Political Beat 8 May 2007
As I walked out of Aikido last night, the governor of the state of Illinois jogged past me. Really. I’m 90% certain it was him. I’ve met him in person before and believe me, the perfectly immobile hair is unmistakable. The only thing that makes me think it wasn’t him is the fact that in United States of Official Paranoia the governor of an entire state can apparently jog around town without any kind of security detail. Personally I would have expected a couple of black suburbans with roof-mounted .50 caliber machine guns to be following him around, but none were apparent. Momentarily anyway, it gave Chicago a kind of Mayberry feeling. Like later maybe we’d all be down at at Floyd’s Barbershop playing checkers. Or, y’know, not.
Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to [elect assholes].
France, you fucked up. You could have elected sexy, sexy socialist Ségolène Royal (say it softly and it sounds like praying) and set an example for the whole world. Not just in political terms, but by establishing the precedent of having stone-cold foxes as heads of state. And what government in the world couldn’t do with more sexy? But no, you had to go and elect the right-wing xenophobe version of Tony Shaloub. Seriously, France. You couldn’t have gotten this one more wrong. Now you can spend the next five years oppressing brown people and thinking about what you’ve done.
One State, Two State
Reading this interesting, but also kind of dispiriting article by Dan Savage I was reminded, as I repeatedly am, of my confusion over how the colors of the Red and Blue State concept were assigned.
Really. I want someone to explain this to me. I was introduced to the concept of political parties having colors when I was in England for the momentous 1997 elections that swept Labour (ie. Red). into power. Tories (conservatives) were Blue. Which made, and makes, sense. Labour is (supposedly) left-leaning, socialist-ish, hence: Red. And Tories are Blue, like, um, their blood or something. I don’t know exactly but the lefties should definitely be Red.
So the first time I heard a politician on this side talk about Democrats as Blue and Republicans as Red, I thought he was drunk. When and how did we get this one backwards? Someone, please, explain it to me.
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