Saturday, January 26, 2008

Hillary's Inferno

1. Midway on the journey through the 2008 American Presidential election, we find ourselves grown tired, bitter, and cynical.

2. To jump right in with a mixed metaphor, we find ourselves in solidarity with the first audiences of Romeo and Juliet who upon hearing the famed imprecation, "A plague on both their houses" were so tired of the squabble between the houses of Lancaster and York that they stood, hooted, applauded, and otherwise cheered for several minutes.

3. It is bad enough to have one candidate who calls himself serious and yet wants to rewrite our constitution to make it more congruent with what he calls God's constitution. Please.

4. It is already beyond the pale of voter endurance to see the sniping among the candidates and the growing awareness that the concept of Swift Boating has found its verby way into the lexicon.

5. Add to that Hillary grandstanding to get her hooks onto the delegates from Michigan and Florida.

6. Add to that we now have two presidents of the United States cowboying around the countryside, those being numbers 43 and 42, each in hos own way braying across the landscape, Mission accomplished. Yeah, right, mission accomplished..

7. Living in one of the more entitlement-oriented venues in the U.S., I am used to being impatiently waved out of the way by SUVs piloted by harrassed mothers with cell phones, dropping their progeny at the Montecito Union or the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, or The Crane Country Day Schools, slipping through traffic signals and left turns as though having money and a real estate license are cartes blanches. Nevertheless. Hillary, piloting her presidential bid through the traffic of dissatisfied Democrats is becoming Mitt Romney with a wig, changing her stance and history as it/they suit her; when she is not, she is letting the forty-second president do it for her.

8. Politics being what they are, it is a given that she will have an attack dog, but it should not be a retired president of the United States, his being her husband notwithstanding. Former presidents of the United States should be above all that, even such largely discredited ones as Jimmy Carter, who, on close observation, turns out to have been pretty good in his emeritus role.

9. Get Bill back on his meds.

10. For all that GWB has, for the past seven years, made a rubber duck toy of the presidency, Hillary threatens to continue in the same reckless sense of having the family car on prom night.

11. Writers are warned at the outset of their vocation to avoid sex, religion, and politics. As they mature, they come to see these three human activities as the entry way to dramatizing the human condition. Imagine telling Van Gogh or Gauguin to avoid using red, blue, and yellow. Imagine telling Gershwin not to write in the key of F.

12. Gimme a break.

13. Accordingly, it is not merely okay, it is vital to make fun of GWB and HRC and, for that matter, WJC. The unthinkable come to pass, hubris writ large, right over the Hollywood sign, for everyone to see.

3 comments:

R.L. Bourges said...

amen, says a voice from the choir
(but saying amen means I'm going to have to tackle my political monsters in the closet). Damn.

so my comment reads:
amen, damnit!

x said...

I love this post! One thing I would correct: Hilary is Mitt with a Blonde wig, not just a wig, because Mitt sure looks like he's already got a wig cemented on there. And yes, I have been debating with myself about this. Do I write about politics on my blog or just let it go, since so many readers seem averse. They just don't want to know. And my conversation with my son yesterday really was a turning point for me. We should write our hearts out because it will help us and others think things true and make sure that maybe, maybe, maybe we get it right this time, damn it.

tut-tut said...

This may give you an interesting take, after his overwhelming win in South Carolina:

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/01/crowd_grows_as_sen_obama_prepa.html