There are numerous irritating people in the news on a daily basis. People that have no particular expertise save self-promotion and aggressive PR firms behind them.The queen bee of these types has got to be Sarah Palin, a disturbing mix of beauty and fervently clung to ignorance with some ego, bravado and venality tossed in for good measure. She's excellent at whipping up a crowd into a frothy frenzy of parroted talking points that have no bearing in reality but answer already held beliefs by her adherents.
The response to justifiable criticisms against her proclaimations is that people hate her because she's strong. Of course this is total bullshit. People hate her because she's factually incorrect most of the time, adds nothing to the national debate stage and actually goes a long, long ways towards undermining any partisan legislation efforts with her divisive and, let's be honest, hate-based rhetoric.
As I wrote in a comment on a recent article on SFGate about her outrage at the Family Guy for poking fun at her, her outrage is uncannily selective. She demanded Rahn Emmanuel's resignation when he used the word "retarded" once, for which he's publicly apologized. Yet when Rush Limbaugh uses the same word more than 40 times on his show, he gets a free pass because he was using it as satire. Her rage is false, her beliefs are opinions, her presence on the national political scene is little more than a distraction from the real problems at hand.
And I think that's why people like Sarah Palin bother me so much. She's not trying to help put America back on track, she's out there hunting speaking fees, whipping up opposition to legislation our country desperately needs and spewing lies and propoganda regardless of how often she is proved to have no idea what she's talking about.
Another person on the national political landscape that does nothing but slow down or obfuscate real issues is Michelle Bachman of Minnesota. I seriously think this woman is a part time nutter at best and a full time loony at worst. She regularly makes up facts to support her chosen perspective (or the perspective chosend for her by the GOP "leadership") and her words do nothing but fan a fire of fucking fools (sorry about that). I'm sure both Bachmann and Palin think they are patriots. Or maybe they don't, maybe if they were to be honest they'd admit that they are out for nothing more than notoriety, speaking fees and to be the sand in the vaseline of the nation. Or, more likely, the sand in the lube of Democratic party.
Either way, they are hurtful towards America, they are divisive spirits without substance and their continued presence in national politics will do nothing to help get our nation back on track.
I know this blog post actually plays into their hands because they live for rancor directed at them, they feed off the anger they elicit in others and they love stirring up partisan fury based off their lies and intentional misrepresentations of reality. Which makes them dangerously close to traitors to the USA in my estimation. Lucky thing I'm not in charge, for them.