"...Shut Up...I Can't Hear Myself Interrupting You...."

Linguistics is not in my skill set.

I have, though, through the years, apparently acquired a knack for translation.

Stand by for a demonstration.

First, though, here's a clip of an exchange that took place on Hannity's show late last week.




Now, here's a wonderful version of a piece from "South Pacific".




Ann Coulter is, by any reasonable measure, a limelight fixated, one trick pony who continues to defy the odds makers by continuing to hold an audience's attention though her fifteen minutes were up years ago.

That said, Mr. Johnson's style of "debate" only fueled the fire while botching a wonderful opportunity to let Coulter further prove Mark Twain's observation... "better to keep quiet and have people think you stupid, than to talk and confirm it".

Spirited discussion requires both talking and listening.

Mostly listening.

These days, the goal almost always seems to be "oneupmanship".

Even when the most obvious strategy is allowing the opposition to make Mr. Clemens' point.

Political discussion in media is essentially oxymoronic.

What remains is "twin soliloquies".

Oh...and about my acquired gift for translation?

In most cases, when exposed to "discussion" like the one between Coulter and Johnson, here's, in fact, what most people hear:

Blah, blah...yada, yada....blah, blah....blah.

I'm thinking about applying for a gig with Rosetta Stone.

"....We Don't Want You To Put Your Finger On The Problem...."

I have an idea for a new bumper sticker.

More on that in a moment.

The brouhaha surrounding the "to scan or not to scan, pat down or not pat down" issue is, predictably, bubbling closer to a boil point as the busiest travel day of the year appears on our radar.

If you believe what your read (and, admittedly, I have mixed feelings about that concept because I'm innately skeptical but, at the same time, taking on faith that you believe what I'M writing here...) a mini revolution is brewing for November 24.

Here's the link to the latest:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40242420/ns/travel-news

Okay. Here's the view from the center line.

People are, by nature, individuals.

Individuals don't like being told what, where, when or how to do.

Government is, by its nature, entirely about telling people what, where, when and how to do.

Much of the time, people go with the flow.

Speed limits, licensing requirements, assorted and sundry rules and regulations, all of which are, ostensibly, created to make life safer for the many, some of which accomplish that purpose, some of which toe the line between direction and dictation.

The laying on of hands, though, is usually where even the best of intentions go south.

The mindset of the average American goes a little like this.

"...I'll stand in your damn line at the DMV, I'll wait patiently for my turn at Space Mountain, I'll even disperse though the cause be just...but try to pull or push me toward, or away from, it and I'll dig in my heels so deep it'll take a back hoe to pry me loose...."

Now, let's thicken the plot.

Because Osama Bin Laden and his wack job posse made the Towers come a tumblin down, our own government, much like a well meaning, but over protective, parent, continues to invent new ways to protect us.

Putting aside the legitimate question "why, after ten "quiet" years, are we just NOW so drastically ramping up the airport security thing...is there something you're not telling us?", here's the dilemma.

Some well meaning, over protective parent has decided that we need to be scanned.

Six to five and pick em' there's a body scan machine manufacturing company lurking somewhere around the story line here.

As a result, Joe and Joan Six Pack are faced with a lose lose situation.

Choose being checked out all over.

Or being checked out all over.

Which brings us back to that "don't like to be told what, when, where or how to do" thing.

Checkmate.

For almost ten years, we have all co-operated pretty patriotically with the "don't pack shampoo, take off your shoes, no, your family can't meet you at the gate" revisions to what used to be a reasonably uncomplicated event, an airplane trip.

Now, we're being told we have to be x-rayed or touched x-rated.

Okay, that's it.

It's time to let mommy and daddy know that we're big kids now and we know the risks and we know the dangers and while we are willing to be mature about not being able to pack shampoo, keep our shoes on or have the family waiting at the gate, we don't want to be x-rayed and we don't want to be touched x-rated and we just want to get on the damn plane.

We're not stupid. We know how the world works. We know there is a statistical possibility that our flight will come to its conclusion on the fiftieth floor of some skyscraper.

We get it.

