I'm a firm believer that too many of the least well informed and the least well financially endowed among us have been artfully convinced by Conservatives to support politicians who do not represent their own best interests.
The have-nots who have attached themselves to more liberal representatives are called "brain washed" by one of our more unlikely GOP candidates.
No question, Herman Cain is a smarty. I'm trying to determine if "patina" or "veneer" best describes his intellect. I make the differentiation of the two by how recent is the acquisition and how deep it goes.
He uses his basso profundo voice to good effect. By enunciating carefully, clearly and in unhurried fashion, he gives off the tonal clues people attach to education. But he is glib, not truly educated.
I believe the impression he is giving to the hoi polloi has evolved from his learning how useful mimicry is. Mimicry is used most successfully in the insect world where edible insects mimic the patterns of the poisonous ones.
In other words, he sounds good, tastes bad.
Perhaps this is too harsh an indictment. And I probably wouldn't have made it so quickly had it not been for the interview Lawrence O'Donnell conducted with him last week. An interview that was criticized, even by brilliant liberal intellectual Melissa Harris-Perry, for being unfair because of O'Donnell's apparent premise that because he was black he was required to participate in the civil rights movement.
O'Donnell asked him why he did not. That he was in high school at the time was a credible excuse, if one needs an excuse. But his further explanation that he was following his father's advice to keep his head down and not get in trouble was a less convincing and viable reason. His description of his father's credo was unfortunately reminsicent of Uncle Tom.
Keeping your head down, working hard and not asking for help is an admirable formula for success. He can't be criticized for that. However, he is succeeding because braver, more visionary activists risked everything for his right to succeed in a white world.
And succeed he has. Unfortunately, his current sympathies still do not lie with those who laid down their lives so that he might bloviate on the merits of capitalism.
He should be on the griddle tonight. I will be interested to see if he maintains his equilibrium now that he will be a target of his political peers.
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While we are on Wall Street trying to right our ship of state, maybe we could expand the parameters to include ridding ourselves of those insidious, mind-rotting, soul-searing, science-denying peddlers of faith and self-styled morality.
Preachers, priests, shamans, witch doctors and, particularly, evangelical pastors should have preceded the Dodo bird but, unfortunately, superstition appears to have the upper hand.....still!
Did you see and hear that little Texas pastor, Rev. Robert Jeffress, who addressed the gathering of the GOP faithful yesterday where he self-righteously made all those definitive declarations about faith and god?
His god. The god he is convinced is the only god. The god that he insists must be believed in before you can be elected to any office, including dog catcher, or even before you can be considered a "bona fide" person.
Who the hell ever wrote this on any rock, or edifice, or beating heart, or on a mind that contains all its working parts?
Unfortunately, it's hard for me to defend the obvious object of his criticism - Mormon Mitt Romney. While Jeffress is, to me, a vulgar, soulless little man who doesn't think Romney can be considered for office because of his cult membership status, I have my own criterion for a leader: a man who believes in magic underwear has an intellect that must come in for a fair share of examination.
I think I would crawl naked over glass if it would help to free mankind from this idiotic attachment to worshiping at the altars of man-made codes that have proved themselves fallible, evil, cruel, stupid and bloody at every instant of our history.
Further, the religious zealots appear to be getting dumber and meaner. Not to mention how many, on close examination, are sexually deviant.
What is it about the fundamentalist faithful that makes them so far from god-like, but so convinced that they can tell us - with no empirical proof - that they know what we must believe?
Resist, thinkers of the world. We must overcome.
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This is the first illustration I have used on my blog. Why? I didn't know how to put one here. But this blew me away sufficiently that I figured out how to copy it and install it. Millions won't see it here, but I hope whoever does will pass it on.
You can talk about the disparity in compensation, and you can talk about class warfare, and you can listen to the sages on wages.....but, as they say, a picture is worth billions of dollars.
How can anyone defend this? How can any of our elected politicians sanction this? How can this stand? Why aren't the sanctimonious clergy up in arms? Why isn't every citizen in the country outraged?
There is a kind of sickness running through a part of our population that will not heal until we rid ourselves of the idea that greed is goodly and wealth is godly; that the poor are poor because they are lazy; that because luck allows even one idiot to rise to the top without having to do anything onerous, that this is manifest destiny.
Of course there will be a revolution. Let's hope it doesn't include bloodshed. If ever there was a reason to shed blood, this blind worship of the almighty dollar might be it.
Let's take the Kochs and the Cantors, the Norquists and the Know-nothings, the Mitts and the Mitches, the Becks, the Rushes and the rest of the rats in the political sewers, out to the woodshed and convince them of the error of their ways.
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Back in the 40s, when radio was the only source of live audible information and entertainment, my mother would listen to a program called "Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick."
The "Dorothy" was a gossip reporter and columnist named Kilgallen who became more famous a few years later as a panelist on what seems now to have been a delightfully innocent example of programming called, "What's My Line."
