Skip to main content

The Media's Strange Relationship With Ron Paul



Ah, Ron Paul. I can think of very few political figures who inspire such bat-$h!t, unwavering (and some would say myopic) devotion in his followers. It's a curious phenomenon, one I'm not sure I understand completely. Paul doesn't have the gift for oratory or good looks of Barack Obama, or the fiery, off-the-cuff populism of Chris Christie.

Yet there they are, the "Paulites," at Republican events, at town halls, at protests, wearing their Guy Fawkes masks (lately and clumsily co-opted by #OccupyWallStreet), holding up signs clamoring for a "Ron Paul rEVOLution" (see, they put the backwards 'love' in revolution - which sounds kind of ominous to me, frankly).

Even Ron Paul looks kind of confused and distressed by this sentiment

The media also doesn't seem to know quite what to make of Paul (I'm actually watching Congressman Paul on Fox News Sunday right now - it's been a very strange program). Take today's Reuter's story: "Ron Paul declared winner of Illinois Republican straw poll:"

Ron Paul was declared the winner on Saturday of a weeklong Republican presidential straw poll in Democratic President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois.

That's quite the lede, Reuter's. Ron Paul, libertarian-except-when-it-comes-to-abortion, riding high in the Socialist home state of our Usurper in Chief!

Before you move your retirement into gold and run Old Glory up the flagpole in preemptive celebration of a new Red (state) Dawn in America, however, read a little closer (emphasis mine):

Texas Congressman Paul won 52 percent of the combined 3,649 online and in-person votes cast between October 29 and Saturday evening. He won 66.5 percent of the votes cast over the internet and 8 percent of those cast in person. 
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earned 7 percent of the online votes cast and 35 percent of the in-person votes cast at 22 locations, the party said.

So, to parse: Paul won a landslide of online votes and virtually no polling-place votes, while Romney won the polling-place voting by a fair margin while collecting a microscopic quantity of internet votes.

On a planet populated by organisms with large brains and the ability to transmit information by reading and writing, a media outlet like Reuters might choose an "angle" for this story such as; there is an interesting disparity between online support and polling-place support for candidates in the Republican primary. Why is this?

It's a good question. Ron Paul is widely considered President of the Internet: his online support is so deep and well-organized that his followers invented the moneybomb, a new, weaponized form of online fund-raising that was first deployed back in 2007.

Maddeningly, the media still repeats each Ron Paul "victory" that involves online polling as though it represents a phenomenon that would or could translate into actual, physical-world electoral victory. Perhaps this is at least partially because of the media's other fixation with Paul - a fixation in which Paul plays the role of eyeball-grabbing circus freak.

That would explain the "Ron Paul's Fake Eyebrow" $h!tstorm that briefly rendered the Republican primary debates marginally entertaining (normally Hermain Cain would fulfill this function but something about him gives me a sour stomach). This is a role I've seen libertarians play frequently in national politics, which is unfortunate, since I admire at least some libertarians' philosophical gravity and consistency. However, the role of jester is probably theirs to enjoy as long as they keep turning themselves blue with colloidal silver like Montana libertarian Stan Jones:



I don't know. Most of us enjoyed the Smurfs as kids - maybe an internet-fueled libertarian insurgency DOES stand a snowball's chance. Stranger, more awful things have surely happened.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apparently, Liberals Are The Illuminati

posted 10/5/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Greetings, sheeple, from my stronghold high atop the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Salt City, where I type this before a massive, glowing bank of monitors that display the ongoing progress of my 23-point plan for complete social control. Whether you want to demonize me as a "liberal," or prefer the Glenn Beck update "progressive," we all know the truth, and it's time to pull the curtain aside: like all left-leaning persons, I am actually a member of the Illuminati. How else to explain how much power my side of the aisle wields in U.S. American politics? According to conservatives, liberals/the Illuminati control the media * , science * , academia in general * , public schools * , public radio * , pretty much anything "public," the courts * , and Hollywood * . Hell, we pretty much control everything except for scrappy, underdog operations like WND and Fox News, or quiet, marginalized voices like

The Garden Is Dead, Long Live The Garden

posted on 8/30/2015 by the Salt City Sinner  The last two times that I wrote about gardening, the tone was uncharacteristically less “playful whimsy” than “agonized demon howl.” This is with good reason. The cockroach-hearted fauxhemian Whole Foods crowd at Wasatch Community Gardens, you see, did a terrible thing to me and many other people – they decided that agreements are for suckers and that what the world really needs is another blighted patch of asphalt rather than a large and vibrant community garden, and so they killed my garden (and the gardens of many others) dead, dead, dead. Forgive my bitterness: there is something about loving a patch of actual soil, about nurturing life from tiny green shoots to a luxurious canopy of flowers and vegetables that brings out a protective streak in a human being, and also a ferocious loyalty. The destruction of Sugar House Community Garden did not, however, end my gardening career – heavens, no! Instead, I and a handful of

Cult Books: One Good, One Terrible

  I’ve finished writing a new novel (stay tuned for details) in which the massacre at Jonestown in November 1978 plays a pivotal role. Both to research it and because the phenomenon interests me, I’ve read more than a few books on cults and cultic ideology over the last year.