What is it with Republicans and poo? Last week it was Senator David Vitter and the diapers. This week, Mitt Romney is calling America "a cesspool."
Here's the text of a new Romney television ad:
"I'm deeply troubled about the culture that surrounds our kids today. Following the Columbine shootings, Peggy Noonan described our world as "the ocean in which our children now swim." She described a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions. She said that the boys who did the shooting had "inhaled too deeply in the oceans in which they swam." I'd like to see us clean up the water in which our kids are swimming. I'd like to keep pornography from coming up on their computers. I'd like to keep drugs off the streets. I'd like to see less violence and sex on TV and in video games and in movies. And if we get serious about this, we can actually do a great deal to clean up the water in which our kids and our grandkids are swimming."
Which raises a whole slew of interesting questions:
What kind of campaign imagery is that? I see America swimming in a cesspool? Why would Mitt Romney even want to govern a country that did things like that? I have a hard enough time being nice to the dog after it gets skunked.
Is this cesspool downwind or upwind from the shining city on a hill? Shouldn't someone have built America some kind of metaphorical sewer system by now?
I know Mitt Romney is strong -- every ninth word the man says is either "strong" or "strength" -- but can anyone really keep us safe from indolence?
Is indolence better than sloth? Or is it worse, because it knows better?
How serious is America's Indolence Crisis? Is it more or less of a problem than "the vapors?"
Are you the Music Man?
If Peggy Noonan saw her son wading in the septic tank, would she take personal responsibility for getting him out? Or would she see it as the government's problem?
How come conservatives get to dump on their country all the time? If Osama bin Laden made a video calling America a cesspool, George Bush would be almost enraged enough to catch him.
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So many questions. But at least the ad answers one puzzler: Since none of Romney's sons are in Iraq, where are they? Answer: They're at the beach.
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Mitt Romney has already spent $4.9 million dollars on ads, and the election is still more than a year away. Which seems kind of hypocritical, since he made a million dollars on the Marriott board of directors, and when you rent hardcore porn in a Marriott hotel room, it comes commercial free.
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I have a certain amount of trouble taking Mitt Romney seriously, but that's because I'm shallow, and I judge people by their looks. It's the chin and the tan and the salt-and-pepper around the ears. He doesn't look like much of a thinker. He looks like he should be in the Sears catalogue in his underwear, showing another guy in his underwear a rare first edition, or with his foot up on a globe.
And I think the solution to kids playing violent video games is for their parents not to give them the fifty bucks to buy one. But that's just me.
But let's say you were a "values voter." Here's the problem with the Oceans Ad:
The Peggy Noonan column he's quoting ran in the Wall Street Journal after the Columbine shootings, and it ends with a bitchy and out-of-left-field shot at the recently elected senator from New York.
"I'll tell you who could make some progress though, maybe. Hillary Clinton. All the big media people, the owners and anchors, the studio heads and producers, the creators and disseminators, they all admire her. They support her. She could talk to them, She could ignite a "national conversation." She could get tough. She could take names. It might cost her--they give her money. But she's an important member of the community. And you know, it takes a village."
Meow! I guess, when you think about it, Hillary Clinton really was responsible for the Columbine killings. I mean, in that she didn't personally prevent Rockstar games from distributing Grand Theft Auto. This never would have happened if Mitt Romney was First Lady.
Here's the problem, and why Mitt Romney probably doesn't want to run against Hillary Clinton on who's tougher on Halo: After the Noonan column ran, on November 29th, 2005, Hillary Clinton - and Joe Lieberman - introduced The Family Entertainment Protection Act to prohibit the sale of inappropriate games to minors. You can look it up, if you're not too indolent.
You might think it's a moronic non-issue, but it's Hillary's issue. The Super Mario Brothers = Moral Swamp thing? She owns it.
Mitt Romney has spent almost five million dollars, and he just produced an ad for Hillary Clinton.