And while we appreciate your ramped up efforts to "keep us safe', we sincerely believe that the value of that effort is too costly when it results in a three year old child being groped by a stranger in the name of safety.

Every intelligent parent knows that, when it comes to keeping kids safe, there is, literally, only so much you can do.

At some point, you have to suck it up, give them the keys to the car, tell them you love them and hope for the best.

The government needs to suck it up, give us the keys to the car and hope for the best.

When an ounce of prevention becomes an unbearable burden, its time to lower the dosage.

We're all willing to swallow that ounce.

And we all know what the odds are.

It would look like this on that bumper sticker I mentioned earlier.

"Life...it's the chance we take..."

"...A Few Words on Fancy Footwork..."

Book reviews aren't my thing.

The root cause, I imagine, being several elementary and secondary education year's worth of forced labor in the form of book "reports".

At a time in literary history when the only written words my peers and I coveted were the mysterious/misogynistic licensed to kill narratives of Ian Fleming, I really didn't give a shit about reading "Lord Jim", let alone wasting valuable weeknight TV time writing about it.

Add to that my intrinsic disdain for the obviously subjective concept of "review" in the first place (one man's poppycock is another man's Pulitzer,after all) and you needn't worry about finding blog space taken up with my bland efforts to become the cover to cover equivalent of Roger Ebert.

So when I share with you that I have neither the time or inclination to "review" Sarah Palin's newest collection of thoughts and theologies, "America By Heart", you can rest assured there will be no thumbs up or down to be found at the end of this piece.

Meanwhile, though, I would respectfully offer that there is an admittedly thin line between review and reflection.

And I do enjoy an opportunity to tippy toe along thin lines.

To wit, my reflections on the latest gospel according to Sarah:

Her take:
In a chapter on faith and public life, Palin addresses at length John F. Kennedy's noted speech on religion during the 1960 campaign — a speech many saw as crucial to counter sentiment that his faith would hold undue sway over him if he became the nation's first Catholic president.

"I am not the Catholic candidate for president," Kennedy said at the time. "I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic."

Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that JFK's speech reconciled religion and public service without compromising either. But since she's revisited the speech as an adult, she says, she's realized that Kennedy "essentially declared religion to be such a private matter that it was irrelevant to the kind of country we are."

She praises Mitt Romney, a Mormon, for not "doing a JFK" during his campaign for the 2008 GOP nomination. "Where Kennedy seemed to want to run away from religion, Mitt Romney forthrightly embraced it," she writes. She attributes the gulf not just to the difference between the men, but to the distance the country has come since 1960. Now, she says, America is "reawakening to the gift of our religious heritage."


My take:
The conventional wisdom in 1960 was that electing a Roman Catholic to the presidency would result in some kind of puppet government, the strings attached to the guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C, the strings being held by the guy living in Vatican City, Rome, Italy. Any full read of the text of Kennedy's speech on the matter clearly spells out, in some passages bluntly, that JFK believed the separation of church and state was, and is, a constitutional dictate and any violation of that should, and would, be considered an impeachable offense. In other words, elect me, you get a president not a pope lackey. The history of the Kennedy presidency bears out that he kept his word. Sarah's use of fifty year old hindsight is not only obviously out of context but an unmistakable example of the remarkable skill, if no others, she possesses: the ability to play to the crowd, in this case, the crowd being the hard core religious right or, as its known affectionately, the Republican base.

Her take:
Palin, whose daughter Bristol is in the thick of a much-scrutinized run on "Dancing with the Stars," takes aim at another competitive reality show, "American Idol." She says the show's "talent-deprived" contestants suffer from "the cult of self-esteem" to the extent that they grew up convinced they could be stars like Michael Jackson.

But Cowell, the acerbic judge who left the show at the end of last season? He is "almost alone in his willingness to tell hard truths," Palin writes.

My take:
Is there any person on the planet wiling to consider a point of view even resembling objective that hasn't been scratching their heads wondering how a contestant who has week after week after week been at the bottom of the judges list but who continues living to dance another day?

