Does anyone embody the smug arrogant blundering of the Bush years more perfectly than Bill Kristol? When he was given a column on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, The Grumpy’s eyeballs nearly exploded. The Grumpy cursed Bill Keller’s name a year ago, but now he sees the deep wisdom in that appointment.
With W. about to jump into the chipper of history, The Grumpy turns to Kristol’s column each Monday with glee, eager for a fresh steaming pile of the fatuous ignorance from which we will soon be liberated. How will we remember the mindset behind the disastrous course of the last eight years unless we keep couple of those knuckleheads around to remind us how it all went down? And it is critical that we remember. Kristol provides a useful exhibit.
Kristol will also continue to be a positive force for the destruction of the Republican Party’s fortunes for as long as they let him hang around. He was an early and instrumental backer of that brilliant political phenomenon, Sarah Palin. Kristol bragged about his influence in promoting her and when Palin bombed, Kristol hectored the McCain campaign for trying to muzzle Palin and contain the damage. We can only pray that Kristol remains close to the inner circles of Republican Party decision making for years to come.
So on Monday (12-2-08) Kristol used his Op-Ed space to lobby for war between India and Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai atrocities. He ridiculed Professor Martha Nussbaum and former Republican Congressman Jim Leach for counseling India to avoid a violent nationalist response to the terrorist atrocities in Mumbai.
Having learned nothing from the last eight years, Kristol continues to draw the most simpleminded straight line from “patriotism” to “nationalism” to “fighting the terrorist enemy.” Somehow it never occurs to Kristol that “thinking” should somehow get a wedge in there somewhere. In the face of mindless terrorist violence, he apparently believes that a patriot’s first duty is to lose his mind.
Hey, it worked for Dick and George.
Kristol may still get his way. The governments of India and Pakistan are struggling mightily to resist the slide toward war. Condaleeza Rice is jetting about trying to get the two governments to cooperate against the terrorists responsible for the attacks. But in the streets of Mumbai and Lahore the mobs on both sides of this potential conflagration are taking up Kristol’s challenge and calling for blood and vengeance. The Grumpy assumes that these crazed nationalists do not get home delivery of The Times but if they did, Kristol would be required reading.
Did any of Kristol’s editors think to protect him from himself? Can’t they delegate some craggy faced old timer, some broken down guy in a fedora and suspenders with a nasty cigar, who could take young Bill into the corner office and try to explain it to him? “You see Bill, in India they have Hindus and Muslims, you know, like Osama. You see they hate each other a lot. They used slaughter each other by the millions. They both think they should run the country so when you say they should crank up the nationalism you’re really encouraging a civil war. You can understand that, right? You don’t really want to do that Bill, do you?”
Has Kristol himself ever been involved in anything more violent than an argument over or a squash court reservation at The Harvard Club? What youthful inadequacies does his belligerence mask? Should this prissy milk toast be allowed to encourage the use of state violence from the pages of our most important newspaper? Maybe he should.
The Times has apparently decided to let Kristol embarrass himself on a weekly basis for as long as he likes. Kristol represents the media equivalent of his darling Governor Palin, a suppurating intellectual wound that will bring nothing but calamity to his own side.
Still, The Grumpy dreams of tuning in to Fox News some Sunday when Juan Williams finally loses it, puts Kristol in a headlock and gives him a really good vigorous noogy.
It will happen just after Kristol proudly completes one of his well-rehearsed quips. Kristol will lean back slightly, flare his delicate nostrils, and smile that twisted little half smile. He’ll squint impishly and arch his eyebrows in that inimitable wry manner. As he chuckles softly he'll jiggle his head ever so slightly as if taunt, don’t you wish you could be as wonderful as me? Then Juan will go for him. Chris Wallace and the rest will have to wrestle them apart. It will make a glorious piece of television.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
New Words for a New World
One of our favorite curmudgeons, William Safire, chose frugalista for his favorite new word of 2008 (NYT Sunday Magazine 11-23-08). A frugalista is a penny-pinching fashionista, who swaps and trades for designer clothes rather than buying them. There is a pleasant shade of gentle ridicule in the term, a suggestion that the frugalista devotes a silly revolutionary zeal to her practice.
Safire chose frugalista from a list of the best new words of 2008, proposed by the New Oxford American Dictionary. Safire rejected The NOAD’s winner new word hypermiling, which describes driving an automobile with the minimum use of gasoline. Safire found hypermiling and its synonym ecoDriving (A favorite word of California Governor Arnold Schwarznegger.) too "news-specific", as if global warming and the energy crisis were ephemeral issues, like the season’s hemlines.
The Grumpy loves the new word frenemy, used recently to describe the special love-loathe relationship between Barack and Hillary. This word has legs and is not at all trendy or newsy. It describes a classic political pas-de-deux in which you stab your esteemed friend gently through the ribs while smiling in his or her face.
Big Bill will no doubt correct me if frenemy was not coined in 2008. Perhaps recent research will indicate that it was first used by Samuel Johnson to describe that pesky Boswell fellow, but was lost to lexicographical history when a part time waiter at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese mistook the great man’s scrawl for a snuff stained rag and threw it in the fire.
All this neologizing got The Grumpy cranked up and thinking about some new words that could be useful in the new year.
The Grumpy liked frugalista and plans to use it a lot, but felt we needed a more earnest less ironic appellation for someone dealing bravely with straightended circumstances. The Grumpy tried out frugalnaut on some of his few friends but was not met with applause. Thriftanaut smacks of great heroic adventures in moderation and making-do, and may be applied especially to cheapskate travelers.
