The knee-jerk “government is bad” argument against health care reform, the jobs bill or banking regulations is always “it creates more bureaucracy.” This is mainly from Republicans who want to be called lawmakers. Yes, there are people working in the government – gladly cashing their government paychecks – whose default is always that the government is incompetent. And admitting government can’t do anything right actually, sometimes, gets them elected.

Which is like hiring a mechanic who prefers not do anything that requires wearing overalls, using power tools or knowing what a car looks like – but he knows a guy…

Bureaucracy is always bad, you see. It’s slow, deliberate and full of well – bureaucrats. People who thrive on rules and checks and balances. A bunch of hall monitors. Form filling bed-wetters.

The alternative to bureaucracy? Privatization. Yes, the private sector is the cure-all for all the cumbersome, slow-witted, pencil pushers in the government. The sexy private sector is full of innovators we’re told – entrepreneurs. People who are moving and shaking and forward thinking. The private sector is shaping our future.

So the next time you have to call AT&T about a mistake on your bill, or your Internet going out or why your cell phone works perfectly on the Inca Trail but not in your living room, think of how much better the private sector works. Yes, after you’ve been transferred to the fifth person who also isn’t accountable, knowledgeable or responsible for how poorly the mega-corporation is performing think of how horrible it would be to have more bureaucracy. And when they tell you the call is being recorded for quality assurance because after an hour of being transferred to three continents you still need assurance, smile inside that this is a preferred alternative to your tax dollars being wasted.

And to anyone who’s ever been harassed for years by a billing department mix-up only to have the charge show up as unpaid on your credit report take heed, at least it’s not the anal-retentive IRS with all that red tape. And when Capitol One just arbitrarily decides your APR should be north of 33%, feel pride that at least there’s not a government bureaucrat between you and your banker. And the next time Bank of America charges you unlimited overdraft fees and you’re left with absolutely no recourse look up at that shiny red, white and blue sign and feel the glow of patriotism because it’s not the dreaded government interfering in your life.

From a consumer vantage point – privatized bureaucracy seems an awful lot like regular bureaucracy.

Waiting in line at the court house to clear up a parking ticket is the same hour spent in line at your cable company to switch out your defective DVR. All tedious, de-humanizing, time-sucking authoritative bodies are the same to their victims. The only difference is politics. No wonder people are afraid of the government taking over Medicare (psst it’s a government program). It’s one giant soulless entity being confused with another giant soulless entity. The right would have us believe it’s the government that’s the problem and the left would have us believe it’s the unregulated corporations. A privatized world is no utopia – not anymore than a government run one is. It would be nice to have a healthy pool of both, however.

The difference between the government and the private sector is you don’t have people pulling a paycheck in the private sector championing for more money and power to go into the government.

The only reason the government is preferable is because it doesn’t turn a profit. Its motives are not to make money and it is at least successful at that. Plus in the government you and I are the shareholders. We have ownership of our government, ideally. We have a say. It’s for the people, by the people. If bureaucracy is an inevitable evil, a symptom of civilization, between the private sector and government, between the DMV or Etna, I’ll choose indifference over monetization.

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Every horrendous thing one could possibly say about President Barack Obama has been said. It’s been said, repeated, blogged, taped, printed, e-mailed, syndicated, broadcasted and most likely spray painted somewhere. Some of the verbal grenades are slightly off-base. For example: you know who’s really offended by Obama being called a Nazi? Nazis. Whoa are they irked by the comparison.

You want to cheese off Hitler, call him an Obama.

So the half-Caucasian half-African leader of the free world – he’s racist. That’s why you lost your job when the plant closed in 2007. He’s a socialist, because that sounds really bad. Tyrant. Everything pejorative, dangerous and un-American – he’s that. He’ll kill us all.

George W. Bush couldn’t be challenged in the press for nearly five years. Was it deference for the office? No. He didn’t get this grace period because he was a great man. The press was scared of him. He was surrounded by a crew of thugs happy to take the low road and never above being petty. He bullied the press, cut off access, shut down communication and outed a dissenter’s wife. “Liberal” was a swear word synonymous with “retard.” It was scorched earth. Nothing was left. He bought off columnists, produced phony news stories, planted faux journalists and fabricated evidence. Anyone who questioned anything was unpatriotic. A terrorist sympathizer. Treasonous. French. Or worse, liberal. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” explained Bush.

