No "Santorum Drops Out" Jokes, I Swear
Rick Santorum finally called it quits this week in a move that was as inevitable as it was satisfying. Speaking generally, it is of course always gratifying to watch someone else fail and give up on their aspirations. More specifically, it’s nice to be reminded once in a while that the country isn’t filled with quite as many whack jobs as you might ordinarily suspect.
Santorum never had any real chance of becoming president, and it’s easy to see why. A couple weeks ago, he released a position paper in which he said he would “vigorously enforce” laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet,” as well as several other means of distribution, in order to put an end to the “pandemic of pornography.” First of all, “vigorously” is not a word that should ever be used in the same sentence as “pornography” if your goal is to elicit respect from an audience instead of cheap laughter. But more importantly, this is a nice example of one of the biggest problems with political campaigns, especially ones for high office. In order to have an effective campaign, you really have to run on a platform of things you’d like to do without regard for trifling matters like reason or practicality.
I don’t know if Mr. Santorum has been on the Internet lately, but stripping it of all it’s obscene content would be so tirelessly unproductive as to make Sisyphus give up and turn on Wheel of Fortune. The internet exists for the sole purpose of distributing breasts to as wide an audience as possible. E-commerce, social networking, lolcats, all these are byproducts of the most advanced pornographic collection ever conceived by man. You can’t even go to Toys R Us Online anymore without at least a couple pop ups for horny local singles moaning away in the background.
I’m not objecting to his right to be unhappy about that reality. But to believe he can do something about it is like saying, “I don’t like that my kids can’t drink from the ocean. I’m going to declare a war on salt! This president’s shameless pandering to Poseidon has created a pandemic of saline, and I won’t stand by while the needs of crustaceans are put above those of American kidneys.”
Fortunately, in the end he saw the error of his ways and shifted his gaze to the eradication of his own delegates. With the number of clicks that Bang Bus alone gets every day and the number of people who were willing to vote Santorum in 2012, the numbers should have spoken for themselves.
-TC