Apologies for the sexism of the term “cunts”. Really, the British need to hop to using a more gender-neutral word for the concept. Americans have a leg up in this department with the word “assholes”, which doesn’t, unfortunately, fit in the meter of this song.
The fact that the McCain campaign has resorted to a level of pants-on-fire lying, both about himself and especially about his opponent, has left me in the sort of funk that can only be treated by escapism. I like Ezra’s analysis of how it’s gotten so bad, but honestly, I think his analysis explains more how low the media has gotten that they won’t call a lie a lie, proving how much they’ve sold out to the McCain campaign. That’s unbelievable amounts of cynicism in the mainstream media.
Am I more freaked out than when George Bush pants-on-fired lied to the public about Iraq, 9/11 and WMDs? Well, that was five years ago, so it’s hard to say. It sure felt different then. I remember feeling very Cassandra-like, because I was absolutely positive that the Bush administration were lying straight up to get a war they’d planned before, but also that people I expressed this feeling to largely scoffed. It seemed impossible that the administration would pants-on-fire lie, probably especially in light of the trust extended after the events of 9/11. So while I was unbelievably frustrated to be treated like a bit loony, like a conspiracy theorist because I was so damn sure that they were lying, I think it was mildly comforting that most people bought the lie, because that meant that the mainstream media was at fault for being lazy and overly trusting, not that they were conspiring with the Bush administration to get us into war.