{"id":52936,"date":"2000-08-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-08-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/961b3c43-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2000-08-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-08-04T00:00:00","slug":"961b3c54-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/961b3c54-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"Skunked in Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s one for you: According to the Drudge report, the Philadelphia cops have pulled over a suspicious bus that was chock full of tarantulas, scorpions, skunks, reptiles, and assorted other creepy crawlies.  The suspected target for this faunal fare: the Republican convention.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I won&#8217;t be the only quipster to note that reptiles would probably feel right at home at a political convention.<\/p>\n<p>And so would the skunks in this case, because I can&#8217;t help but notice that the convention has been soundly skunked by the media.  I don&#8217;t follow politics, but the shrill, glaring, and almost rabid animosity aimed at the convention by most reporters is as obnoxiously conspicuous as a fat chick in a T-back bikini.<\/p>\n<p>Two&#8211;and only two&#8211;points have been flogged during the broad convention coverage.  Media Skewed Point One: the Republicans are venal because corporate cash is intertwined with the politicking.<\/p>\n<p>Gee, it seems to me that the Democrats, not the GOP,  are in legal dutch for crooked money raising at the national level lately.  Isn&#8217;t that why Clinton money bag-man Charlie Trie copped a guilty plea for his fund raising crimes?  Why yes&#8230;it certainly is.<br \/>\nMedia Skewed Point Two: Veep candidate Dick Cheney has a &#8220;conservative&#8221; voting record, and is therefore unfit, somehow, for public service.<\/p>\n<p>This is political correctness run so far amok that it almost gives me the Orwellian creeps.  The presumption is that Mr. Cheney should have to &#8220;defend&#8221; the fact that he&#8217;s not a whining, Politically Correct agitator for the gay scoutmaster and welfare mother constituencies.  Is PC such the status quo that  traditional American values are now &#8220;extreme&#8221;?  Evidently so.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s more than a trivial matter of political context.  It shows you the awesome power of the media, which forms issues by not only presenting supposed answers, but by specifying the very questions asked.<\/p>\n<p>The more I witness these sleazy and shadowy media machinations, the more I take interest in this election&#8211;which is no small point to me, since I hate politics.  But the point the media seems to be making is that any essence of traditional American values is somehow shameful.   I&#8217;m pretty much sick of hearing that point, and if it takes the Republican party to forcefully refute it, then good for the Republicans.  I&#8217;m no &#8220;conservative,&#8221; and I don&#8217;t mesh with the puritan-Nazi faction of the GOP, but I am fed up with America&#8217;s slide into Euro-lefty style statism.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it remains to be seen if the GOP will have the gumption to muster a forceful assertion of legitimate values, or will simply dilute its will by its &#8220;inclusive&#8221; tendencies of late.   I, for one, would like to see the Republicans give a sharp poke in the eye to all this political correctness.   It just might pull a lot of otherwise idle folks off of the sidelines and into the fray, because I can&#8217;t be the only one who is fed up with the slippery agenda being peddled by the nation&#8217;s lefty media.<\/p>\n<p>And the agenda will no doubt roll on, as the GOP continues to get skunked in Philly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s one for you: According to the Drudge report, the Philadelphia cops have pulled over a suspicious bus that was chock full of tarantulas, scorpions, skunks, reptiles, and assorted other creepy crawlies.  The suspected target for this faunal fare: the Republican convention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}