ESPN demands a playoff!

Do you wonder why Oklahoma elects such moronic politicians to the national scene?

This selection of "Letters to the Editor" from today's Oklahoman should make it clear. The last three printed letters are from the forced-childbirth lobby, and are apparently in response to a very mild pro-choice article that the Oklahoman cannot even bother to put online lest people find it and read it. This is how they pretend to be "balanced"—they print timid non-insane articles in the paper on Saturdays, then refuse to keep them online where people can find them, and make responses to them prominent and easy to find.

Also note that according to today's authors, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed because regulators ignored George W. Bush's warnings (a canard straight out of the Republican talking points), that apologia attempting to integrate creationism with science is somehow valid (it's not), and my favorite:

Since it was created by Congress in 1885, the national holiday now observed on the third Monday of February has been called Washington’s Birthday, Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays and President’s Day. In the 1960s, a new poorly educated and/or propagandized generation adopted a hate-your-country philosophy, refusing to pay homage to American heroes. Slander of the president who secured and founded our country and the president who stopped its disintegration grew to include Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and the Christian faiths held by all of them.

Any civil society endures its barbarians who shamelessly envy, hate and speak against great men and women. However, this latter-day contempt for our great heroes has the appearance of a more general subversion that goes beyond the ignorance of simpletons. It is, perhaps as intended by our enemies, destructive of that "domestic tranquility” deemed so essential by our Founding Fathers.

…offered without even the slightest hint as to what this "slander" against George Washington, the Pilgrims, and Christianity as a whole might be. This is no more than two paragraphs of "hippies and liberals will destroy America by hating it" without offering a single example, much less anything remotely resembling evidence or proof.

It is hatred of Americans in its most raw and pure form, and even more disgusting to see in the paper of the only city that experienced a major terrorist attack perpetrated by Americans against other Americans, ordinary people that the terrorists dismissed as "anti-freedom."

The entire Oklahoma media is set up to cater to these people and to offer dissent only in ways that are easily missed, or rebutted without further debate. The views in these letters are presented as "normal" and "American," while other views are mocked as stupid or, more commonly, dangerous. The adversarial press should question everyone and everything, but it only questions Democrats and people who express views to the left of Inhofe and Coburn.

Until that is fixed, it doesn't matter how many house parties people orgnanize or lawn signs they erect. Until the majority of Oklahomans can get more than the equivalent of World Net Daily with slightly better production values when they seek "news," this state is going to vote people like Inhofe and Coburn into office. And I see absolutely no attempts underway to change that in any significant fashion.