… some part of the horse, anyway. Reporting from the salt-of-the-earth diner-demographic in Iowa, Mr. Pierce at Esquire elicits a brilliant analogy:
[My emphasis] This is not quite the “Look! a jackalope!” trope so beloved of internet trolls and Media Village courtiers, which is just intended to distract. Twitching, in the veterinary sense, allows a skillful 200-pound biped to compel obedience from a 1,200-pound quadruped — just as the tiny minority in charge of the Republican party has compelled the GOP rump to vote against its own best interests for the past forty years, and counting.POLK CITY, Iowa — So Dennis Wendle and Don Boone were hanging out together at home down around Liberty, Missouri (no kidding), and they decided that they were tired of living in a state that counted for so very little in the presidential nominating process, especially when compared to The Crucial Iowa Caucuses. So they packed themselves up for the drive north and, yesterday, they found themselves at a table in the Riesling Sun Cafe in downtown Polk City, which was jumping for nine in the morning, and waiting for the imminent arrival of Rick Santorum, whose campaign was said to be jumping as well, perhaps even as high as second place in TCIC. Dennis and Don were pretty much trapped over their breakfast, what with the fact that patrons of the Riesling Sun were outnumbered about 50-1 by journalists, camerapeople, and TV news haircuts from many lands. (Frank Luntz was haunting the ice-cream counter, possibly attempting to lie pistachio into thinking itself to be chocolate.) Don spoke, in succession, to Canadian TV, Japanese TV, German TV, and a local station from Boston.
__
“Hey,” Dennis said to me, showing some admirable entrepreneurial drive. “For fifty bucks, you can stand on my chair.”
__
Dennis is a retired TWA mechanic, and Don worked for Kansas City Power and Light for over 20 years, and also was an official in an IBEW local. They are shopping around for someone to get behind during this election year. They are not optimistic. “It’s big money and it’s big business, and it doesn’t reflect the views of working-class people like us,” Dennis said. “Corporations are not people. See what I mean? The people’s wishes. I don’t even follow Santorum, but I’ll bet, here’s what we’re gonna talk about. We’re gonna talk about the moral issues. We’re gonna talk about abortion. We’re gonna talk about all those things that are pretty much settled.
__
“There’s a trick in the horse industry that we learned before we had sedatives that, if you grab a horse by the lip, and squeeze it, he forgets about anything else. It’s called ‘twitching.’ That’s what they do to us. They twitch us with all that other stuff and pass over the important issues. Not gonna talk about jobs, either, because they’re not here, and they know where they went, but they’re not gonna do anything to bring them back.”…
(And speaking of “twitching demagogues”, Brett Smiley at NYMag‘s Daily Intel reports that Rupert Murdoch has “Sort of Endorsed” Santorum… via Twitter.)
taylormattd
Maybe you can get it to scroll off the front page faster if you put up another nasty post about ABL. But congrats, you must be so happy!
Villago Delenda Est
The last line of that Pierce piece is pure comedy gold.
Go read the whole thing.
MikeJ
As already demonstrated in this very thread.
dead existentialist
Anne needs to work on paraphrasing. That complaint lodged, I will thank her for pointing me to Chuckles and his blog. Can’t get enough of the guy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Dennis ex-union mechanic, who gets is pension threw the US government (no TWA and all that), along with a public utility worker, doubtlessly hates socialism. What a pair of idiots and classic modern conservatives.
Cheryl from Maryland
I think Denis should run for office in Liberty, MO. That man has the soundbite down.
Lojasmo
DRONES!
Auldblackjack
Come’on finish it. The procedure is used on the mare when breeding race horses so she won’t fight a stallion mounting her (after she’s been kept under artificial lights for days to bring her into heat).
What the prophet Carlin said, about the big red, white and blue dick being jammed up our collective asses.
Mino
Humm, it seems that liberals have their set of twitches, too, no?
debit
@Auldblackjack: It’s also used as a back up control measure on sedated stallions when gelding them. So what’s your point?
debit
Seriously? Editing a comment puts it in moderation?
amk
poor, poor politico haz a butthurt over the rethug field.