Safire will surely enjoy misercrat, a word to describe and poke fun at a familiar brand of puritanical liberal who thinks we can save the world if we all just ride bicycles and save string.
In a New York Times editorial of 11/23/08 (Yes, The Grumpy has to broaden his reading.), we learned that some Bush administration zealots plan to go feral inside the Obama administration, converting themselves from political appointees into permanent civil service moles. These burrowers, as the Times calls them, will bury themselves deep inside the vast federal system intent on sabotaging the new administration and its policies from within. May we improve on this neologism in progress and refer to these dead enders as burrowcrats and suggest that they form an insidious burrowacracy? The Grumpy needs your blessing Bill.
Some have suggested that burrowcrats be known simply as Brownies in honor of the infamously incompetent FEMA director, in the same way that London’s Bobbies took their moniker from Prime Minister Robert Peel.
The Grumpy does not yet have a satisfying word to describe the effort to dig out the burrowcrats. Deburrowcratification somehow doesn’t cut it.
Bush-hogging already exists and does not have the correct connotation of digging out and up rooting the pesky varmints, although it does make a sly reference to that sweaty bucolic pastime, favored by many recent Republican presidents, of hacking away at the shrubbery while on vacation.
Mole whacking is joyful but packs a disagreeable whiff of futility. The moles in the whack-a-mole carnival game keep popping back up and never get properly whacked, in the preferred wise-guy sense of the word.
DeBushification, an appropriate twist on the deBathification of the boondoggliest (most boondoggled) period of the Iraq War, may be the most ready to wear term for dispatching burrowcrats, but it still needs work. Any suggestions?
The office of the Vice President will certainly require a special regimen of intellectual and constitutional fumigation. Some may speak of the need to deCheneyize the office. Political sophisticates will refer to an era of anti-Addingtoniansim, after David Addington the legal architect of the unitary executive theory and inflato-vice-presidentialism.
Bidenize may be used to describe an act of replacing anything grandiose and dangerously overarching with something solid and regular. When you downsize from a McMasion to a small but comfortable cape they will say you have Bidenized your living arrangements. Any similar swap: Rolls for Chevy, Gucci for Thom McCann, The Ritz for Motel 6; will become an example of Bidenization.
Obamafication will be used by right wing talk show hosts to stick a scary foreign sounding label on the normal practice of replacing incompetents with people who know how to do their jobs.
As Lincoln was The Great Emancipator, so Reagan was the Great Communicator. George H. W. Bush, The Great Lip Reader came before Clinton, The Great Triangulator. Has anyone yet christened George W. Bush The Great Discombobulator?
Perhaps Obama will restore peace and prosperity to our nation and become The Great Combobulator, or should that be Recombobulator? Even Safire can hope that coinage represents change we can believe in.
Safire chose frugalista from a list of the best new words of 2008, proposed by the New Oxford American Dictionary. Safire rejected The NOAD’s winner new word hypermiling, which describes driving an automobile with the minimum use of gasoline. Safire found hypermiling and its synonym ecoDriving (A favorite word of California Governor Arnold Schwarznegger.) too "news-specific", as if global warming and the energy crisis were ephemeral issues, like the season’s hemlines.
The Grumpy loves the new word frenemy, used recently to describe the special love-loathe relationship between Barack and Hillary. This word has legs and is not at all trendy or newsy. It describes a classic political pas-de-deux in which you stab your esteemed friend gently through the ribs while smiling in his or her face.
Big Bill will no doubt correct me if frenemy was not coined in 2008. Perhaps recent research will indicate that it was first used by Samuel Johnson to describe that pesky Boswell fellow, but was lost to lexicographical history when a part time waiter at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese mistook the great man’s scrawl for a snuff stained rag and threw it in the fire.
All this neologizing got The Grumpy cranked up and thinking about some new words that could be useful in the new year.
The Grumpy liked frugalista and plans to use it a lot, but felt we needed a more earnest less ironic appellation for someone dealing bravely with straightended circumstances. The Grumpy tried out frugalnaut on some of his few friends but was not met with applause. Thriftanaut smacks of great heroic adventures in moderation and making-do, and may be applied especially to cheapskate travelers.
Safire will surely enjoy misercrat, a word to describe and poke fun at a familiar brand of puritanical liberal who thinks we can save the world if we all just ride bicycles and save string.
In a New York Times editorial of 11/23/08 (Yes, The Grumpy has to broaden his reading.), we learned that some Bush administration zealots plan to go feral inside the Obama administration, converting themselves from political appointees into permanent civil service moles. These burrowers, as the Times calls them, will bury themselves deep inside the vast federal system intent on sabotaging the new administration and its policies from within. May we improve on this neologism in progress and refer to these dead enders as burrowcrats and suggest that they form an insidious burrowacracy? The Grumpy needs your blessing Bill.
Some have suggested that burrowcrats be known simply as Brownies in honor of the infamously incompetent FEMA director, in the same way that London’s Bobbies took their moniker from Prime Minister Robert Peel.
The Grumpy does not yet have a satisfying word to describe the effort to dig out the burrowcrats. Deburrowcratification somehow doesn’t cut it.
Bush-hogging already exists and does not have the correct connotation of digging out and up rooting the pesky varmints, although it does make a sly reference to that sweaty bucolic pastime, favored by many recent Republican presidents, of hacking away at the shrubbery while on vacation.
