You know, I tried to give Mike Huckabee a chance. I’ve found most progressives don’t want to be haters, really. Why spend all that time focusing on the negative, dude? It’s all good.
Until Friday night’s Assasination Joke.
If by chance you haven’t heard, former Arkansas governor (and failed Repub. prez candidate) Mike Huckabee screwed up pretty good at the NRA Convention in Louisville a few days ago (I love it when that happens.) In the middle of what I assume was another boring, over-paid speech of sanctimonous, self-serving crap, a chair or something fell backstage, making a racket. Rather than being understated and keeping his mouth shut (something that boy just wasn’t born to do) he had to go and get all free-form. He looked back over his shoulder then turned back to the crowd:
”That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair getting ready for his speech. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
Dead, queasy silence. Even from the fucking NRA. An assasination joke? Here? Are you kidding? Be cool, bro.
I saw the report last Friday night on MSNBC – who for some bad reason, has hired him as an commentator, and was interested when I saw he was scheduled as a a panelist on NBC’s Meet The Press this past Sunday. Would they boot him? Nope. I could barely stop myself from throwing something at the TV. Tim Russert, shame on you! How long did you carry on the group conversation before you mentioned the Assasination Joke? Six minutes? An eternity? It should have been dealt with out of the gate, right? But that was only topped (lowered?) by Huckabee’s pouting, self-possesed “explanation”.
It inspired the same feeling of headache and nausea in me that his concession speech at the end of the campaign did a few months ago. He finds a way of tapping my inner-Hunter Thompson. Like I say, I didn’t really want to hate him. He made me. He seemed nice enough on early Daily Show and Colbert Report appearances. I liked the fact that he dropped all that weight, that was a good idea. I must admit, though, I had to turn away anytime I saw clips of him over-playing the dorky six-string bass w/ his 60’s cover band. The night he bowed out of the race he was so smarmy and full of the icky pleasure of stroking himself in front of a mass audience during that I regret to say I grew to somewhat loathe him. Then the Assasination Joke.
His “explanation” (not really an apology), was that it was merely a gaffe, a dumb thing to say. That he would never want to “create an endangerment moment for any candidate – I don’t care who it is.” He pointed a finger at other Republican mega-gaffes (the popular “he did it too” defense), including bringing up McCain’s “Bomb, Bomb Iran” Greatest Hit, saying he personally “thought it was funny, but alot of people didn’t.” (Bet they loved that in McCain-land. What an idiot. Oh man, I’m ready for the general election.)
Huckabee truly is a senseless idiot, apparently. He got one thing right, though – it was dumb. Dumb like Calling-Out-The-Wrong-Name-In-Bed dumb.He jokingly said out loud (Dr. Freud, line one) the ugly subtext of this soon-to-be-campaign, the bitter historical reality of the last 50 years of American politics. For some reason, dynamic, progressive leaders often don’t make it out of their 40’s. For some reason, alot of them get gunned down. We all know the drill. John Kennedy. Malcomb X. Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon. All fell off their chairs because somebody pointed a gun at them.
Maybe it’s just the fact that there are more right-wing wackos with guns than there are left-wing wackos with guns. (Huckabee – and that gun-loving NRA crowd know a thing or two about that.) But maybe it’s something more than that, something more than just dumb chance, something more sinister. Who knows?
What we do know is that it’s a real pattern of events. And it’s nothing to make a joke about.
Mike Huckabee, the born-again Assasination jokester. Someone should take that dorky-ass six-string bass away from him if he ever plays another Beatles song.
2 Comments
May 24, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I just think Mike Huckabee is ham-handed.
He is ham-handed in the way he over slaps that bass; turning mojo into mooojo.
I think he is ham-handed in his cornspun down home Grand Ole Opry sense of humor.
And he is ham-handed in his self-serving, sanctimonious peity and reformed over-eater intolerance of others. No harsher critic than a reformed junkie — no matter the junk, be it: food, booze, sex or politics.
Let’s just hope this jokester goes back to the boonies where he belongs, and clears the stage for the next show.
July 8, 2008 at 2:02 am
David Rheins blogs at:
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