Signs of Intelligent Life

Last night, Mr. Shakes went on a (rather amusing) mad-haired rant, impelled by his deep loathing of the term “family values,” and the emptiness so often hiding behind it.

“Ooh, congratulatoons! You’ve goot a wife and kids, and you’ve goot a great joob with a fat paycheck, and you goo to choorch every Soonday, soo that means you’ve goot family fooking values. Soo bloody what?! Hoo do you treat your wife? Hoo do you treat your kids? Doos your joob contribute anything to the community? Doo you actually practice what you hear preached at your choorch? It’s goot to be moore than woords! FOOK!”

Well, maybe there’s hope that Mr. Shakes’ head won’t eventually just explode after all.

Via The Green Knight, I find the latest NYT poll, which reveals, among other things, that 50% of respondents say that the Dems come closer to sharing their “moral values” than do the GOP. Only 37% of respondents gave Republicans the moral values thumbs-up. The Knight suggests, “[M]aybe people have begun to think about what their values are in a more sophisticated way than they used to -- as Jim Wallis and others have been asking for a few years now, are ‘moral values’ really only about private sexual behavior? What about poverty, honesty, war, the environment?”

If more voters are beginning to think about their values in a more sophisticated way—and I really hope that this poll is the first sign that they are—we’ve surely got the GOP to thank for it. Their determination to inextricably associate themselves with the term “moral values,” in spite of their patent unwillingness to practice any, may finally have worn thin, even with the most disengaged Americans. The party that rode in on the “moral values” ticket is now also linked with a disastrous war of choice, the drowning of an American city, illegally spying on Americans, craven cronyism, and wanton corruption. Yeah, okay, they still hate boys kissing each other, but somehow “protecting the sanctity of marriage” doesn’t offer quite the same bite when you’re being hauled off in handcuffs to the courthouse for breaking federal law.

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