Do people forward you as much political “humor” as they send to me? Since I started publishing this site, I get even more of it.
Just this week, different people sent me the two graphics here. One person sent a batch of anti-Republican stickers asking if I could use them. And then I got a batch of anti-Democratic graphics from another friend, with a note saying, “I didn’t know if you could use any of these graphics on your website or not. Very good bumper stickers.”
I appreciate my friends’ good intentions. I really do. (In fact, a few of you send me things that do turn into article ideas. You know who you are. Thanks.) But politics is already vacuous enough without dumbing it down even further. This isn’t what I want to be about. I don’t want to be “room noise” or “elevator music,” to steal a couple of phrases from an obscure old song.
Simplistic sloganeering such as what you see here doesn’t help anyone. Honestly, I don’t even find it funny. I will gladly take something I disagree with and write about why I think someone is wrong. I realize that some people don’t appreciate that — as was discussed in the comments of that article — but it’s a balance I try to strike between ideas, on the one hand, and attracting new readers, on the other. But most of what I see offered as political discourse today strikes me as the equivalent of children on a playground shouting insults at one another.
Bernanke: Recovery ‘faltering,’ so let’s do more of what hasn’t worked
Can a free society tolerate intrusions into details of ‘The Lives of Others’?
Can I talk myself into not wanting great things I fear I’ll never have?
If you want permission to skip that Super Bowl party, here it is
In ’98, Ron Paul warned U.S. policy was leading to terrorist attacks
Out of touch: Most politicians, media don’t understand ‘the real world’
In winner-take-all systems, swing voters matter only at election time
What does a man confess about himself when he wants a ‘slut’?