A Washington Post story onSunday (9/18/11)argues that many recipients of Social Security aren’t really paying attention to what the GOP presidential front-runners are saying about Social Security. The real story, then, is what kind of narrative the candidates are trying to establish. As reporter Amy Gardner puts it:
In many ways, it doesn’t matter to the candidates whether people are attuned to what they are actually saying about Social Security. For them, the issue is instead serving as a proxy for the narrative each is trying to establish about himself.
For Perry, standing by his brash statements on Social Security–he has called it a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie”–presents a chance to show that he’s a straight-shooter unafraid to confront the nation’s toughest challenges.
“I don’t get particularly concerned that I need to back off from my factual statement that Social Security, as it is structured today, is broken,” Perry said in an interview published in Time magazine last week. “If you want to call it a Ponzi scheme, if you want to say it’s a criminal enterprise, if you just want to say it’s broken–they all get to the same point. We need, as a country, to have an adult conversation.”
This is actually a great illustration of a terrible problem with political reporting. How candidates are using policy discussions to frame their candidacies is actually much less important than whether what they’re saying is nonsense.
Perry’s Social Security claims are wildly misleading. Press coverage should explain that to readers (and, you know, voters) instead of talking about how his inaccurate claims means he’s a “straight-shooter.”
Perry and company are “straight-shooters” all right.
And it’s pretty goddamn obvious at whom they’re taking dead aim, innit?
I thought someone who is a “straight shooter” was someone who told you the truth no matter how unpleasant. Perry is NOT telling the truth about Social Security (or about much of anything else). Why is he not called out on this?
Well, I tell you what..it’s a wake up call….most Americans are too busy playing Video Games and watching Dancing with the Stars (and I’m not just talking about the children) to give a hoot about what Mavericks like Perry has in store for them!….while Americans remain asleep with their eyes wide open,…everything that was fought for in the last several decades, Civil Rights, Social Security, and your Freedom will be snatched away in a blink of an eye….and there’ll be nothing they can do about it…..all it takes is a pen and a signature…..good luck people!
Amy Gardner’s claim that Rick Perry’s deceptions â┚¬Ã…“show that he’s a straight-shooterâ┚¬Ã‚ is indeed bizarre. It’s a prime example of how disconnected Beltway reporters and columnists have become, and in particular those of the Washington Post.
The more absurd the claim, the greater its sensationalistic value for these people, which is evidently all they care about, regardless of how detrimental the grotesque misrepresentations of current political candidates are to the electoral process.
It does appear that being a “straight shooter” depends upon who the “shooter” is and at whom such shots are “really” aimed. Perry’s fans in and out of the Beltway seem not to understand what his rhetoric could mean in actual policy: the plunging of the elderly back into the poverty of pre-Social Security days.
Gramma and Granpa like his rootin’-tootin’ ways… but do they like him enough to vote away their Social Security pensions? Would they vote away their kids’? Do they look at their checks, with its printing by the United States Treasury clearly so labeled thereupon, and see evidence of an unjust enrichment out of a Ponzi scheme? Do they think they should refuse to accept what Perry is clearly suggesting is ill-gotten gain? Do the elderly really see themselves as skimmers off the top of a “pyramid”, as beneficiaries of a “criminal enterprise” — do the elderly feel guilty? Should they?
I am not yet a senior citizen, but if I were I could not be persuaded to vote for someone who promises that my next housing option will be a cardboard box under a bridge, and that my meals be will be composed of what orange grease I can lick off a paper food container in the trash bin in the park.
And no, I won’t be voting for Obama in 2012 — he remains willing to cut benefits to the poor to fund his jobs program. Nice; setting one part of the working class against another.
This granpa aint voting for Obama, or Perry, or any of the other crazies who have surfaced to date. Unless something changes drastically, I’ll be writing in Elizabeth Warren/Ralph Nader. Hate to see Warren get ruined, or corrupted, by serving in the vile excuse for representation that we call the senate. We need her, now.