I had dinner with my parents the other night, and they’re staunch conservatives. All they watch is Fox “News,” and listen to Sean Hannity, etc. And my mom brought up the subject of politics, prefaced with “I don’t mean to make you mad, but…”
So then she’s like, how do you feel about Obama wasting all this money? And I’m like, what about Bush’s war in Iraq? A trillion dollars down the drain! And she actually thought that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. So I had to give her a little lesson on that, -most of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, in regard to the “Axis of evil” - Iran and North Korea had nuclear capabilities before we went to war with Iraq, the republicans voted against any and all bills supporting veteran's benefits, etc. And I knew there was TONS more I could have said, but I couldn’t remember at the time. I said, you have no credibility when it comes to wasteful spending. So then she admitted that her frustrations were with Obama AND Bush. And I said, well then that’s what you need to say. And then my dad chimes in about the bailout money to the banks. And I explained about the Phil Gramm deregulation bill which helped cause the economic mess we’re in,
and explained:
And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.
And my dad was like, just let the chips fall where they may. And I responded, well then you support a depression if necessary, and he’s like, yes I do. And again, I’m like, well then that what you need to say - Conflict resolved.
Then my mother gets into the tax protest tea parties. Claiming they were grass-roots organized. Again I had to correct her. And of course I’m grinning the whole time, and asked her, do you even know what tea bagging means. She didn’t, so I told her to look it up online, and she said, well just tell me what it means, so I did, and that pretty much ended the conversation. Fortunately there were no hard feelings and it was a productive conversation. But I knew my chit, she didn’t.
Anyway, Countdown with Keith Olbermann (David Schuster hosting), did a recap of the whole debacle - The sexual innuendo, Fox News denying they were promoting it, and a hysterical YouTube video making fun of the whole thing.
So in case you missed it, here it is:
MSNBC's Countdown (hosted by David Schuster), April 17, 2009
