Oprah, Jesus and Joe
It is about time the two leading political parties consider the silliness of allowing a couple of states such as Iowa and New Hampshire to have so much influence over the selection of presidential candidates.
If either is representative of the rest of the nation, we are a far differ- ent country than what we have been led to believe by common know- ledge, backed by statistics. And it may be the early influence of these two states that is largely responsible for some of the bad choices for president American voters have been making.
The Iowa partisan caucuses illustrated how silly, even dangerous it is to rely on a state whose pop-ulation is nowhere near reflective of the United States at large. And it is time commentators began to focus on what really was behind the vote.
It is absolutely insane to choose a president based on the en- dorsement of a celebrity who knows little or nothing about poli- tics, the public issues, even the problems or needs of the common weal. Or of any celebrity, for that matter.
After Oprah Winfrey endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama, his poll numbers in Iowa went from 20 points behind HIllary Clinton to at least six points ahead of her, and his circus tour of the state with Win-frey drew record crowds.
Winfrey's Web site highlights its contents with "The perfect haircut for your face," "Kirstie's bikini body" and "Oprah's debt diet." Her biography says she became a local TV news anchor (the British call anchors "news reader," which is what they are) at the age of 19, did the same for a while in another city and moved from there to hosting talk shows, which she has done since. She's no more qualified to endorse a presi- dential candidate than a pig in that sty that sits on the highest point in Iowa. She is nothing more than a talk show host.
This issue is nothing about a black woman endorsing a black man or about anything else but how silly it is to allow a bunch of sycophants in one abnormal state to influence a presidential nomination.
And it's not just sycophancy, although that should be enough to bury this setup for good. It's also about the fact Iowans are nowhere near re- flective of the rest of the country in religious views, or at least we hope not, yet a nobody like Mike Huckabee is finding his star rising in a state heavy with evangelicals, those people who insist on converting everyone to Christianity.
Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister who said the only explana- tion for his star rising in the state "is not a human one." In Iowa, he is battling for the lead Mormon Mitt Romney who thinks you can't have freedom without religion or vice versa. How can you trust either man not to consider his religious beliefs when making presidential decisions?
Finally, you have John McCain, a Republican, getting a boost in Iowa because Joe Lieberman, a Democrat without a party, endorsed McCain because no other candidate asked Lieberman for an endorse- ment. How nutty is that?
And this state is allowed to have such a lopsided influence on the course of the presidential nominations of the two major parties? C'mon people, get a life. Or at least get some sophistication.
Sycophants, evangelicals and worshipers of losers are about to have a major say on our choices for president next November and yet the two parties allow it to happen every four years. And the Democratic Party does so while boycotting a more representative state such as Michigan.
Next after Iowa? The first real primary, in New Hampshire, a state that may be just as out of sync as Iowa.
What next? Tom Cruise shows up in New Hampshire to plug a mem- ber of a dead sci-fi novelist's cult for president? Where does this insan- ity end?