And is there any person who, aware of Simon Cowell's "willingness to tell hard truths", doesn't believe that if Simon were a judge on DWTS, Bristol would have left the show weeks ago, if only in humiliation as a result of the hard truths Cowell would be willingly telling about her performances?

Her take:
Palin praises "Juno," the movie where a pregnant teen chooses to carry her baby. "Most Americans, I think, are a lot like Juno," she writes — they may not be actively religious, "but they still want to do the right thing." She also likes "Knocked Up," in which a baby results from a one-night stand, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

My take:
Conservative candidate for President of the United States (and let's cut to the chase, okay, she's running and we all know it) deftly sidesteps base line conservative values by momentarily wrapping herself in a loving mommy outfit just long enough to deflect attention from said conservative candidate's daughter who deftly sidestepped base line conservative values by getting knocked up in the year 2008, a year in which birth control is more easily purchased than a fishing license. In one fell swooped paragraph, she mollifies her followers by cloaking conception in courage, while calming the more liberal thinkers who fear she has a puritanical stick where sun shine is lacking. Seriously, is it just me or is this lady the real dancing talent in the family?

Her take:
In fact, she says that if she had to pick a role model between Bristol and Murphy Brown, the 1990s sitcom character who chose single motherhood as a lifestyle, she'd choose Bristol. As for Brown, she laments that former Vice President Dan Quayle's criticism of the character essentially cost him the chance to be president. Quayle, she says, turned out to be right.

My take:
Let's just enjoy the laughter of the Murphy/Bristol comparison and move right along to considering the thought processes of anyone expressing regret that history and the American Presidency never had the chance to benefit from the once in a generation brilliance of J. Danforth Quayle.

I said, at the beginning of this piece, that I wouldn't be reviewing the book.

Turns out I wandered into a book report, though.

So, to honor the teachings of my assorted English teachers/professors through the years, let me wrap it up correctly.

The book is "America By Heart" by Sarah Palin.

If you find it interesting and would like to read more, I recommend another work in the same vein.

"Every Man A King" by Huey P. Long.

Now, there was a dancer.

"The Constitution Is Kind Of An Original Recipe' If You Think About It..."

Chances are the names Juan Williams and Harlan Sanders don't often pop up in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence.

One reminded me of the other, though, as Juan's "Muslims make me nervous" observation lit a fuse that resulted in his NPR gig blowing up in his face.

Maybe it's just my proclivity for warping the dots a little as I connect them, but as I watched the little teapot tempest unfold, I found six letters running around in my head.

NPR.

KFC.

For it wasn't too long ago, in one of those inevitable moments when any sense of nutritional need takes a back seat to the craving for something from the two major food groups, grease and preservatives,that I found myself sitting at a sputtering, crackling drive thru speaker doing my best to articulate to the well intended, but somewhat obtuse, minimum waged poultry specialist on the listening end that my happiness du jour was directly dependent on something extra crispy.

And in one of those other inevitable moments where truth truly is stranger than fiction, the disembodied voice at the batter fried end of the speaker wire did their cordial customer service best to break the bad news gently.

"Uh...we're out of chicken right now....oh...we have plenty of sides, though!"

Putting aside the blatantly obvious difficulty any reasonable person would have getting their head around trying to formulate a satisfying meal limited to "fixins", I found myself unable to respond, my synaptic circuit breakers dramatically tripped by the non sequitur of a Kentucky Fried Chicken location that had everything...except chicken.

KFC. Kentucky Fresh Coleslaw, I thought of retorting?

I let it go, instinctively realizing that any fast food service trained mind that could cheerfully offer up taters and beans in place of thighs and breasts was probably ill equipped to grasp the satirical subtlety of comedy involving shredded cabbage.

That adventure came wandering back onto my radar this week as I read of the Juan-dering that cost Mr. Williams his day job.

KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken.

NPR. National Public Radio.

I think we all know without having to be reminded that the key word in the former sentence is "chicken".

In the latter, on the other hand, I'd offer the key word is...wait for it..."public".

As in "the general populace, people in general considered as a whole".

