As Friday Comes Around

What a week, huh?

Hope your International Women’s Day was rich and powerful. The women at WMNF ran the station today, as they do each year. Each year is a treat and this year was no exception.

The public affairs programs in the morning brought a diversity of young women to the mic for a long and deep conversation about the experience of being a woman and an activist in today’s world where one of our major political parties seems to be homing in on the 19th Century. “It’s the Music” showcased women making music LIVE in the WMNF studios. You can’t find that anywhere across your dial.

Thank you, ladies … it was wonderful and, as always, I look forward to next year.

The Republican “Circular Firing Squad Tour” rolled through “Super Tuesday,” so named for its fabled power to deliver the “clincher” for the party’s nominee, and produced not a hint that resolution is anywhere on the horizon. Even the “pundits” on the right are puzzled and confused as to where the road may lead. The “brokered convention” is a feature of comment with increasing frequency, with there apparently being a very real possibility that the party may caucus in Tampa in August, cast a vote and find they have no one to offer to run against the president. There will follow a process to find a candidate, someone, and that candidate may be one who rises from the ranks at the convention and, after all the months, debate after debate … after debate, the campaigns, the primaries, the money, the Republicans may nominate someone, perhaps Jeb Bush … who never participated at all!

What message would that send to the party’s “base,” those Red Rootin’ Tea Party Fundamentalist Republicans who have been the power and the center of this entire primary process?

“Thanks, but no thanks.”?

It sounds to me like the quickest and easiest way I can imagine to alienate an entire electorate … your own.

 

Rush … Rush rolls on. Dozens of his sponsors across the nation, from Sears to Sleep Number, have quietly dropped their ads. Rush doesn’t care. He considers himself to be above the reach of such pathetically inconsequential actions from the little people.  He claims 18,000 sponsors and considers those who have abandoned him to be like a few “fries” dropped from a Giant Economy Sized order.  He believes his draw is so powerful that no matter how many may leave, more and more want to enroll.

He may be right.

It takes a lot of focus and extended action to affect a system so large and commercially successful.  it remains to be seen if Americans are angry enough and committed enough to carry out the needed campaign.

It’s had an effect, though.  MSNBC reports that in the largest market in the country, of over 85 ad spots on Rush’s show today more than 75 were donated unpaid public service announcements, and the American Heart Association has asked to have its PSA’s removed from the show.  There is political action afoot to yank Rush off the armed forces networks.

“It ain’t over, ’til it’s over.” right, Yogi?

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