Friday, October 26, 2012

South Dakota GOP: Education is scary bad!



I don't know how long this video will stay on YouTube, because it's getting a ton of 'dislikes' (and the South Dakota GOP is moderating comments - but there aren't any they've permitted to be seen, so far).

In case this disappears, note that it's a real political ad from the South Dakota Republican Party promoting their own congressional candidate Kristi Noem as a poorly-educated farm girl who's apparently never been out of the state in her life.

Her opponent, Matt Varilek, on the other hand, got his masters degree at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and even attended Cambridge, for chrissake! He's been all over the world! Do you really want someone... educated (pardon my bad language) and with global experience in the United States Congress?

Of course not! Vote for Kristi Noem, who's never once even needed to clean the pig crap off her boots. She'll uphold South Dakota ignorance, because she's just as ignorant as the rest of us!

Oh, and Matt Varilek eats corn dogs, so he's not such a smarty-pants after all!

OK, I'm paraphrasing the ad a bit, but only a bit. That's really what they seem to be saying. Now, Americans in this part of the country - I grew up just a stone's throw from South Dakota, myself - used to value education. Yeah, that's hard to believe, isn't it? But education used to be considered a good thing.

Anyone who'd accomplished what Matt Varilek has accomplished would be widely admired. But now, in the GOP, education just makes you a furriner. As Rick Santorum indicated, college is just for snobs. Critical-thinking will just make you an atheist. The Texas Republican Party platform is clear about this: children should leave school just as ignorant as when they entered it.

These days, in today's Republican Party - thanks to that 'Southern strategy' which filled the party with Deep South Dixiecrats - education is a bad thing, a scary thing. Yeah, now, for Halloween, you can go trick-or-treating as a teacher and scare all those good Republicans to death.

So, with this kind of attitude, how are we ever supposed to compete with the rest of the world? How are we ever supposed to compete with China? Oh, no worries! You see, God likes us best. And the world is going to end soon anyway, so we don't have to worry about any of this.

Won't we be laughing at all those intelligent, educated, capable people - all destined to burn in Hell - as we're floating up to Heaven? Ha, ha. All those smarty-pants snobs will get theirs then, right?

4 comments:

Chimeradave said...

Wow, I wish it was online, there is a sketch from the MTV show "the State" it's a fake political ad where they go over all these seemingly positive thinks about this one candidate and meanwhile his opponent is a complete nut. Then at the and of the sketch they say "But [so and so] does use a colostomy bag. Michael Cavanugh a complete lunatic, but at least he doesn't crap through his stomach into a bag."

This ad really reminds me of that sketch. Like you said they gave me a lot of reasons to vote for Varelik and really no reasons to vote for Noem.

Bill Garthright said...

Well, you and I aren't South Dakota Republicans, John, so I guess we see these things differently. They don't want the "elites," the people who actually know things, to be responsible for our laws.

I wonder, if they need a doctor or a dentist or even a plumber, if their standards are also this low?

Gregg Garthright said...

Wow, hard to believe that's a real ad!

There's no shame in staying home and working on the family farm, but how far out of whack do you have to be to view obtaining advanced degrees from prestigious universities as a negative?

Note also that Noem worked exclusively in her family's business - the right wing's version of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

Unfortunately, this is a typical Republican campaign - nothing about policies, no new ideas to solve any of our problems, just a bunch of crazy crap about the democratic candidate.

Bill Garthright said...

Note also that Noem worked exclusively in her family's business - the right wing's version of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

Very good point, Gregg!

And yes, this is a typical Republican campaign in that respect, but that's because it keeps working. Just throwing a bunch of crazy crap at your opponent works. If it didn't, Republican politicians wouldn't do it.

We'll see if this is too crazy even for most South Dakotans. Unfortunately, I doubt it. (Heck, it would probably work for most Nebraskans, I suspect.)