The Craziest Thing I've Ever Seen

We see crazy things on TV all the time. Sometimes MSNBC runs old episodes of To Catch a Predator on the weekends. Every segment of that show ends with the police tackling a surprised pervert. It's fantastic. It's also pretty crazy to see a bunch of guys show up to have sex with 13 year olds on national TV. We're like two, maybe three steps away from killing someone on live TV, right?

By the way, what do you think goes through a pervert's mind when the little girl disappears and Chris Hansen pops out and tells him to have a seat? His first thought would have to be "uh oh, that's her dad and he's definitely going to kill me". So, when he finds out it's just Chris Hansen, there have to be some mixed emotions. On the down side, no sex with a 13 year old today, and he's about to get tackled by policemen dressed as trees and hauled off to jail. On the plus side, he's probably going to live.

Last night I was watching the Colbert Report and I found out that J.D. Salinger died last week. I watch as much news as anyone, it took me a week to find out that J.D. Salinger died. The death of one of the Jersey Shore cast members would get more media coverage. I know, Salinger was a recluse and the State of the Union was last week. Plus, we're still getting more information on just how much of a scumbag John Edwards is (I used to like John Edwards too, I felt like he really gave a crap about poor people, then he cheated on his cancer surviving wife, had a baby and denied paternity. There's a special level of hell just for him. You know, if hell were real).

Still, the death of Michael Jackson was on every channel on my TV for like a week. If Michael Jackson had died last week, I think we would have had to postpone the State of the Union. I'm only half kidding about that. But Salinger gets hardly anything. He wrote Catcher in the Rye. How does that not at least equal Thriller? (obviously, it's like 78 times better than Thriller, and I like Thriller. I'm just trying to be fair-minded) Seriously, sometimes I wonder what's wrong with us.

Last week ole Goldmember Beck was at it again. I didn't watch most of this episode, but it seemed he was doing an entire hour on the evils of elitism. My favorite part was when he called Woodrow Wilson a "dirtbag racist" (Beck really doesn't like Wilson, or Teddy Roosevelt). I don't have a problem with that, it was pretty funny to see, but weren't many of Glenn's heroes, the founders, slave owners? Anyway, that's not the crazy part, and Beck's constant attack on elite people isn't the crazy part either.

Going after elites is good politics. Most people aren't elite, most people are actually pretty average, and many of them are just plain stupid (I've said this before, look around you right now, do you see stupid people? You bet your ass you do. I rest my case). There's a lot of political hay to be made in making the stupid people think that they're not stupid and actually somehow better than the smart people. It's nonsense, but a lot of populism is nonsense and it always seems to work.

The crazy part was right at the end. Glenn and his guests were talking about what people should read to get informed. Someone suggested The Federalist Papers. That's not a bad idea. Glenn suggested that someone would have to translate The Federalist Papers into words regular people could understand. So Glenn's argument is that the "people" are smart, and they know what's best, and anyone who calls them stupid is an elitist jerk, and possibly a communist who wants to kill everyone. But those same "people" are just too stupid to understand The Federalist Papers without someone translating the essays into smaller words. Glenn even made fun of himself for saying it. Something has to be pretty crazy to give Glenn Beck a moment of self-awareness.

I saw something else last week. The President reminded us why being elite isn't a bad thing, why we want the smart guy in charge. He reminded me why I voted for him and why, even though I'm a registered Republican, I refuse to vote for anymore Republicans until we get the idiots out of the party (I've said this before too, it may be a while). Last Friday, the President went to visit the House Republican caucus and took questions on live TV. He mopped the floor with those morons. It was awesome, like watching the President debate a group of hostile third graders. Here's how you know last Friday didn't go well for the Republicans. They haven't even been trying to spin it this week. They're just pretending it never happened and moving on. It got to be such a one-sided ass kicking that Fox News stopped covering it in the middle.

So what was so crazy about this? You had Republicans asking questions and listening politely to the responses. You had the President talking on TV without prepared lines or going over everything with his staff. Politicians, having an open and honest debate, unscripted, in front of TV cameras, for the whole country to see? I don't know about you, but that's the craziest thing I've ever seen.