American Ass-Kicking

Another primary day, another occasion for voter disgust-- today's ballots will be parsed for the degree and direction of anti-incumbent rage as new polls show such passion at an all-time high.

All this recalls the reaction of a social critic half a century ago to excoriation of those who produce mass entertainment as purveyors of junk: "Yes, but what about the people who consume all this swill, who choose the bad over the good, who don't know or don't care about the difference?"

In their current pique, voters are blaming everyone but themselves for public problems while overlooking the inconvenient fact that they chose the incumbents they now hate and are about to transfer their approval to a different set of charlatans and clowns.

Across the primary scene, campaigns are being driven by South Carolina "freak show politics" and inexperienced candidates' "obscene" spending in California, ensuring that new choices will be no better and probably worse than the old.

As President Obama elegantly declares he is looking for "whose ass to kick" over the Gulf oil spill, the American public is engaged in the same search for who to blame for everything.

The enterprise is bipartisan, as reflected in a meeting of "progressive" organizations, where references to government failures provoke the loudest cheers as only one voice urges that organizers “invest in the slow, respectful work of talking to people in our country again.”

When the President is finished satisfying his critics with a manly display of posterior pummeling, he may want to get back to doing that again or come November we will end up being governed by the worst set of horses' asses ever.