Immoral Kerry voters unphased by 9-11

Note to journalists. Stop playing the the 9-11 and “moral voters” cards. Those are old hands. To switch metaphors, you have strip-mined those clichés more than a quarry in McHenry County.

At Christmas time I read a story where the writer claimed the rise in the sale of Chia Pets was do to a post-9-11 baby boomer nostalgia for a simpler time.

How asinine is that? I thought people by them for the irony, as a joke. Not, “honey, I had a flashback to 2001 and I long for the days when I smoked a lot of pot and grew Chia Pets while listening to Pink Floyd.” Actually, I’m guessing most people who actually liked Chia Pets were Carpenters fans.

Last weekend I read a story about an an art exhibit at the MCA Chicago, Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye. The Chicago Sun-Times writer claimed that although the presentation “makes no special effort to emphasize the effect of terrorism-related fears on international tourism, the memory of 9/11 casts a subtle but undeniable shadow over the exhibit.”

Maybe they should get better lighting.

Come on. To those of us without an understanding of physics, flying has always seemed more an act of faith, that science at work. And hijacking has been around a lot longer than 2001.

What I want to know is, when are the tsunami clichés gonna start? Couldn’t tourists and artists/tourists just as easily worry about impending natural disasters?

John Irving probably isn’t going to win a Pulitzer Prize, but back in the late 1970s he wrote on the them of being safe in an unsafe world.

Up-and-coming on the exasperating topic for hackneyed writers to explore is the “moral values” angle.

Here’s an AP guy’s take on Homer Simpson’s cartoon neighbor, Ned Flanders...”the values he embodies in exaggerated form now monopolize the political scene. In fact, one might say that Homer is Ned’s next-door neighbor, not the other way around, so clearly does Ned bask in the mainstream.”

(It’s OK to bug your eyes out and go, “whaaah?” like you’re animated too, upon reading the above.)

What bullshit.

Ned is no more or less mainstream after Bush’s reelection than he was before it. The right is just better in claiming W’s victory was primarily because of him.

How about the rich guy vote? (Or the vote of those voted for the more “likable” candidate? Or people who don’t like change?) Where are their pundit champions? Then again, cartoons often have more depth and nuance than political gab fest folks.

It’s interesting to watch how these things become part of the accepted way of thinking (and I use the term loosely).

This allows one side to claim a term - moral - all for itself. It becomes code for a narrow set of issues (abortion, sexuality, media content) at the exclusion of others (war, economic injustice, free speech).

And it allows newspapers to fill space otherwise devoted to the marital woes of Brad and Jen (poor guy - I mean, I saw the ad, and boy the lengths he has to go to to get a beer and call his new girlfriend) and Donald Trump’s exciting life as the planet’s biggest asshole.

Never mind the complexity, when we can broadly paint red and blue Americas, when in truth it’s a blend, not only in communities, but within each person: the Ned Flanders-type in my office voted for Kerry

Complexity means you have to shut up and listen, and do boring things like back up what you say with substance, not trade barbs and insults.