Mole whacking is joyful but packs a disagreeable whiff of futility. The moles in the whack-a-mole carnival game keep popping back up and never get properly whacked, in the preferred wise-guy sense of the word.
DeBushification, an appropriate twist on the deBathification of the boondoggliest (most boondoggled) period of the Iraq War, may be the most ready to wear term for dispatching burrowcrats, but it still needs work. Any suggestions?
The office of the Vice President will certainly require a special regimen of intellectual and constitutional fumigation. Some may speak of the need to deCheneyize the office. Political sophisticates will refer to an era of anti-Addingtoniansim, after David Addington the legal architect of the unitary executive theory and inflato-vice-presidentialism.
Bidenize may be used to describe an act of replacing anything grandiose and dangerously overarching with something solid and regular. When you downsize from a McMasion to a small but comfortable cape they will say you have Bidenized your living arrangements. Any similar swap: Rolls for Chevy, Gucci for Thom McCann, The Ritz for Motel 6; will become an example of Bidenization.
Obamafication will be used by right wing talk show hosts to stick a scary foreign sounding label on the normal practice of replacing incompetents with people who know how to do their jobs.
As Lincoln was The Great Emancipator, so Reagan was the Great Communicator. George H. W. Bush, The Great Lip Reader came before Clinton, The Great Triangulator. Has anyone yet christened George W. Bush The Great Discombobulator?
Perhaps Obama will restore peace and prosperity to our nation and become The Great Combobulator, or should that be Recombobulator? Even Safire can hope that coinage represents change we can believe in.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
My Obama Dividend
11/19/08
I’m ready to cash in whatever is left of my political engagement and start enjoying my Obama dividend.
I’m not talking about anything like the “peace dividend” of the early 1990’s when we stopped wasting tons of dough preparing for Armageddon vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. I’m not talking about money at all, although the thing has great value.
I’m talking about the great gobs of my own time I will be able to reclaim now that I no longer have to spend so much of my waking life in a panic, anticipating the next cliff the Bush administration might take us over. I have fretted and fumed for eight years. Many have done much more, but I have done my share of donating and marching, campaigning and canvassing, bitching and moaning. Now I am done.
Times are tough and are going to get tougher. My life may start to unravel financially, as will the lives of many friends and family. But I feel carefree, almost weightless.
I know that the ship of state will be in the hands of well- motivated men and women who are capable, smart, savvy and practical. I know a lot of smart people but I relish the thought that no one I know is anywhere near smart enough to get tapped for a position in the Obama administration. Those people are wicked smaaaht. So get out of the way and let them at it. I plan to kick back and free load off their brilliance and efficiency.
Of course, I reserve the right to bitch from the peanut gallery. I am an American.
My own small part of the cresting catastrophe will be enough for me to handle. I have two time-bomb mortgages and enough credit card debt to gag Donald Trump. If I can just save my own ass I will be doing my part for my country. No thanks necessary. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it.
Today came the news I was looking for to confirm me in my new complaisance. Obama gave an address yesterday in which he said something he was too careful to emphasize during the campaign. Basically, he said he was going full speed ahead on his climate change agenda, regardless of the economic conditions. With his head in the right place on saving the planet and with Al Gore watching him for any signs of backsliding, I feel comfortable checking out. See you in 2012. Make that 2016.
Since the election, I have truly appreciated the sentiments of those who exhorted us to remain engaged and energized. The Obama Campaign, we are told, was not just a run for a political office. It was a genuine mass movement for progress on a whole range of shared aspirations and hopes to make this a better country. Barack still needs us we are told. Everyone can find a way to help make this a better America.
I have always believed that I owe my country the greatest possible measure of my devotion. If I don’t have what it takes to teach under-privileged kids to read in some terrible urban school, then I can send out letters and make phone calls and maybe knock on doors to encourage other people, younger and more energetic than myself, to teach those kids in those lousy schools. And if I don’t have the stationary to send out those letters, or maybe my knuckles are raw from too much door knocking, or perhaps after too much phone canvassing I’ve developed a phobia; then I can still sit quietly in the corner with my tongue sticking out so somebody else can use it to moisten the stamps to put on those letters that persuade those tragically enthusiastic young American Heroes to teach those kids in those lousy schools. What I’m saying is we all have a role to play. Only my role is to roll.
My country needs me all right. It needs me to take a hike, away from the noise of the public square toward the silent sacred space of my own life. My country needs me to lower my hyper-inflated expectations, to learn to make do and enjoy things pretty much the way they are. My country calls me in a clear persistent voice, the voice of destiny: “Don’t take up too much space. Don’t demand too many goodies for yourself.” My country needs me to be quietly OK.
I am overjoyed that I have lived long enough to find myself in a nation in which 53% of the people are able to recognize the earnest solid virtue of a Barack Obama. I will learn to trust and feel secure in his leadership.
Meanwhile, I will do my part to restore the dignity and sanctity of private life. Someone has to do it. I will cultivate the subtle art of wasting time. I will fish. I will fiddle around. I will fascinate myself. I will have my hands full.
I’m ready to cash in whatever is left of my political engagement and start enjoying my Obama dividend.
I’m not talking about anything like the “peace dividend” of the early 1990’s when we stopped wasting tons of dough preparing for Armageddon vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. I’m not talking about money at all, although the thing has great value.
I’m talking about the great gobs of my own time I will be able to reclaim now that I no longer have to spend so much of my waking life in a panic, anticipating the next cliff the Bush administration might take us over. I have fretted and fumed for eight years. Many have done much more, but I have done my share of donating and marching, campaigning and canvassing, bitching and moaning. Now I am done.
