GOP-za-Poppin'!

To those who still haven't made the politics/news/entertainment connection yet, even though the unholy nexus is on display every time a TV screen (or AM radio) is switched on, the daily events that are classified carelessly as "news" would seem thoroughly authentic.

Balderdash, I say!

I mean, was the "Santorum surge" really a surprise? It's just the latest act in the vaudeville that is the political process, after the Bachmann Spurt, the Newt Scoot, the Cain Refrain (any spinmeisters who would like to hire me may contact me here).

By parading a succession of unelectable loonies onto center stage for the better part of a year, letting them spin their plates and juggle their balls (!), we begin to understand the goal behind The Big Show: to ultimately paint Mitt as an unlikely underdog and create a wholly contrived dramatic tension by delaying him his de facto triumph. Having achieved his rebranding from out-of-touch corporate raider/job killer/closet moderate public health care dispenser, the show's producers will put him up against That Mean Ol' Obama in a desperate dance-off.

Like "socialist", "appeaser" and "community organizer", the appellation "underdog" is just another co-opted, re-jiggered rightwing button that gets pushed every time Ailes and Company want their audience to respond like the flinching sheep they are. They use people's natural inclination to comply with authority figures while simultaneously tearing those figures down, consciously creating bad government and saying "See?!!!" P.T. Barnum would be proud.

By blaring its roster of patently unserious candidates, each purporting to offer one slice of the nasty Republican pie, the corporate right endeavors to continue in politics what it has so spectacularly achieved in other areas which rely on an assembled crowd of consumers -- religion and media -- dumbing down and homogenizing them to make them digestible to even the simplest of consumers. The choice between Mitt, even with all his flaws, and the comparative insanities of all the preceding acts, make him the obvious choice. Ta-da!!!!

And, of course, the amount of shit thrown at Obama corresponds -- as it always has -- directly with his opponents' fear that a skilled, rational, governance (along with an informed and actively engaged citizenry) will succeed where their crude, greed-saturated, divisive capitalism-run-amok hasn't. All that's ever trickled down from them is dissatisfaction mingled with corporate fascist drool.

But the show goes on. The rightwing ringmasters crack their whips, the acts do their spiels, the audience eats it up. It's entertainment, politics and news all bundled into one exciting year-long event! Just sit back, America.

And watch.