Paranoia and “Propagandapalooza!”

Desperation leads some to make some pretty transparent gestures.

Here's the situation. Your approval ratings have been hovering in the low-to-mid 30s for quite some time. Your war is going horribly. Your party is on the verge of collapse and may very well lose control of Congress in the upcoming elections in two weeks. Your base is turning against you and your party. Americans are even starting to call you out on your persistent fear-mongering. People are just plain getting sick of the GOP shuck n' jive and are ready for the grown-ups to come in and clean house. You're even starting to trip over your own lies.

Here's another hint: Ever notice Dubya stutters and stammers more and babbles like an idiot when in panic mode?

So, what does Georgie Porgie do? On Tuesday he decided to throw a big tent party on the White House grounds for his biggest lackeys, as well as a few who have strayed from the flock. Lawn darts, pony rides, jugglers, chocolate cake. Well, not that kind of party. But there were plenty of clowns on hand. For his little children's party, he invited talk radio show hosts, both local and national, to the White House for a go-round of Bush Administration shills. A cornucopia of the usual suspects, including Karl Rove, Tony Snow, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dan Bartlett and the usual gang of idiots. People are turning against his party, so it's time to rally the base, and suck up to the propaganda brigade that has slowly started to move away from him.

Not to be confused with his little propaganda pow-wow a few weeks ago, this one was a much bigger event. And it took place on the South Lawn. 'Fair and balanced'© syndicated squawkers such as Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck and others were among the 42 talk radio hosts there. There were quite a few anonymous local Rush Limbaugh clones in attendence as well.

So, with this being a rather unrestricted access event to some of the key members of our government, i.e. the ones who collect paychecks from us, one would expect a representative sampling of hosts spanning the political spectrum, right? Or, heaven forbid, even some real journalists? After all, who's paying for this little picnic anyway? Who's footing the bill for the big tent and the porta-potties? You'd thing an event like this would be open to what passes for our mainstream media, right? Well, there was no sign of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, etc. And certainly no liberal talk show hosts either. Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio requested an invite, but her request went unanswered. Reportedly, the same thing happened to Ed Schultz, who hosts a highly popular afternoon show on over 100 stations across the country. Well, in the interest of fairness, Robert Siegel of NPR was in attendence, because NPR is never mean to anyone. Very low threat level there. FOX News token liberal Juan Williams, who also works for NPR, was there. These are obviously examples of media figures the White House considers 'liberals'.

So, the White House opened the doors once again to so-called 'journalists' who spout things like, "The liberal media wants to suppress the vote, they want to convince you that this race is over, they want you to go away and they want us to lose. I'm here to tell you that you have the power." That is what Hannity told a Republican rally in Cincinnati last week in a jab at the so-called 'liberal mainstream media'.

What's ironic is that Hannity IS PART of the 'mainstream media', though the irony obviously went straight over his head. Well, at least he's an out-front media whore when he's not helping gay men find their soul mates.

Perhaps it is best to see this little shindig for what it really is. The GOP is in panic mode. First was the whole Foley thing and subsequent fallout, which made the party of 'family values' look like complete frauds to the rest of the country that hadn't quite figured that out yet. Then the Bob Woodward book showed them to be liars. And a former White House insider, miffed at how much the Bush Adminstration ridiculed their Christian fundamentalist base, spilled the beans, claiming that Bush, Rove, etc. thought they were just a bunch of “nuts”.

And just the other day, after actor and Parkinson's sufferer Michael J. Fox's campaign ads for pro-stem cell candidates began airing during the World Series, Rush Limbaugh went on the air and accused him of hamming it up and faking it, even (gasp!) going off his meds. He even tried a half-assed backpedal when even his own listeners turned on him. Yes, the same Rush Limbaugh who elicited sympathy for his hearing loss a few years back. Yes, the same Rush Limbaugh who's hearing loss could have been attributed to his massive, near-fatal intake of hillbilly heroin (aka OxyContin). And yes, the same recovering drug addict Rush Limbaugh who was held at airport customs for trying to smuggle Viagra into the Dominican Republic for him and his male buddies. Yes, the same Rush Limbaugh who is a hypocritical drug-addicted pile of whale shit.

Of course, it's hard work reigning in your loyal lapdogs. Otherwise the White House would be able to control walking freak shows like the evil, shrill Melanie Morgan, a conservative radio/TV lunatic who practically abandoned her own family to fuel her expensive gambling addiction, yet tries to spread vile lies about Cindy Sheehan, a woman who lost her son in Iraq. Then again, this would take all the fun out of watching these people embarass themselves.