Tag Archives: Washington DC

Sarah Palin’s Magical Mystery Rogue Bus Tour Starts Rolling Today

Sarah Palin - Caribou Hunt

Image by smiteme via Flickr

You don’t need tickets but donations are requested, sought after and as welcome as a homemade caribou stew.  Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin began a bus tour today that will tour the eastern U.S. and other points unknown (the bus stops are evidently top secret until she is ready to spill the beans).  She calls it the “One Nation Tour” and her “people” say that the bus will tour historical sites that were key to the formation, survival and growth of the U.S.  I don’t quite know what all that exactly means but rest assured it is all very Palin patriotic. I call it the Magical Mystery Rogue Bus Tour because well, after all she is a self-proclaimed rogue and it seems a mystery to me that if she isn’t going to run for the Republican nomination then the bus tour must hold some other to-be-explained magic.

The bus is red, white and blue and has a bigger than life U.S. Constitution painted on it along with some of the lines of the Pledge of Allegiance. The back of the bus has the painted words “Join the Fundamental Restoration of America.” The bus is large and is quite the attention grabber but the bus route outside of “going up the east coast” is mired in mystery. Her website shows a map of a few stops with todays hot spot stop, Washington D.C.  After checking out her website where it noted Palin is embarking on a tour, I could only think what kind of tour? Comedy tour? Speaking Tour?  The fundamental restoration of America thing never crossed my mind. Silly me.  I figured she was testing the waters to be a Republican nominee for President and join the other dozen or so candidates. There are so many candidates and potential candidates now, it’s kind of like club Repub.

So today Palin showed up in Washington D.C. to take part in the “Rolling Thunder” motorcycle ride. It began at the Pentagon and ended at the Vietnam Memorial.  Clad in a leather jacket, she was on the back of a motorcycle driven by her daughter Willow.  Her husband Todd and daughter Bristol were on separate bikes.  Not all the bikers were pleased with the reporters and publicity Palin and her family were receiving.  I guess they felt the Palin’s were stealing their “thunder.” Participants are typically Vietnam Vets and their families.

I don’t know what Palin has up her sleeve or even in her bus but she has purchased a $1.7 million dollar house in Scottsdale Arizona. It could be a respite from the cold Alaskan winters or to keep an eye on Bristol who also has an Arizona home.  It could also be an easier spot geographically to throw her hat into the club Repub ring.  Either way–there goes the neighborhood.

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Are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert our “real” news media?

What does it say for journalism today when the best and most accurate news is delivered by comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? It says a lot, actually. It says that somebody over at Comedy Central does their homework and research. It says that even though their news “bits” are funnier than hell, their opinion based news is actually founded on FACT. Imagine that. Opinion based on fact and not “made-up stuff”.

It’s no wonder that a Time magazine poll last year named Stewart the most trusted man in news. He has literally replaced the deceased Walter Cronkite. And no, that is not a joke but most of our main stream media is. Both Stewart and Colbert (or their staffs) actually go digging for news. They call out our politicians on their absurdity and lies. In the old days they called this “investigative journalism”. Today it is called Comedy Central.

Thanks to the social news website of http://www.reddit.com  Stewart and Colbert will be holding dueling rallies at the Washington D.C. Mall Oct. 30. Stewart’s is called “Rally to Restore Sanity” and Colbert’s dubs his “March to Keep Fear Alive.” While they are obviously both parodies of Glenn Beck’s recent “Restoring Honor Rally” in the same location and on the date of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, (which many thought was awful timing) they joke that maybe 400 million people could show up.

Joseph Laughlin, who frequents the Reddit site started the ball rolling recently by putting up a message that said Colbert should hold a satirical rally in response to Becks’s rally. He started the campaign rolling and it took off. He and a handful of other Reddit commentors started sending messages across the country in e-mails, Facebook, Twitter and any other means they could find. They even raised $240,000 for one of Colbert’s favorite charities to entice him. It worked.

It will be more than “funny” to see how Fox, ABC,NBC,CBS,CNN,MSNBC et al, handle this rally. Will they “cover” it like they did Beck’s rally, acting like it was “real” news. Will they distort the number of people who show up in order to downplay the power of people and humor. Will they even understand that although it is satire, the crowd that does show up is among other things, thumbing their noses at the main stream media and its robotic and shallow reporting of what really is going on in America today?

Will there be a politician alive who will understand that this is an outlet for frustrated and unhappy voters to vent, mingle and maybe with a whole lot of humor, decide to vote them out of office? I guess we’ll all have to tune-in and see..

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