"Alan, I swear I'm not kidding. It's true. Everybody who was ever close to the Rolling Stones will tell you it's true."
"Scott," I said, trying to keep a straight face while speaking with a first-rate guitar player who lists Ringo Star's All-Star Rock and Roll Band on his resume; "it's not true. It's an urban legend, pure and simple. Even if it did come from someone inside the Stone's inner circle, how could that be considered reliable? God knows what their blood alcohol, cocaine, grass, heroin content was when they said it. It's an urban legend."
"No way, Alan. No way, man. Keith Richards really does have to have all the old blood flushed out of his body and replaced with new once a month or he'll die. Hell, why do think he looks the way he does?"
After a while, there are some things you just don't argue with a true believer. It's like banging your head into the proverbial brick wall.
Keith Richards, guitar player, singer, songwriter, recent author of the best selling autobiography, "Life"; recovering booze, heroin, and by his own admission damn near everything else addict; the guy who, along with buddies Mick Jagger and Brain Jones founded rock and roll's longest lasting, arguably most creative band: The Rolling Stones. The man who, some remain convinced, has his blood flushed every month.
Then there's Barack Obama, President of the United States. Barack Obama, whose resume commands respect from all but the most incomprehensible dullards the rest of us have the sad misfortune of having to put up with. A resume that includes Harvard Law, the United States Senate, the new START treaty, the first comprehensive health care reform bill in our nation's history. I could go on. But you get the idea.
Two incredibly accomplished individuals. Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. What could these two possibly have in common?
I've given this considerable thought. Turns out it's not so difficult to figure out. My first clue came when I was watching the tube last night and saw this Fox News guy interviewing a group of Iowa voters. Turns out about half of this focus group believes, despite Obama's repeated affirmations that he's a Christian, that he is nonetheless a Muslim. No doubt these same folk would number themselves among those "birthers" who, again, despite all evidence to the contrary, firmly believe the President really can't be the President because he's not a native born U.S. citizen.
Okay... Here's the connection... Keith Richards, Rolling Stone. Barack Obama, President of the United States. Both men are living proof that if a story, a lie, a myth, or an urban legend gets passed around enough, no matter how shit-all-stupid it is, there are plenty of shit-all-stupid people who will believe it.
This is especially true if they hear it and see it being repeated by members of the official Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council: St. Sarah the Simple, Glenn John the Bircher Beck, and Rushdumb the Drug Addled Gasbag.
For those of you fortunate enough not to have, prior to this, heard of the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council and their minions of morons, let me take this opportunity to point out that it is an offshoot of the Flat Earth Society, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth Consortium, and the Nobody Ever Really Walked on the Moon Fellowship of Bible Thumping Fundamentalists.
What is truly sad about all this is the apparent fact that the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council is apparently running the Republican Party.
Where are the voices from Right of Center who are willing to speak out and say, quite simply, "Look folks, if it looks like shit, smells like shit, squishes like shit, and you heard it from the Shit-All-Stupid Leadership Council, it's probably shit?" More traditional Republicans should remember that silence is always taken as agreement.
There will always be those who, despite evidence to the contrary, persist in believing urban legends, myths, lies and the lying liers who tell them. In a free society, they are to be heard, tolerated, and their speech protected. That, however, is not to say we should let the idiots run the country.
Mahalo
