Worst Person in the World

I use the title with tongue in cheek. For several reasons ... first, it seems a shame to me that Keith Olberman is wasting his impressive intellect, yet marginal power of reasoning, doing political commentary. In many ways, I feel that Stephen Colbert is really parodying Olberman. That's another story, however. But the fact, the utter dumb hubris, that Olberman feels he can bestow the title "Worst Person in the World" from his bully pulpit [in his case, aptly named] is beyond defense. Liberals can claim no quarter as long as he continues to take the low road much traveled.

Can I say this? This election makes me miss Buckley the pere, and Tim Russert so much.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand.

The "worst" in this matter is the author of a column from a recent LA Times. Her name - and I do not know this woman, sorry - is Norah Vincent. I'm not going to even google her, as I fear what I might find. So, Exhibit A-jillion in the ongoing saga of "The Times Ain't What She Used To Be", is this woeful piece of writing that they saw fit to publish. Slow news day? No news day, one would think.

In the immortal words of Andy Partridge, "Let's Begin."

The title of her piece? "A vote too late for Obama" with the telling subtitle "At the time, not voting felt right. Now it's time for regrets." She explains that she felt good about not voting, but now - a few days hence - she feels "out of it." Even though she had good reasons not to vote for either candidate, being a libertarian and "fiscally conservative."

Well, I can understand not voting for either McCain or Obama, given those credentials -- but no love for Bob Barr? I mean, we all bite our tongue and swallow the bile when we vote. Personally, I have much distaste for Joe Biden, and a whole lotta love for Sarah Palin, yet I weighed the issues and pulled the lever. No regrets - yet!!! So I am confounded that Norah feels "out of it." If she had voted for Obama, would she be "in it" or "with it"? I mean, just because you voted for Kennedy, that doesn't give you a magic pass to Camelot, I'm afraid.

Here's what I believe -- like a lot of "libertarian / fiscally conservative" people, Norah is a closet liberal, a secular humanist who hates the moral aspects of government only when they rub her the wrong way. Good way to shield your true convictions [Norah gives away her true beliefs later in the column.]. This explains two things about her -- when Obama won, she felt left out because she really wanted to vote for him, but didn't because she was soooooooo disappointed when Kerry and Gore lost, she wasn't strong enough to lose a third time. She hedged her bet, and lost and now is left feeling ... regret. As they say, so sad, too bad. Secondly, what is it about voting for someone that allows you to feel a part of the franchise? I would say, unless you are talking about Ted Stevens, Al Franken or Hannah Beth Jackson, you're barking up the wrong tree if you over-esteemed that your vote meant a good God doodly-damn to anyone. So, really, as far as being "out of it" is concerned, get over yourself.

Let's go on. She makes the stupid argument that Obama's tax plan "penalizes" people who make more than $250,000. Well, it's a whole lot less the marginal rate under Eisenhower, lady. That rate was 92%. Our current rates, well, they resemble the rates under Hoover. Obama's plan is hardly a return to the rates we saw under even Nixon. He'll maybe move the needle a couple of points. Not exactly going to create a nation of tax exiles.

Here's where I start to chortle. She defends her decision not to vote for McCain as the good Senator is a man of "brittle intellect and doctrinaire sensibility." Wha? As for as "doctrinaire sensibility" is concerned, are we talking about John McCain or ... Keith Olberman? John "Hated By The Right For His Tendency To Work Too Well With Others" McCain?" Hardly doctrinaire. And WTF does "brittle intellect" even mean? If you're talking about Joe Biden, I'm with you. Granted, John McCain is not Obama, intellectually, but he is no slouch. His intellect is brittle? Meaning "easily broken"? Broken by what? Years of confinement in a jail? A lengthy political campaign? Years of battle in the Senate? See what I mean.

Norah really lowers the boom on Palin:

"The second reason I didn't vote for McCain is -- big surprise here -- Sarah Palin ... She is a belligerent ignoramus. resounding theme of her candidacy was a shamefully rabble-rousing, nauseatingly populist denunciation of knowledge, intellectual expression and reasoned debate, all apparently the vicious province of the media elite and not the hard and hardy backbone of the "real" America."

Wow. When the truth diverges from the myth, print the myth. And so Norah follows the crumbs laid down by the Rachel Maddows of the world, without so much as thinking for herself or checking the facts. Sarah Palin is "belligerent"? Because why? She raised "rabble"? I guess that's like raising "hope" but backed by specifics. And when John Edwards or Joe Biden appeals to the common man, it rings true but when Sarah Palin does it, it becomes "nauseating." I see. And please, let me know when and where Sarah Palin denounced knowledge or intellectual expression and reasoned debate? Did she not show up and have a "reasoned debate" with Joe Biden? Or did she kick him in the shins and wave the flag? Maybe Norah's TV pulls in more cable channels than mine. My recollection is that the good Governor from Alaska did very well with both the reasoning and the debate. That would be consistent with her membership in the Honor Society in high school.

