I’m not sure when American culture started to exist in quotation marks. But at this point the line between “real” and “farce” is so blurred as to no longer be meaningful. The Daily Show gets awards as best news show, but considers itself a comedy show about the news. Certain “news” shows surely ought to get best awards for best comedies.
The pop music one of my teenagers listens to is farce, I think. Like The Lonely Island’s “No Homo,” which suggests tongue and cheek that “when you want to compliment a friend, no homo, but you don’t want that friendship to end, no homo, to tell a dude just how you feel, no homo, just say no homo so he knows the deal.” The compliments for your friend include “I like the way your shoulders fill out that shirt” and “I kinda like your natural scent, no homo, and I kinda like the musical Rent no homo.”
This sort of tongue in cheek homoerotic homophobia is juxtaposed against the real homoerotic homophobia of rappers like Lil’ Wayne who sings about “money coming out your ass, no homo” or “I love my niggas no homo” and I guess he’s being serious. In the same way that Riskay is being serious when she sings “Why you comin’ home at 5 a.m. Something’s going on. Can I smell yo [fill-in-the-blank or click on the link]?”
I suppose if we can’t figure out what is farce and what is not in pop culture, the world probably won’t end. But at this point I can no longer figure out whether the GOP is serious or not. And the GOP’s leadership’s willingness to play the fools to ignite the “base” is Riskay business indeed.
Let’s take a close look at their “serious” candidates. Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry. We have a homophobic religious zealot, and another, and then we have a Mormon.
Bachmann’s intense religiosity is well-established, but a recent article in The New Yorker by Ryan Lizza says it best.
Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared
Those beliefs include the idea that homosexuality can be cured, that evolution is just a theory that has never been proven, and a belief that the Bible is the literal truth.
Then we have Rick Perry. God knows the man looks like Ronald Reagan, sounds like Dubbya, and has really presidential hair. But he is also, apparently, the Chosen One. At least for the pastors who are part of the New Apostolic Reformation, an extreme Christian Taliban type group that believes
Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an ‘army of God’ to commandeer civilian government.
Which leaves us with Mitt Romney, the reasonable candidate because he’s a Mormon, a religion so out of the mainstream that even other GOP candidates, like Herman Cain, insist that Romney could not win a general election. But the truth is that Romney’s Mormon belief’s—despite making him deny full rights to gays too—are far less troublesome to a lot of Americans who believe he is the candidate focused on the economy, not the Bible or the Book of Mormon. Indeed, many American voters might be willing to ignore the tens of millions of dollars Romney has given to the Church of Latter Day Saints and their many (often anti-gay) causes in exchange for a candidate who doesn’t believe things like “And on the third day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle. So that Man could fight the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals.”
And when American politics reach this level of farce, it is seriously risky.
Image from Flicker user Fibonnaci Blue
