What it Means

Can you play with me?

It was a bad time. It was dinner. Dinner was late. Dinner I knew was going to be unpopular.  Dinner I was forcing through despite multiple telegraphed messages that this meal would be poorly attended and have much commentary. I thought the fuss was unreasonable, but apparently tater tots are not a substitute for french fries, just as surely as Cauliflower is not acceptable as bleached broccoli.  I said no and rather sharply.  Her eyes got big.  Then I realized what I'd done and said yes. 

For the next ten minutes, I wound up being a camel that walked on all fours and got tied up outside the bathroom so I wouldn't be stolen or go somewhere.  No one was upset that the meal was delayed, even the ones that liked it. However she did have the camel pick up shoes and toys and lunch bags as I journeyed across the living room desert with a caravan of children desiring their time on their mother's back.  The hitching post at the loo was apparently requirement of the game, as mother dromedaries are apt to wander off but it did mean they got their hands washed before we ate.

Literally and figuratively, motherhood is opting to be a bactrian beast of burden tied up outside of the bathroom.  There is no glamor and your back needs to be strong.  

I opted to nix bath times for the younger set as we were still running behind schedule.  Thinking I'd just found 25 minutes, the next requests came flying in to take it back. 

Can you read to me tonight? My son has scrambled to find his chapter book.

Believe me, the first thought in my head was ugh. No. Boo. Go to bed.  But I can't do it. I can't bring myself to say no to the big puppy eyes begging, when I know, soon, those same eyes will barely tolerate my presence.

Reading to one cascades into reading to several. It is inevitable.  So "That's Not My Puppy, Snoozers, Lilly's Big Day and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" chapter one run their course before I can finally bid them good night and farewell and sleep tight.  

Running through the day, I can see where the missteps were, where I could have done something to lift this one or hugged that one rather than make suggestions on how to cope with something, but for the moment, the story aloud saves everything.  It is something I hope they take with them when they leave this house, that they remember being read to, being introduced to wonderful worlds and more wonderful words.   That and I've filed away in my head, next time the question comes, "Will you play with me?" the answer needs to be an immediate enthusiastic and unequivocal yes, I thought you'd never ask. Dinner, and everything else, can wait. 

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Most election years, I watch both conventions.  I hear some good speeches, but I was also pay attention to what is not said. Part of the purpose of a convention is to introduce the party/person to the people. Both conventions are first and foremost, giant commercial parties for the faithful.  Here's how they usually go regardless of your party affiliation:

 Here's our candidate, rah rah rah.  Good to people, good to animals, good to rocks.  Good to air. Good for everybody. Good. Good. Good. Good. Goody goodness type good. Good good goodness with a puppy and apple pie. Good. Good. Good.  Oh and we're cool too.  Our side rocks.  It rocks. ROCKS!  Did you see that we ROCK? Rock on!  Rock! Yeah! 

That other side..Evil. Pure evil. Impure evil. Evil with impurity on the side. Impure evil with pure evil on the side. Evil. Evil. Evil. Evil. Evil evilness and villainy, villainy and evil evilness.  They are so evil, they run with scissors. We saw it.  We can't stop it, but you can. Stop their evil scissor running or wallow in freakish misery forever if they win, worrying about your eyes or skin being hurt by those evil people with scissors.

We have a solution. Our solution is so obvious and simple a caveman could do it, but those evil cavemen on the other side, they've been stymieing our leadership forever.   They fear our brilliance.  They fear you.  They'd fear you even more if you recognize our brilliance.  We're brilliant.  We're brilliant, we're brilliant and we're good for you (Like fruits and vegetables and other foods in sensible portions only moreso).  Join now and you can be brilliant too.  It's contagious, just like voting for the other side makes you an evil caveman.  You don't want to be an evil caveman so you should join us and be an independent thinker like all of us. Then you too will be brilliant and good. (Don't forget good).  Brilliant and good and like fruits and vegetables only moreso. And we have a plan.  We can't show you the plan because then the evil stupid cavemen would steal it and use it in an evil stupid way, but we have a plan.

Also, we'll give you things because, we're good and brilliant and brilliantly good. The other side won't give you things because again, they're stupid and evil and selfish.  Or, we'll solve all the problems the selfish evil stupid people created and punish the stupid evil selfish people because then they'll either learn they should be brilliant and good like us, or continue to be punished on top of being selfish and evil and stupid.  

And, after millions and maybe billions of dollars are spent telling us this on tv and radio and computer and in magazines and papers and countless hours are lost that could be used to actually address the issues of unemployment, taxes, health care, the huge expansion of government powers to include not only the Patriot act but unmanned drones over our own country, voters will still be left with a great puzzle.   Not who are these guys but why is it always the same two options, Godzilla or Mothra?  The problem is, no matter which monster wins, it's the people that have to clean up the mess.

And like those Godzilla movies, there's always another one, there's always another election, so there's always another battle of the titans to illustrate to the destroyed city that we are not players in this arena, we're at best innocent bystanders who get to scream at the sidelines as cars are smashed and buildings crushed.  Both parties have huge planks in their eyes, and the media goes around screaming about the voter's splinters and how those splinters are affecting their judgement and their vision.

I won't say that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties or that anyone's vote doesn't matter, only that I'd wish at some point, we could get beyond what feels like a bad movie or at best, a fight between high school nerds over which sci-fiction is the best; the type of Internet arguments about who is better, Old or New, Starwars or Star Trek, Kirk or Spock that go on forever and mean nothing!

I'd like for our country to get out of adolescence or at least middle school about politics.  Don't just tell me how wonderful you are.  Tell me what you are going to do and how and then why.  Show your work.  Let me see what your plan is. Trust that if it is a good plan, I'll back you.  If it is a bad plan, I'll tell you.   If there isn't a plan at all, I'll be annoyed at you.  If you lie about the plan, I will be more than annoyed.  I'll be angry.

