Salon bouncy: Cruz rally

[dutch508]

My additions in red:

cali (108,663 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027588630

The special hell of a Ted Cruz rally: What it’s like to spend an evening with the GOP’s oiliest operator.

So, There is a boisterous Oath Keeper leaking alcohol from every pore sitting three seats away from me in a Nashua, New Hampshire, middle school auditorium hosting a Ted Cruz town hall. I’m wondering if it’s too late to change seats.

The guy is wearing a camouflage jacket that doesn’t quite hide the bulging middle-age belly straining at the faded Patriots T-shirt underneath. He’s carrying a sign that reads “Like a Cruz missile, Ted will destroy ISIS” on one side and “Cruzin West” on the other, a plea for the Texas senator to pick former Florida congressman Allen West as his vice-presidential candidate. He’s loudly telling everyone within earshot that we need to start a Cruz/West chant at some point and is met with approving responses from some of the people around me.

I decide not to move. If the Oath Keeper or anyone else spies my reporter’s notebook and asks what outlet I’m with, I’ll say World Net Daily and hope no one pulls out an iPhone to check. In case they do I haz the good rig and a pack of peanut butter in my boot. I am prepared.

It’s all part of the carnival atmosphere of a Ted Cruz event being held at Elm Street Middle School, an imposing Gothic building that, as I drove up in the dark amidst a driving rain, made me think of an insane asylum in a movie, a comparison that felt more than appropriate once I was inside. Old men in baseball caps bearing the names of military units, moms holding babies in one hand and Ted Cruz signs in the other. Three people by the stage waving flags (from left to right: American, Israeli, Gadsden). Two flat-screen TVs on either side of the stage are showing a campaign film of more cheering crowds, backed by patriotic music and conservative activist Brent Bozell talking about all the reasons he loves Ted Cruz. ****ing fascist racist ****s!

This is the New Hampshire I came to find. This is the polished and professional political rally of the true believers, ecstatic in their fervor and their belief in the rightness of their cause. It’s exhilarating and terrifying. As the late great Hunter S. Thompson might have said, this is the belly of the beast. HST wrote way better than you, missy.

Cruz is often described as “oily,” but that word doesn’t really do him justice. In fact, he’s so oleaginous he reminds one of the puddles covering the stained cement floor of a Jiffy Lube. It’s not just a physical characteristic – though there is that; the man has a sheen about him – but also one of affect. When he strides out to a rapturous greeting from the crowd and walks along the edge of the stage slapping hands with people in the front row, it feels so studied that I can picture college-age Ted Cruz practicing this move in his Princeton dorm room. Hispanics are oily.

<snip>
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/06/the_special_hell_of_a_ted_cruz_rally_what_its_like_to_spend_an_evening_with_the_gops_oiliest_operator/

No need to go and read the rest of the article.

oberliner (34,296 posts)
3. Can't we just focus on the issues?

This kind of article is pointless. All it does is play into negative stereotypes and personal attacks.

Ted Cruz is on the wrong side of every single issue we care about. That's what matters, not that he has a sheen or that patriotic music is played at his rallies.

I know it's a long campaign season and Salon needs to generate hits and content, but there has to be a better way.

If people (even religious and/or conservative ones) understand the policy implications of a Ted Cruz presidency then many of them might not support him. That's the light that journalists should be shining.

The problem with articles like this is that they feed into the notion that the left-wing media mocks people who are not like them.

The left wing media hates Hispanics.

cali (108,663 posts)
5. No. Because Presidential elections, in particular, are as much about our culture as anything else.

 

[Carl]

The one thing the left has to hide and lie about is the "culture" that it represents and enables.

It is the darkest,rotting underbelly of humanity there is.
Lazy,seething,jealous and greedy.

[SVPete]

oberliner (34,296 posts)
3. Can't we just focus on the issues?

This kind of article is pointless. All it does is play into negative stereotypes and personal attacks.

Ted Cruz is on the wrong side of every single issue we care about. That's what matters, not that he has a sheen or that patriotic music is played at his rallies.

I know it's a long campaign season and Salon needs to generate hits and content, but there has to be a better way.

If people (even religious and/or conservative ones) understand the policy implications of a Ted Cruz presidency then many of them might not support him. That's the light that journalists should be shining.

The problem with articles like this is that they feed into the notion that the left-wing media mocks people who are not like them.

The answer is simple. Answering Ted Cruz (and some other R candidates) requires understanding their policies and underlying facts: too hard; too risky. Name-calling and caricaturing - [url-http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LOLITS]LOLITS 2.0[/url], the MSM's caricature of the 1964 R convention - is much easier, and ax-grindingly fun.

