By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
I’ve been hearing a lot of jokes about ADD — Attention Deficit Disorder — in the last few weeks. Either the American public has an advanced case of ADD, unable to process facts or focus on outcomes, or it’s leaning on that as an excuse for having made a series of tantrum-driven political miscalculations that are already having ramifications we’ll regret. You know how this goes: we’re destined to repeat history, even so recent as a few years ago, if we don’t … LOOK! Squirrel!
With apologies to those who actually suffer this disorder, I’d feel better if our recent shift rightward had been produced by such a malady instead of by the weakness of character that seems to drive the cynical, specious tone of our current politics. Tell a lie often enough, it becomes true, and lately, with lightning speed. For instance, it took the public about three weeks to make Sister Palin’s Twitter gaffe, ‘refudiate,’ into an actual word that shows up without quote marks. Within a year or so, no one will question its validity. [This seems to be a morph of ‘refute’ and ‘repudiate’, a newborn cousin of the word ‘ginormous’. -ef]
Speaking of stuff we forget, former Bush henchman, House Leader and money launderer Tom DeLay is back in the news after his brief return to our TV screens in Dancing With The Stars. Tom has been keeping a low profile for a few years now, after spending 20 years rising to power in the House of Representatives only to fall from its heights. Known as The Hammer, a reflection of his cut-throat, arm-twisting style, Tom had his fingers in a financial scheme that turned the Texas House Republican for the first time since Reconstruction, then gerrymandered the districts to see that it remained that way. The gerrymandering was legal; the political money swap wasn’t. He has been found guilty of charges and could face so harsh a judgment as life in prison, although that’s highly doubtful. Here’s a quote from a McClatchy editorial:
“This is an abuse of power,” Tom DeLay said Wednesday after an Austin jury found him guilty of politically inspired money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. “It’s a miscarriage of justice. I still maintain my innocence. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system.”