Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Roll Me Over in the Clover


I found myself in an inexplicable funk this morning and it wasn't until those who know me better than I know myself explained my mood. No more politically inspired adrenaline to fill my veins and set my heart and head on fire.

Would that it were as easy to rid the country of the scourge of religion as it appears to have been to shed ourselves of Romney & Co.

Yes, there were days when it looked like the "supreme" combination of money, media and mendacity was conspiring to frustrate us by working their black magic, but now that the thing is done, it's apparent there was little real doubt about the outcome. Even if Nate Silver and we, his adherents, were the only ones who knew it. 

Sigh. It's true that many of us liberals who normally like to read and dream have finally heeded the warning that a deadly, creeping  oligarchy cum theocracy could take over our lives and our planet. The effect of this realization was to turn us into militants. We took up the banner and entered the fray.

Now, flushed with success, where do we take the sound and fury we became accustomed to brandishing?

Perhaps we should address what  is probably the source of the fuel of the Tea Party and its cousins. Not oolong, lapsang or even Earl Grey, but the self-righteous, authoritarian, theocratic drek the evangelicals and other religion-driven in our society have tried to foist onto the rest of us.

You think they will accept defeat by ballot? Not on your life. And they are like bedbugs. They are everywhere, hard to kill and determined to survive.

I suppose this could be my next fixation. Working toward ripping the masks off the various phony faces of what passes for pious in an effort to enlighten the ignorant among us. 

The inkling for this came this morning when I heard that the underdone adolescent who is the "half" in the comedy  "Two and a Half Men"  is badmouthing the show (which has made him millions even before he becomes a man) because it offends his "Christian values." 

Now there is an oxymoron difficult to fight because it is   amorphous and proven by the religious right that it is totally without meaning.

A friend posted a short video showing another "values" actor,  Kirk Cameron, from "Growing Pains" who is presently bathing in "good news" and the joys of Jesus. 

To illustrate how god is the giver of all good things on earth, he rhapsodizes, on tape, about the heavenly qualities of a banana. "Look how perfectly it fits in the hand," says he. And he tells you how smooth and good it is to hold. It's so easy to peel and it's encased in a biodegradable wrapping that parts with a slight tug.

Only the sheer munificence and intelligence of god  could  have conceived and produced such perfection for all god's children.

OK, Kirk-o. I'll buy that....if you wax similarly enthusiastically about  a pomegranate, a prickly pear and a pineapple.

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

A Nosetwist in the Offing?



I just read that Grover Norquist may be getting the wim-wams for fear his bought-and-paid-for lawmakers may welch on their pledge  not to raise taxes, NO MATTER WHAT.

His reported access to all that heavy duty dirty lucre that he has promised to use to obliterate the candidacies of any apostates could be losing its terror effect.

Actually, the pledge couldn't amount to a hill of hiccups if his pipeline to all those cash backed threats is seen to be less than formidable. And there is a stench around even heavily financed failing schemes that cannot be denied. My guess is that Grover's day in the sun is coming to a cloudy close.

Look at the money that poured into the Romney rumble, and it failed to finance any kind of sizzle for that plucky little fellow.

Indeed, it would seem Romney's pluck has run out and his fun is done, too.

Poor Ann. For one wild moment she must have thought she was going to have a new house to redecorate.

Maybe it is time for the inmates to take back the asylum and throw all the bums out. At least that seems to be the view of some of the wiser wardens.....like little Billy Kristol.

Whatever will Grover do without his Wednesday Meetings?

My guess is that anyone who finds the term "poopy head" appropriate for use on national television  is likely to go suck his thumb. 

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Friday, November 16, 2012

Cat Gut and Dandruff




We all remember Judy Garland skipping down the Yellow Brick Road where she met the Cowardly Lion, searching for courage, the Tin Man looking for a heart, and the Scarecrow, who wanted a brain. 

These poor needy creatures bear a remarkable resemblance to the last 20 years' worth of GOP candidates for public office.

If one didn't have a firm grip on reality, one could feel that the U.S.A. was taking on some intoxicatingly familiar aspects of the make-believe kingdom of  Oz during this last election cycle. 

There are long lists of understudies for those three starring parts, but the part of the Wizard may have attracted the most aspirants and, possibly, the raunchiest.

To whom do we assign that part?  Rove? Limbaugh? Hannity? Beck? Cheney? Trump?  

And who gets the job of prompter? Ailes? Coulter? Drudge? Murdoch, himself? 

Press agent? Newtie swung into action in fine fettle, a little late but in predictably full throat. Sununu would be a good bet, too. He seems born to sleazy promotion.