Times are tough and are going to get tougher. My life may start to unravel financially, as will the lives of many friends and family. But I feel carefree, almost weightless.
I know that the ship of state will be in the hands of well- motivated men and women who are capable, smart, savvy and practical. I know a lot of smart people but I relish the thought that no one I know is anywhere near smart enough to get tapped for a position in the Obama administration. Those people are wicked smaaaht. So get out of the way and let them at it. I plan to kick back and free load off their brilliance and efficiency.
Of course, I reserve the right to bitch from the peanut gallery. I am an American.
My own small part of the cresting catastrophe will be enough for me to handle. I have two time-bomb mortgages and enough credit card debt to gag Donald Trump. If I can just save my own ass I will be doing my part for my country. No thanks necessary. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it.
Today came the news I was looking for to confirm me in my new complaisance. Obama gave an address yesterday in which he said something he was too careful to emphasize during the campaign. Basically, he said he was going full speed ahead on his climate change agenda, regardless of the economic conditions. With his head in the right place on saving the planet and with Al Gore watching him for any signs of backsliding, I feel comfortable checking out. See you in 2012. Make that 2016.
Since the election, I have truly appreciated the sentiments of those who exhorted us to remain engaged and energized. The Obama Campaign, we are told, was not just a run for a political office. It was a genuine mass movement for progress on a whole range of shared aspirations and hopes to make this a better country. Barack still needs us we are told. Everyone can find a way to help make this a better America.
I have always believed that I owe my country the greatest possible measure of my devotion. If I don’t have what it takes to teach under-privileged kids to read in some terrible urban school, then I can send out letters and make phone calls and maybe knock on doors to encourage other people, younger and more energetic than myself, to teach those kids in those lousy schools. And if I don’t have the stationary to send out those letters, or maybe my knuckles are raw from too much door knocking, or perhaps after too much phone canvassing I’ve developed a phobia; then I can still sit quietly in the corner with my tongue sticking out so somebody else can use it to moisten the stamps to put on those letters that persuade those tragically enthusiastic young American Heroes to teach those kids in those lousy schools. What I’m saying is we all have a role to play. Only my role is to roll.
My country needs me all right. It needs me to take a hike, away from the noise of the public square toward the silent sacred space of my own life. My country needs me to lower my hyper-inflated expectations, to learn to make do and enjoy things pretty much the way they are. My country calls me in a clear persistent voice, the voice of destiny: “Don’t take up too much space. Don’t demand too many goodies for yourself.” My country needs me to be quietly OK.
I am overjoyed that I have lived long enough to find myself in a nation in which 53% of the people are able to recognize the earnest solid virtue of a Barack Obama. I will learn to trust and feel secure in his leadership.
Meanwhile, I will do my part to restore the dignity and sanctity of private life. Someone has to do it. I will cultivate the subtle art of wasting time. I will fish. I will fiddle around. I will fascinate myself. I will have my hands full.
I'm Client #9
11/8/08
Yesterday, Barack Obama gave his first press conference as President Elect. The Grumpy was surprised that Eliot Spitzer was not there to take his proper place in the row of grim faced luminaries. Larry Summers was there despite his crash and burn at Harvard. An allegedly renovated, sweeter, warmer Rahm Emmanuel, was there, just appointed Chief of Staff to The President Elect. The administration of the first African American president could become the HQ of second chances for middle-aged white guys.
That morning, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Spitzer would not be tried for consorting with high priced prostitutes last year. It seemed conceivable that by 2 pm, Spitzer could be redeemed enough to be included in Obama’s transition team.
Last March, we all stared fascinated into the flames of the Eliot Spitzer bonfire. Many yearned for a great leap forward in mutual comprehension of our common human frailty.
Still so many durable delusions and frauds remained piled up high on the boundary between our private and public lives. For a while it looked like we would be required to misconstrue what the Governor (Client 9) had done and punish him like we really meant it.
Back then, most men held their tongues in mixed company, staring mutely at their shuffling feet, wondering if there, but for the lack of a bottomless pile of untraceable campaign cash, might go someone they knew pretty well.
You may not be surprised, Dear Ladies, that when they were safely alone with their buds, many of your husbands and partners felt compelled to wonder aloud how they could volunteer to become client 10.
When they make “Spitzer”, the inevitable movie, there should be a thrilling scene like the famous one in “Spartucus.” The men of America all chained together and waiting to be crucified for the sin of having testicles and a penis, struggle bravely to their feet, one by one and then in hoards, to declare: “I’m Client 9.”
Men understand Eliot Spitzer. He’s just a guy, in other words, a dog.
Now with no prosecution, we may never know for sure what acts some of Eliot’s escorts considered “unsafe.” America will not be forced to contemplate acts so filthy that just hearing about them could constitute a grave danger to public safety. We may have dodged a WMD of mass mortification capable of depopulating large sections of the nation’s midsection. Now, millions of people will not be forced to move away in the dark of night because they are unable to face their neighbors with the knowledge that they know what they themselves know. You know what I mean? Like Clinton and the cigar but a lot, lot worse.
On the other hand, Eliot’s sins may have remained in the range of the gross normal, or the normally gross. Perhaps, we’ll never know. The tut-tut-ocracy will not get to ask some important questions.
What sex could be worth $5,5000 an hour?
