Along with his more visible and publicly flatulent policy problems like
a rotten fucking storyteller.
Maybe he just doesn’t know or can’t remember what he believes one day to the next anymore, or maybe it comes from having to do all his talking with George Bush’s dick in his mouth, but Saint John just plainly sucks when it comes to Teh Talking, and that is a huge problem.
We ask Presidents to be and do many things. To keep an eye on shit. To represent us. To keep us safe from the Bad Things. To be the public face of our mourning when we are wounded as a people.
Yes, we elect Presidents, but we also -- in a very real sense -- hove them up out of the weltering witchbag of horror, ecstasy, gluttony, compassion, entitlement, optimism and stoopid that is our national unconscious.
The America-Go-Round spins and lurches and never stops, so Monday we want a beer-friendly dolt, but on Tuesday we want a brilliant horn-dog. Wednesday, a Daddy who creaks of Old Spice-soaked leather and will let us play with guns. Thursday, a Mommy Liberty who’ll show us her tits. Friday, a blood-drunk War God.
Some of us want a President who tries to be mostly honest with us most of the time.
Others will not abide a President unless he keeps them diapered in the comforting lies they want to hear.
(And for those of you new to politics, there is a term-or-art for candidates who tell the American people the unvarnished truth all of the time. That term is “Loser”.)
But at the end of the day, what we want our Presidents to do it tell us the story of ourselves; to stand in front of the tribal fire, or the tribal “fire side” radio, or the tribal teevee and act out a ritual that tastes just a little bit like what Walt Whitman was getting to in ”Song of Myself”,
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,Telling the story of America to Americans -- finding just the right chords, and setting them to the music of the English language -- is an enormously powerful tool.
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
…
It is also a morally neutral skill; Republicans build shrines and name highways and airports for their Great Communicator whose decisions got 241 American soldiers pointlessly killed in Lebanon, lost us seven valiant America astronauts and one irreplaceable space shuttle, put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of Iranian terrorists, funded an illegal war in Nicaragua, reversed all progress on energy self-sufficiency, smashed labor unions, created the most massive shift of wealth from the middle-class to the plutocrat-class in modern history…all while tripling America’s deficit.
But ahhh, that hair! Those suits! Those Peggy Noonan-sculpted quips! And /swoon/ the way he manfully only-almost-wept over all of the people he got stupidly killed!
/We now pause while every wingnut in America sneaks downstairs for a little nostagionanism: jerking off with a red, white and blue chamois shaped like Reagan’s head, into a jellybean jar, while screaming “There!You!!Go!Again!"/
Where Winston Churchill ‘mobilised the English language and sent it into battle', the Reagan Administration used it every bit as deliberately and carefully to convince millions and million of Americans to commit mass economic suicide.
And they did it with a smile, because he told them a Story of America they desperately wanted to believe. They curled up at his feet as he looking into the camera and spun them homilies of a hard-workin’, family-lovin’, God-fearin’ white people whose Manifest Christian Destiny was blockaded and besieged by Commies abroad (who were – swear to Jebus -- going to roll Right!Through!Texas!, into Everytown, USA and despoil your children iffin we didn’t stop ‘em in Nick’ragwa), and pinko unions, lazy Negroes, dirty Hippies and Evil Gummit here at home.
Of course it is an open and festering question as to whether or not the American Story that Senator Barack Hussein Obama is constructing – America as a nation finally, really (if stumblingly) at play in fields only dreamed of by Martin Luther King. America proudly declaring that sophistication, pragmatism, tolerance and intelligence are fucking well our culture’s greatest virtues and not some horrid Liberal shame-goiters that have to be hidden at all costs from the Pig People -- is one that 50-plus-one percent of the electorate is even capable of hearing
But the American need for our President to be, first and foremost, our Griot-in-Chief is and ancient and undeniably powerful one.
And on that particular battlefield,
there is no
contest at all.
The Red Staters: To Iran!
The Red Staters: Real soon!
10 comments:
Holy crap that's funny. When are we going? Real soon!
One minor detail, those seven valiant American astronauts were more irreplaceable than any space shuttle.
Man, you got a way with ya, hoss . . . thanks for sharing, that's good and snarkilicious as all good sci fi and reality should be . . . GREAT read on Reagan, too. But ya left out what he did to CA, BEFORE he got the to the PretzelHouse . . . ;-)
"Telling the story of America to Americans -- finding just the right chords, and setting them to the music of the English language -- is an enormously powerful tool."
Another outstanding example of your ability to craft phrases that
wake up the mind and touch the heart.
wow, it never occurred to me to note his first name being "john" might be indicative of his being a red lectroid from the planet 10 via the 8th dimension.....explains a lot.....
Quite true. Although Obama has the opposite problem, he is so eloquent and good at telling a story that he is often tempted to talk the talk than walk the walk. Although I trust that he will be a good president, I always fear that he might become another Tony Blair.
Obama is now veering off towards satisfying the Pig People. Not good.
In relation to Fuckwit McSame, when I hear him squeeze out that fake-ass "My Friends", I feel the urge to bathe in acetone.
Obama will learn.
We cannot tell him.
Perhaps he is too naive as yet, or perhaps he has not been blooded thoroughly enough.
But there will come a time when he realizes they will "live under a bridge with a sparrow roasting on a curtain rod if it means other people have not a sparrow nor a curtain rod to roast it on."
He will realize there truly are people who cannot be appealed to using reason, logic, or sense.
I do not think he has really smacked heads with them... yet.
But I think he will turn his intellect upon it, and figure something out.
At least, I hope so.
Yes, we elect Presidents, but we also -- in a very real sense -- hove them up out of the weltering witchbag of horror, ecstasy, gluttony, compassion, entitlement, optimism and stoopid that is our national unconscious.
No matter where our national consciousness goes, there it is.
-cl
Funny, 'cos in the UK, we don't give a shit what the Queen or PM says. So why the American fascination with what the latest and greatest 'CEO' says? Okay, so said attitude is very much British, but why the deification of whoever occupies Penn. Ave? What gives!?!
...in the UK, we don't give a shit what the Queen or PM says....
That's not the impression I get, but I'll give you credit for being more likely to call them on their B.S.
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