Here's how you know you're in LaLa land. PBS Newshour correspondent begins the night's program with "all eyes on Iowa, the center of the political universe." [Double take and sound of palm hitting forehead.] I'm getting less and less tolerant of hyperbole. And this really goes over the top, no? It's the worst kind of lamestream media nonsense. Center of the political universe??? For starters, how about the hubris and over-weening self-regard and self-importance of this statement? As if the political universe, whatever that is supposed to mean, didn't include other countries of singular significance. I suppose it's inevitable that Americans will continue to believe that they are the center of the universe, political or otherwise . . . at least until some national or global life event makes it unquestionably certain that the US is not the center of anything, unless we're talking about ignorance and naivete about the course of empire, the tides of history. 2012, I fear, will be another chapter in our continuing decline.
As for Iowa, the cast of clowns there vying for the Republican nomination for president . . . how can anybody take this aggregation seriously? I'm already detecting an undercurrent of extreme dissatisfaction or extreme indifference among Republicans with the presumptive winner there, Mitt Romney, a shameless chameleon who virtually salivates when he contemplates the prospect of being president. He stands for nothing whatever but saying whatever it will take for him to get elected. And this guy is looking like the likely opponent to Obama? Please.
But the media is in a frenzy. They now have eleven heavenly months in front of them they can devote to the feckless, meaningless poring over the entrails of the presidential "race." As if Iowa and every other caucus, straw poll, or primary actually meant that this country has decided to arrest its headlong plummet to terminal mediocrity. As if what president the corporations own will make a difference to the rest of us.
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