Did Spitzer discover an incredible new erogenous zone? He certainly proved again that many rich and powerful men cannot get excited about anything without vigorous stimulation of their wallets. For some women, sex is what you put up with to get money. For some men, money is sex.
How could someone lock people up for prostitution and then become a John himself?
People were struck dumb by the enormity of Eliot’s hypocrisy, but did we really need Spitzer to remind us that self-righteousness often has a secret slimy under belly? For many preachers, pundits, pols, and other poobahs, the sanctimony only adds a certain sizzle to the sin.
How could he be so reckless?
Ask Bill Clinton. Ask JFK. While you’re at it, ask Genghis Khan, Caligula or Vlad the Impaler. With great power often comes great irresponsibility. (Sorry Spiderman.) Perhaps people running for high office should be asked for a sex resume. Anyone with a standard issue libido would be disqualified.
Wasn’t being Governor of New York enough for Eliot?
For the truly driven, what the rest of us admire and envy is never enough. Compared to running for Governor of New York, spending $80,000 on a pro-am sex romp was a fairly normal healthy activity. The strictly enforced fraudulence and requisite self-manipulation of politics have turned many good people into sociopaths. Maybe Spitzer should be recognized as the victim of a vicious psychological experiment and sent to one of those rest homes for retired lab chimps.
This is where you should bow your head and pray: Lord, please protect Barack Obama and this nation from the scourge of another sexually incontinent Presidency.
Back in the Spring, people divided up predictably between those who wanted to give Eliot Spitzer a pass, and those who wanted to punish him to set a really effective example. But before and after Spitzer, a third way for processing public scandal has been developing. A subtle shift has occurred in society’s attitude toward matters of public morality. The public now seems to say: “OK punish the bastard, but do it quickly and don’t overdo it and then forgive him his trespasses. That’s what Jesus would do.”
When Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter was found to be pregnant it was not treated as a scandal at all, but a blessing. The proverbial shotgun was waved in the general direction of the young father but was never employed. The young couple may or may not actually get married at some point, whenever. With the McCain/Palin ticket defeated, is anyone going to keep track?
There have been countless recent examples of increasing moral leniency in the cases of celebrities and public figures in general.
Rush Limbaugh may be a recovering/lapsed/recovering/lapsed/recovering Oxycontin addict but no one impounded his microphone and he still rouses the rabble with best of them.
Bill O’Reilly may not know the difference between a loofah and a falafel when harassing his female staff, but a few million of Rupert Murdoch’s money, is a small price to pay to enjoy the genius of his unique small mindedness.
Imus was banished to the media wilderness for about a nanosecond and now we can all continue to enjoy the highly entertaining progress of his senility.
Just before the election, Obamas’s aunt was discovered, an illegal alien living in a Boston public housing project. Obama declared that the law must be upheld. He then said that he loved his aunt and he promised to care of her.
Massachusetts has just followed a few other enlightened states and voted to decriminalize the possession of marijuana, in small amounts. This offers hope that the Great Relaxation long enjoyed by the high and mighty, may start to embrace the rest of us.
Our entire economy sank into a sea of collective dishonesty this Summer, but no one has suggested that real people should go to jail for telling lies to mortgage brokers, which is in fact a crime.
We have become an “easy off” society and The Grumpy is all for it. Give the miscreants a break and while you’re at it give me a couple too. We may be inventing a more mechanical, less morally absolutist and more humane approach to some of the smaller sillier crimes.
Eliot Spitzer scared the children and startled the livestock. The law must be upheld but not with excessive vigor. Essentially, he got a really huge parking ticket that could still ruin the rest of his life. Does anyone think he should also go to jail?
In his second term, President Obama may have the wisdom to make Eliot Spitzer the Assistant Attorney General in charge of public corruption. Talk about fully vetted. After a reasonable time out, a chastened Eliot Spitzer could serve as a new kind of public official, pre-shrunk to realistic human proportions.
Yesterday, Barack Obama gave his first press conference as President Elect. The Grumpy was surprised that Eliot Spitzer was not there to take his proper place in the row of grim faced luminaries. Larry Summers was there despite his crash and burn at Harvard. An allegedly renovated, sweeter, warmer Rahm Emmanuel, was there, just appointed Chief of Staff to The President Elect. The administration of the first African American president could become the HQ of second chances for middle-aged white guys.
That morning, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Spitzer would not be tried for consorting with high priced prostitutes last year. It seemed conceivable that by 2 pm, Spitzer could be redeemed enough to be included in Obama’s transition team.
Last March, we all stared fascinated into the flames of the Eliot Spitzer bonfire. Many yearned for a great leap forward in mutual comprehension of our common human frailty.
Still so many durable delusions and frauds remained piled up high on the boundary between our private and public lives. For a while it looked like we would be required to misconstrue what the Governor (Client 9) had done and punish him like we really meant it.
Back then, most men held their tongues in mixed company, staring mutely at their shuffling feet, wondering if there, but for the lack of a bottomless pile of untraceable campaign cash, might go someone they knew pretty well.
You may not be surprised, Dear Ladies, that when they were safely alone with their buds, many of your husbands and partners felt compelled to wonder aloud how they could volunteer to become client 10.
When they make “Spitzer”, the inevitable movie, there should be a thrilling scene like the famous one in “Spartucus.” The men of America all chained together and waiting to be crucified for the sin of having testicles and a penis, struggle bravely to their feet, one by one and then in hoards, to declare: “I’m Client 9.”
Men understand Eliot Spitzer. He’s just a guy, in other words, a dog.
