me, I got issues.

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irrelevant stuff from 05

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Tuesday, January 17 2006

If Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominees are expected to open with Stirring Tales of Humble Upbringings, then we should be honest, and move the venue to Oprah’s couch. Apparently the citizenry who fear that Samuel Alito will repeal the eleventy-second Amendment - you know, the one with the right to privacy and Canadian prescription drugs – are supposed to be mollified by a tale of hard-scrabble determination. Well, it won’t work, and this biography-is-destiny approach is misguided. Let us imagine two fictional nominees whose “life stories” have informed their attitudes towards the Constitution, and see which one you’d prefer. Cue Strawman #1: ( “Thank you for letting me into the Senate today. Pardon my suit; back where I come from, they’re all made of hay. I was born at the bottom of a coal mine to poor parents – my mother died before I was conceived, and my father made a living carving balsa-wood peg legs to sailors. Didn’t get much repeat business, as you can imagine. Every night he’d tell me and my 32 siblings that one day, we were all going to go to college, and when we got there, we should gather up everything that looked valuable and run it back here to the house. “But sometimes he’d take me aside and tell me I could go to college and stay there. I could improve myself. I could go to med school, and maybe learn how to sew an extra arm on my side. “It’d come in handy in a card game,” he said. I don’t think he meant it as a joke. Jokes were for rich people. At most we could afford a limerick, around Christmas. But I never forgot what he meant, and as I sit here today, the first man in my family with a college degree and a wife with teeth and an extra arm, I am reminded that America is a wonderful place where a man can be named to the highest court in the land on the strength of biographical anecdotes. So I pledge myself to judge the law according to my personal circumstances, and contort the Founder’s wishes to help the groups who most closely mirror the economic circumstances of my formative years. Thank you.” It would be refreshing if a nominee told a different story: “Gentlemen, and I use the terms in conformance with its most elastic definition, I submit to this appearance with equal amounts of rue and bemusement, particularly since it falls during the time I usually thrash my footman for sins both real and contemplated. It seems I must explain myself to a series of low-born mountebanks and trust-fund wastrels, in order to ingratiate myself with the herd of sheep over whom my rulings will fall. Very well. “I was born in a manger, surrounded by farm animals, attended by wandering kings – Mother had entered one of her rustic moods, and had the servants build a crèche in the west ballroom. The kings were authentic, mostly second-tier low-country rabble – but one of them, a rather sweaty Belgian, told my mother I had the mark of greatness on me. He referred of course to this birthmark on my skull in the shape of the Masonic emblem; it is the reason I shave my head, of course. In any case, I attended expensive colleges, served as judge for two decades, translated the Federalist Papers into six languages. I will rule according to the words of the Constitution, and damn the consequences. Now if you don’t mind, I am late for my weekly colonic irrigation with a solution of ambergris and champagne. So get on with it..” The first fellow would be the national darling. Senators would strew petals in his path; Newsweek would crown him “The People’s Justice.” If he later found that the Constitution contained an unlimited number of heretofore undiscovered rights, his name would adorn elementary schools across the land. The latter example would be regarded as Count Borkula, and find himself working a hand-cart to Obscurity Junction with Harriet Miers. Which would be better suited to uphold the Constitution? Depends whether you pronounce “uphold” as “interpret.” Or even “Invent.” (perm link)

Monday, January 16 2006

Garrison Keillor is a grandly talented monologue writer and novelist. I can do without the radio show, but that puts me in the minority around here. It’s a smart quality product, obviously, but I’ve never felt part of the club. When he says “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon” you can feel the audience sink with audible satisfaction into a warm communal bath, and for whatever reason I’ve never wanted to join them. He has a syndicated newspaper column now, and I read every week to see how he will work talk radio or George Bush into the subject matter. It is important for everyone to know that he approves of neither. He can work them into a column on s’mores or the wallpaper of an aged aunt. This week he wrote about fat leaders – Ariel Sharon in particular. He believes we should vote more fat people into positions of leadership. I think. Churchill was fat, and that’s good. Lenin and Pol Pot were thin; say no more. Sharon, for example, went from “right-wing warrior to moderate compromiser.” Presumably as he gained weight, he moved to the center. Of course, one can see Sharon as something else – someone who built the wall, and disengaged because he had given up hope of compromise, and withdrew from Gaza because it was indefensible in the long run, and continued attacks from Gaza would show the world that occupation was not the animating issue of the various Palestinian militarist factions. It is also likely that this “moderate compromiser” was intimately involved with plans to knock Iranian nuclear facilities back a few years. On the other hand, he’s fat, and that’s a column idea. How do American leaders stack up? Depends. The column ends thus: “The top-ranking fat man in government today is Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert of Plano, Ill., who for years has been two heartbeats away from the presidency, and one of those hearts has a pacemaker. A mild-mannered fellow who only seeks to do good for the western suburbs of Chicago and for American business, Hastert favors a strong national defense and the education of our children while opposing tax increases of any kind, large or small. He is also in favor of life. “Sitting on the dais behind President Bush at the annual State of the Union address, the Speaker has never missed a single standing ovation. A fat man must get tired of jumping to his feet 20 times in a row, but the Speaker has always been there, clapping his big meaty hands. He would be the first Dennis to become president. And he would look more like us, the American people. Think it over.” Uh – okay; I have. And? Think it over! That face in the mirror, friends – it’s you. You’re fat and support education but oppose tax increases. For shame! That the excess avoirdupois of Sen. Kennedy or certain beefy documentarians might well reflect indistinctly on the positions they proposes is obviously irrelevant. Or not. I don’t know what he means. But this is fairly clear: I suppose that a compact build indicates some sort of self-discipine, but discipline to do what? Look at Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. None of them was a heart eater, and for good reason: paranoia. When you’re a megalomaniac, it takes away your appetite, thinking of all the folks who’d love to put rat poison in your ratatouille. It is human to put butter on mashed potatoes and to choose the cheese plate instead of the lo-fat gelatin and to linger over the port wine and chocolate. The man who denies himself might satisfy his hungers elsewhere, promulgating reckless policies, such as a war against a nation that poses no threat to us and torturing those whom he deems enemies and detaining them at his pleasure and marking his troops into a quagmire. Would you like a comma, sir? It’s wafer thin! A fat man, someone who must heave himself to his feet in the morning and behold a great pile of flesh in the bathroom mirror, the matronly pectorals and the enormous haunches and spare tire, might be more circumspect. He already looks like an emperor, so he would try harder not to act like one. So if Bush had gained 120 pounds in the 90s, Saddam would still be in charge of Iraq and all would be right in the world. You have to love it: Iraq has now morphed into the International Kitten, the Switzerland of the Middle East with quagmirey bogs instead of picturesque mountains. You could prop some people in chair like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” and make them viddy untold hours of Steven Hayes articles about Saddam and his connections to terrorism, and they would still insist that Bush lied when he told Fox News that Saddam personally piloted the planes into the WTC but parachuted out at the last moment. As for the “no threat to us” part, one only wonders what the Old Scout thought when Iraq was attacked in response to a purported assassination attempt on Bush 41. The author of those events looks pretty skinny to me. Think it over. (Note: I ended with that because I couldn't think of a good conclusion.) (perm link)