What’s “changed” is now former Vice President Dick Cheney goes on television to warn the nation the current president, of a different party than Cheney, is going to harm America, simply because he’s of a different party than Cheney. A new low for Cheney. A new low for partisan rancor.

The current storm was birthed during the Clinton years, enhanced ten-fold by the Internet and sired enthusiastically by the Bush Administration. And then comes, by a landslide victory over a year ago, a politician who promised to bring Americans together. So in part America voted for an armistice in the war at home. We’ve yet to get it.

At his first official State of the Union Address, Obama spoke to the mood in the country. “Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away. No wonder there’s so much cynicism out there. No wonder there’s so much disappointment.”

Then immediately after, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin described the speech as “snitty.” Clearly she’s the expert. Other side-obsessives followed suit. Rudy Giuliani, The Mayor of 9/11 who recently mind-bogglingly claimed there was never a terrorist attack under Bush (err, 9/11?), said on Fox and Friends Obama never once mentioned the word “war” in the SOTU. Obama said it seven times according to the transcript, the millions of witnesses and the video.

Criticism used to be a fine art. Now it’s a carefully framed generic broad-stroked mass-reproduction that matches your chosen color scheme: Talking points. Reactions.

Two days after the SOTU a question and answer session was televised from a GOP retreat in Baltimore. There was the president, no teleprompter, answering questions, addressing issues and stating some obvious. “If there’s uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it’s going to be difficult to get a deal done, because that’s not how democracy works,” said the president in a candid tone. With a smile he called out the GOP for characterizing his health care agenda as a Bolshevik plot.

It was a riveting hour of television, stunning in its openness. It was civil civic discourse – on television, for an hour. What was most shocking was when Obama stated, “And the irony, I think, of our political climate right now is that, compared to other countries, the differences between the two major parties on most issues is not as big as it’s represented.” That’s like eating disorders in Hollywood, it’s an open secret no one wants to talk about but everyone knows. The major political parties aren’t as different as we’re told, it’s true. Sad common ground isn’t more common.

The arena has been scorched and salted over the previous decades. Can this reluctant flame war president lead us out of it? Does your answer depend on if you believe in “climate change?” Perhaps.

Diesel Jeans’s new slogan announced today, “Be Stupid” pretty much sums up consumerism and overpricing clothes to ramp up demand. Let’s not have some faux-enviro, pseudo-political, under-ageless sexy marketing, like that of The Gap or American Apparel. Let’s get right down to mindless following, shall we?

How do you find yourself wearing $200 torn jeans, gladly mimicking a high-end trashy, uber-trendy, super-shallow, somewhat preachy corporate re-branding slogan? Easy: Be stupid.

Was “Hipster Idiot” too on the nose? Was “Trend Sucking Moron” too easy to spoof? Was “I Buy What I’m Sold” too gimmicky?

Just to prove I’m not making it up. Here is their press release:

BE STUPID

Diesel SS’10 campaign is a shorthand for bravery, spontaneity and saying “yes”

Sick of being told that all your good ideas are “stupid?”

Well, we got news for you: there’s nothing dumb about stupid.

After all, Diesel was stupid enough to start selling new jeans that looked old – and look where that got them!

When somebody says “don’t be stupid,” what they’re really saying is “Don’t have fun. Don’t be daring. Don’t provoke. Bury your sense of humour. Get serious.”

So we say: “Get lost. We’re with stupid”

Stupid is the liberating alternative to dry-as-dust cerebral (so called “smart”) and it takes courage, loads!

Stupid is the very word all those folk use to dismiss anything original and genuine.

Stupid is about having the guts to risk, to take on the new and inventive, however dangerous.

Stupid is about passion, strange sex, wearing the wrong thing in the right place, swapping roles trying something new, failing, trying again – and failing better.

Diesel is stupid and thoroughly identifies with it and lives it as the clearest expression ever what the brand is standing for.

