Wednesday, June 1

The Problem Isn't The Republican Field. It's That They Should Be Running For President Of The Confederacy.

I WORKED the last couple days on a post about my new home away from home, the Monon Trail, a rail trail through Marion and Hamilton counties I had avoided like that plague it will certainly speed the spread of someday. But it just turns out to be something that's much more interesting if you're me.

Actually there's nothing wrong with the Monon a good influenza pandemic wouldn't fix. It became enormously popular about the time the asphalt cured, which was enough to keep me away until Security threw me off my regular course, the all-but-unused overflow parking lot of a nearby mall-like swelling. I shopped around and couldn't find a decent replacement, so now I'm riding on the taxpayer dime, alongside a Hoosier-y collection of serious athletes, mediocre athletes with chips on their shoulders, escapees from the Memory section of any of three local nursing homes, more mothers with dual strollers than you imagine could be drummed up for movie extra work, mentorless children, and any number of people whose age belies their inability to obey simple traffic ordinances.

It's got a couple things going for it. It's about twelve miles from me to the north end of the line, so I'm putting in about twenty-five miles a day, since I can't quit in the middle. And it gives me the opportunity to hate smug, self-centered, libertarian Hamilton county up close and individually.

And--I'm serious about this--it's sharpening my animal instincts, because any given thirty-yard segment may include two stroller operators who meet going opposite directions and decide to stop and chat; unsupervised three-year-olds on scooters and possibly amphetamines; or, most ubiquitous, bicycles from the opposite direction who feel you're unfairly hogging their passing lane. Which actually feels good, after a bit, because I'm convinced that if there's a crash the person who wasn't paying attention is going to get the worst of it, because that's the real reason I am paying attention.

What's lost, though, is the mediative quality of running unhampered laps. I took off early this morning, having just scanned the news, and choked this down with toast and coffee: Charles Hurt, "Sarah of Alaska fits Joan of Arc role as 2012 possibility" which, first of all, suggests that the Washington Times has hired Pastor Grant Swank to write headlines, and, second, the brave explorer will need to read damn near half-way before deciding the thing isn't a leg-pull, even though it's in the Moonie Times.

How did Sarah Palin come to be the #2 story on last night's NBC news? What, Brian Williams couldn't say, No, I'm not reading that? There's no cut-off switch anywhere? Does this not perturb anyone? These are the same people who a decade ago were insisting we all bedeck trees and spout patriotic slogans, lest Freedom Herself find a fiery grave, and now they don't give a shit that the thread the Republic dangles from is a brainless shopaholic who preempts real news whenever she pleases. For chrissakes, it might as well be Zsa Zsa Gabor.

I understand all too well why the Republican party is stuck with her. But why the rest of us? Aren't her disapproval numbers clear enough for you, Brian? (He actually ended the story, or "story", last night with some tiny deprecation designed to be too literate for her followers to follow, which, of course, just makes it that much worse.)

'Course on the other hand, it has drowned out most of the "Chris Christie, Straight-Talkin' Republican Savior" shit.

8 comments:

  1. Chris Christie's chopper ride to his boy's little league game starts to make his position on the tunnel a little more understandable.

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  2. which, first of all, suggests that the Washington Times has hired Pastor Grant Swank to write headlines...

    My theory is the Washington Post is grabbing their turf, so the Times must serve ever rarer anusburgers.
    ~

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  3. charles pierce8:53 PM EDT

    Hey Riley -
    Is that the same thing ol' George is talking about in Hoosiers when he tells Norman Dale that, if he screws up the team, he'll "hidestrap yer ass to a pine rail and send you up the Monon Line"?

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  4. at least she has a reason for not having a completely functional command of the English language.

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  5. Charlie--

    As a fellow Hoosier to Riley, I can say "sort of." The Monon trail is made from the old rail line; the powers that be just paved over the old rail lines. Even though, Milan/Hickory is a 150 miles from Indy, the rail line would have run close to the real town.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monon_Railroad

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  6. Riley -- Are you ever as revolted as I am that Hamilton County sees itself (as if a county could see, but you get my point!) as smug and independent and libertarian BECAUSE they suckle of the teat of Marion County? This point seems lost on them: that without the infrastructure they refuse to support in Marion County, these exurbanites are just a tick sucking the vitality of Indy?

    Not to mention thinking of themselves as libertarians when they live in a place with that staggeringly huge amount of cops, building regulations, and homeowners associations is laughable. They just think they are libertarian because their betters are all white

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  7. Anonymous3:51 PM EDT

    Monon was still painted on a railroad overpass during my youth in Bloomington. Someone asked a friend whatever happened to the railroad. The reply "It merged with Lionel." still cracks me up.

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