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About TheCenterLane.com
TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.
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The Narrowing
October 20, 2008
Halloween is less than two weeks away. The theme of the perfect horror film for 2008 becomes increasingly apparent as I type this. We can rely only on the YouTube medium to get this year’s best spooky thriller before the public in time. Right now, the trees in our nation’s capitol are manifesting the multi-colored transition to autumn. The time to shoot this movie is right now. The time to get it before the public is right now. The Narrowing has the potential to be the “fright film” of the decade.
The horror depicted in this movie is most troubling for the moderate Republicans. On Sunday, October 19, millions of Americans watched former Secretary of State, Republican Colin Powell, a retired Army General, endorse Democratic nominee Barack Obama for the Presidency. Among the reasons given by General Powell for his endorsement of Obama included what he described as “the narrowing” of the Republican Party during the course of this campaign. On that same television program, NBC’s Meet The Press, conservative commentator David Brooks expressed his concern about “the narrowing” of the Republican Party throughout the current election cycle. In his analysis of General Powell’s rationale for the Obama endorsement, Mr. Brooks said:
As a movie, The Narrowing would feature mobs of “talk radio” – entranced people, wandering through the streets of our nation’s small towns and big cities. There would be elderly men with racist-attired Curious George dolls. They would speak with strange little voices, using the Curious George dolls as puppets to complain about how our nation’s public schools would be serving pigs’ feet and black-eyed peas to “red-blooded American children” for lunch. The movie would depict elderly, white-trash women with “bed head”, repeating the rumor that Barack Obama is uncircumcised. (It was actually Bill Maher who started this rumor. In the movie, he would remind these women to include the aspect concerning the scent of curry.) There would be pit bulls wearing lipstick with small “beehive wigs” and ersatz Kawasaki eyeglass frames, brought to animal shelters and veterinary emergency rooms after horrible maulings and other injuries. These events would not have been caused from abuse by humans – but from attacks by irate Jack Russell Terriers and Border Collies. Mobs carrying torches would be chasing after Peggy Noonan and Chris Buckley, yelling: “Traitor!” John McCain would attempt to transform himself into “the old McCain of 2000” but it would be too late.
The film’s most scary moments would take place on Election Day. Throngs of screaming people would be seen, running from polling places. The Sarah Palin “wanna-bes” would show up to vote, not having washed their hairdos or having changed their clothes since Halloween. The gasping exiles from the voting booths would complain of the overwhelming “homeless smell” carried into the polls by these over-ripe Palin impersonators.
At the conclusion of the film, the vanquished, moderate Republicans would be forced in retreat to the shelter of big cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and (gasp!) San Francisco. They would form “cells” and organize plots to undo “the narrowing” and hopefully live to fight another day.
Meanwhile, here in “the real world”, The Narrowing is upon us. It has become painfully obvious to the more astute members of the Republican Party and the conservative community. If the GOP is to have a future, it must develop an immunosuppressive response to The Narrowing.