Does This Come In Any Other Color?

THE regular reader is no doubt aware that this blog exists in the main as my desperate attempt to be liked, to fit in, and that all my comments to the contrary--these, for example--are merely a ruse designed to make it appear as though I myself am totally oblivious to the emotional locomotive driving endless hours of what would, otherwise, be totally wasted effort. This (the ruse) is why you generally do not see me jump in with my patented Look What A Clever and Slightly Tolerable Curmudeon I Am routine whenever there's a small prairie fire of irrational enthusiasm sweeping the nation and its internet, as, say, when the first American of admitted partial African descent* secures the Presidential nomination of a major party, or when Bill Buckley kicks off. Because that's exactly what you'd expect me to do. See?

However, I would appreciate it if some genuinely liked, truly in-the-know person out there might let me know how long the Festival of Self-Congratulations Over How Far We've Come is scheduled to last. Is it going straight through the Convention, or will there be three separate Platitudinal Events in the run-up to Inauguration Day? Will it keep going after that? The Historic First Really Good Inaugural Ball Dancer? The Historic First Pitch of the 2009 MLB season ("We're just moments away from that historic toss, Joe Morgan, and as an African-American yourself, do you think President Obama's natural athleticism can overcome that strong breeze coming in from Left?")? Will we combat the Barack Hussein Obama shit with an "H is for Historic" campaign? I need to figure out when I can say this stuff is driving me crazy.

By Michelle Obama's Pearls! People in the 19th century gladly sat (or stood) through eight-hour orations; four years between Presidential elections must've seemed no longer than the average ad campaign does to us, besides giving outgoing and incoming residents sufficient time to move their belongings. Today the passage of four years surpasses human understanding, and it's sufficient time for a new generation of voter to spring up like alfalfa, or a strip mall. Five years on, and the Iraq War is an orphan. Even John McCain is treating it more as something to get through, like a midterm, or a colonoscopy, and the only people who act like they remember how it started are the six guys who earn a tidy living telling Slate every six months why it was, again, that they changed their minds about it. Except Hitch, of course. One could almost begin to feel sorry for that sod.

Maybe we need to tie the terms of elected officials to some national standard of average attention span, instead of speeding along the turnpike, periodically entering tunnels so long that we not only come out of them purblind, but having forgotten why we got in the car in the first place. By Michelle Obama's Pearls! A People who don't remember Eisenhower's golf, or Kennedy's touch football, or Johnson's surgical scars,** Billy Beer, Jelly Bellies™ , or broccoli-phobia are not just doomed to repeat them, but to drag the rest of us along for the ride. And apart from a reasonable historical, or just plain good, sense, what about Bush II's Presidential cowboy boots, brush clearing, and alcohol-induced adult-onset sociopathy? Are those forgotten already?

And yet, at a time when, By Michelle Obama's Pearls! we Need It Most, we get this:

“When you are operating at a national and even global level,” said Mikki Taylor, the beauty director and cover editor of Essence magazine, everything signifies. “No gesture is too small from now on,” Ms. Taylor said. “It’s all information. We’re all taking something from this look.”

Enthusiasm is the basest human emotion. It's a measure of what sort of diseased minds get hold of our spiritual longings and turn them into cash cows that the supposed Seven Deadly Sins combined, throughout recorded history, do not measure up to the damage Enthusiasm can do on an average weekend. Enthusiasm is the Viagra™ of non-sexual intercourse. Worse, really, because Viagra™ is not, to my knowledge, generally employed by rapists, and because Enthusiasm regularly lasts more than four hours, though less than four years. The Enthusiast has a big, unearned hard-on, and he intends for you to Get It, one way or another. And Enthusiasm's weapons, unlike those of more supposedly Deadly sins, are all lethal: the broadaxe, the neutron bomb, the beauty director and cover editor.

Look, if you do not remember Bush the Nicknamer, Clinton the Sax Addict, or the national craze for lumberjack shirts that trailed Lamar Alexander like an exceedingly ugly waterskier, kindly return to your studies. If you do, or if these words spark some dim recollection, for god's sakes try to think two months in advance, for once. Unlike starlets, and boy singers, and reality-show harlots, there's not another America's Next Presidential Couple around the corner. Could you not do your damnedest to make us sick of this one by Halloween, when comical costumes will finish the job?  Please, please--I don't ask for much here, do I?--just kick your enthusiasm where it belongs, start asking questions, and stop talking about How Far We've Come, fer chrissakes; you're a college-educated careerist who just might possibly know something of Martin Luther King's bio, at best, and the only thing you've overcome is Unfashionable Kitchen Appliance colors. You may swear now you'll LUV OBAMA 4EVER, and I hope he'll give you reason to, but the whole thing ain't up to you. And in all that time there'll still be plenty of Republicans around who still deserve stomping on. Sheesh, even Peggy "Pulitzer Bait" Noonan knows this country was founded by the first people to toss a king out on his ear and refuse (however narrowly) to replace him with another.


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* For fuck's sake, we all are.  Obama's just a few steps closer to the source.

**Shown off, apparently, because there were international rumors he'd had a very different surgery. Cf. John McCain's medical document dump.