Figuring out how best to assess--alright, brutalize--the boy-wonder from down under, Bobby Jindal, I found my self simply shaking my head in bewilderment; much like the fictional cartoon character quoted above talking about his son Bobby (seen above).
As for Jindal, the odd mix of brown face and good 'ol boy voice, smothered in the down home temperament of George W., made for the uneasy digestion of my dinner, to say the least.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Jindal admits to changing his name--no surprise there--to Bobby because of another, albeit corporal, character from the TV show, The Brady Bunch. Any wonder whether or not Jindal would have been voted in sans Bobby? Me thinks not.
(Hm, makes you wonder if Barack should have changed his name? What would it have been? Tommy Obama? Kinda rolls of the tongue, no?)
Admittedly, I feel like I missed the boat on this guy--sorry folks. I had just recently decided how much I hate this guy--one of two new-brown-hopes for the Republican Party--when he goes and self-destructs before I had a clean shot at him. I mean, jeez, what's the point now? It's not as fun to kick a person when they're down. Well, not as fun. So, lets, shall we?
If you've watched any news in the last week, you'd be aware of the slow-speaking, seemingly, perpetually sweaty-palmed, pre-adolescent voiced governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. Much like his fellow douche-bag from the north, who came from relative anonymity to "revitalize" the GOP in the presidential election, his bark turned out to be equally as flaccid as his bite. And like Sarah Palin before him, it didn't take long for the loud, proud swaggering of this good 'ol fashioned American to fizzle into the same old individualist, government-hating conservatism.
And though the guy seems like he might be a few IQ points higher than his female comrade (and Bush Jr. as well), he still speaks out of the same half-smirk, and with the same condescending, pedantic-while-still-trying-to-be-friends tone, rife with snarky jingoism, of his predecessor. Like: I don't really blame for listening to some guy named Hussein and wanting to believe him because you're sooo stupid; but now I'm going to tell you why he's full of shit and why I'm right.
It's to be expected that some Republican would have to rebut anything and everything that the President (that's still so cool to write) said, even if the suggestion was that the sky is blue and the grass is green. "The man must be color blind!" no doubt would be barked from the ill-fitted suit of some politico. And, indeed, that's just what happened.
Only, what usually comes next, didn't. Instead of the partisan seesaw of point/counterpoint about who was more effective or "won" spilling over into the media and blog-world, what's surprising is the evisceration, by even Fox News and the like, of his response to Obama's speech to Congress last week. He's been getting it at both ends, so to speak.
Of course, from a feckless media, focused on the drama of the political tennis match rather than content of these types of things, coverage was utterly devoid of any political analysis of Obama's speech or Jindal's rebuttal, other than the latter's image creation ala Regan-retread.
And here I was thinking there'd be no one to kick around for awhile.
But thankfully the GOP is always quick to proffer up some born-again, intelligent design-believing, anti-abortion/pro-death penalty (every life is sacred, huh?) moralist that appeals, more and more exclusively, to older white people of non-urban areas.
A slogan during an election run for Jindal was "Bubbas for Bobby." This ain't your (my) Jewish bubba, either. There's a 60 Minutes interview with Jindal and his wife in which they said they consider themselves non-Indian and tried to downplay their ethnicity. As well, he converted to Christianity from his family's Hindu background. (Wonder if the Bubbas would've accepted Jindal if his conversion was from Islam, which also is heavily represented in his parent's native India.)
But what my real ire is reserved for: the governor of Louisiana saying that a) the lesson from Katrina is that big government sucks (I can't even deal with how fucked this is in this post) and b) although he is philosophically opposed to President Obama's Stimulus plan (including the tax increase of less than 5% for only 5% of the country; really only done effectively by the expiring Bush II's tax cuts, bringing the rich back to Regan-era levels), he plans on taking almost all the money allotted to his state--all except additional unemployment benefits.
For the many thousands of newly out of work people, at no fault of their own, in his state, Jindal is unwilling to help them in this supposed economic crisis because that violates his other ideological relic from Economics 101. (Dick.) Namely, that unemployment benefits decrease the incentive to find new work, or so the theory goes. You know, much like the proverbial, Pavlovian dog. Only I don't feel that we're dogs. What we have to come to realize is that this is exactly what the neo-liberal economist thinks of human decision making.
It's as if Jindal, and others (but I'll get to them another time), went to the first class or read the first few chapters of a freshman Econ class, and then stopped (indeed, there's no lacking of these scratch-the-surface intellectuals on the left too; like only reading Marx's The Communist Manifesto and not Capital).
I have a decent perspective on this as I am currently taking a freshman Econ class, but, I've already gotten farther than that. And, although I can prove to you with graphs and curves and calculus (oh my!) why, in the perfect world of the free-market economy, the minimum-wage is actually bad for workers--that doesn't make it so in our not-so-perfect world.
Of course, to hear Jindal speak, it sounds as if he's hardly taking anything from the stimulus bill, you know, because it's sooo bad for the country. But the fact is, it will be more like + 97% what's offered to the state. Hypocritical dick.
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