The Bank United Center Fieldhouse at the University of Miami hosted Mitt Romney right on the heels of his 47% comment.
It was a 200-person town hall meeting slash interview slash Hispanic pandering session -
A HisPanderSesh!
The event was open to registered Republicans, University of Miami’s Republican student union, Univision staff, invited guests and dignitaries, and a dude who scored two tickets from a Univision staffer he made out with… yup, me, I WENT.
Mitt Happens
Originally I was planning on picking up two homeless people, driving them to the United Center, handing them the tickets then rushing to my TV to watch them watch Mitt. But then Mitt became interesting for the first time in his life. A secretly-recorded videotape surfaced that featured Romney characterizing a group of income-tax-free Americans as being “dependent on the government” and feeling “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
I did not mind the quote; it’s more fun when rich dudes act like rich dudes, instead of this “common-man-pandery half-sap” that Mitt fakes. It’s too bad that politics is predicated on quarter-truths, giving us quarter-Romney, while rich folks who have closed-door meetings get the full-Mitt.
Not even Ann Romney gets the full Mitt anymore.
Scorecard: With Obama not mentioned in the opening section and Mitt getting loads of attention we have the underdog taking the early column lead.
Obama: 0 Mitt: 3
Up Mitt Creek without a Paddle
Walking into the event was a bit arduous. It looked like half of our defense budget went towards protecting Mitt. There were snipers, hackers, traditional coppers, undercover coppers, cops implanted in my brain, and armed white folks trying to register voters. Mitt isn’t trying to create a police state, he exists in one, and I didn’t mind one bit. Mittsylvania may have thousands of militiamen, but I bet their picket fences are extra picket.
Speaking of extra picket, there were dozens of picketers in front of the Fieldhouse. I know we have Twitter, the Internet, snitch-factory TMZ, Facebook, and those three dudes using Google+, but nothing beats making signs and pacing in a circle for hours to get a message out.
A lady picketer (?), picketeer (?), picketologist (?), was holding a 10-pound sign that read “Not entitled, injured!” She was obviously referencing Mitt’s foot-to-mouth faux pas, but her picket-vigor troubled me a bit, so I asked
“How long have you been out here?”
“Four hours strong and we’ll be here through the event.”
“Dang, there might as well be a time-clock, eh?”
Maybe her brain was injured, because the irony was completely lost on her. Making a sign and picketing is tedious work, but not nearly as tedious as it is to proclaim on that meticulously crafted sign, while in the midst of a nearly 6-hour demonstration, that you’re injured.
Scorecard: The picketer did not help Mr. Hope and Change, while Military State Mittsylvania had me dreaming of bleached-anus blondies ready to piss off papa with a night fellating Rosicky!
Mitt takes a commanding lead towards winning the presidency… and seriously, this method is as scientific and fair as the Electoral College.
Obama: 1 Mitt: 17
When the Mitt Hits the Fan
Once in our seats, my brother and I did the same thing that every other Republican was doing… counting the black folks. The Repubs were doing it as a security measure; my brother and I were just curious.
I don’t really have to tell you what our final tally was, do I?
Let’s just say that if eggshell were a race, it was the closest we came to a black person. There were a ton of Hispanics, almost too many for a Republican event but blacks were completely ignored. It was like a weird, nearly perfect Republican fantasy… A perfect Republican fantasy would replace Ann Romney for every Hispanic in attendance.
That’s a fantasy I can get behind.
Scorecard: I awarded Obama 25 points on account of Mitt ignoring black-America altogether, sort of like a boost to help the disadvantaged, like an action that I felt would affirm Obama’s standing in lights of Mitt’s unfair practices, a scoreboard affirmative action as it were.
Obama: 26 Mitt: 17
But then I got on, or off on, an Ann Romney tangent and imagined an auditorium full of Ann Romeneys, all staring at me with those dead eyes, waiting for a non-wooded man’s touch.
So Mitt got an Ann Romney bump nearly as big as the Ann Romney bump that I got.
Obama: 26 Mitt: 57
Fall in a bucket of Mitt and come out smelling like a rose
Mitt’s crowd was a collection of every single person who’s written a letter of complaint that led to a speed bump getting built.
Old Folks!
I don’t think they should get a vote, old folks that is. New rule: no vote if the actuary tables tell us that you are probably not going to live out the term you’re voting for, that you’re not going to live out your stupid decision.
Nonetheless, the event was a tad bit tricky, the hosts, JoseSomethingOrOther and MariaSomethingSomethingSantos would ask Mitt the questions in Spanish, which off the bat seems quite offensive to Republican voters, but I digress. In Mitt’s left ear was a mic that translated the Spanish to English, and in his right ear was a mic that translated that English into the King’s English. He then answered in English.
For TV audiences his English was translated back into Spanish, or what Repubs call “downgrading.”
For us in attendance we heard a Spanish question, we didn’t get a translation, and then we heard Mitt respond in English.
Since this was a Hispanic focused Q&A I was surprised that it wasn’t a one-question event.
Mitt, why do you hate us?
But it was more than a one-question event. It was an event centered on Hispanic-issues. We were reminded over and over that Hispanics were the fastest growing demo in the country. Coincidentally, this is the same tagline that NASCAR used ten years ago, so if that’s any indication, the Republican Party will grow to adore the Hispanic community unconditionally.