".. articles like this ... feed into the notion that the left-wing media mocks people who are not like them." Notion? Hell! Mocking normal people has been a MSM, liberal, and "Progressive" staple for decades. Mocking their audience is one of the two or three major reasons MSM networks, magazines, and newspapers have declined so severely to past 3 or 4 decades. (The liberal-encouraged decline of reading skills and a liberal pop culture that discourages reading and learning being, IMO, the other two major reasons for the decline)

[CollectivismMustDie]

The guy is wearing a camouflage jacket that doesn’t quite hide the bulging middle-age belly straining at the faded Patriots T-shirt underneath.

I bet this (D)Ummie worships the round guy from Omaha though.

The one thing the left has to hide and lie about is the "culture" that it represents and enables.

It is the darkest,rotting underbelly of humanity there is.
Lazy,seething,jealous and greedy.

All that and envy too. (D)Ummies hates excellence. This is why so many of them hate America. They worship the lowest common denominator, mediocrity. Anyone and anything that strays from their safe pasture of mediocrity, gets put on the "burn the witch" list, unless they do penance in the form of public fearmongering about glow ball warming or racism or feminism or other (D)Ummie tenets. Short of that, this is how an individual is treated. Everyone here has seen it at the DUmp, whether its calling a Ben Carson an uncle tom, talking about how the successful don't pay their "fair share", or their hatred for America. If you exemplify excellence without doing penance, this is how you're treated:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m48xii7ndcg[/youtube]

They don't actually believe in bringing those who fall behind upward and forward to join the rest, they believe in bringing the rest down to a standard to meet those left behind. I can't think of a better way to represent it visually than this:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoP1E9J4jpg[/youtube]

There are so many facets to this, it could be discussed for days on end. I believe this is part of why they hate trump so much in spite of him having some obvious lefty beliefs. The message "lets make America great again" sounds way too much like promoting excellence, and after his statements on immigration, he can never do enough penance before the election.

CMD

[Karin]

Old men in baseball caps bearing the names of military units, moms holding babies in one hand and Ted Cruz signs in the other. Three people by the stage waving flags (from left to right: American, Israeli, Gadsden). Two flat-screen TVs on either side of the stage are showing a campaign film of more cheering crowds, backed by patriotic music and conservative activist Brent Bozell talking about all the reasons he loves Ted Cruz

There is nothing of the insane asylum in this description.  The feverswamp known as DU however...

DUmmies, an awful lot of people happen to cherish military units, babies, flags, and patriotic music.   

[txradioguy]

That Salon piece could have been written by one of many DUmmies and posted as a bouncy.  That was a horribly written article. 

[SVPete]

That Salon piece could have been written by one of many DUmmies and posted as a bouncy.  That was a horribly written article.

Salon, partisan authors, and quality writing just don't appear together in combination. Especially during the Silly Season.

[Big Dog]

That Salon piece could have been written by one of many DUmmies and posted as a bouncy.  That was a horribly written article.

Which of Skins' Island's misbegotten wretches escaped? The whole purpose of The Island is to keep them safely segregated from the real world.

[CollectivismMustDie]

Which of Skins' Island's misbegotten wretches escaped? The whole purpose of The Island is to keep them safely segregated from the real world.

Unfortunately, it is working out about as well as our southern border.



CMD

[Big Dog]

Unfortunately, it is working out about as well as our southern border.



CMD

I said we should have spent the money for sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads, but nooooooo!

[CollectivismMustDie]

I said we should have spent the money for sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads, but nooooooo!

 

I was thinking a well managed large population of Candirú fish would help too, but the funding never came through. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru


CMD

[Patriot Guard Rider]

Which of Skins' Island's misbegotten wretches escaped? The whole purpose of The Island is to keep them safely segregated from the real world.

I know a die-hard Dem. Nice guy but his politics are out there. When I asked him what his DU name was, he looked at me and said, "No way, those people are crazy".

[CollectivismMustDie]

I know a die-hard Dem. Nice guy but his politics are out there. When I asked him what his DU name was, he looked at me and said, "No way, those people are crazy".

 

Hi-5

CMD

[SVPete]

What CMD said!

[CollectivismMustDie]

Salon, partisan authors, and quality writing just don't appear together in combination. Especially during the Silly Season.

FOr (D)Ummies, the silly season starts January 1, and ends December 31.

The hilly season is an entirely different matter.


CMD

[SVPete]

FOr (D)Ummies, the silly season starts January 1, and ends December 31.

The hilly season is an entirely different matter.


CMD

I'm hoping that latter season is past. I'm hoping that the cumulative result of her supporting and defending the abuser/rapist and of her ineptitude as SecState keeps her out of the WH!