Photographers Kristin Vicari, Melodie McDaniel and Chris Buck help visualize the positive rebellion of the Be Stupid movement providing images that, working together with razor sharp captions, anchor an entire philosophy that will go on a multimedia campaign devised by the Diesel creative team in partnership with the

Anglo-American agency Anomaly.

The classic red Diesel logo makes its signature return to endorse and celebrate

“Be Stupid” as the way to Successful Living.

Shooting in California, a stupid amount of ingredients were thrown into a stupid mix: a bus, four houses, a couple of parks, an animal wrangler, the desert, an artist’s studio, a bar, an attractive elephant, a Burbank supermarket and wolves (animals can be very stupid – which is why we love them.). They shot on top of trucks and rooftops, made rain, turned a head into a flowerpot and flashed boobs publicly, often.

Be Stupid calls out to each and every one of us. It’s the key to successful living. It’s about following your heart and not your head. You can’t outsmart stupid – so don’t try. Long live stupid.

Diesel should start selling wigs, because when I see a bunch of 35-year-olds riding skateboards with “Be Stupid” t-shirts on, I’m pulling my hair out.

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The mainstream media gets denounced on cable news programs, corporate talk radio, best-selling books and behemoth blogs every day. This strangely doesn’t seem to bother the mainstream media as it heroically absorbs all the jabs thrown at it from, well, itself. It’s stoically unfazed. Admirable in its immunity.

Yes, this code word for “liberal media,” or “not liberal enough media” or “not-the-person-on-the-television-at-that-moment media,” is like rice deploring white. The ocean against wet. Trees condemning shade. It’s an epic struggle of hyperbolic proportions.

It seems some media conglomerates like the one owned and influenced by Rupert Murdoch, News Corp just don’t trust other media conglomerates. No honor among major media shares. And MSNBC feels like they’re not with the other two of the three 24-hour news networks and their multiple sub-networks because they often claim they counter the “mainstream media.” So it appears the entire mainstream media is against the mainstream media.

Almost poetic, isn’t it? But the mainstream media won’t tell you this. No you’ll have to check out ham radio, smoke signals or the cork board at the YMCA to find this out.

Right after the nation was aghast that Christian Broadcasting Network’s televangelist Pat Robertson stated the people of Haiti made a pact with the devil to get rid of the French as his explanation for the catastrophic earthquake, (described by one Haitian tweeter as a “natural holocaust”) Joe Scarborough was quick to criticize the “mainstream media.” Joe whose Twitter handle is @JoeNBC, literally meaning “the only Joe at the National Broadcast Network” pounced into his “I’m an outsider” schtick, ”MSM will now obsess over Pat Robertson’s ‘devil’ comment but will pay no attention to his organization’s remarkable relief work worldwide.” And then Joe, host of Morning Joe watched by nearly half a million people every day, long time member of what’s called the mainstream media went on to list Robertson’s good deeds excusing Robertson’s pro-colonial/pro-slavery stance. Of course this made Joe’s first statement therefore, incorrect. There was someone in the MSM paying attention to Pat’s good deeds: it was Joe.

If you can complain about the mainstream media from a national platform, it’s akin to being a ventriloquist act without the dummy: you’re bantering with your own voice.

Speaking of which, also-ran veep candidate Sarah Palin loves bashing the mainstream media. She does so from an enormous national platform, a far bigger platform than most people who consider themselves members the mainstream media. So when she’s pleads with the “press” (people who make their living from the media) to “quit making things up” she’s technically addressing herself. She’s one of the mythmakers she battles against on her new gig as a paid Fox News Channel contributor. But she won’t just “quit making things up,” that would be letting the mainstream media tell her what to do.

The media, mainstream or not, is not a monolith. American Idol is a monolith. It has one singular goal, millions of devotees and a small group in charge of its content. The press in its entirety may have been a giant uniform mass years ago. But today, it’s especially fractured with general interest newspapers failing and more and more newscasts being broadcast to compete with other broadcasts. It’s getting to the point where one can absorb oneself in “media” all day long without ever stumbling upon one single idea with which one can disagree.

The alleged mainstream media is the Sasquatch of media criticism: a myth perpetuated by the fact it’s still being talked about. It’s a rhetorical tick, a throwback to when there weren’t millions of blogs, hundreds of newspapers, dozens of news channels all live-streaming on Twitter.

