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Did the Ol’ Dirty ever have class?

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

That was my reaction when I opened to the opinion page of the Oregon Daily Emerald today and found this:

Top 10 Ways you know you’re Republican

Whether you’re a gun-toting Texan or a money-hogging oil tycoon, the GOP has enough emphasis on “good ol’ American family” to make you idolize people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

If you don’t know whether you’re a Republican at heart, we have 10 signs that show that you are indeed a Republican.

1) Your idea of a tea party consists of 40-year-old men with guns
2) You’re pro-child and against educating them
3) You still think Barack Obama was born in Kenya
4) You believe Judgment Day is May 21
5) Women’s Rights?
6) The thought of things trickling down turns you on
7) Sarah Palin? Michelle Bachman? Total RILFs, bro
8) You’ve gone through three divorces, but you think gay marriage will ruin the American family structure
9) You think Dick Cheney is a good hunter
10) Your news is fair and balanced

Let’s let alone for a minute the fact that the Emerald opinion desk wouldn’t know subtlety or humor if they walked up and introduced themselves. Let’s also let alone the fact that there are so many better things the Ol’ Dirty could have put in that space that students would have cared about. (While we’re at it, we can also ignore the gross misspelling of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s name, although it will serve to illustrate my point.)

This list shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of the Republican Party and what it’s about, especially in Oregon.

I am a registered member of the Oregon Republican Party, and a proud one at that. I am a member because of the three things the Oregon Republican Party stands for: accountability in spending, protecting our environment and protecting our schools. The misspelling of Rep. Bachmann’s name was not the only flaw in the severely misguided column; it is clear that when it passed through the opinion editor’s desk, it was never fact checked, not even a little bit.

Not every Republican is a tea-partier, a birther or a social conservative. We’re not all religious nuts, and we don’t all blindly stand behind elected leaders from our party.

Republicans identify as such because we believe in fiscal responsibility and civil liberties. We believe that all our constitutional rights should be exercised to their fullest extent, including the right to keep and bear arms. We believe in national defense, a free market and energy independence.

We believe in making a better America for all citizens.

At the Oregon Commentator, we publish blog posts and articles that are based on facts. We make fun of people, too, but it is always warranted and has a point. And we make sure to fact-check our pieces to the fullest extent, especially if we’re going to call someone (or a group of someones) out.

I would implore the folks at the Ol’ Dirty Emerald to, in the future, do some fact-checking, research “humor” and find some class. That is, if they haven’t strayed too far from it already.

I’ll leave you with three reasons it’s awesome to be a Republican:

1. Save what you make. Keep what you earn.
2. Avocados, papayas, bananas and every other fruit and vegetable that isn’t grown in the Willamette Valley (nom).
3. Teddy Roosevelt. Enough said.

  1. V'mort says:

    I agree with NGA.

    I also agree with Lyzi’s conclusion on the Top 10 list (that it was embarrassing) but not her reasons for reaching it. Reading as she busted a nut over the Republican Party was embarrassing. If you believe the focus-grouped bullet points political entities plop on their websites and literature actually mean anything, in fact, if you buy into either political party enough to be proud of belonging to it, you lack a certain degree of critical thinking capacity, or perspective, or both. Oregon Republicans stand for the creation of a political climate that gets out of the way of the wealthy and big business. Oregon Democrats stand for the creation of more and stronger bureaucracies. Get real.

    The problem with the top 10 list is that it’s devoid of original ideas or any trace of wit. It’s just not funny. But when it comes to Daily Emerald “satire” and “humor” articles, it’s hardly alone in that.

    On the other hand, I guess the underlying assumptions of this article reflect pretty poorly on the Emerald’s editorial staff: That the difference between the country’s major political parties is that the Republicans are more myopic. The irony here — and maybe the Emerald editors are being so daringly satirical they don’t even give a fuck whether people can tell it’s satire anymore — is that the list the Emerald editors, presumably Democrats, have put together is myopic beyond the slightest pretense of reason.

  2. Carly says:

    Lyzi, I agree with you completely. The only amusing thing about that “Top 10” list is how terrible it is. It’s actually sort of sad that someone thought that would make people laugh.

    Also, “I love that the same people who try to isolate republicans hate when people stereotype about race.” Well said. Well said.

  3. Cameron says:

    I love that the same people who try to isolate republicans hate when people stereotype about race. Both acts show the ignorance of the person talking, and are fundamentally the same.

    Lyzi doesn’t need to “wake up.” She is dead-on for the goals of the republican party in Oregon. Saying that ANY political party does one thing, and says another is not actually making a point. A 5 year old could figure that out. Instead of bitching about it, try doing something.

    Having said that, I think that most of those “Top 10…” articles are intentionally written to be kind of dumb (and I read them as somewhat satirical). It is in bad form to perpetuate misinformation about a minority group, though.

  4. NGA says:

    Republicans and accountability in spending? That must be a joke. They may talk a lot, but no one can claim the republican party has walked the walk. Cancerous government programs and bureaucracies have consistently grown no matter the party in office/holding majority.

    Republicans certainly haven’t taken the lead on “environmental” issues – and I don’t really want them to b/c most of the programs aren’t helpful.

    Republicans demanding accountability of our schools? You mean like NCLB? Throwing more money at public schools isn’t “demanding accountability.” It’s more like “acquiescing to mediocrity.”

  5. Bernard Webb says:

    Thanks Steve, for demonstrating the kind of people right-wingers are. Your violent hatred is “par for the course”.

    I advocate voting politicians I disagree with out of office; you advocate shooting strangers to death en masse because they disagree with you. Can you see the difference?

  6. Steve Toyota says:

    Bernard, why in the fuck is an Ohioan talking about Oregon? Please, do the world a favor and go drown yourself in the Cuyahoga, please.

    My god, if it weren’t for the fact that we have laws, I’d take a shotgun to every progressive I see and make sure that their faces never recovered from the impact.

  7. Bernard Webb says:

    Sorry Lyzi, but those ten points about republicans are dead on! You say that republicans favor “accountability in spending, protecting our environment and protecting our schools”. All I can say to that is HAHAHAHAHA! Are you nuts? What planet are you talking about?

    Come visit Ohio and talk to people here about the plans the republicans and our new Tea Party Guv have for the state. Here’s a hint: they are privatizing everything in sight in an attempt to reduce accountability, they are gutting our environmental laws to make the state more “business friendly”, and they have proposed setting up charter schools run for profit with NO oversight or accountability whatsoever, which will decimate education in our state (this is payback to republican mega-donor David Brennan, who runs a vast network of failing charter schools in Ohio). And that’s just for starters! Don’t even ask me about their attack on public employees.

    Our just-elected governor now has an approval rating below 30%, because the residents of our state are rejecting his heavy-handed, cruel, ideology-driven policies. The same thing is happening in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and every other state that foolishly elected Tea Party republicans to govern them. Our governor ran on jobs, jobs, jobs (with endless TV ads financed by the Koch brothers from Texas) but so far has focused on abortion, privatization, and union-busting. There has been nothing whatever done on jobs. (Just like the new republicans in Congress!)

    If only ACTUAL republicans could be like the mythical ones that you have made up to discuss in your post. Instead, we get the likes of Senator Ensign.

    Lyzi, WAKE UP! Open your eyes!

  8. zstarmac says:

    Really? You’re criticizing the ODE for not fact checking their “Top 10 ways you know your ____” editorial?
    Are those even supposed to be fact checked? Isn’t the point of them to make broad overgeneralizations about a group in a funny way?
    Of all the things you could criticize the ODE about, it’s the part where they’re trying to be funny? Really?

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