Or, more germane to the issue, each and every single taxpaying citizen of the United States of America.

Regardless of race, creed, color, religious or sexual affiliation and...big finish...political ideology.

Because NPR is not a commercial enterprise funded by sponsors who might or might not be offended by any particular comment, observation, point of view et al during its broadcast day.

It is a non profit enterprise funded by grants, donations and, of course, federally mandated monies.

Or, as they are described more generically, your tax dollars at work.

Liberal tax dollars, conservative tax dollars, Catholic tax dollars, Protestant tax dollars, red state tax dollars, blue state tax dollars, all God's tax dollars comin' from all God's childruns.

And, therefore in theory, a broadcast enterprise that provides a comprehensive range of programming with a foundational philosophy of total inclusion, a forum for viewpoints of every slant, rant, rhyme and/or reason to be freely expressed, regardless of the aforementioned race, creed, color, etc, etc, yada, yada.

Apparently not.

Some obviously found Williams' comments offensive.

Some, just as obviously, likely did not.

In this particular instance, though, that's beside the point.

Here's the point.

We, meaning all of "we", fund National Public Radio.

So firing someone for expressing any, let alone a particular, point of view is, at best, inappropriate, at worst, unconstitutional.

At that moment, National Public Radio ceased to be "public".

And whether we think Juan Williams is a patriot or a pinhead, we should all be able to agree on the common denominator.

If NPR is no longer "public" radio anymore, than the "public" shouldn't be expected to foot the bill for it.

It ain't really KFC if they can't serve no chicken.

And it ain't really NPR if they can't serve the public.

All the public.

Not just those who can live with just the "fixins."

"...Pity There's No Heimlich For Hatred..."

Sensitivity training.

Now, there's an oxymoron just waiting to happen.

Due respect to the admirable human ability to learn and adapt, I've always felt like trying to teach someone to be sensitive is like trying to teach them to be tall.

Put less philosophically, you either is or you ain't.

Some years ago, in one moment of pique or another, I pulled the verbal trigger on somebody who was, to any reasonably functioning set of eyes and ears, being rude and crude.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that when I pull that trigger, I have what seems to be a God given gift for inflicting way more than the minimum daily requirement of humiliation on the inflictee.

A short while later, a friend/witness to the carnage took me aside and suggested that perhaps I could have found a more subtle, gracious way to enlighten the rude crudist as to their transgression.

Lennon-esque visions of "love is all you need" notwithstanding, I responded, with what probably could pass as Vulcan like logic, that if one were capable of understanding and accepting that their behavior was rude, crude and insensitive, they very likely wouldn't be...wait for it...insensitive in the first place.

In other words, the guy who doesn't hold the door open for you to enter as he exits the restaurant isn't going to start holding doors open just because you point out to him that he lacks a certain awareness of other people besides himself on the planet.

I tend to be reminded of that little scratch on the human schematic when I read the rants and raves masquerading as rhetoric of those who profess both a passionate commitment to what currently passes for conservatism as well as an equally passionate hatred for anyone offering up anything that might meander from the manifesto.

Okay, I'm through playing with my word toys now, let's spell it out.

Committed, unwavering, passionate adherence to a belief is not only a gift of prerogative afforded us by the system of government our founding fathers created, it is, no matter the belief itself, a legitimate act of patriotism.

The "voice of the people" and the freedom to both use it and hear it is a privilege even the most erudite can only begin to elucidate.

And when the voice is articulate, inspiring, motivational, thoughtful, provocative, lucid, even poetic, it creates a like atmosphere in which any positive, life affirming change is possible.

When, though, the voice is paltry, pedantic, vitriolic, even vicious, it, too, creates a like atmosphere where chaos flourishes and the darker sides of our nature block out any real light that might be available to show us the way out.

When the voice says that Meg Whitman must be accountable for not having been registered to vote, let alone actually vote, until 2002, it is raising a legitimate point worthy of discussion and debate.

When the voice calls her a whore, it is demeaning the freedom that ironically allows such a slander.