Samara Morgan
@Auldblackjack: oh, its used all the time.
we usta twitch our ponies to pull porcupine quills out of the their heels after they kicked one of the buggers. and we use hormonal therapy now to bring mares into estrus so theres no need for lights or twitching. plus jockey club is the only place they demand live cover anymore.
its a great analogy, AL.
A horse with a twitch on its lip gets all calm and sleepy and docile.
Its an amazing autonomous nervous system response.
Samara Morgan
/sigh
moderation.
i have no clue.
Mino
@debit: A twitch can be used on any horse of any age to enable treatment. It’s a safety precaution with a large animal. Cattle can be semi-paralysed by manipulation of the tail.
Davis X. Machina
They’re not automatically voting against their own best interest, they’re voting against their own economic interest. People are motivated by a complex bundle of things, and the genius of the GOP has been to stuff that bundle, and then re-prioritize its contents.
amk
Iran jails former President Rafsanjani’s daughter.
PeakVT
@amk: Shorter Politiho: just image how great the Republicans would be if all of their candidates didn’t suck so bad.
Gag.
amk
BP wants Halliburton to pay for all costs and damages of Gulf of Mexico fuckup.
popcorn time.
Samara Morgan
@amk: the Tyrant jailed Mousavis kids and whacked one of his sons.
you seem to feel this makes Iran “look bad”. In truth, the Green Wave is a dispute between two different views of Islam, not between Islam and western secularism.
its not our bidness, dig?
amk
@Samara Morgan: It’s a one line post. You can read whatever you want to in to it, dear.
superdestroyer
If “the GOP rump” has voting against its own best interests for the past forty years,” then what would be in the best interest of the “GOP Rup” that would still be different than the current Democratic Party platform?
Or still this yet another post cheering the coming one party state?
Schlemizel
@superdestroyer:
Perhaps if your post was written in English it would be possible to respond.
Linda Featheringill
@Samara Morgan: #13
Thanks for the explanation. I was raised in the country but we didn’t have horses. I learned something today. :-)
Don and Dennis sound like intelligent human beings. I respect the effort they made to inspect the candidates at close range. I don’t know who they’ll wind up supporting but it would be interesting to get some followup later in the game.
Samara Morgan
@Linda Featheringill: most real countryfolk are.
its the burbclaves and the megachurches that are the problem.
>:(
SRW1
That is so cute on at least three different fronts that it’s pure genius.
xulon
Something which I consider more problematic but has not gotten any repeats on the sites I go to is that Murdoch also tweeted “England sure has a lot of holidays for a broke country”. Serfdom here we come.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Go read the article. You obviously have drawn a conclusion based only on the excerpt.
That conclusion is false.
Gex
How did they accidentally arrive at an accurate analogy? Because they are lining up to find a Republican candidate to get behind. I’m going with they accidentally nailed this without understanding what they were saying.
Or how about this? If the party you are voting for is constantly twitching you, maybe you should question why they don’t want to tell you their actual economic policies.
People who are interested and should know better still can’t figure this shit out. We’re fucking doomed. Tribalism trumps all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gex:
Gex…read the entire article.
The protagonists are on your side. Really. I’m pretty sure they went to Iowa to slum. Boy, did they score, with Santorum in the house!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Villago Delenda Est:
Unless these guys are secret Dems, like Union guys should be, rubbing it into what a bunch a clowns those candidates, why they shopping around GOP for anything?
Speaking as the son of a retired jet mechanic from a rust belt manufacturing town I have meet plenty of in the union idiots who repeatably cut their own throats by voting Republican for stupid ass shit like abortion. How do you think Santurm got elected Senator of Pennsylvania?
They go to the union hall, listen to the stewards go on about how the GOP wants to butt fuck them, but then they go to church were the pastor tells them the baby Jesus weeps over aborted babies and likes it when working class families are butt fucked and vote Republican. And then the next day at work the other guys are flipping them the bird and they whine about how mean liberals are.