Well, the thread just goes on. Norah bemoans not voting for Obama, missing the historical moment, going to bed early and missing Obama's acceptance speech. She muses "Am I going to feel a little caught out one day when I have to say that I did not vote for him?" Caught out by whom? Self-important, self-righteous blowhards like yourself? Probably.

But here's where she reveals her true colors -- why she didn't vote in the first place:

"Or will I feel vindicated by what will surely be the many and great disappointments of the Obama administration?After all, what man could live up to so much expectation? So much hope? I honestly don't know how the man gets out of bed in the morning."

She has to hedge, doesn't she?

And what's all this about the "many and great disappointments"? We shouldn't have elected Obama. The bar is too high. Who set the bar? Michael Chabon? It wasn't me, Jack.

I have a close friend, a reasonable soul, who felt a little mixed about Obama, not because the good Senator himself posed insurmountable problems. No, it was because his followers tend to be as dim as Scientologists, or, say, Earth Liberation Front members. People who have ill-reasoned, childish expectations of the world, and especially, politics. These people - the thin skinned, overripe bananas [mushy headed, easily bruised] of the world -- tend to criticize but never try. They are the human black holes, always sucking the sunlight and starlight from a fundamentally optimistic world.

By the end of the article, Ms. Vincent allows for a little hope, cracks the door a little. Good for her. What I hope for her is that when Obama succeeds and fails and all manner of in-between as President, she has the responsibility to participate in that reality and help fund the account of hope that Obama has created for the pie-in-the-sky eaters who are surely hearing their stomachs gurgle as Inauguration Day nears. It's up to her, and all of us, now. Obama can't do it alone.

The Life of a Playwright is tough ...

As my favorite movie, at least part of the time, is "My Dinner With Andre", I thought the above clip from today's NY Post was sufficiently amusing to share. No one can construct an argument like the brilliant and sexually devastating Mr. Shawn.

Mr. Zeit, meet Mr. Geist

I have this mental picture of some guy in a beige cardigan in the fall of 1960, sitting in a small tract home in Rancho Park in front of a Philco, glowing incandescent in black and white. He's watching Huntley and Brinkley, hunched forward on a low slung Milo Baughman couch. He's maybe 35 or 40 years old, single, listens to jazz and drives a new Corvair. Very hip guy. A Democrat who has suffered through the 1950s, likes the fact that he lives near UCLA, that hotbed of radicalism. Goes to lectures there on occasion. He's enjoying the election coverage, and he's projecting all these positive things that are going to happen if Kennedy wins [which was by no means certain on election night that year.]

So he wakes up the next day, listens to the radio or picks up the paper and reads that Kennedy, indeed, has won. He's a happy cat. An extra bounce in his step. Refills his Corvair with Hi Test, just as a lark.

What he doesn't realize is that when Kennedy won, something much larger than a political shift happened [In fact, the paper-thin difference between the moderate Republican Nixon and the conservative Democrat Kennedy is, in retrospect, laughable.] No, what happened on that Fall night, in the wee hours of November 9th, 1960 was that a new zeitgeist occurred. Which is a bit like saying that a nuclear bomb "occurred" in Hiroshima in 1945. The values of an entire culture shifted overnight. And our hero, from then on, despite his good intentions, his contributions to UNICEF, his tolerant attitudes, his Munsingwear shirts and his jazz patter, would became a relic, a footnote, a sad little man who from then on would be working on a combover that would never quite cut it with the chicks in Westwood Village.

That same wind is blowing in America tonight, folks. Do you feel it?

The Horror of the Internet

Before the Internet cast its web over us, thus interconnecting us in this fairly pervasive way [such that I have exchanged emails, for example, with both Jill Sobule and Jane "Issa" Siberry], we could live our lives free of so much knowledge.

And I'm not talking about about really useful facts. I'm talking about news about people you barely knew 30 years ago. I scanned the Classmates.com bulletin board [broke my own code doing so, sorry to say] and found out that a few girls I remembered as being young, vibrant and beautiful were in fact, quite dead.

Now, I'm 45, and pretty far from dead, I hope [to prove it, I ran 4 miles today.] So to think of these girls, who when I last checked, were 18 years old and pretty cute are now dead, well ... that's just repugnant. The heavy metal dudes who were drunk or stoned or both during high school - I can picture them dead. Hell, they pictured themselves dead. The boring, back of the packers? Dead, too. The surfers? The bad girls? Dead, and dead. But the cute, carefree, Ditto-wearing girls? They're supposed to outlive us. That was the plan.

And when the plan is not followed, I get upset.

This is a remote chance, I know, but I'm wondering what would happen if Obama doesn't get elected? What would happen? So many people have invested their "hope"currency into the Obama Bank. And I'm just saying that I predict that there is - whether he gets elected or not - irrational exuberance factored into the value of that currency.