When the voice says that Christine O'Donnell should explain the discrepancies in her personal financial history, it is asking a reasonable question of someone who is asking for the right to make financial decisions that will affect large numbers of people.

When the voice calls her a witch, it is a worthless,childish giggle at a childhood learning experience.

And when the voice says that Barack Obama should rightly be measured by the accomplishments, or failures, of his two year old administration, it is speaking the words that the founders intended to be spoken in the process of checks and balances and accountability.

When the voice calls him a Muslim terrorist, it is betrayed by its own sound, the sound of gurgling and choking, hysteria disguised as passion, ignorance disguised as enlightenment.

That sound is not patriotic.

It's simply pathetic.

Those who make that sound are rude, crude and insensitive.

And should be ashamed.

Chances are they won't be.

If they were capable of understanding and accepting that their behavior was rude, crude and insensitive, they very likely wouldn't be...wait for it...insensitive in the first place.

you must be THIS tall to ride to the right...

"I Know You Are, But What Am I?..."

Two years ago, I published a collection of essays chronicling the 2008 presidential campaign.

This piece will resume in five seconds.

The book is entitled "Three Hats" and is available at Blurb.com.

And now...

As an epilogue to that work, at that time, I wrote the following:

January 2010.
Barack Obama has been President for one year. Assuming, God forbid, that some psychotic wack job trying to impress Halle Berry doesn’t take a shot at him, those who didn’t care for him still don’t care for him and those that believed him to be the answer to every prayer uttered have quietly gone back to living their lives as best they can, having realized that he is mere mortal, subject to the same challenges and setbacks that every guy who calls the Oval Office his nine to five.
Oprah is inconsolable, by the way.

Now, as we approach the mid term elections in the year 2010, allow me to once again offer my layman's prediction:

November 2010
The mid term elections been held. The clear and unmistakable voice being heard in the polling results is one of frustration and resentment. The former arising from a sense Democrats have that the promise that seemed so bright and shining in 2008 turned out, in fact, to be more pyrite than precious metal and the latter arising from a sense Republicans have that so many were blinded by that brightness that the right was robbed of its chance to have four more years of Bush-Cheney by any other name.

And while I'm at it, let me add to that a little of this:

Ultimately, unless there is some high drama twist waiting around the next bend to thicken the plot, the presidency of Barack Obama will end in November 2012, regardless of who the Republicans nominate, his singular, and primary, accomplishment being that he was the man history chose to break the racial ceiling at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Our political system, much like our economic system, functions and/or survives, largely in spite of, rather than because of, those who circumstance or circumvention put in the wheelhouse at any given time.

And despite the passionate, albeit irrational, beliefs of the extremists in our own society who vent their political spleens with absurd notions of a White House occupied by Muslim terrorists or foreign born non-American citizens or, God forbid, the anti-Christ incarnate, the system will do what the system always does.

Purge, clean, right and adjust itself accordingly.

It was designed that way.

Perhaps the most positive contribution we can make is to continue reaching for the stars, while keeping our expectations and feet on the ground.

While offering to our more hysterical fellow travelers that screaming about the sky falling might clear the throat...but it doesn't clear the path.

"...And The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round (well, right, then, left, then right...but you get the idea...)"

Nostradamus gets a lot of credit for being extraordinarily prescient.

For my money, though, when it comes to the gift of possessing "knowledge of events before they occur", you won't find anybody more someday savvy than the Bard of Avon himself.

Put your hands together for Mr. William Shakespeare, everybody!...(and don't forget to tip your server...)

All due respect to the "King of the Quatrain", Willie not only held up a pretty accurate mirror to our human foolishness but made that awareness infinitely more palatable, sprinkling it here and there in the midst of the only thing humanity has ever seemed capable of paying attention to any longer than ten or twelve seconds at a time.

Show biz.

Long before Mama figured out how to crush our vitamins and mix them in with the mashed potatoes, the Shake was feeding us morality and mayhem and message by hiding them in snappy patter and distracting dialogue.

Think Tennessee Williams without the ripped bodices, overly syrupy Southern accents and please just kill me now humidity.

