Thursday, May 8

Sure, Everybody Wants To Party, But When It Comes Time To Help Clean Up They're Too Hungover.

I can't tell you how heartwarming it's been for a withered misanthrope to watch as millennial waves of fresh young Democrats adopted "old white woman" as a favored pejorative.

--Doghouse Riley

LEG pain: intermittent. Still bad at night, but mostly manageable with Alleve; kneeling in the garden possible, though I look like a crippled bug trying to get down there, and the pain upon attempting to rise again may be described as "blinding". I actually had this conversation with the orthopedist:

RILEY: The thing I can't do is kneel down.

DOC: Try not to do that.

There goes my conversion to Catholicism, especially under the current regime.

They switched me from Vicodin to Tramadol, which is the methadone of low-rent opioids. Listen, you fucks, I was abusing stuff ten times this strong when you were still cramming for your SATs! I tried to explain. And I got a script for Celebrex®, a medication which, to judge from the packaging of the samples I was given, can only be described as enthusiastic, as you would be too, if you were a Pfizer rep. Celebrex® restricts the user to Tylenol™ for other pain-relief needs, which is like telling me that in case of a splitting headache I can take two pieces of candy corn every four hours.

So Spring is here in extremis, and there are crows nesting in the big pine out back, and flickers and downy woodpeckers in front, and the garden looks as good as it ever will, especially considering that the gardener moves like The Human Torso in Freaks. And my Poor Wife is counting the two weeks to school's end, and her students are already gone, spiritually. There are many things to be said about the anti-unionist forces allied against the teaching profession, but among the most incisive is that anyone who bitches about how much vacation time teachers get has never taught the last two weeks of a school year.

And the carnival left town, which caused me to reflect on the fact that after a full month of unexpected (and somewhat undeserved) national campaigning Hoosiers seem to have come out the other side no more intelligent than before.

How much money do we spend on these things, again?

There was one, surprising exception--Governor Mitch "The Mighty Atom" Daniels, who ran unopposed, is still running campaign ads! And they're new, or else I would have suspected a) a scheduling glitch or b) typical power-structure collusion. And the goddam thing looks like a cross between a super-hero flick trailer and a sports aid drink campaign:

Lord, their internal polling must be even worse than what the Racist Star reported.

This may, or may not, have been why I got up this morning, but then catching up with yesterday's news has become something of a habit at this point, and I was shocked, shocked! to discover certain Obama supporters beginning to ask Democrats to move past Hillary, beginning, not surprisingly, with Hillary supporters, a concern which roughly doubled the usual number of comments to which "lying old bag" was appended, and which engendered my reply above. Soar high, Young Democrat! I think this idea of talking like a Republican, except about your own party, shows enormous potential in managing to lose a gimme national election in new and exciting ways.

That's not what I predict, and, Lord knows, however much I dislike both Democratic candidates, John McCain doesn't even register on the same scale. But the simple fact that this stuff can't be turned off owes, not to an anonymous rabble, but to a partisan campaign driven, Kos-like, by the desire to Just Win.

If that has a point I'll climb on board, but if it does someone has to explain it to me. Common sense and conventional wisdom both say it's a Democratic year; standard functional intelligence says you don't take anything for granted, especially once an election becomes binary. It's perhaps a shocking revelation, but middle-class or working-class Middle Americans don't really give a shit what bloggers think, and, as such, if the New Breed imagines it can win elections without them I say go for it. You can always blame your loss on their bigoted ignorance.

I used to discount this "divided Democrat" business, but I've been forced to give it another look. The sad thing to me is that none of it needed to happen; the Big Whoop of the campaign is that Obama did not receive his coronet in New Hampshire. The race ran absolutely true to form thereafter.  But his supporters--let's be fair, huh?--went apeshit.  Clinton slagging, in the long run, hurt the Obama campaign by drawing the line even more starkly. Before New Hampshire Senator Obama had a minor problem with genuine racists, one that it would have been hard for them to create much trouble about in an open forum. Afterwards he had a problem with his supporters calling all non-supporters racists. It's this fissure through which Jeremiah Wright pokes his head. In March, Senator Obama responds with a "masterful speech on race"; by late April he's being battered on the same issue by people like Brooks and Noonan who'd had no opening before. You may try if you wish to convince me that the portrayal of Clinton supporters as backwards, toothless, cousin-marryin' racists did not turn this into a major fault.

