Romney Shaking That Etch a Sketch Just As Hard As He Can, To No Avail

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Last week, conservatives of all stripes were handed a great big steaming pile of disappointment when the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") was constitutional. In particular, the Supremes upheld the "individual mandate," which requires most people to buy insurance or pay a penalty.

The reaction was pretty much what you'd expect from the unhinged right, for whom Obama Derangement Syndrome is the new normal. There were calls for the impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts. Someone briefly changed Roberts' Wikipedia page to brand him "Chief Traitor of the United States."

Former Michigan GOP spokesperson Matt Davis went even further: "[H]as the Republic all but ceased to exist?" he wrote on the Michigan Capitol blog. "If so, then is armed rebellion today justified?" When pressed for clarification, he refused to back down: "You can't have people walking with lattes and signs and think the object of your opposition is going to take you seriously. Armed rebellion is the end point of that physical confrontation."

Later, however, he did amend his remarks to say he'd "take out the part about armed rebellion." Whew. Good thing. Else someone might think the right wing was made up of, you know, radical traitors.

Some conservatives did paw through the wreckage of their hopes for a black eye for the president, trying to salvage something. They found it, or so they thought, in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion that, while the mandate could not be upheld as an exercise of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, it did fall within their power to levy and collect taxes, because of the penalty provision. They seized upon the idea of a "tax" and began waving it about with glee.

"The biggest tax increase in the history of the world!" trumpeted Rush Limbaugh. (Wrong, as usual. As noted by numerous sources, even if you accept it as a tax, it comes in 10th in U.S. history, behind Bush the Elder's 1990 tax increase and far behind that of Saint Ronnie Reagan in 1992.)

But calling the mandate a tax increase, while it handed the Republicans in Congress a new talking point, handed their presidential candidate a ticking time bomb. Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts, which he's on video touting as a model for the country, contained a nearly identical health insurance mandate. But Romney's insisting he didn't raise taxes in Massachusetts.

So, when campaign spokesman Eric Fehnstrom (who gave us the notorious "Etch A Sketch" quote) told NBC that Mitt "disagreed with the ruling of the court. He agreed with the dissent written by Justice Scalia, which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax," he really didn't have any choice.

Or did he? If you're Mitt Romney, you always have a choice, if you regard directly contradicting what you just said as a choice. Wednesday, Mitt raised that Etch A Sketch above his head and shook with all his might to try to wipe out his campaign's stated position of the day before.

"While I agreed with the dissent," Romney said, "that's taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it is a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There is no way around that."

Now, one could view this not as a contradiction, but as a nuanced statement that Romney still doesn't think it's a tax, but that it's legally one now, so we have to live with that. But that hands Romney another set of problems:

First, Republicans don't do nuance. Nuance is what they beat John Kerry to death with in 2004. The second problem is similar: The rubes, racists and rageaholics of the Republican base hate the president so much, they will completely disregard anything Romney says or does and pull the lever for him anyway.

Romney could kill a kitten with a hammer at the podium during a campaign stop and by nightfall, right-wing bloggers, Republican talk radio and Fox News would be flooded with pundits insisting the kitten had it coming, and it'd be an article of faith among the Rabid Right by the weekend.

But to independents and undecideds, saying, as Romney did in a CBS interview, "It wasn't a tax when I did it, but it is when it's in Obamacare," makes you look like a weasel. Romney is just that, of course, but this particular act of weaseltude may be the one he can't wiggle away from.

Well, He's No Bill Pullman, But He'll Do

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When you look at the polling data on November's presidential election, it's easy to be confused (if you're at all intellectually honest) or to find evidence that your chosen candidate is the clear front-runner (if you're not).

For instance, a Bloomberg poll taken between June 15 and June 18 shows President Obama up by a whopping 13 points. The Rasmussen tracking poll for the same period shows Mitt Romney up by 1. The Fox News poll shows a tie. Most others show Obama with a slight lead, often within the margin of error.

Anything that close is subject to change without notice - at which point, supporters of one candidate or the other will commence the usual tiresome premature victory lap.

There is one poll, however, conducted by the National Geographic TV channel, that gives the president a clear and commanding lead on one vital question - 65 percent of those responding to that poll believe that President Obama would do a better job of protecting the country from an alien invasion.

I'm not talking about the aliens from south of the border, the very thought of which turns so many people on the right into miserable, depressed creatures who can't even discuss the subject without devolving into a jeremiad about the Doom of American Civilization as it's buried under wave after wave of the Brown Hordes.

No, I'm talking about real aliens. You know, the little gray goomers with big heads and enormous black eyes

. Or the slimy buglike critters in their bio-suits from "Independence Day."

 Or... you get the idea.

The poll, conducted by Kelton Research for the NG channel, was part of a promotion of a new show called "Chasing UFOs." Despite the fact that the respondents overwhelmingly believe in Obama's ability to deal with an attack from the stars, 79 percent of them also believe that the government "has kept information about aliens and UFOs a secret from the public," according to a story in the online political blog The Hill.

And yet, only 36 percent of those same respondents believe UFOs actually exist, 17 percent are sure they don't, and 48 percent of them aren't sure.

As most polls do, this one raises as many questions as it answers. Chief among these questions is, "What in the world has happened to the National Geographic?" I mean, when I was growing up, the National Geographic was the serious, glossy magazine that brought the world to you, often in the form of maps and educational posters torn out and tacked up on your classroom bulletin board.

But now, the TV arm of this educational giant is bringing us stuff like "Chasing UFOs" and commissioning polls to ask people whether they thought The Hulk, Spider Man or Batman would do a better job against aliens. (Silly question. The Hulk, clearly. And 21 percent of those polled agreed with me. So there.)