Kilgallen coined the question, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" when trying to elicit from a guest what it was they did or produced for a living.
At night, over dinner, mother frequently scoffed at some inane bit of radio intelligence she had received earlier in the day, such as: Dorothy Kilgallen uses only candles to light her bedroom to keep romance alive in her marriage.
The impracticality of such a daily time-wasting, and possibly hazardous routine for a busy woman, and the likelihood that it was all hogwash designed to impress suburban housewives with her sophistication, was not lost on my mother.
When I asked her why she listened to someone she obviously disliked, she said, it was for the pleasure of the irritation.
I suppose that doesn't make much sense to most people, but I have come to understand it. And I am my mother's daughter. I watch at least a part of Morning Joe every day just to delight in the irritation produced by watching Mika Brzezinski's constant, embarrassingly narcissistic, mugging for the camera. She never fails to produce!
Are there any psychologists out there who can explain why it can feel good to be annoyed?
* * * *
(According to a story titled Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen by journalist Sara Jordan, Frank Sinatra loathed her, too, and called her "the chinless wonder." Maybe the candlelight was more effective than a paper bag over her head.)
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There was quite a little tizzy in the press about 10 days ago when it was reported that one man was the source of donated sperm that have materialized into 150 children.
I don't think this was all in one helping, if that's what it could be called. It may be that women found the outcome so sublime they came back for more...and maybe did testimonials, as well.
Said one commenter:
"It's kinda irresponsible to have so many people be able to use one donor, since it could accidently [sic] cause inter-breeding or something else."
What could possibly be the "something else" that could happen? I'd be fascinated to know.
But maybe even more fascinating is the consternation suddenly besetting those who have availed themselves of these wares. Had the possibility of incest never occurred to them when they purchased an off-the-shelf commodity?
Now, apparently, they are developing some kind of number alert system that can be used to determine communal fatherhood. But surely some of these children will come from families who have not advised them of their status, leaving them vulnerable.
And even if they can source their forebear, it would seem a little previous to check the books when they first meet someone. But if they wait until after they have fallen in love, that could lead to heartbreak or, as the commenter said, "something else".
It seems to me this whole petri dish method of propagation is better left to fruit and vegetables.
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It's a little after 5 p.m. and I am staring at a frozen TV screen. The phone rang and I had halted Chris Matthews mid-mouth. Now I am examining the motionless split screen and see that Matthews is wearing a red tie, its knot skewed a little to the left, and Ed Rollins is wearing a navy blue tie; his twists a little to the right. How appropriate.
I've been noticing ties a lot lately. I'm not sure if I ever remembered seeing so many of them looking so untidy. Either the knot is off center or else it isn't fitting tight up against the collar button.
I've also noticed that men's ties swing around a lot more than I've observed in the past. A TV host seems to have to hold the thing close to his chest when he bends down to sit...or if a guest sits in a chair next to the host and doesn't unbutton his jacket, the tie often is left peeping from below the button....looking a little like something is out that should be in.
And the colors. When President Obama addressed the combined House and Senate this month, he was wearing a pale blue tie. His Veep was wearing a lavender one and the Speaker was wearing a pinkish one - all watered down colors that we identify with a statement of neutrality.
It's starting to look like ties are now the only thing that a man can rely on to say something about himself. Every other garment is pretty much the same (look at the row of navy blue suits lined up at the recent GOP debates).
I missed the second and saw only clips so I didn't really mark what the "suits" were all wearing. But at the first one, I noted Huntsman was wearing a nicely knotted yellow tie with his blue suit...and looked quite splendid. Cain, too, wore yellow... departing from the obligatory blue, red and in between colors. But it wasn't the standout Huntsman's was.
If ties are doing the talking, one of the clearest, neatest, smartest man on the public stage appears to be.....(wait for it)......Keith Olbermann! He is the epitome of sartorial splendor. His tie is always knotted correctly and centered under a perfect white collar...and the designs are bold and strong.
In the land of "ties talk" he is clear winner.
Texas has a lean, mean, well-barbered governor who calls it like he sees it - and he sees only guilt where the incarcerated are concerned. You get arrested - you get justice: Texas justice. Rapid and uncompromising "justice" with no room for doubt, nor consideration for error.
This Texas style of dismissing any weight given arguments for the possibility of sending the innocent into oblivion, came to mind last night when I heard that Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, has said that shoe removal at airports may be a thing of the past. New technology for apprehending potential mass murderers is on its way.
Gone will be the naively inconvenient ways to discern if shampoo is combustible, or if there is explosive material in someone's belly-button lint. Cutting edge technology will prevail.
It reminded me that I had heard of a new technology last year that was reported by the Israelis. They are developing an airport security device that eliminates the privacy concerns that come with full-body scanners at the airports.
It's a booth you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you. They see this new instrument as a win-win for everyone, with none of the whining about racial profiling. It also would eliminate the costs of long and expensive trials.
Justice would be swift indeed.
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