History walks backwards, like a crab; each generation learns that backwards, too. The practice of noticing things right after they fall on your head is time-honored, and none too smart.

8 comments:

  1. Amen.
    -An Old White Woman

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  2. And Hillary's supporters are calling the rest of us sexist, even if we're women. So there we are.

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  3. The political discourse has become so vulgarized, so nasty due to... the media? Life, the Universe and Everything? we are lucky it isn't worse than 'old white woman', etc. I was a Kudnich supporter, then Edwards, then Hillary...till she started echoing McCain. I'm hoping Obama will bring a little courtesy back to DC (HAA-ha!). It does seem the electing him will get us much needed respect in the rest of the world. "Maybe the American People aren't quite as stupid and bigoted as we thought" the Old Europeans will say. Maybe. I really really hope H Clinton will drop out, and be given an important Cabinet post. We need her smarts and expertise. (Word verification: ug she)

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  4. Doghouse,
    You're right to reconsider the Democratic Party split - these come from a pro-Clinton blog: (I find the blog in question to be stupid, so you will please trust me that I'm not making this up. Thanks in advance.)
    Whether the RULZ were violated or not makes not a whit of difference. (Referencing the DNC's punishment of MI & FL, prior to their primaries.)
    I’m not sure you are grasping the enormity of this situation. (Diito.)
    We are going nuclear on the party in order to try and save it from itself.

    In terms of race, I'm sure you've seen this.
    "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

    "There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

    On your slow recovery, I, too, was told to "not do that" - I asked how I was supposed to not flinch when the soccer ball came flying at me - & he repeated himself. OK, then. Seriously, your experience is troubling me, since it appears my right knee is next on the list for surgery. I'm going to try those chicken comb injections one more time, it worked for a few month the first time. Take care, Doghouse, we love in Wisco.

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  5. Anonymous8:54 PM EDT

    Soar high, Young Democrat! I think this idea of talking like a Republican, except about your own party, shows enormous potential in managing to lose a gimme national election in new and exciting ways.

    You are far more eloquent than I. I just told all the Obamamaniacs and Clintonistas to shut the fuck up.

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  6. Please read the fine print on the Celebrex (or have an obamalamadingdong read it to you)

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  7. I think you can get to heaven on your back, that's what a deathbed conversion is about, so don't worry about catholicism now! The gardening is more important. I've just given up on the whole "who has been more offensive to whom" thing. We can't really know, or grasp, although we can stand in awe of how incredibly sensitive people are to the notion that some unspecified other doesn't think they and their candidate are all that.

    You called me a sexist! you called me a racist! actually aren't equivalent accusations in modern america. One can be worn as a badge of honor--and frequently is--the other is always a shut up moment. But I'm sick of the whole shebang. None of these people, on either side, seems to be able to grow the fuck up and realize that their candidate choice isn't them, and even if it were no one else in the world signed on to give them permanent "thumbs up!" and "well done!" and "youre the best! smoochies, the world loves you!" You are voting for a candidate. That's it. Get on with it.

    aimai

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  8. Anonymous8:49 PM EDT

    As sometimes happens, Doghouse, your references and allusions are too complex for me, and I'm not always able to parse your sentiments properly. I don't know what you mean by history walking backward, but it sounds tempting.

    I find myself in resonance with your strong awareness of the exclusionary element in Obama fandom. You might think that people who will soon(The Mother of Destruction willing) be middle-aged and more themselves, would be more aware of the unfittingness of slagging the age cohort ahead of them on the slippery slope - but youth is wasted on the wrong people. Fer shur it was wasted on me.

    On a less controversial line: whoever did that Mitch Daniels ad snitched their musical motif from "Pirates of the Caribbean", lock, stock, and rum-barrel. Somebody alert the Screen Composers Association.

    Li'l Innocent

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