In the nether locales of the nation, where necks are red and politics is expressed in drawled simplicities, they seem to have a bit of an ideological dilemma these days. It can’t be easy when you hate the government and love corporations and a corporation is screwing up your environment and economy big time and you have to call on the big, bad Federal government to come to your rescue. And to top it off, the Federal government is headed by the type of guy you used to make ride in the back of the bus, the guy who went to elite Ivy League schools and who you definitely did not vote for, and you don’t know whether to tell him to stay the hell out, or pay more attention to your dilemma.
My, oh, my, crawfish pie (or something like that). This is a problem for those folks who just love to hate that big, ole, bad government that wants to take their guns away and let those danged immigrants into the country, and make them pay taxes for public services. ‘Fore y’all know it, there won’t be any God-fearin’ white folk left to get their necks all red. Danged if it ain’t a problem when Dick Cheney’s energy friends like BP and Haliburton are out in our gulf makin’ things all greasy-like. We love ‘em for the taxes they pay and puttin’ gasoline in our pick-ups, but our fried crab cakes are starting t’ taste like tar balls. [Quick, stop me before I do my Bobby Jindal impression.]
Mind you, RNR is a part of the country that has been clogging arteries with deep-fried everything for years, but can’t seem to come up with something clog up the outflow from a pipe less that a foot in diameter. How about some deep-fried chicken or “chicken-fried steak,” or maybe some of those chitlins or those fried pig skin chips. How about a Chitlin Top Kill? OK, so a few dolphins or pelicans might end up dying of stroke, but nuthin’ comes without a price.
Sure, I’m kicking those Red Neck Rivierians when they are down in the sludge, or have slipped on a tar ball and landed on their fannies. Well, they have been a political pain in the national fanny since well beyond forgetting, and while Christian charity (no, not the kind that builds mansions for prayboys) requires a bit of concern for the plight of southern brethren,* I find it hard to summon, given the chorus of Teabag anti-government carping from those latitudes still echoing off the walls from the health care debate. Never mind that all the states comprising the RNR consistently receive more in Federal services than they pay to the “big gov” in what taxes they grudgingly pay, and probably wouldn’t survive without the huge handouts in DOD largesse.
Taking a page from their likewise (though not “fellow”) hypocrites on Wall Street our southern confederates now seem to expect a governmental bailout of their petro blowout. They would be the first ones to say that we don’t need snoopy bureaucracies like the Minerals Management Service–ineffectual and bought off as it is—overseeing our petro-energy producing friends. They have been the ones for years—hell, since they lost the Civil War—carping about big government sending troops to enforce integration, to investigate their lynchings and murders, and sputtering their “states-rights” rhetoric that through the mouths of the Lester Madoxes, George Wallaces, and Strom Thurmonds, that is little more than smoke screen for Jim Crow.
The BP debacle is the sort of event in which everybody gets slimed. The wingnut slimers, from Limbaugh to the Fox Stooges, were immediately busy finding a way to spin the whole thing as something pelican-hugging environmentalists wished for, or the product North Korean torpedos(?), or that something the Obama administration is happy to watch from a more remote posture than Bush took with Katrina. This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” deal; so a good leader should recognize that and make the best of it.
So there is the president, who just seems unable, despite those impressive Ivy League diplomas, to get it. Slow on the uptake and surprisingly ineffectual and unconvincing when he manages to get going (“Daddy, when are you going to plug that hole” is even more dorky than “Mr. Gorbachev, take that wall down!” Admittedly, Obama, presented with another potential presidential moment, seemed to treat the event like a two-alarm fire in Chicago. Not knowing whether to trust another huge corporate player he only belatedly (as he did with the health insurance cartel and the Wall Street boys) seemed to find puny language to insist that yes, we need big government to countervail the unfettered behavior of corporations that are ‘too big to fail’ and big enough to buy as much government influence as they would like. Mr. Obama is the leader of the “big, bad government,” but the more he is cowed by that rhetoric the more be emboldens the behavior of those who believe it. Also, Mr. Obama seems constitutionally (if not ideologically) incapable of rising to the Rooseveltian moments that circumstances have presented him and the anti-government Teabaggers, Libertarians and greasy Red Neck Rivierians love to shove in his face. It is time to stop catering to these red necked hypocrites because they had their slaves taken away from them. If ever he needed to summon his inner TR and FDR . . .
Meanwhile the RNR is not only getting the sort of big government they asked for but the corporate behavior they deserve for fighting to keep government from doing its job.
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© 2010, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 6.10.2010)
*Something that continues to amaze me is the number of former college classmates and friends I have who have decamped from the North East to the ecological and social swamp of Florida to live and/or vacation. How much of that phenomenon I can attach to the breakdown of their snow blowers or to what was always an abiding ideological conservatism (or both) continues to fuel speculation. A state without a decent university or political representative beyond Alan Grayson, but has plenty of humidity, hurricanes, bugs and bigots, seems a poor trade for long New York winters. If you can’t move from the upper right-hand corner to the lower left-hand corner, better to hold out for global warming.