Armchair Politics: WikiLeaks, Sarah Palin, and Super Bowl XLV0

by Brett Warner

It’s not easy being the only smartass, largely uninformed Social Democrat in a family of complacent, church-going conservatives – but somebody’s got to do it. In the debut installment of my new SG column Armchair Politics, I’ll be taking a half-assed gander at the week’s political news with the un-researched perspective of an underpaid know-it-all college graduate with a twenty year-old car and $160 thousand dollars in student loan debt. Why does my opinion matter? Because it’s on the internet, duh.

Topic 1:

This weekend, my new favorite James Bond villain Julian Assange appeared on 60 Minutes, speaking with Steve Kroft about WikiLeaks, his arraignment, and the U.S. Justice Department’s throbbing boner for extraditing him on espionage charges.

Mr. Kroft equates the pro-whistle blowing activities of WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange with “screwing with the forces of nature,” while Assange rightfully asserts that the leaked cables, by and large, are more embarrassing to the U.S. State Department than anything. Over publicized folks like my gal pal Sarah Palin would love to see Assange prosecuted as a terrorist and an insurgent, but I think this lengthy 60 Minutes piece should demonstrate once and for all that Julian Assange is: a) Simply the bi-product of a growing resentment against the clear disconnect between the over-blown yet largely ineffective government and the underpaid/unemployed working poor majority in this country, and b.) the lead singer of Japan.

Hillary Clinton and the majority of the “oh shit, I never should have used my birthday as my government e-mail password” Republican Party are acting like the RIAA circa 2000, freaking the fuck out because technology has rendered their old business model obsolete. Napster didn’t kill music, and the United States is not going to crumble because our citizens are a little bit more informed, despite what the anti-elite, pro-misinformation GOP derelicts would have us believe.

Though he’s possibly a perverted, misogynist sex offender, Julian Assange is not a terrorist or a political criminal. We should be spending less time wasting tax dollars on inventing some new, back door way of throwing him into prison and start spending more time listening to David Sylvian records.

Topic 2:

Oh, Sarah Palin. Where can I even start? There’s not much you can say about everyone’s favorite ex-public servant that hasn’t already been firmly established. (Namely, she’s dumb and shoots her mouth more often than she shoots wild animals.) So I’ll say something about Wasilla’s favorite hockey mom that I feel needs to be properly addressed: she’s a bad role model.

The Huffington Post reported this week that during a speech to a bunch of hunters (a.k.a. the only people who take her seriously), Palin stated that a proposed “media boycott” of her would be “good, because there’s a lot of chaos in Cairo, and [she] can’t wait to not get blamed for it.” (I’ve got it from a good source that Palin knows Cairo is the capital of Egypt because her high school boyfriend took her to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at the drive-in.) Frankly, it boggles my mind that anyone would see a social revolution from such a delusional, self-centered perspective, but of course, this is the woman that quit her job in the midst of a recession so that she could go sell more copies of her book and star in her own reality show. Nice message to send to the financially suffering proletariat, Sarah.

I grew up playing hockey, so I’ve run into my share of hockey moms. From experience, I can tell you they’re good at two things: yelling vitriolic bullshit at the top of their lungs, and… well, no, I guess it’s just that one thing.

Topic 3:

I won’t be watching the Super Bowl this weekend. Why, you ask? Well, I have to work that night. But also I find it a bit offensive that many of our superb, admirable business corporations can come together once a year to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on commercials while our government is scrambling to figure out how to fish this country out of the quicksand pit of a deficit we’ve been writhing around in for the past decade. So Nike can spend half a million on a tennis shoe commercial, but won’t pay an American $8 an hour to glue the damn thing together?

Right now, the United States is in the second act of Marie Antoinette. That’s right, all the CEOs and Wall Street traders are gallivanting around, listening to Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” and chowing down on tiny pieces of cake. It’s disgusting that we can find millions and millions of dollars to dump into a fucking single game of football, but the unemployment rate in my state is still in the double digits. It won’t always be that way, though. If Tunisia and Egypt can find a way to organize themselves and demand social justice, then it’s only a matter of time before all the bankrupt, foreclosed, spat upon have-nots in this country stop yelling at their TV sets and start yelling at their elected officials.

There’s a solution to this country’s crippling debt and shattered economy: cut out all the garish, Roman Empire bullshit that we’ve convinced ourselves we need. No more pro-athlete salaries, $100 million dollar 3D movies, overflowing prisons, or out of control defense spending. Take all that money we’d save and give every American an apartment, a library card, and a newspaper subscription. Also, John Boehner has to work at Starbucks and buy his own damn health insurance. (It’s not a bad idea, except he’d probably start crying into my completely necessary Trenta Frappuccino.)