It's not unusual during ultra-partisan quadrennial political conventions for the truth to get bludgeoned. The "rah rah" pep-rally nature of things essentially guarantees the highest degree of shrill spin and sensationalism, especially for whoever draws the "hatchet job" spot to beat up the other party's nominee.
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren's "40 whacks" battery was worthy of the poetic memorialization of another Massachusetts Lizzie from another century.
Warren began biographically, talking about how she was a janitor's daughter who wound up becoming a U.S. senator. "America is truly a country of opportunity," she gushed.
Then she turned pensive. "I'm deeply grateful to that America. I believe in that America."
WHACK!
The senator from Massachusetts believes in the America of her own childhood? A time before legalized abortion and gay marriage and just about every other politically correct and pandering plank in the Democratic Party's platform?
Not only that, but she said she's "worried that my story is locked in the past."
It was exceedingly refreshing to hear a liberal/progressive harking back to the 1950s as the "good old days"--conservatives are typically criticized for waxing nostalgic that way--when crime was low and schools were local and government was small.
Then she moved on to a little soliloquy about the rigged system. "There is a huge difference between the people fighting for a level playing field," she said, and then, with a straight face, "and the people keeping the system rigged."
WHACK!
That would be ... the DNC people? Those people who the leaked emails show were willing to do everything possible to rig the system to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primaries, even up to and including systematically and deliberately exploiting religious bigotry over his faith?
It would have been short notice to alter her speech, but jiminy cricket! Sometimes a speaker has to instinctively know what shouldn't be said aloud, no matter how often rehearsed or revered. It was the height of oratorical hypocrisy to try and smear Republicans on the issue while Sanders supporters were still seething over DNC system-rigging headlines and the party chairman had unceremoniously resigned over the revelations that very day.
Warren wasted little time targeting Donald Trump. "Not once did he lift a finger to help working people," she said.
WHACK!
As if hiring and paying working people by the thousands doesn't qualify as finger-lifting?
She said Donald Trump's America is one of "fear and hate ... where we all break apart. Whites against blacks and Latinos. Christians against Muslims and Jews. Straight against gay. Everyone against immigrants."
WHACK!
That description sounds a lot like Barack Obama's America the past few years, and even right now. Warren claimed Trump is trying to turn neighbor against neighbor "by persuading you the real problem in America is your fellow Americans--people who don't look like you, or don't talk like you, or don't worship like you."
WHACK!
As the citizens suffering the violent crime explosions that have rocked Chicago and other cities on holiday weekends this year can well attest, their persecutors are indeed their fellow Americans. And most of the time the criminals turning urban neighborhoods into war zones look very much like and talk very much like their victims.
Warren blamed Trump for embracing racial hatred and religious bigotry, including "attacks on immigrants, on women, on gays."
WHACK!
It's a little insensitive to use the word "attack" at this particular moment in time to describe any group without including police officers, who were group-targeted for racial hatred and assassinated and maimed in Dallas and Baton Rouge recently.
Listing a litany of causes Hillary Clinton will "fight" for, Warren wandered over into climate change, asserting the Democratic nominee will "fight to preserve this earth for our children and grandchildren."
WHACK!
The United States' land mass is 6.6 percent of the earth's total; our surface area is only 1.9 percent. Warren neglected to highlight any real plans by Democrats on how to force the inhabitants of the other 90-something percent of the earth's to join in the preservation effort.
Then near the end came this, emphasized as the finale in a string of stated beliefs, with Warren saying in preface, "And just one more ...":
Pause. "We believe we must get big money out of politics."
WHACK! WHACK!
That's a double-whacker because the big-money bonanza is inbred in Democratic DNA, as scores of leaked DNC emails revealed in elitist, self-serving detail--with every big donation arriving with strings firmly and overtly attached. It's pretty rancid to see how casually and frequently presidential proximity was auctioned off on the fundraising block.
To her credit, Warren did exercise some laudable discretion.
When she said, "I grew up in Oklahoma," for a split-second viewers across the country might have thought she was about to revert to her penchant, some years ago, of listing herself as a "minority"--Native American, like she did while teaching at Harvard--as evidence of diversity in the convention speakers' ranks.
Convention hatchet jobs can be pretty entertaining sometimes. Lizzie Warren did not disappoint.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 07/29/2016