As IF Times

link Randy Newman writes new satirical, political song – Yahoo! News.

It’s difficult to refute an argument about a topic if the rebuttals have no reference to basic logic.  Liberals love to demonstrate how enlightened they are by taking the sides of issues that have little logical foundation.  If one reads the argument of the artiste Randy Newman, one will get that he is trying to prove how enlightened and non racist he is.  Yet the thrust of his argument is that the President should be embraced BECAUSE he is black, not for any particular aspect of ability.   What if that same logic were  applied to his music business?  Why don’t we all buy music that’s performed by black artists regardless of their quality?  Hey wait a minute….

In our modern American Idol culture, popularity is the same thing as being legitimate.  If there weren’t sane people in the world, (a shrinking contingent to be sure ), George Clooney or Brad Pitt would be elected to lead the country.  It makes very little difference to most that neither one of those talented individuals have any genuine grounding in economics or geopolitics.  Oh sure, they may look good on TV and probably even smell nice.  However , it should not shock most people that the opinions of folks like those are considerably less illuminating than your average first year economics student. In an increasingly dumbed down society in which David Letterman is considered a source of real information, people farm out their critical thinking and merely adopt what they hear in the pop media and from pop artists as fact.  As if people who live in fantasy can give advice on reality.  An artiste like Newman may think it’s logical to support someone solely because of their ‘minority’ status, but it’s the very racism he’s trying to parody.

If we are going to appoint people solely because of their membership in a favored constituency, why don’t we elect more female leaders? They do represent more than half of the population and it would only be appropriate in an enlightened, modern society.  I recommend Kim Kardashian.  She appears to be popular.  Some may perhaps argue that a Hilary Clinton would be eligible; they had that chance.  But as we recall, the DNC thought that it was more important to install someone with no real life experience but who happened to be a person of color, than it was to embrace someone with a lifetime of political experience.  Any racism or sexism there is incidental.  Now if Hilary looked less like Hilary and more like Kim, who knows?

Like most people, when I get my car fixed, I want the guy who knows what he’s doing, not the grad student who has University credits for studying engine theory or because he belonged to a favored minority.    I’d bet  that even the socially sensitive Randy Newman doesn’t specifically ask for the black mechanic, nor would he write satirical songs about it.  We keep hearing that racism is the great issue of our society.  For people like Newman at least, it must be,  they find it everywhere.  Sort of like lawyers and lawsuits.  Americans have the largest numbers of lawyers per capita in the world.   Coincidently, they are the most litigious nation as well….lawbreakers are everywhere.  As the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

link 630 WMAL: Stimulating Talk – Breaking News.

To say that logic has been stretched by the media in reporting on recent events is like saying a cow has nipples.  In the aftermath of the Arizona shooting, conservatives, specifically Sarah Palin, were linked to the shooter through some gossamer thread of logic despite having no evidence of this at the time or since.  Logic and Reason 101 are not required courses for a journalism degree.  Now, Michelle Obama is being linked to increases in pedestrian fatalities because of her widely advertised “get out and move” campaign.

Reasonable people might find both accusations presposterous in their claims as both are undoubtedly rooted in partisan sentiments.  Certainly in the case of Palin, but doubly so in the case of Mrs. Obama.   The author of the article is may be a bit delusional if they think that a prodding from the wife of the president would encourage people to get out and walk.  However, it is refreshing that someone of influence can motivate the slack jawed masses to action.

Notwithstanding the fitness and green propaganda overwhelming people on a daily basis, in reality, people would drive to the kitchen from their bedrooms if they could.  The likely culprits for the increase in pedestrian strikes are more likely attributable to:

1. Poverty.  After years of declining real estate prices, high  unemployment and upticking gasoline prices, people can’t afford to drive cars.

2. Complacency.  Because of the culture of entitlement, people are not afraid of being harmed by cars, instead they assume that cars wouldn’t dare strike them because of their rights as pedestrians

3. Darwinism.  Related to the above, people don’t know any better than to step out into traffic without regard to tons of metal, glass and rubber bearing down upon them at any given time.

4. Distraction.  People are increasingly absorbed in texting and phoning so that they become oblivious to their surroundings.  A recent you tube video shows a woman walking in a mall, so absorbed in her texting that she headed straight towards and fell into a reflecting pond in her path.  No doubt she will sue for her own carelessness.

Of course, the real answer is probably all the above.  Apart from reason number 1 listed above, all of the other explanations are rooted in modern cultural conditioning.  People have offloaded responsibility for their own actions onto the ever crowded lap of “society”.  Somebody else is always to blame and more importantly may be a source of reparations.  This being the case, the federal government may now be found responsible for the uptick in pedestrian deaths and it’s only a matter of time before a class action suit is filed on their behalf against the federal government.  In legal parlance, they “knew or should have known” that exposing people by walking would contribute to injury or death.  If found culpable, the government, which means the public, will pay out compensation to all those injured.  That’ll be good for the deficit.  More likely, a new tax will be imposed on drivers to pay into the compensation pool.  Some genius will invent pedestrian insurance. 

The worst part will be new propaganda programs instructing people how to be cross streets.  We’ll have the likes of George Clooney and Bono doing Public Service Announcements exhorting people to cross only on green lights as well as urge them to go inside if raining.   It may be determined that being a pedestrian is too dangerous in the presence of cars and we may see cities banning cars all together in favour of pedestrians to ensure a safe environment for them.  Good luck getting to the theater on time. 

That Michelle Obama, like Sarah Palin, such enemies of the state.