War of Words

When Michael Steele was named chairman of the Republican Party a few weeks ago, there was a lot of back-and-forth over whether the GOP was indeed moving forward into the 19th century or just pulling an opportunistic political fast-one.

I was never one of those people who believed that either A) their hearts really were in the right place when they conveniently appointed an African-American to head the party, or B) the end justified the means regardless. It doesn't take a cynical nature to understand that the Republicans put Steele where he is because they honestly didn't have a choice -- not if they wanted to send the message to voters that they're at least as revolutionary in their thinking as their political adversaries. Unfortunately, the GOP can't escape the kind of backward-ass buffoonery that's been its hallmark for the past few decades.

Case in point: Missouri State Representative Bryan Stevenson -- who yesterday on the Missouri House floor called the Freedom of Choice act, which bars the government from interfering with abortion, the most egregious federal power grab "since the War of Northern Aggression."

Now if you're not either a history major or a dumb redneck, there's a chance you've never even heard of the War of Northern Aggression -- that's because to most of civilized society, it's known by another name: The Civil War.

Only the least evolved and most offensive among us -- the sort of idiots who slap "Forget, Hell!" stickers all over the tail of their pick-ups -- still refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. And yet there's a Republican state representative busting it out like it's second nature.

It's exactly the kind of image the modern GOP is trying to slither quietly away from -- the image it hoped would be involuntarily shot full of holes with the election of Black Man™ Michael Steele as its leader. But old habits die hard, and the inadvertently revealing (or blatantly fucking stupid) words of Bryan Stevenson prove it.

Today's GOP can make all the overtures it wants about being the party of intelligence and inclusion; as long as it continues to be a welcoming home to clowns like Stevenson -- or continues to take marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, a talk radio host, for Christ's sake -- it will never be able to claim that it's put its narrow-minded past behind it.

At least not and be taken seriously.