Thursday, February 28, 2008

Little Earthquakes


Two things you will hear every election cycle - there's a possibility of a brokered convention and this is the ugliest campaign season we've ever seen.

The first, despite the furious mental masturbation of all the political junkies, never happens. The last brokered convention was the Democrats in 1952. The refinement of the primary process carefully shepherded by the new class of profressional political rustlers has pushed the possibility of some open political brawl into the realm of fever dreams of the deluded.

After the fever dreams pass, we wake to a world we perceive as madness, muckery and morass.

Much as the "plagarism" charges against Barack Obama caused the scribes to furiously search for previous episodes of "lifting" (not so shockingly they found a throughline of purloined political bromides back to the time of Lincoln) so does history reveal that a few pictures of a man in what westerners think is an awfully funny outfit is far from the worst bit of political awfulness the world has seen.

Grover Cleveland was accused rather publicly of fathering a bastard. Andrew Jackson opponents claimed he was the son of a prostitute and a "mulatto" to boot. Abraham Lincoln was frequently called "Honest Ape". Given the racial politics of that particular era the implication was rather obvious.

Yesterday, we had a picture of a man in a funny outfit. Today, we have some maniac with a microphone using a candidate's middle name as a smear. Neither holds much honor but neither holds much horror either. Certainly neither should unleash an earthquake of contempt strong enough to shake us from our beds. After all, the fever dreams await.

1 comment:

Cotter Pen said...

I certainly hope you are right, although I have as much fun as anybody making a mountain out of a molehill. And if I did not, then what would there be to write about? Additionally, thank you for paying attention to my blog. Nobody says you have to, and I appreciate that and take it kindly.