Scorecard: I was going to reward Obama a handful of points on account of me not understanding enough Spanish to keep track of the event, but then I remembered that most Hispanic voters vote Dem, so the points instead go to Romney.
Obama: 26 Mitt: 84
But Obama also gets points ‘cause old people are the worst.
Obama: 33 Mitt: 84
Trying to fit ten pounds of Mitt into a five-pound bag
As bored young guys who had no business being at that event are wont to do, we created a game… three actually.
We put the over/under at Hispanic Florida Republican Senator Marco Antonio Rubio mentions at 3.5. I chose the over and my brother chose the under. The under won, with Mitt’s 3 mentions, but I contend that the original plan was for more mentions and Mitt just forgot when the system of pulleys and levers controlling his brain began to tighten up.
I promise you if someone found a Mitt Romney robot blueprint from the 60’s I would wholeheartedly sign on to its legitimacy.
The second game we played was trying to guess the question based on Mitt’s response. We didn’t understand the Spanish question, but based on Mitt’s answer every question must have been “How did Obama ruin America?”
The third game was that I tried to push my brother in front of the camera panning the crowd so I could make fun of him on Facebook for being at a Mitt Romney event.
Scorecard: Mitt doesn’t get any points for helping me lose my Rubio bet. Obama gets zero points, as well. But I got 50 points; I made up 3 awesome games at a boring ass Republican town-hall meeting.
Obama: 33 Mitt: 84 RosickyJones: 50
Happier than a pig in Mitt
In 2002, NYU political scientist Russell Hardin wrote a brain-wrinkling essay called “The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism.” In it, he contends that extremists are not insane or stupid or uneducated. They just happen to gain all their information from a drastically narrow set of news sources, and they live in these “self-reinforcing information cocoons” and base their convictions on their “crippled epistemology.”
He wrote this essay a full decade ago. While I agree with him in 2002, the ten subsequent years since his study has shifted the paradigm a bit. The extremists who were just getting their info from bias sources have now been so inundated with stupid, bias, inaccurate news that they have just become stupid. The media is not crippling their epistemology anymore; they exist in a permanent state of incapacitation.
This stupid cocoon showed its ugly face during 4 crazy moments that night, with each appearance earning a louder applause than the last.
Crazy Moment #1: JoseSomethingOrOther asked how Mitt, who just finished saying something pro-Immigration, about Jan Brewer’s racist Arizona-immigration law. There was a wave of boos, people stood on their chairs to boo… not to boo Mitt’s inconsistencies or to boo the AZ bill but to boo the moderator for asking the question. A question that was not disrespectful, partisan, or out of line in any context. They booed a tough question, because they don’t want the truth, they just want their cocoon massaged with scripted, self-serving bullshit.
Crazy Moment #2: “Blah blah blah, they should get rights, but blah blah blah Marriage is between a man and a woman, blah blah blah!” This stupid quote, transcribed verbatim by the way, met a wave of cheers and chants of “Romney, Romney.”
Yeah, minorities rooting for the downfall of other minorities. This is just mean; they were cheering for rights being taken away from Americans.
Crazy Moment #3: When speaking about illegal aliens, specifically Mexican immigrants who were too ingratiated to leave, Mitt said that he “can see rights extended to them.”
THIS MET APPLAUSE FROM THE HISPANIC, UNIVISON TELEVISON AUDIENCE!
Crazy Moment #4: When the topic of the “war on drugs” (I’m using quotations to delegitimize the moniker because it is bullshit) came up he said, “Obama must decrease the need for drugs.” This is fucking crazy. Politicians can’t even speak honestly about drug abuse… even addiction is Obama’s fault.
And of course everyone cheered.
Goddamn it, we deserve everything we get. The overwhelming political truth of our system is that we don’t want truth. Fuck, every day C-Span delivers the answers we pretend to want, every fuckin’ day, and no one watches, instead we wait for Fox News or MSNBC to repackage the truth into some easily ingested cocoon-approved crap-nuggets.
Scorecard: I’m sad. This is the worst, I hate elections. Mitt gets a boost ‘cause his base is crazy and Obama also get a boost cause his base is crazy. I on the other hand am losing egregiously.
Obama: 100 Mitt: 100 RosickyJones: -1000
Mitt or get off the pot
Mitt’s security stressed that no cameras were allowed. They made a statement at the beginning of the talk and before the final applause break.
NO CAMERAS!
But right when the show ended half the auditorium pulled out their phones and began snapping pics. One fucking rule and these clowns ignored it. They want ironclad rules for everyone but themselves. How could they bitch and moan about the lawless, moral-compass-less, and luckless citizenry as they feign to know better for while concurrently failing to follow the easiest law in the world.
They were stealing, no different than any other crooks, just a varying degree.
While we were dodging camera-flashes the old man to my left began poking me in the shoulder with a pamphlet. I waved him off, thinking he wanted me to register as a Repub, but he didn’t repent. So I acceded and grabbed his literature, his “Have you Accepted Jesus” booklet.
I politely said, “I don’t believe in God” as I handed it back to him. But that old man was no different than Obama or Romney… they were each giving me pamphlets full of hollow promises. And I don’t believe in any of them… hell, I actually believe in Jesus more than I believe in politics.
Scorecard: Jesus makes a late run to steal the win from Mitt and Barack. But again, Rosicky has dropped to negative infinity as the biggest loser in this whole election season.
Obama: 5000 Mitt: 5000 Jesus: 10,000 RosickyJones: -∞
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