Now with no prosecution, we may never know for sure what acts some of Eliot’s escorts considered “unsafe.” America will not be forced to contemplate acts so filthy that just hearing about them could constitute a grave danger to public safety. We may have dodged a WMD of mass mortification capable of depopulating large sections of the nation’s midsection. Now, millions of people will not be forced to move away in the dark of night because they are unable to face their neighbors with the knowledge that they know what they themselves know. You know what I mean? Like Clinton and the cigar but a lot, lot worse.
On the other hand, Eliot’s sins may have remained in the range of the gross normal, or the normally gross. Perhaps, we’ll never know. The tut-tut-ocracy will not get to ask some important questions.
What sex could be worth $5,5000 an hour?
Did Spitzer discover an incredible new erogenous zone? He certainly proved again that many rich and powerful men cannot get excited about anything without vigorous stimulation of their wallets. For some women, sex is what you put up with to get money. For some men, money is sex.
How could someone lock people up for prostitution and then become a John himself?
People were struck dumb by the enormity of Eliot’s hypocrisy, but did we really need Spitzer to remind us that self-righteousness often has a secret slimy under belly? For many preachers, pundits, pols, and other poobahs, the sanctimony only adds a certain sizzle to the sin.
How could he be so reckless?
Ask Bill Clinton. Ask JFK. While you’re at it, ask Genghis Khan, Caligula or Vlad the Impaler. With great power often comes great irresponsibility. (Sorry Spiderman.) Perhaps people running for high office should be asked for a sex resume. Anyone with a standard issue libido would be disqualified.
Wasn’t being Governor of New York enough for Eliot?
For the truly driven, what the rest of us admire and envy is never enough. Compared to running for Governor of New York, spending $80,000 on a pro-am sex romp was a fairly normal healthy activity. The strictly enforced fraudulence and requisite self-manipulation of politics have turned many good people into sociopaths. Maybe Spitzer should be recognized as the victim of a vicious psychological experiment and sent to one of those rest homes for retired lab chimps.
This is where you should bow your head and pray: Lord, please protect Barack Obama and this nation from the scourge of another sexually incontinent Presidency.
Back in the Spring, people divided up predictably between those who wanted to give Eliot Spitzer a pass, and those who wanted to punish him to set a really effective example. But before and after Spitzer, a third way for processing public scandal has been developing. A subtle shift has occurred in society’s attitude toward matters of public morality. The public now seems to say: “OK punish the bastard, but do it quickly and don’t overdo it and then forgive him his trespasses. That’s what Jesus would do.”
When Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter was found to be pregnant it was not treated as a scandal at all, but a blessing. The proverbial shotgun was waved in the general direction of the young father but was never employed. The young couple may or may not actually get married at some point, whenever. With the McCain/Palin ticket defeated, is anyone going to keep track?
There have been countless recent examples of increasing moral leniency in the cases of celebrities and public figures in general.
Rush Limbaugh may be a recovering/lapsed/recovering/lapsed/recovering Oxycontin addict but no one impounded his microphone and he still rouses the rabble with best of them.
Bill O’Reilly may not know the difference between a loofah and a falafel when harassing his female staff, but a few million of Rupert Murdoch’s money, is a small price to pay to enjoy the genius of his unique small mindedness.
Imus was banished to the media wilderness for about a nanosecond and now we can all continue to enjoy the highly entertaining progress of his senility.
Just before the election, Obamas’s aunt was discovered, an illegal alien living in a Boston public housing project. Obama declared that the law must be upheld. He then said that he loved his aunt and he promised to care of her.
Massachusetts has just followed a few other enlightened states and voted to decriminalize the possession of marijuana, in small amounts. This offers hope that the Great Relaxation long enjoyed by the high and mighty, may start to embrace the rest of us.
Our entire economy sank into a sea of collective dishonesty this Summer, but no one has suggested that real people should go to jail for telling lies to mortgage brokers, which is in fact a crime.
We have become an “easy off” society and The Grumpy is all for it. Give the miscreants a break and while you’re at it give me a couple too. We may be inventing a more mechanical, less morally absolutist and more humane approach to some of the smaller sillier crimes.
Eliot Spitzer scared the children and startled the livestock. The law must be upheld but not with excessive vigor. Essentially, he got a really huge parking ticket that could still ruin the rest of his life. Does anyone think he should also go to jail?
In his second term, President Obama may have the wisdom to make Eliot Spitzer the Assistant Attorney General in charge of public corruption. Talk about fully vetted. After a reasonable time out, a chastened Eliot Spitzer could serve as a new kind of public official, pre-shrunk to realistic human proportions.
Et Tu, in the Bubble, Obama?
11/7/2008
At this critical point in the post-election whatnot, nothing is too small to escape annoying in-depth analysis. So what’s with the sunglasses?
On Tuesday, Barack Obama parted the Red Sea of American history. Then he gave another perfectly calibrated, uplifting but sober, speech accepting his election. Since then he’s barely appeared in public at all.
On Wednesday we slept off Tuesday.
But on Thursday came the photo of Obama fleeing his allegedly happy home on his way to a secret meeting with his advisors. His prominent sunglasses literally and figuratively reflected the blacker than black, back-off blackness of the waiting Secret Service SUV.
Then on Friday, came a pic snatched of “That One”, again doing the now all too familiar dash to the Tahoe, as he left an early morning workout, at a soon to be much more popular Chicago gymnasium. This time clad in exercise togs but again - the shades. He looked like he was auditioning for a star turn on The Sopranos.
