Gaslight

Remember the old Charles Boyer-Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight? In it, a famous opera singer is murdered. Her niece is then seduced by the murderer, who constantly tricks her and lies to her in order to prove to her that she is crazy, so that he can institutionalize her and get the jewels he missed the first time. Gosh, what does this remind me of -- oh, yeah! John McCain, Bill O'Reilly, and the Republicans! Same motive--grand theft, same strategy--asserting with a straight face that what we all know to be true is complete wrong -- we must be crazy to think that!

When O'Reilly was challenged on calling the Spears parents "pinheads", but not the Palin parents, those gaslights kept flickering, but he denied saying it, even though it's on tape! Then there's McCain. Don't we know he's been in Washington for a generation? Don't we know he's voted with Bush 90 percent of the time? It's all on tape! Its fully attested and in the public record. But don't look at the flickering gaslights, dear. And that brooch in your purse? Don't you realize you put it there? Darling, you must be crazy!

So, the Republicans have gone beyond lying. Bush and Cheney have been great liars, really, the best. Rove has made a career, and even a philosophy of lying about everything. But there is a special cold villainy to the way they have taken it to the next level now. "Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts." Rather than repent, they plan ever more of the same. Knowing that we know what they know, they now tell us we're crazy, that black is white and cats are dogs and John McCain is a maverick and Sarah Palin is a tax cutter (hear the one about Sarah P. leaving the town of Wasilla with 19 million dollars in long term debt? You did? No, you didn't, darling. You must be imagining things)

Well, we are crazy if we let them get away with it. The whole world thinks so.