It also makes you wonder, though: How can 79 percent of people believe the government is keeping the truth about aliens from us, while only 36 percent believe they exist? Do the other 43 percent believe the truth the government is keeping from us is that there are no aliens? But that doesn't make sense either, when you consider that the White House officially announced in December that there was "no evidence" of alien life, or that extraterrestrials have made any contact with humanity.

Maybe what we can take away from this poll is that 100 percent of those responding, like most poll respondents, weren't really thinking very seriously about the questions. Or that they were all idiots.

The NatGeoTV poll also fails to address another burning question, even more pressing than the one about aliens. I'm talking, of course, about the question of which presidential candidate would do the best job of protecting us from the Zombie Apocalypse.

In a world where a naked guy was shot and killed by the cops while trying to eat another man's face, for no reason anyone can determine, it's not an idle question.

If that incident, as some have said, is only the beginning, I'm putting my money on Obama. After all, he's already spent the last few years dealing with the cold-blooded and the brain-dead in Congress. And if that doesn't make up your mind, a good look at Mitt Romney's soulless eyes should do it.

The dude's only a few degrees of body temperature from turning into a Walker himself.

In Which I Am Dissed by the Washington Post

It seems my recent column on Bryce Harper and "Clown Question, bro" drew the attention of  Washington Post sports columnist Dan Steinberg: 

The awesomely named lawyer wrote a column on Bryce Harper for the Southern Pines (N.C.) Pilot. Filing his dispatch from outer space, Rhoades noted “the rise and fall of the catch phrase ‘That’s a clown question, bro,’ which apparently was coined, had its vogue, and was declared dead in the course of a week. And I seem to have missed the whole thing.

“It seems there’s a young player for baseball’s Washington Nationals named Bryce Harper.”

Indeed. It seems there is.

Mr. Steinberg was apparently amused and/or miffed by the fact that I felt the need to explain who Bryce Harper is. Sorry, Dan. As I've said before, politics is my baseball. (Actually, it's "politics is my football," but it's the same idea). 

But thanks for the shout out, Mr. Steinberg. Glad you like the name! 

JUSTICE is coming.

Spread the word.

No More Clown Questions, Bro (UPDATED)

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One of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories is R.A. Lafferty's "Slow Tuesday Night." The basic premise of the story is that humanity has removed a mental block that slowed down action and decision-making, and people now live at a freakishly accelerated clip.

"Transportation and manufacturing had then become practically instantaneous," Lafferty writes. "Things that had once taken months and years now took only minutes and hours. A person could have one or several pretty intricate careers within an eight-hour period." One character makes and loses four fortunes in the course of the night, "not the little fortunes that ordinary men acquire, but titanic things."

The story's a clever satire on how life seems to keep moving faster - and it was written in 1965. One wonders what Lafferty would make of the speed of life now. We haven't quite gotten to the insane pace of his fictional world yet, but sometimes things happen that make it seem like it's not that far off.

The most recent example is the rise and fall of the catch phrase "That's a clown question, bro," which apparently was coined, had its vogue, and was declared dead in the course of a week. And I seem to have missed the whole thing.

It seems there's a young player for baseball's Washington Nationals named Bryce Harper. Harper, after hitting a game-winning home run against the Toronto Blue Jays, was being interviewed in the locker room. A Canadian reporter stepped forward and asked, "Bryce, you know, in Canada you're of legal drinking age. A celebratory Canadian beer would seem to make sense after a hit like that. Favorite beer?"

Now, as noted above, Bryce is a young fellow. Nineteen, to be exact. And he's a Mormon to boot, so drinking beer, Canadian or otherwise, is not likely to be on his agenda. The team's PR man tried to step in, but Harper fielded the question (so to speak) with an aplomb far beyond his years. Giving the reporter a disgusted look, he delivered the smackdown: "I'm not going to answer that. That's a clown question, bro."



Of such humble beginnings, it seems, are Internet memes born. Within a day, "clown question, bro" became the top "trending topic" on Twitter. T-shirts appeared for sale with the catch phrase on them. A beer company in Denver - called, appropriately enough, the Denver Beer Company - announced that it was bringing out a Canadian-style lager called "Clown Question, Bro."
It's too bad, I guess, that Harper didn't have the presence of mind to immediately contact an intellectual property lawyer and have his phrase trademarked. Or perhaps not. *

Because a week later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was being quizzed by a reporter regarding President Obama's announcement that the administration would not be trying to deport the children of illegal immigrants who were of good moral character and didn't pose a threat to national security. The reporter asked if Reid intended to bring the defunct DREAM Act back to the Senate (where it had been strangled in its crib by Republican filibusters) to "put people on the record." Reid paused for a long while, then smiled and told the reporter, "That's a clown question, bro."

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At that point, blogger Dan Amira of New York Magazine declared the phrase dead after only seven days, "the victim of a brutal and obviously premeditated attack" by Reid - who was, Amira said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, under investigation for "meme-slaughter."

I guess if an old politician like Reid is saying something, it can't possibly be cool anymore. Kind of a shame, actually. "Clown question, bro" is the perfect dismissal for those questions that are just too stupid or slanted to be answered any other way. Like the now-standard "Isn't this (insert absolutely anything the president does or says from now till November) just being done for political gain?"

Maybe if Sarah Palin had answered Katie Couric's "What newspapers do you read?" with "That's a clown question, bro," she would have seemed less dimwitted. At least until the next question.

But who knows? Maybe the reports of its death are premature. Maybe the phrase will go on and have a long and happy life in our culture. I hope so. And I hope I can keep up with the next thing to come along.

*UPDATE: It seems I spoke too soon. 

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