the other. It was all an absolute waste of time and money and has no bearing on the election whatsoever, except that Pawlenty bowed out sooner than he would have and later than he should have. Bachmann gets a win in her own backyard and no one is fucking surprised at that. It was tents, cheap thrills, and even a petting zoo for the kids. Wait, why was there a petting zoo? Are Iowan adults swayed by a petting zoo? Are ponies conservative? I know it’s a big agricultural state, but these people don’t actually think the presence of farm animals is any indicator of a good leader, right? I mean, the ponies aren’t in attendance to show support. They are locked in a corral and get fed sugar cubes and then loaded up and shipped off to the next embarrassing chapter of their spectacle of a life. Seriously, if anything you should be offended that she’s locking up these stupid-looking animals. A pony? It is an evolutionary dead end. In nature that would be weeded out after generation of horses raping them. Well, at least the ponies are getting work, and that’s Bachmann coming through on her promise to create new jobs.
This is all like a soap box derby race. A bunch of hastily assembled and ill-conceived mobile platforms rolling downhill on nothing but momentum driven by people hoping it carries them through to the finish line. Well, it doesn’t. Historically the winner of the straw pole doesn’t make it to the White House. Last time around good ol’ Huckabee was your winner of the straw poll…how did that turn out again? Huckabee was at the straw poll this year, but this time on his guitar getting paid for a couple shows. He’s the only one that came out of top of this thing.
The straw poll feels a lot like Groundhog’s Day. Not that I feel like I am repeating the same horrendously annoying day of my life over and over again for no clearly defined reason (how was there not a gypsy or something that cursed him or some grave he disturbed or something!? Why did Bill Murray keep reliving that day!? Explain it to me!) until I get it right, but that it’s an archaic ritual synonymous with folklore and steeped in tradition whose outcome has no bearing on anything that will happen in the next six weeks. When I picture Iowans as groundhogs, I don’t seem to loathe their fat faces quite as much. Just like that we’ll all forget about the city of Ames, until the next straw poll when they shove their deep-fried mayonnaise cones into my political machine and muss up all the perfectly rusty gears to the tune of three-cents per Hawkeye pound. Fuckin’ Iowans.