This is a jarring sartorial development, a dissonant pre-presidential accessorization. The ramifications are manifold and ominous. Did we elect the smiling, open-faced, big-hearted Obama of our deepest hopes, aspirations, and dreams, only to find ourselves stuck with a be-goggled, bubble-encased, politics-as-usual nightmare Obama?
Let’s pause before we drag the molehill all the way to Mohammed. The sunglasses may only signal that Obama wanted a day off. After performing an innumerable series of political miracles, the man may simply need some down time. Sunglasses are the internationally accepted symbol, employed by celebrities everywhere, indicating: “Please leave me alone, I don’t want to be bothered by you, the insignificant groundling.”
The Grumpy was ready to accept this benign interpretation on Thursday, but then came the Friday Sopranos photo along with the news that Rahm Emanuel, the famously vicious Clinton hatchet man, had been named as President-elect Obama’s Chief of Staff. Many commentator types have been moved to comment: “Yeah. What’s with that? Here we go again, maybe”.
Also on Friday, Emanuel’s “best friend” described him as “a combination of a toothache and a hemorrhoid.” Is a painful rectal itch on the brain really change we can believe in?
Presidential sunglasses sometimes strike the perfect note, as in any photo of JFK sailing or hanging out shirtless on a PT boat.
(Gratuitous historical factoid: As President, JFK avoided appearing without a shirt because the drugs he took for many years to treat his well-concealed case of Addisson’s disease caused him to develop embarrassing man boobs.)
A useful rule of thumb for the employment of Presidential sunglasses, many experts agree, is that they should not be worn unless the sun is actually beaming down.
Throughout the arduous campaign of the last two years Obama followed this rule and wore shades only when called for by an actual excess of solar glare. He wore them, memorably, while touring a desolate Afghan landscape with his bipartisan traveling buds Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed. Photographed in dark suit trousers and unbuttoned white shirt, Obama looked like a cool black 007, catapulted by some international emergency directly from an elegant Georgetown drawing room or an exclusive European casino, to a sun-baked third world hell hole. The rest of his entourage looked definitely uncool, an L.L. Bean catalog montage of appropriately dressed weekend campers in the Adirondacks.
In that same image Obama’s sunglasses said: “I can take the heat. I’m prepared to be President the way I’m prepared for high noon at Kandahar.”
The sunglasses in concert with the romantic business dishabille shouted: “I’m a globe-trotting, multi-tasking, multi-cultural, multi-dimensional demigod.”
This well circulated photo may have been more important to the success of Obama’s foreign trip than his speech in Berlin a few days later.
The Grumpy was almost moved to an act of journalism, but there was no need to research this week’s weather in northern Illinois. Chicago in November is not normally sun drenched.
Clearly, Obama’s shades of the last few days were intended either to conceal or reveal something, but what? Was he trying to conceal the very rational terror that might be evident in his eyes at actually having to deal with the dog’s breakfast now heaped up on the Presidential plate? Were his eyes all red and puffy because he’s been curled up in a fetal position crying and sleepless, while Michelle and the girls rubbed his back and applied cool compresses to his forehead?
And then just a little while ago Obama gave his first press conference, since the election. The sign on the podium, “The Office of the President Elect”, sounded a clunky note of excessive expectation control. How about: “He’s Not the President Yet”? Apparently, the finely tuned Obama campaign machine has run through the finish line and continues right around the track doing endless laps at full speed. Clearly nothing has been left to anything even vaguely hinting at chance.
Rahm Emanuel stood closest to The President-Elect but he was also careful to stand outside the frame of the main shot of Obama at the podium. That important just over the shoulder role, was given to the venerable reassuring Paul Volker, the giant of the American financial establishment. A quick glance at the huge white haired Volker visage should sober up the craziest short selling, greed obsessed criminal on Wall Street.
The President Elect looked a little weary around the eyes but he gave a controlled and careful performance. He offered the nation a quick peek-a-boo to reassure us that he was still functioning. His appearance was crisp, almost perfunctory, expressing a freshly fledged disdain for our attention. Then he strode off the stage with his posse of economic heavy hitters, leaving us alone, abandoned. Get it? The election is over. “Sniff.” He doesn’t need us anymore.
In Obamaland, every detail, no matter how tiny, is part of a powerful, unrelenting, subtle and seamless communication. The President Elect’s new shades clearly whisper: Time to get to work.
At this critical point in the post-election whatnot, nothing is too small to escape annoying in-depth analysis. So what’s with the sunglasses?
On Tuesday, Barack Obama parted the Red Sea of American history. Then he gave another perfectly calibrated, uplifting but sober, speech accepting his election. Since then he’s barely appeared in public at all.
On Wednesday we slept off Tuesday.
But on Thursday came the photo of Obama fleeing his allegedly happy home on his way to a secret meeting with his advisors. His prominent sunglasses literally and figuratively reflected the blacker than black, back-off blackness of the waiting Secret Service SUV.
Then on Friday, came a pic snatched of “That One”, again doing the now all too familiar dash to the Tahoe, as he left an early morning workout, at a soon to be much more popular Chicago gymnasium. This time clad in exercise togs but again - the shades. He looked like he was auditioning for a star turn on The Sopranos.
This is a jarring sartorial development, a dissonant pre-presidential accessorization. The ramifications are manifold and ominous. Did we elect the smiling, open-faced, big-hearted Obama of our deepest hopes, aspirations, and dreams, only to find ourselves stuck with a be-goggled, bubble-encased, politics-as-usual nightmare Obama?
