And then you've got this guy
Speaking of self-serving egos, Ralph Nader's back. I'd like for him to go ahead and admit that he draws a check from the Republican National Committee because that's the only that makes sense anymore.
posted by Jmac at 5:04 PM
6 Comments:
Yes, surely it can't be a desire to expand the political discourse in this country from the spectrum of about two inches that it covers...
I ain't voting for him, but I don't think it's solely self-serving.
I have a dear friend who's met him, and got to know him pretty well. Believe you me, it's all about Ralph. Ralph is always all about Ralph. She said she danced w/him at an event, spent time w/him, and couldn't wait to get away from him, he was so self absorbed and uninterested in anything but himself.
He doesn't care who he hurts, as long as he stays in the public eye.
He's a creep, and should go back to figuring out what products are safe for us to use, and stay out of politics. He's just a spoiler, and a spoiled brat of one at that.
I find the personal stuff interesting if true but I concur with Hillary here. Nader thinks that a lot of people are fed up with BOTH major parties at this point. I'm not sure if that's true (Obama, hope, faint!), but in any case I think it is definitely true that our current political dialogue is a dog-and-pony show between the two big parties, especially at the national level.
Of course, Obama's a progressive dream, so Nader should be pleased at the guy it looks like the Dems are about to nominate. But perhaps Nader is worried that Obama's rhetoric is hard to translate into concrete proposal sometimes. I think that Nader is worried for nothing: Obama has and will prove himself to be plenty liberal. But I can sympathize with the argument. I'm ODing on 'hope' at this point, but I don't mean to crap on your candidate. This has been, moreso than I can remember (not that I'm old or anything), a completely vacuous primary season, devoid of any substantial interaction on major issues (with the possible exception of Hill and Obama going at it on health care details). Whenever such substance has threatened an appearance, the media has dutifully stifled it. The media has abandoned any semblance of trying to help the public understand the candidates' various positions so as to make an informed decision, and is instead focusing entirely on the 'horse race' angle. Who's gonna win? Who's in the lead this week? Ooh, did you see THAT poll? Bosh. Bosh, I say.
Yeah, I can't figure this guy out either. I voted for him in the past when I truly thought he could incite something, but now he is nothing more than a comic strip character.
In a lot of ways he has taken on a Ross Perot feel in the sense he was once relevant (to a good many) and now is a laughing stock.
Do you consider blogs media, Xon?
Charles, I do and I don't.
I don't in the sense that I do think it is reasonable to think in terms of 'professional' media as one thing and amateurs like your typical bloggers as another. My comments about the media stifling genuine diversity in political discourse are meant to apply primarily to the professional class of media.
But, in another sense I also am willing to throw bloggers right in there. Many of the more 'popular' blogs out there that comment on politics have the same problem as the 'mainstream' media. They constantly complain about the MSM, but the truth is that they play by the typical rules of the fake left-right spectrum, too. To conform to the axiom and write what I know, the way Ron Paul was dismissed by conservative blogs is a good indication of this sort of problem. On the one hand, they make fun of the mainstream media for being 'biased' and for stifling genuine differences. But then when someone comes along who, at least on paper, agrees with many fundamental conservative principles, but disagrees on one particularly hot issue (war), hs is simply lumped in as a "liberal" or a "fake conservative" and the conservatives bloggers (and radio heads) go on lamenting about how there is no 'genuinely conservative' candidate in the crop this go around. Because they define what a genuine conservative is, but their definitions are actually quite blinkered and shallow.n916
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