Wet Burrito Award

For today's Wet Burrito Award I had two choices: 1) the entire Republican party for their recent campaign of suppressing the vote, lying repeatedly, and their idiotic approach to energy policy ("drill, baby, drill"), or 2) perennial Wet Burrito winner and right wing shrill Ruben Navarratte Jr. I went, of course, with my homeboy. Not so much because the vato's an intellectually bankrupt writer dependent on GOP talking points and lazy writerly cliches for his regurgitated columns passing as original thoughts and is thus ripe for mockery and derision, but in the spirit of Hispanic Heritage month I'm sticking with mi raza. Represent, baby, represent.

What's got my ire are Junior's last two columns (here and here), both fixated on McCain's VP choice, Sarah Palin, and both half baked syntheses of cable news debates with nothing new added to the conversation, only hollow excuses to bash the Democrats. Junior gushes that the self-described Hockey Mom is "a brilliant choice." Whatever. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Even if said opinion is backed up with only a cherry picked, self-serving portion of Palin's Republican-edited life story. Absent in Navaratte's distorted hagiography is any mention of Palin's varied and problematic issues reflecting badly on her character and judgement. Issues like Troopergate, her bridge to nowhere flip flops, tendencies towards book banning, and her intolerant religious beliefs she wants to put thrust upon us via public policy.

Nevertheless, Junior believes: "No matter how this election turns out, it's the country that stands to benefit the most from John McCain's historic decision to launch Sarah Palin onto the national stage."

Like I said, whatever. But what really is deserving of today's Wet Burrito is Junior's sanctimonious screed against the "elites," the "snobs," who he claims are attacking Palin because she comes from "outside the beltway." First of all, this bashing of the "elites" is coming from the guy who not only likes to remind readers at every opportunity he went to Harvard, but wrote an entire book about it. It's like Giulani's speech at the Republican convention where he accused Obama of hating small town America because it wasn't "cosmopolitan" enough. This coming from the ex mayor of New York, one of the most cosmopolitian city in the world. Or Mitt Romney at the same convention, criticizing "eastern elites." This from the guy who used to govern Massachusetts.

The hypocrisy of these guys is amazing. Add so I add Junior to their ranks. And while it would be laughable at any other time, given McCain's post convention bounce, it's scary in its effectiveness.

Comments

[soledadenmasa]

Navarrette is a joke, plain and simple.

[Caro]

To be fair, the book-banning stuff is turning out to be spurious. But that still leaves PLENTY to horrify about Palin.

As for Junior, I think he must have been keeping up with his yoga, as it takes some serious twisting to play BOTH the elitist and populist sides, which he does at the will of his masters. Ay Junior, don't you know you'll never be good enough for the white man?

Good to see you back, Jim.