Yes, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal does talk like Kenneth the page from 30 Rock, & I now know how Alaskans felt when Palin spoke at the convention

Earlier tonight, minutes before Bobby Jindal delivered the official Republican response to Barack Obama's state of the union speech, I found myself overcome with a moment, and yes, it was just that, a "moment," where it all suddenly came crashing down on me...Holy shit, the governor of my home state is about to give an address to the nation! Now, in order to comprehend the magnitude of that, you have to understand that never in my life has there been a politician from Louisiana who has been taken seriously on the national stage. The closest one prior to this was probably former Senator John Breaux, who was, prior to his retiring to becoming a lobbyist, a high-ranking member of the US Senate who appeared frequently on talk shows like Meet the Press and Crossfire (I miss Crossfire btw...the old Michael Kinsley/Pat Buchanan Crossfire to be specific).

So, getting back to my little "moment," it was probably right about the time that CBS, the station I was watching on, cut away to a commercial after Katie Couric teased the viewing audience with the announcement of the forthcoming Republican response after a commercial break, that I found myself overcome with a slight sense of pride in my home state, a pride born out of the knowledge that for once a governor of ours was making news for something worthwhile, something other than a federal indictment or a horrifically botched emergency response. But sadly that feeling of pride turned out to be fleeting, as seconds later my "moment" of Louisiana pride morphed fully into a "moment" of knot in the gut/blood rushing to the head fear, a fear that felt something along the lines of this..."oh for Christ's sake this guy's about to totally make us the butt of a million new jokes!" It was around this time that I posted the following on my Twitter page...



It was so bad, this fear of pending geographical lineage humiliation, that I couldn't deal with it and flipped over to the LSU/Florida basketball game on ESPN. It was so bad that I couldn't watch it! I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before. It was weird. Totally.

A few minutes later I calmed down and went back to CBS and rewound the DVR recording of it. I then saw the camera from outside the Governor's mansion and I thought, "holy shit I've been in that place," and to see it on national television was all sorts of surreal. And then, finally, Jindal himself came out, this same guy I remember seeing all the time in the Albertson's on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge back in the mid-90s shopping for groceries just like little ole me, and he actually spoke, and it was then in this moment that all of those fears of being the butt of a million new jokes came rushing back again, only this time they were fully realized.

Bobby Jindal was embarrassing the fuck out of me.

Now, I'll skip critiquing Jindal on his presentation, for there's plenty of that to go around already, and honestly...I sorta feel sorry for the guy. I mean, who among us in the same situation wouldn't have been nervous as all hell in that moment, and he was, and it certainly showed. But I digress. Yes, he started out horribly, atrociously, very Kenneth the page-esque, eerily so in fact, but then he seemed to get his sea legs under him and right the ship so to speak. As best he could anyway, in terms of delivery, that is. It's the substance of the speech that I have a real problem with.

You see, going into the night, I'd sincerely hoped that perhaps Jindal, bright young Rhodes scholar that he is, would have something original to say. Perhaps he'd have some bright new idea, some illuminated dissent from the Obama administration's plan to fix the ailing American economy.

No.

Instead Jindal trotted out and, after offering up a brief bio to the nation, launched into the same old Republican party "the Democrats want to increase the size of government and we want to cut your taxes" rhetorical dog and pony show, you know, the same stubbornly simplistic ideological warfare that incites the urge stab yourself repeatedly in the genitals each and every time you hear it because it's so fucking tired and played out and completely devoid of steady flow of blood to the brain intellect, even though you may actually be, like me, beyond all sense and reason, still a registered fucking Republican!

I truly can't understand how ideologues, and I'm talking about fiscal ideologues here, on both sides mind you, Republicans and Democrats, people who steadfastly grip to a rigid set of beliefs as to how things are supposed to be in their minds regarding the US economy, can be so blinded by said beliefs as to not see what is, to me and I believe many other people, so painfully obvious....that America was not made great because of conservative economic political beliefs or liberal economic political beliefs. It was made great by conservative economic political beliefs AND liberal economic political beliefs. Each has their time, their moment in the sun if you will, and each checks the other. It's striking the delicate balance between the two that's key, something we've done rather well for a number of years, and something that's made us quite prosperous, arguably the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

There have been times when it was necessary for the government to let business and industry run free in order to grow the economy, and there have been times where it has needed to be reigned in. One could make the argument that the 80s and 90s, the time of Ronald "Government is the problem" Reagan and Bill "The era of big government is over" Clinton, were times when it was best for the government to get out of the way and let the free enterprise system do its thing. There have been other times, the late 1800s and 1930s among them, when the opposite has been the case, where the government has had to step in and essentially save us from ourselves.

This is one of those times! The game has changed dramatically and at a stunning rate, and the things that the Obama administration has proposed doing are things taken almost directly from the "how to save your country from complete economic collapse" playbook that other presidents and assorted world leaders have used successfully in the past. So, I guess ultimately what I'm trying to say is this...

We live in a liberal era. Period. Obama is doing what he has to do to get us out of the mess we've created for ourselves. It's the way it has to be. Shut the fuck up and get over it. You'll get your turn again in a few years.

I was on the train earlier tonight thinking about all of this and a bit of an analogy popped into my head. I thought about my childhood growing up in Louisiana, a place where the summers are long, often colliding head-on with the winter, and I remembered how one day it could be eighty degrees outside and then suddenly the next day it'd be like forty degrees. I remember how I'd get upset over my Mom telling me that I had to put on a coat to go outside when I got dressed in the morning.

"But Mom, I haven't worn a coat in forever," I'd gripe, just as a gazillion other kids probably have. "I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt yesterday!"

"Yeah well, that season's over," my Mom would say. "Put on a coat or you'll get sick."

"But Mom I don't wanna wear a coat."

"Stop whining and put on your dang coat!"

That's what the stubborn ideologues of the right-wing of the modern Republican party remind me of. Bratty kids who refuse to put on their coat to protect themselves from exposure. The season has changed, the sun is no longer shining, it's no longer warm enough to go outside with the protection from the elements provided by a coat, and they simply refuse to acknowledge it.

Here's Jindal's speech in case you missed it...

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