Man do these people make me angry. Liberal ones do too, but not as often. Griping about politics is one of the main reasons I wanted to have this blog, in fact…I just need somewhere to vent. Unfortunately it’s ultimately pointless of me to do it here in a place read by about seven people, but screw it.

In this case I’m talking about a James Dobson article on cnn.com, Media provides cover for assault on traditional marriage. He’s bitching about the failed 49-48 vote to get a Constitutional amendment preserving marriage as guy + chick.

Rarely has there been a greater disconnect between members of the Senate and the American people who put them in power.

Too right, Dobson! Glad to see we agree on oh wait we don’t, do we. Of course he’s saying that the vast majority of Americans think there should be such an amendment, when a recent Gallup poll says that the number of people who think gay marriage is a top priority for lawmakers is statistically next door to zero.
He’s prepared for this, though. And by “prepared” I mean wave wave TACTICAL MISDIRECTION!

Let’s examine the claim that traditional marriage lacks support in the court of public opinion. As it always does when conservative issues are being debated, the liberal press produced a series of trumped-up polls indicating the issue was of no interest nationally. However, there was another “poll” that the media completely ignored. In fact, there were 19 of them. They represented the 19 states in which voters overwhelmingly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Ahhh dig that. I’d sit back and appreciate the art there, if it didn’t fill me with anger. Dig how charged the second sentence is—you can almost hear the John Stossel giiiive-me-a-breaaaak inflections in it. But right there in the first sentence, right out the gate he diverges from the topic at hand. The poll doesn’t show that traditional marriage lacks support in public opinion, the poll shows that public opinion is that Congress has more important shit to be worrying about.

And yeah, Jim, the media completely ignored that. So ignored it that there weren’t ongoing vote counts, big headlines in the papers the day after, and I certainly have no idea what you’re talking about, because the media completely ignored it.

Indeed, on the day before 48 senators bailed on marriage, a 20th state voted on its own constitutional amendment. It was Alabama, which supported traditional marriage by 81 percent to 19 percent! …
CNN and the mainstream televised news networks uttered hardly a peep about the Alabama decision. Why was the issue buried? Because the “poll” in Alabama and 19 other states didn’t match the template put forward by those who wanted the amendment to be crushed. Their bias against the family is breathtaking.

How the fuck do you make the logic leap in that last sentence. Goddamn, whenever I hear people say “liberals want America to fall” or “the media hates the family” or “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” it makes me want to crush something.

And as for Congress being out of touch…a separate poll conducted over the weekend asked specifically whether there should be such an amendment. 45% were for, 54% were against. So on that point, Congress is hardly out of touch, the numbers came up pretty close. They part where they’re out of touch is why are they even wasting their time on this in the first place.

Incidentally, Dobson’s how-it-suits-him math here reminds me of this.