Still a Novelty After 8 Years?

There are outsiders and then there are outsiders. Barack Obama has run his candidacy as an outsider claiming immunity to the groupthink and cynicism that affects those who have spent years in spitting distance of Washington institutions, but with a firm respect for the institutions themselves. That's the good kind. Sarah Palin and George W. Bush are the other kind, whose outsiderism comes from little more than a sneering disdain for the institutions themselves.

It's often asked how in hell George W. Bush ran as an outsider in 2000 with better connections to classic Washington power structures than anyone to seek the presidency since RFK. Watching Sarah Palin, I finally see that he really was one. It didn't matter who he had access to. To him, any of their accomplishments and expertise were of no more value than his brush-clearing skills anyway. His chief qualification was having never lost the part of us that gets bored at dinner with our mothers' friends when we're twelve. It was all boring goofy talk to him, and it's all boring goofy talk to Sarah Palin.

It's that kind of thinking that deems it perfectly reasonable to hire a childhood friend to run a $2 million dollar agriculture agency in Alaska, as Palin did, because she likes cows, or to hire the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association to run FEMA. When you think all these organizations are a waste of time anyway, why not just hook your buddies up with a cush job?

And so, even though our appetite to be governed by a silly movie hero who rolls into town in a pickup truck armed with little more than intuition and decisiveness has a body count, folks are lining up to do it again with Sarah Palin. How is novelty still novel after eight years? Why are people excited about someone whose solution to everything is to "shake things up" when we're already a nation with a case of Shaken Baby Syndrome?

Our new song "A Stranger Rolls in on a Truck" is our punk rock musing on this question - enjoy.

Click the play button to listen

A Stranger Rolls in on a Truck

When a stranger rides in on a truck and talks about shaking it up
And lays it on down like a new cop in town to applauses both shrill and abrupt
In a frenzied media splash, incompetence dressed as panache
it will slip right on by with a glint in her eye and a sparkling photography flash
A scientist and a quack, a populist and a hack
Are divided by lines clear and defined with beginnings and endings exact
If an era of death and decline can't rub off novelty's shine
Than pass me the pills, we'll drink 'til we're all and we'll sleep it off some other time

How many times can we fall 'til we find, that boredom is beauty and dull is divine
But we melt into water with each folksy line and they're laughing and lapping it up
And our eyes go aflutter year after year as the charming offensive opens our ears
Quickly forgetting how we made it here simply stuck from a stranger who rode in on a truck

The more that you learn the less that you know, how does nonsense like that ever go
Over with any, let alone many when you figure that out let me know
So when they strut in slowly and cool, thumbing their nose at the rules
Be it cowgirls or cowboys, like gun-slinging androids, a fine kind of freshness for fools

We'll be shaking our heads in disgust when we see how they pull of identical moves to a tee
Feet in our mouths, getting kicked in the teeth saying sorry, you're shit out of luck
So save us from fake-outs of false confidence, shrill speaking voices of decisiveness
Determination transmogrified into trust by a stranger who rode in on a truck

How much time will it take to find that boredom is beauty and dull is divine
We drool over each ridiculous line hands clapping, lapping it up
Our eyes go aflutter year after year with the charming offensive plugged in our ears
Resigned to the fact that we're staying here simply stuck with a stranger who rode in on a truck

Max and the Marginalized are a band and a blog. We do a song every week on the Huffington Post, all 49 of which are available for download here at our site. Add us on Facebook or MySpace.

Comments

[LindaLuNordling]

what do you know... get my moose gun or is it mouse gun ;)

[CompetenceMatters]

Great, thank you. So the most significant issue in this election is : who would you rather have a drink with? It's not the economy, stupid.

If the person I hire to run my country for me has time to come and have a drink with me while the world is in turmoil, then he"s not doing his job. So I"m going to vote in two elections in November. First I"ll go and vote in the national election, so that I will have a right to take credit or complain depending on how things go. Then I"m gonna go to my favorite neighborhood bar and vote for Fred Simms, my next door neighbor and friend, as the guy I most enjoy having a drink with.

[w&cheneysuck]

Good song from Max...

[w&cheneysuck]

AWESOME AS USUAL!

[MissCupcake]

It may seen strange but the PUNK ROCK music scene is very political. There are several songs about Dubya. One of my favs is THE IDIOT SON OF AN @SSHOLE. Check out the band Against Me. They have a song titled Condoleezza. Good stuff.

[ignorantwillyharper]

Hell, it don't make no difference, if they introduce themselves as a politician, what the're really saying, is I'm a crook. I'm here saying, I'll take care of you and all the time planning on how they will rob you of everything you've worked hard all your life for.
It boils down to a politician is a liar and a crook, he, or she cares nothing about your well being, nor the country...it's all about them.

[teddyquin]

Will Palin be "wired" like Bush during Debate??? Watch for the hairdo (wires) coverup

[zedthewizard]

i can't believe that buchanan used the term capitalist pig on tv. he did this knowing that palin used pig in her speech. buchanan thinks before he speaks. he knew what he was doing. once palin utters a word, then that is her word. you can't use it again without a derogatory slight towards palin. shame on you msnbc. shame on you buchanan.

[zagyzebra]

You have captured the essence. Brilliant.

[peterg76]

Well, completely by-passing Congress and the Constitution, and using the Supreme Court to throw out the election that he lost, that actually is "outsider" on a certain level. Just not in a good way.

[siney]

well that says it all...bravo!

[darker]

BUSH was CREATED BY HYPE.

The tragedy of voting in America is that Republican strategists
MOBILIZED THE MINDLESS to vote for THE CORRUPT.

A huge victory for a greedy and vicious REPUBLICAN minority that wants unlimited and
permanent power to do whatever they please at any cost.

No more years for Corrupt REPUBLICAN LIARS.

[proreality]

Love it!