Craig's Lust,

The pecking has begun.

The scent of blood hangs on the humid summer atmosphere like the ghost of an election promise.

They want him to go.

More and more of them, check in every day with a newer sense of outrage than the them of the blog post or Fox News (follow copy on that news) or CNN, or the tabloids. In their fustian and fury, they reveal more of themselves than what he might or might not have done, and contributed the unvarnished truth that they are speaking beyond the parameters of their business.

Whoever sets pen to paper, the splendid observer E. B. White once noted, writes of himself, whether knowingly or not.

They have revealed more of their closet bigotry than he, for all his posturing, ever dreamed of revealing.

Silly as he and his barbershop quartet, The Flaying Burrito Brothers, may have been, then, or should I say THEY step forth reminiscent of an observation made by another great observer of the human condition, a generation or two before E.B. White. I speak of Ralph Waldo Emerson,who may or may not have had E.B.White's gift of humor.

Writing of The Chardon Street Convention, which took place in Boston in November of 1840, Emerson wryly observed:
"Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day-Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians and Philosophers, -all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest."

What a comfort it has become to see that little has changed in over a hundred sixty years. THEY are out caterwauling like horny Tom's on the back fence, having sniffed a fellow human being vulnerable, perhaps to his own weakness of spirit, perhaps to his own panic, perhaps to things not entirely visible to us , eager to offer advice, ah, the worlds and words of wisdom.

 The madmen, madwomen, and men with beards are out among us, reminding me of my past as purveyor of scorecard/programs at Gilmore Field, the old Triple-A Baseball park, now paved over as a strip mall adjacent The Farmer's Market in L.A. "Score cards. Can't tell the players without a score card."