Willie's gift of get it surfaced for me again earlier this week when I saw the first blurbs hyping the "new" chit chat chapter coming to a flat screen near you.

"Parker/Spitzer".

For those who simply must see the trailer before deciding on the flick, allow me.

http://parkerspitzer.blogs.cnn.com/

Okay.

Three things.

First, you don't have to be a Mensa member to recognize that there ain't nothin' about to happen here that we haven't seen ad nauseum, repeatus maximus throughout the history of broadcasting, be it Shana Alexander bitch slapping James Kilpatrick around or Mr. Ackroyd suggesting that Ms. Curtin talk to the hand with a crowd pleasing "Jane, you ignorant slut..".

Second,(and here's the fun one)...Shakespeare gets the props for opining so many moons ago that there is "nothing new under the sun"....

Stop the presses, though.

Willie gets the atta boy, but he didn't originally frame the phrase.

Credit where due, you've got to go back to that perennial New York Times best seller, the Holy Bible.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Well now, who saw that coming?

I suspect the Parkerpeeps (I've already taken the initiative to coin fun little names for their followers) will be beside themselves at the news that that liberal, bleeding heart playwright had to rely on that old time religion to thicken his plots.

And the Spitzerspaniels will undoubtedly find some way to blame that on George W.

Meanwhile, we arrive at the third of my previously advertised three things.

And where I think the put-er together-ers of this latest entry in the yin yang category erred when they put it together.

Or, more to the point, what they left out.

Watching political discussions between two sides is, in theory, the philosophical equivalent of a match at Wimbledon. Serve and volley with passion and gusto until one server/volleyer proves to be the superior of the two and a victor emerges.

That's the theory.

The reality is a horse (or donkey or elephant, whatever) of a different color.

Political discussion limited to red state/blue state banter is actually the philosophical equivalent of tic tac toe.

The match, by its nature,, is unwinnable.

X and O always spell stalemate.

Here's a thought.

You want discourse and discussion that might honestly have some kind of impact?

Put somebody in the middle.

Someone who walks into the studio without pre-set position or agenda. Someone who is willing to listen to spirited debate and discussion and make up his or her mind on the merits of the moment. Someone who gives thoughtful consideration to both the pros and the cons of this side and that side and then offers a perspective that might allow both sides to come together, the whole being so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Here's the chance of that.

An ice cube's...in hell.

Not sure if Shakespeare ever uttered that phrase.

Pretty sure it's in the Bible somewhere.

Liberty as Ball Of Yarn

Ogden Nash was a witty fellow.

And not just a little insightful at the same time.

"The trouble with a kitten is that / it eventually becomes a cat..."

I'm reminded of that philosophy from time to time, most often when I read a political diatribe written by someone who, while clearly passionate in their conviction, lacks the depth of thought to pull it off.

Or, as the less verbose might express it, there really are a lot of obtuse folks wandering the highways and blogways these days.

The problem, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our inadvertently giving the aforementioned obtuse-esque not only a license to freely express their remarkable density, but a variety of forums in which to put said density on public display, from news site comment sections to celebrity poll questions, from Facebook postings to Twitter twitterings.

G has a theory about life that rings both tender and true.

Everything is a tradeoff.

For everything that we receive, there is, in some form or another, an eventual price to be paid for it.

In this particular case, it is the advance of technology, creating a wondrous place like the internet where anyone and everyone can and, much, too much, to our chagrin, does, feel free to share their point of view on an infinite list of life issues in a most ad nauseum fashion.

When the argument is well framed and exquisitely articulated, it can be a thing of priceless value.

When the argument is the verbal equivalent of the passing of gas at the dinner table, the devaluation is meteoric.

And, when all else fails the aforementioned gas passer, the justification offered is that tried and true chestnut, that crowd pleasing, oldie but goodie..."freedom of speech..."

At which point, both G's and Mr. Nash's respective points of view find purchase.

The tradeoff for being given the freedoms we enjoy is that freedom, by its nature, is non exclusive.

Or, as the more poetic might express it...

"The problem with freedom is that / you have to give it to everybody..."