And when the little people in the b-movies get angry and organized, even the big monsters lose.

Laughing at Icarus

If the President falls from the sky in this election, the media will have no one to blame but themselves for making him into a messiah, conveniently forgetting what humanity did historically to the only one who actually could make that claim and not be engaged in pure hubris. It didn't help that the President bought into the image and let the illuminated images, Greek columns, halos and Light worker comments stand without comment. He didn't check the nonsense at the door. He spoke it himself to the crowds.

 

Thus when he showed himself to be merely mortal, to enjoy the luxury of the job, made gaffes or bad decisions, the fall from grace one had to know would be more perilous. Granted, when you make your whole campaign of ideas center on the cult of personality and mercilessly castigate through willing sycophants anyone who disagrees as the embodiment of all evil past and present, it will take time for resistance to such a myth to be shattered but if it should, the fall will be hard. 

 

The speech with the chair was hailed in part because a whole people have been lectured for nearly 4 years to NEVER criticize or laugh at this President. Perhaps some laughed harder than the bit deserved. I thought it was clunky but did like when he would get to the punch lines. I did laugh. The news was not that an old Hollywood person stood on the GOP platform, but that American people laughed at their leader, on that floor and in their homes watching.

 

Up until 2008, this was nothing we didn't do on a regular basis. We laughed at our politicians because we could, even if we agreed with their politics. People laughed at Chevy Chase playing Ford, at Tina Fey as Palin, we laughed hard at all the skits by stars who pretended to be the Presidents. We laughed and it wasn't because they were cruel or lacked understanding of the political arguments being made, but because that was one of the powers of being an American. We can laugh at our government for its abuses, its failures, its overreach, its underservice, for all the ways in which it does not live up to the ideals upon which it was founded. We can laugh at our leaders and not go to jail for that bit of mirth.

 

Eastwood broke the 4th wall of Politics in our current age, daring to publicly satirize the sitting President. Merely doing that was an act of open rebellion against the daily propaganda, the political correctness Nazis, the overzealous rage of those who have declared this leader of the free world to be something beyond what he is, a politician who won elected office.  They have also declared dissent the equivalent of moral treason, at best the result of innocent ignorance, at worst, proof of hearts of pure darkness.

 

We cannot survive as a representative republic if we cannot tolerate even the gentlest of mocks without declaring the source of disagreement something by its nature evil. It means the side that wins takes itself too seriously and engages in an almost puritanical wrath of self justification in all policy and procedures. Being able to laugh at ourselves, at our government, at our leaders is a sign of our humility about our nature and our fallibility. We have ideals. We fail to live up to them...often. We fly higher than our wax wings will allow.

 

Most of us wake up and are friends with people regardless of how they vote. Most of us could see that there was much to criticize regardless of what political party holds the majority.  Most of us know the President and the political parties are neither the enemy nor the devil.  Most of us also presume or would hope, that those who disagree with our own politics, would give us the same benefit of the doubt. The absence of humor directed at one side of the argument made the discussion much harder. Humor/satire makes those pointed barbs that sharpen the debate. Comedy illustrates the absurdities that otherwise might go unnoticed if all we do is rah rah rah for our own side. It makes the truth about our condition, our government, our leaders, our reality, more tolerable to bear.

 

With the birth of blogs, YouTube, face book, twitter and cell phone cameras, we have become a nation with nearly instant access to every human moment possible in both ordinary and political life. What will allow us to survive this brave new world of being constantly reminded of each other’s humanity is twofold: the grace of humility (to recognize the humanity in those we see or read about on the internet or news) and the grace of forgiveness. It isn't enough that we see the reality that the people revealed to be stupid in thirty seconds of film from an I-phone, but that we forgive them their moments of sloth, crudity, anger, lust, wrath, shortsighteness, stupidity or what have you. In politics, there is a dearth of both humility and forgiveness, resulting in the take no prisoner’s rancor that frequently passes for policy debate in the public square. We have fake apologies, fake acknowledgements of wrong doing, but what we never see, is public fake forgiveness, or even rarer, public acceptance/forgiveness of actual wrongs.  If  a public figure caught doing something inappropriate is taken to task, as part of reformation of the individual’s character, the wrong is spun and whittled until it is a virtue or a survival mechanism or a sign of evolved awareness of nuanced realities. (See when President Clinton lied under oath and article after article discussed the necessity of lying for good mental health, or President Bush signed the first deal running up our deficit and bailing out the banks and article after article about debt being good). 

We don't have to forgive what isn't wrong. We don't have to reflect or change if we can instead pretend what we did required that others reflect and change their minds about what is wrong.  I am talking about being given the grace of forgiveness the same way we now exercise the public gift of scorn (through com boxes and snarks and barbs and sharings of moments of extreeme humaness).  We are otherwise in danger of becoming a nation of gossips, of emotional wolves who prowl the internet for our next pack like opportunity to pounce and rend.   We must recognize how there but for the grace of God, could be us. 

 

Next week, I fully expect the DNC to fire back with both barrels. I will hope that if I laugh at something, I will admit it was funny. Further, I hope that here is the beginning of the restoring of good faith in our nation, the kind that exists between neighbors, between friends, between most Americans; the presumption that humor is not meant in malice, political allegiance does not require a rubber stamp agreement with all policy, and obedience to one's political ideology or President is not a moral imperative or sign of intellectual strength or weakness. It simply is a free choice which each American has the right to make and unmake as the situation warrants. 

 

And hopefully, some day we can look back at the madness and silliness of politics in this age and laugh.