Not that the press shouldn’t be criticized. It should. Just not in sweeping generalities where no one can possibly be held accountable.

My plea is to everyone in the media: unless you put the “mainstream media” in the same category with unicorns, leprechauns and ethical bankers – stop talking about the mainstream media.

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If you ask Ditto Heads, Republicans or just casual fans why they like Rush Limbaugh their answer is always the same: because liberals hate him.

No, “I admire his humanity.”  Not, “I like his high moral standing in the community.” Nor, “He inspired me to get off drugs/lose weight/have a family/find true love.”

No if you ask someone who likes Rush Limbaugh why they like him it’s solely because he makes liberals nuts. Some will say it’s because they think Rush is funny; he’s funny to those who love to see liberals go nuts.

It’s a political theater show: The warm-up act is Rush blowing hard into his syndicated microphone. There’s the cameo by people who agree with everything he says, just because he says it. But the main event is people reacting to Rush. Together it’s a hyper-partisan spectacle and Rush is being the producer solely by setting the tone.

“Limbaugh wants Obama to fail!” was a headline for two weeks last winter. It was talked about, denounced, analyzed, discussed, pondered, considered and dismissed in and around the media. In doing so this sound bite, a flippant comment made by a jock paid to shock was repeated a million times. So instead of maybe one million* disinterested people or so having their familiar day-time drone of Rush’s in-studio spit-cast on in the background, now every man, woman and child knows what he said about the freshly sworn-in Barack Obama. Rush’s proclamations suddenly got an exponentially larger audience than they would have otherwise.

All because what he said was offensive: It resonated with our lower nature and some of us are ashamed of that. When we lose, we secretly want the winner to suffer.

Rush is an agitator. That’s what his role has been for more than 20 years. He’s not a reporter, he’s not a politician nor is he a strategist. He just says horrible stuff and regular people, liberals and the media get whipped up and therefore more people hear him.

He’s also, like most of this current crop of conservatives, a contrarian. So whatever the current Democratic president is for, he has to be against. Obama is for improving the country’s health care system, Rush is for the opposite. Obama is for repairing our financial system, Rush is for the opposite. Obama is for American’s donating to Haiti, Rush is for the opposite. Remember when Rush was for everything President Bush was for? Neither does anyone else.

So since Rush, in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, before the bodies were cold, before the death toll was counted, before the aid could land, decided to bloviate “Obama will use Haiti to boost credibility with light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” This seems to be a tipping point and there have been calls by liberals to boycott Rush Limbaugh.

Now I believe in Free Speech, protected speech. Therefore I believe in protecting hate speech. Even stupid speech. Even outrageous and poorly timed speech. It doesn’t mean I’m for corporate sponsored hate speech, which Rush Limbaugh is. He has the right for the government not to silence him, but not the right to have companies financially support his views.

So you’d think I’d be all for a boycott of Rush Limbaugh. No. No I am not. Here’s why: you can’t boycott something you’re not patronizing. So if you’re not listening to Rush’s show, then you have no leverage in a boycott. There was a boycott of Glenn Back after he called Obama a racist last year. Yes, Beck lost from some estimates 98 sponsors. But now his ratings are higher than ever and lack of sponsors or not, he’s still on the air. Did the boycott backfire? Yes.

Consider this: if a group of neocons wanted to boycott Rachel Maddow, everyone in the country would watch her show. If she managed to irritate a group enough to have them call her sponsors, her platform would swell.

The answer is to ignore Rush Limbaugh. Ignore him. Just stop being outraged by the stuff he says. You’re not going to change his dwindling fan base. He doesn’t command a voter bloc (remember when he asked his listeners to get Hillary the nomination?). If you disagree with Rush, you’re the audience that must walk away. We can leave ignorant and racist comments unchecked if it means a smaller broadcast of said comments. If the only reason his fans love him is because he makes liberals nuts, liberals have their job clearly laid out for them.

He has the right to say things and I have the right to not repeat them. Besides, Rush hates tolerance. What a more perfect revenge.

*His current ratings are reported at 13.5 million a week. At 15 hours a week of yammering, that’s less than one million an hour, average listening. But actual data of radio ratings are kept vague on purpose.