Have they no shame? Nope

One of the local TV stations is spin checking the advertising for the governor's race, and doing a bang-up job. You know, as in "You're doing a bang-up job, Brownie."

Of course, doing a really good job of checking these ads could turn into a full-time job this year. Both sides are throwing around the most ludicrous claims, and the outside groups fan the flames with the nonsense they put on the air.

My favorite stupid Bill White commercial is the one where he carps about Perry becoming a millionaire while in office. Perry's assets were placed in a blind trust, which means that the manager is doing an excellent job. Oh, I know about the shady land deal accusations, but really, I wish I could find someone to entrust my money to who could turn me into a millionaire.

My least favorite White commercial, on the other hand, comes from one of those outside groups that believes it should "help" a candidate. The ad brings up the Gardisil controversy -- surely one of Gov. Goodhair's less shining moments in office.

The ludicrous part of the ad is its implication that Perry will somehow press ahead with the immunization plan if re-elected. Rick's a lot of things, politically dumb ain't one of them.

But the award for the most noxious ad goes to Texans for Rick Perry and its ad featuring a Houston policeman's widow. She talks about the man who killed her husband, an illegal who'd been arrested a couple of times and deported. The structure of the rest of the ad implies that White supported policies that led to her husband's death.

But the Houston police policies that the ad challenges would not have hampered the police from running the murderer in or out of town if they'd encountered him. In fact, he's exactly the kind of guy the policies were designed for.

The commercial then asks if Houston will remain a sanctuary city. What? White is no longer mayor. If the policies are still in effect, fuss at the current mayor. And no one with any sense claims that Houston is a sanctuary city.

And if the intent is to suggest that if Gov. P is re-elected he will somehow put an end to Houston's policies, then I have to infer that the ad's saying he would interfere in the operations of a city in the same way he claims Washington interferes with Texas.

The candidates still have a week or so to dumbfound me. If they want to succeed, they could quit with the stupidity.

A bigot by any other name

Say you knew someone who didn't like blacks or Hispanics just because they were black or Hispanic. You'd probably believe that person was a bigot, not cool.

We're supposed to be enlightened folks these days who wouldn't admit to bigotry, believing it to be unacceptable, except in certain parts of Redneckville, where the unenlightened congregate in small groups to convince themselves of their superiority.

But a couple of incidents this past week show that bigotry can still be socially acceptable, if it's wrapped in the right package.

A letter to the editor appeared in the Star-T that at first blush extolled the virtues of Bill White when compared with the governor of our fair state, Rick "It's amazing what they can do with makeup to hide wrinkles" Perry.

The writer said he was tired of the guv and his tenure in Austin, and he was attracted to White's stance on education.

But, he said, White had three insurmountable problems: the prez, the speaker of the House, and the Senate majority leader. If White were elected, the writer proclaimed, he would probably immediately become an Obama-Pelosi-Reid pawn and lead our fair state into the jaws of ruin.

No evidence was given for this stance. No suggestion was made that White might actually be a person in his own right, capable of making decisions based on his convictions.

Nope. White has a "D" behind his name, so he must be lumped in with a stereotyped belief about Democratic leadership and be denied the governorship. Perry may not be worth anything, but he's better than a Democrat.

Next one of my Facebook "friends" posted a message to the people of a congressional district, of which the FbF (Facebook friend) is not a resident, urging them to vote against the incumbent, a Democrat, because the FbF had read that the incumbent had voted with Pelosi 97 percent of the time.

I challenged that, asking whether FbF knew the congressman, had ever talked to the man about his positions, or even knew what issues the congressman had voted against the party line about. (Hint: They were votes the FbF would have approved of because they support the FbF's values.)

Nope. Didn't know any of that. The Elephants political platform supported all the things the FbF holds dear, and even though not all Republicans fully held to the party line, the FbF was sure that Republican leadership would force any wayward members to conform and vote the "right" way.

Leaving aside that stunningly illogical reasoning, the essence of the argument comes down to one person being on the wrong side -- you know, the one that starts with "D".

Now, unless I'm missing something, believing that one side is superior based on a select set of criteria, lumping all members of another group together and demonizing them based on another select set of criteria, and refusing to judge an individual on the basis of character is pretty much the essence of bigotry.

So apparently being a racial bigot is wrong, but being a political bigot is OK. Yep. I believe I'm missing something.