British Royal Pageantry Claptrap and the Loony Fringe Birthers Can't Give Up

Today I just want to make two quick, unrelated comments about the fluff that's floating around right now, and then a comment about that phenomenon itself.

1.  Look, I know some people just love all that pageantry and such. But come on! Why Americans fawn over, as Ian Masters put it, the fantastically expensive nuptials of two over-privileged and unexceptional people just because they are members of a hereditary monarchical system that we, as a republic, saw fit to do away with well over 200 years ago, is utterly beyond me. After all, one of the intellectual authors of our revolution, Tom Paine, (in a surprisingly modern witticism) said it best: there's no more reason behind hereditary rulers than hereditary dentists. Were I a Brit, I'd be a republican, i.e., someone who favors abolishing the monarchy (thereby saving the new constitutional Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a ton of money). But, as I'm not, I just shake my head in disbelief that American television is wall to wall with this fluff.

2.  Sure enough, on the very day that the president felt he had to put to rest this "long form birth certificate" nonsense, the creepy crawlies (including the odious Matt Drudge) came out of the woodwork with a ridiculous theory that the document was a photoshop forgery. Fortunately, even among the Far Right Press, that nonsense was put to rest PDQ: here.

It's pathetic, really, that with all the false propaganda being put out by the Rightists in this country, and all the really serious issues facing us as a nation, people spend real time in the marketplace of public discourse even talking about either of these nonsensical matters. The Royal Wedding deserves a thirty second clip towards the end of a news show, after the fact. And the birther nonsense should've been kaiboshed years ago.

Sometimes I think we as a nation are literally distracting ourselves to death with fluff and nonsense.