A couple of days ago I was watching, “Hardball,” with Chris Matthews and the hot subject that evening was the GOP’s man of the hour or bum of the month, depending on your perspective, Rick Santorum.
Since his rather improbable caucus victory in Iowa last month the pervasive media narrative on the former Pennsylvania Senator has been, “authentic.” Juxtaposed to the wooden Willard Romney the tag becomes that much more demonstrative.
“You gotta give him points for being who he is,” said Susan Milligan of U.S. News and World Report.
Well, it is abundantly clear now – if it wasn’t before – where Santorum stands, but he certainly doesn’t earn any points from me for, “being who he is.”
“Who” Santorum is has been on display since he first emerged on the national scene in the early 90’s as a Congressman representing the 18th Congressional District of Western Pennsylvania. However, his bid for the GOP nomination for president has provided him a much broader national platform and since his triple win in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota earlier this month the media spotlight on him has become exponentially brighter and hotter.
Now, everybody can see and hear for themselves just “who” Rick Santorum is.
“It’s not about you,” Santorum said Saturday as he defined the Obama agenda for a Tea Party crowd in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology,” Santorum explained as the crowd erupted with applause and yelps of satisfaction.
But, the next day Santorum went further and threw in a thinly veiled Obama-Hitler analogy for good measure.
“Remember the greatest generation for a year and a half sat on the sidelines while Europe was under darkness,” Santorum said Sunday at a mega church in Georgia.
“We’re a hopeful people. We think, `Well, you know, it’ll get better. Yeah, he’s a nice guy…This will be okay. I mean, yeah, maybe he’s not the best guy after a while, after a while you find out some things about this guy over in Europe who’s not so good of a guy after all…” he added.
Then on Monday night, Santorum tossed in good ol’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright, just for old time sake.
“Look, he went to Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years,” Santorum barked on the “Hannity” show on Fox. “I mean, now you can question what kind of theology Rev. Wright has, but it’s a Christian church,” he said.
Authentic Santorum…
The subtext to the authenticity narrative put forth by media is, `this is not contrived this is who Santorum really is and who he has always been.’
Indeed.
Santorum was born in Virginia, but grew up in Berkeley County, W. Va. and Butler County, in Western Pennsylvania. He spoke eloquently about the region last month in Iowa when he talked about his grandfather, a coalminer and how he, “dug for my freedom.” Well, it seems the consensus of many familiar with Western Pennsylvania is “freedom” is a much scarcer commodity for people of color in that part of the Keystone State.
“There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,” said the late Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat who represented Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District in the state’s southwest corner from 1974 to 2010.
Murtha caught a lot of flack when he made the comment about his home region in the heat of the 2008 Democratic Primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in reference to his view that Whites would be very reluctant to vote for Obama based on his race. However, Murtha wasn’t hypothesizing; he was raised early on in Western Pennsylvania and served the region for most of his adult life until he died in 2010. He clearly knew what he was talking about.
Veteran Democratic political strategist James Carville once described Pennsylvania as, `Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east and Alabama in the middle.’ That wide swath of “Alabama” has consumed more and more of the western portion of the state literally and figuratively it seems.
This is where Santorum is from; it is in his blood and has contributed greatly to forming and informing his worldview, this place that Murtha proclaimed, “There is no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area.”
Santorum is “authentically” Western Pennsylvania and proud of it.
But, authenticity is not inherently a virtue. Hitler (since the former Pennsylvania Senator fancies Hitler analogies) authentically believed in the concept of Aryan racial supremacy just as Santorum seems to believe in the inherent inadequacy of Blacks, women and gays.
“The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness,” Santorum wrote in his 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” in response to Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, “It Takes a Village.”
In 2003, Santorum said this to an Associated Press reporter about same sex marriage.
“In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be,” Santorum said.
Last October, he spoke about his aversion to contraception of any kind, in any context.
“It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” Santorum said.
And in January, on the stump in Iowa who can forget Santorum’s homage to welfare.
“I don’t want to make “blah” (Black) people’s lives better by giving them other (White) people’s money,” he said.
This is who Rick Santorum is; paternalistic, paranoid, a religious zealot, racist, sexist and homophobic.
Authentically speaking…
