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.
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