Let’s pause before we drag the molehill all the way to Mohammed. The sunglasses may only signal that Obama wanted a day off. After performing an innumerable series of political miracles, the man may simply need some down time. Sunglasses are the internationally accepted symbol, employed by celebrities everywhere, indicating: “Please leave me alone, I don’t want to be bothered by you, the insignificant groundling.”
The Grumpy was ready to accept this benign interpretation on Thursday, but then came the Friday Sopranos photo along with the news that Rahm Emanuel, the famously vicious Clinton hatchet man, had been named as President-elect Obama’s Chief of Staff. Many commentator types have been moved to comment: “Yeah. What’s with that? Here we go again, maybe”.
Also on Friday, Emanuel’s “best friend” described him as “a combination of a toothache and a hemorrhoid.” Is a painful rectal itch on the brain really change we can believe in?
Presidential sunglasses sometimes strike the perfect note, as in any photo of JFK sailing or hanging out shirtless on a PT boat.
(Gratuitous historical factoid: As President, JFK avoided appearing without a shirt because the drugs he took for many years to treat his well-concealed case of Addisson’s disease caused him to develop embarrassing man boobs.)
A useful rule of thumb for the employment of Presidential sunglasses, many experts agree, is that they should not be worn unless the sun is actually beaming down.
Throughout the arduous campaign of the last two years Obama followed this rule and wore shades only when called for by an actual excess of solar glare. He wore them, memorably, while touring a desolate Afghan landscape with his bipartisan traveling buds Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed. Photographed in dark suit trousers and unbuttoned white shirt, Obama looked like a cool black 007, catapulted by some international emergency directly from an elegant Georgetown drawing room or an exclusive European casino, to a sun-baked third world hell hole. The rest of his entourage looked definitely uncool, an L.L. Bean catalog montage of appropriately dressed weekend campers in the Adirondacks.
In that same image Obama’s sunglasses said: “I can take the heat. I’m prepared to be President the way I’m prepared for high noon at Kandahar.”
The sunglasses in concert with the romantic business dishabille shouted: “I’m a globe-trotting, multi-tasking, multi-cultural, multi-dimensional demigod.”
This well circulated photo may have been more important to the success of Obama’s foreign trip than his speech in Berlin a few days later.
The Grumpy was almost moved to an act of journalism, but there was no need to research this week’s weather in northern Illinois. Chicago in November is not normally sun drenched.
Clearly, Obama’s shades of the last few days were intended either to conceal or reveal something, but what? Was he trying to conceal the very rational terror that might be evident in his eyes at actually having to deal with the dog’s breakfast now heaped up on the Presidential plate? Were his eyes all red and puffy because he’s been curled up in a fetal position crying and sleepless, while Michelle and the girls rubbed his back and applied cool compresses to his forehead?
And then just a little while ago Obama gave his first press conference, since the election. The sign on the podium, “The Office of the President Elect”, sounded a clunky note of excessive expectation control. How about: “He’s Not the President Yet”? Apparently, the finely tuned Obama campaign machine has run through the finish line and continues right around the track doing endless laps at full speed. Clearly nothing has been left to anything even vaguely hinting at chance.
Rahm Emanuel stood closest to The President-Elect but he was also careful to stand outside the frame of the main shot of Obama at the podium. That important just over the shoulder role, was given to the venerable reassuring Paul Volker, the giant of the American financial establishment. A quick glance at the huge white haired Volker visage should sober up the craziest short selling, greed obsessed criminal on Wall Street.
The President Elect looked a little weary around the eyes but he gave a controlled and careful performance. He offered the nation a quick peek-a-boo to reassure us that he was still functioning. His appearance was crisp, almost perfunctory, expressing a freshly fledged disdain for our attention. Then he strode off the stage with his posse of economic heavy hitters, leaving us alone, abandoned. Get it? The election is over. “Sniff.” He doesn’t need us anymore.
In Obamaland, every detail, no matter how tiny, is part of a powerful, unrelenting, subtle and seamless communication. The President Elect’s new shades clearly whisper: Time to get to work.
The Record Player
11/22/08
Haven’t seen a record played in years
Remember the way it spun round and round
Quivering minutely
Elegant and iridescent
Like a tuxedo
Only flat and round
With a hole through it
Unhurried
Unperturbed
But courting disaster at every turn
Like Caruso with a gun to his head
A tragic scratch or a dust mote
Pointed at his head all shiny with bear grease
As he hits the high impossible note
And the arm of the thing
The bony index finger of a patient crone
Tracing the groove forever and ever
Or maybe for the last time
Arcing tenderly toward the center
Inexorable
Or suddenly sometimes
Like an idiot
Repeating himself again and again and again
Until someone has to get up and fix it, with a sigh
That could also be a prayer of thanks for
Imperfection
Haven’t seen a record played in years
Remember the way it spun round and round
Quivering minutely
Elegant and iridescent
Like a tuxedo
Only flat and round
With a hole through it
Unhurried
Unperturbed
But courting disaster at every turn
Like Caruso with a gun to his head
A tragic scratch or a dust mote
Pointed at his head all shiny with bear grease
As he hits the high impossible note
And the arm of the thing
The bony index finger of a patient crone
Tracing the groove forever and ever
Or maybe for the last time
Arcing tenderly toward the center
Inexorable
Or suddenly sometimes
Like an idiot
Repeating himself again and again and again
Until someone has to get up and fix it, with a sigh
That could also be a prayer of thanks for
Imperfection
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)