The Obama Diary

Joan Katherine Shaw: We tend to laugh at the lunacy coming out of the Tea Party movement, the clownish costumes, the misspelled signs, and we scoff at the legislation coming from the Tea Party-Republican House that has a snowball’s chance of ever becoming law, but we should be wary of the distraction – what is slipping into our national discourse by stealth while we laugh?

One thing that’s slipped in is the attitude of otherwise deliberative Republicans changing into tea party jokes. For instance, Right Wing Senator Jon Kyl outright lied on the Senate floor when he declared that over 90% of Planned Parenthood services were for abortion and by implication, taxpayer money going for abortions. He could not have NOT known that only 3% of the group’s work involves counseling on abortion and, even then, no taxpayer dollars are used for the abortion itself.

Walking it back the next day an aide explained that Kyl’s remarks were “not intended to be factual,” at which comment comedian Stephen Colbert explained, “You can’t call him out for being wrong when he never intended to be right.” So outright lying is all right now? Senator Kyl is not to be censured by the Senate for acting like a jackass on the Senate floor? No, on the contrary, he’s applauded by his base, and has had seen the almost continuous visibility by way of the video clip of his performance on the Senate floor declaring what is essentially a lie. He has become a media attraction.

By lying .

…..We have already seen how it sends vengeance seekers out with guns to kill people they don’t approve of. It could, as many people feel, mark the end of the Republican party since it seems to be its seed bed, but it could just as well change the country’s political discourse into a raquet-ball game, bouncing ideas and opinions and facts and threats back and forth furiously in a deep well, accomplishing nothing. It could be the Political NewSpeak — say it loud, say it often, lie a lot.

Let’s not let them get away with it.

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