The money guys are easy. Adelson and the Kochs led the big parade. Hard to call them "angels" considering the source of their wealth, but cash, no matter the source, does grease all the squeaky wheels.

Probably the easiest parts to cast were those of the Munchkins. The Tea Party gave it their all and were able to supply hundreds of the little - the VERY little - people.

And the whole production was in service of ?

A candidate who not only did not appear to have a heart, a brain or very much courage, but instead seemed to be comprised mostly of a very big sense of entitlement that was and is held together by nothing more than cat gut and dandruff.

Let's hope the not-so-grand old party spends the next few years looking for a new vehicle in which to launch a come-back.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

No Thanks Necessary



Thanksgiving is almost upon us and every November my mind seems to zero in like a laser on two silly memories that seem to be engraved on my brain. 

The first is of my husband, whose turkey ritual always consisted of getting out my old Fanny Farmer cookbook and reading the directions that told him How to Carve a Turkey as he honed his carving knife.

It always amused me....at least it started to sometime around our 20th Thanksgiving together.
 


The second unbidden wisp I clasp of the past is, oddly, about the British Royals.

I was stuffing a turkey Thanksgiving morning in 1984 and listening to a chatty radio broadcast announcing the two-month-old prince had little tufts of red hair.

This benign observation was fast followed by a list of justifications for this apparently innocent phenomenon. The assurances that red hair has, over the years, surfaced on the royal pates of family members on both sides had a salacious undertone in view of the unneedfulness of an explanation. Who needed to be assured that it was all right?


Not I. I didn't care. I still don't.


Ever since marriage was invented there have been those who have an eye for discerning any lack of paternal influence on the looks of the newborn. Mama's baby; daddy's maybe?

 
In these sophisticated times, combing and brushing one's pedigree can be a chancy, if not an iffy, thing in all quarters since DNA has reared its spoilsport head.

And, speaking of sophisticated times,  here we are, Thanksgiving 2012, and while the royals haven't had a scandal in months,  sex on this side of the ocean is still driving the bus.....and for two important generals, it may be going over the cliff.

Poor guys. They apparently have not learned the truth that great philosopher, Jon Bon Jovi has given us:  

"Women rule the world. It's not really worth fighting because they know what they're doing. Ask Napoleon. Ask Adam. Ask Richard Burton or Richie Sambora. Many a man has crumbled."

Even Fanny Farmer must have known this. 

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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Tacky, Tacky, Tacky




I suppose an old lady mourning the loss of gentility and good manners sounds like a chorus from the Flower Drum Song, but reading the stories written since the election, it's difficult to believe they describe people and events born of a supposed polite society.

Perhaps the coarsening of the vernacular of today has added to the reek of the miasma that stands over the political scene in this country. WTF and it's lengthier versions are almost protocol for expression of nearly any sentiment....their use starting in kindergarten and spreading throughout every aspect of our society.

I am not a prude. And I don't like euphemisms when straight talk is the clearest path to understanding. However, the lack of respect for one another, and the lack of even a modicum of delicacy in our daily discourse is debasing

The Conservative view in this country considers it unpatriotic to care what the rest of the world thinks of us. But we do care and we should care. And the fact that the opprobrium heaped on our country and its leaders is well-deserved, is for those of us who are of even minimal intelligence and sensitivity, an embarrassment hard to bear.

And it isn't just the offensively colorful language that has become the currency of our communication that diminishes us; it is the offensively parochial religious dogma  that a terrifyingly large segment  of our population seems to feel  is right and proper to jam down the throats of every living being in the country. 

Unquestionably the GOP has produced - not just this year but since the Clinton years - political hacks of the worst caliber. Twenty years ago they were just mean, conniving and insulting; now they are practically brain dead.

How could a man like Dick Lugar have lost his party's support to a candidate like Mourdock? How could a candidate like Todd Akin ever have been elected to the House, much less given a go-ahead to the Senate?

How could a baby-faced governor like McDonnell think he has the right to order a vaginal probe on any woman, including his wife?

How can we give credence to the hysteria of the Bachmanns and the Palins and the Coulters and the Becks, and the Limbaughs and all the rest of the crazies that take up space in our media?" 

Finally, it is for that Southern Gentleman from Mississippi who can't seem to get his own tongue around his Mother Tongue, to verbalize his assessment of the loss the GOP suffered, using the same fulsome rhetoric that characterizes this era:

"We had shitty candidates," he said.

He's right, and it's good old Anglo-Saxon terminology. But maybe it would be a good idea if we start to muzzle some of it and let the South try to rise again. At least the elegant parts of it. 

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