TOBY PETZOLD

Dan Collins said I had to read this, so I did. Of Barack Hussein Obama, Michael Knox Beran writes:

His charisma is grounded in empathy rather than authority, confessional candor rather than muscular strength, metrosexual mildness rather than masculine testosterone. His power of sympathetic insight is said to be uncanny: “Everybody who’s dealt with him,” columnist David Brooks says, “has a story about a time when they felt Obama profoundly listened to them and understood them.” His two books are written in the empathetic-confessional mode that his most prominent benefactress, Oprah, favors; he is her political healer in roughly the same way that Dr. Phil was once her pop-psychology one. The collectivist dream, Obama instinctively understands, is less scary, more sympathetic, when served up by mama (or by mama in drag).

My greatest concern now is that the deconstructions of this unqualified liar will become so numerous and varied that they will merely add kindling to the fire of his fascination —and make Obama the indispensable man of the age. Are we Americans far enough removed from the sinister influences of Big Media? Can someone such as The One —as McCain is now said to be calling him— really wield that much power over the minds of enough people to seize the most powerful office in the world? The contempt of the Democratic Party for this country deeply alienates me when I can bear to think of it. Their choice strikes me as nothing short of anti-American.

It isn’t true to say I learned nothing from Mrs. Eddy. She taught me to reject mesmerism —even if only as a knock on the competition. But, truly, I despise a messianic pose. I can pick up on an ego-freak from across the planet —and the frequency I tune in on best is whether he knows what he’s talking about. And, often, he does not because the only thing he is truly expert at is deceiving people. Knowing what he’s talking about is merely a trick that the mesmerist must practice at enough to fool most of the people. And what a time-consumer! The mesmerist knows that he cannot know enough to be the master of the task at hand, so his energies are turned instead to practicing the art of distraction —all the while damning distractions as the enemy of his purpose, which is to get your panties off, madam, and to have your wallet, sirrah. The mesmerist is a hack with a talent for lying, but what are you gonna do?

Call him on it, I think. Just say no to the lie of post-partisanism and the shameful lie of a post-racial America. I think the Mayor of Newark said it best:

Well, I reject the term post-racial, it kind of scares me in the sense that I never want that to happen to America. Ah, let’s not sanitize, homogenize, deodorize our country, dear God we are not a homogenous country like Norway or Holland, nor do I want us to be, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I want to be America. We are America, because we have strong Italian communities steeped in who they are, Irish communities with the pride of that community, Korean, Mexican, Haitian, Nigerian. We are the United States of America which is the wonderful collection of so many different races, ethnicities and religions and God forbid if we ever get to a point where we “transcend our race.”

In another few cycles, I wouldn’t mind voting for this man to be my President. In fact, I suspect I would be proud to. Because, by then, he will be ready. And because he knows what he is talking about.

An intellectual infatuation between a man and a woman is the beginning of lies. Big, throbbing, mind-wandering, 3-D rendering lies. Is such a dynamic tenable? Of course not. But it is a test of a man’s character to act on what is right in every respect and to abide by that standard at the moment of truth.

Do you suppose it’s possible that online dating services are actually just fronts for the National Security Agency and that all the personal stuff you so eagerly supply to their servers will some day be used against you in a court of law and/or on the TV?

Oh, well. Such are the wages of social dysfunction and involuntary celibacy.

A lot of people I read have been linking to Joseph A. Palermo’s ham-handedness at today’s Huffington Post because it is so monumentally stupid:

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show should be mindful whenever Obama is the target of their satire that they don’t end up regurgitating Republican talking points. The Daily Show is far more influential than it was four years ago when Bush still had millions of people duped. The producers should be careful when poking fun at Obama not to provide fuel for the right-wing slime machine. Poke fun at Obama all you want, but do it in a way that also reveals the Republicans’ mendacity and hypocrisy.

Palermo’s fear of what his party has done is so fragrant that he needs someone to follow him around to clear the stink lines emanating from his head. Threatening Jon Stewart with the disapproval of the Obamatons? Giving Stewart directions on how to criticize Obama?  What a childish head-zealot. There are three things I will never understand: veganism, scat, and liberals who don’t notice liberal bias in Big Media. I mean, Jee-zus.

Oh, and I don’t want to let a single calendar month between now and November go by without my explicit request that the Democratic Party apologize to me for permitting this nonsense. What have you done to my former party? The one that Bill and Hillary Clinton invited me into before the Big Dog’s lies became too much and I went into protest voter mode until 11 September 2001. You Eleven Percenters are crap to me and I have zero respect for the Democratic Party for this effrontery. Is Obama in any way remarkable on the merits? Look at someone like Ted Kennedy. That’s a guy you can really get a hate-on for. I once had a boss who would routinely excuse himself with newspaper in one hand and his spit-cup in the other to go “take a Ted Kennedy.” Love him or hate him, the man inspires genuine reaction and occupies a large place in our lifetimes. In mine, I’ve never known an America without Ted Kennedy —and I’m pushing forty! What claim on History and Americanism can Obama make? Very little. He showed up without warrant and the idiots went to drooling. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. And it’s hard to respect people who think he is qualified to be the most powerful man in the world in this season of his life. Maybe another season. Fine. But Obama will have to lose much if ever hopes to win again.

Before I call it a night, I just want to say here that I loved George Carlin and that I am sorry to hear of his death. He was an extremely thoughtful and principled guy, so far as I know, and a total riot. My Daddy and brothers and I used to love his HBO specials. Man, I’d love to see some of those again. I guess they’re already out there in one form or another. Anyhow, Carlin was a great comedian and a great American and I am glad that he shared his love of words —and his understanding of the human condition— with all of us.

Every now and then, my ice-maker will do a spot-on impression of a home invasion robber and unleash a cold flash of adrenaline throughout my body as I grab the nearest weapon at hand and leap to my feet to smash someone’s face in. Tonight, it’s the junebugs bouncing off my windows.

Jesus! Gotta get some sleep.

You never know, man. You never know.

Then again, life is everything more than wondering about when you are going to die. Because that is the end of the annihilatory mind of Litmoid Man —not the ultimate aspiration to the well-examined life of Thinking Man, who has something to show for his own turn at the Great Wheel of Being and Nothingness.

I left scratches and scratchings. I left beauty and joy. I left ambivalence and hatred. Because I did live them. And do —even now— though it is all indifference. But, as with the vast majority of human beings, I was neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm and, thus, was spewed out of the maw of permanence.

Whom the gods would save they first make to forget.

The Statesman is reporting that Johnston High School will be closed and then “repurposed.” I don’t know what that second word means in this case, but the first one I get. And I say good. What a dreadful dump.

I hope they also close down Pearce Middle School, which is another haven for incompetence and indiscipline. In fact, they ought to tear the place down and salt the earth where it stood. When I was subbing in this school district back in the 1990s, I got so angry once at the disrespect shown to me by the subhuman dreck running Pearce that I actually wrote a letter to my employer telling them I would never again accept an assignment there. It was a pretty angry letter, too. If I ever come across my copy of it, I will post it here.

My opinion of public education boils down to this: it will continue to disserve our society because it’s no longer possible to insist on discipline. That’s it. Teachers can’t teach anymore because they are at the mercy of ill-bred and ill-mannered children and worthless administrators who routinely betray their best teachers to politics and expediency.

If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can’t, pop a fucking liberal education bureaucrat in his stupid hippie mouth.

I regard Hillary Rodham Clinton as a hero to her party and to our Republic. She is doing all she can to stop the madness of this choice her party has made tonight. I am proud of my vote for her a few months ago and I hope she becomes the next Majority Leader of the United States Senate —where she will very probably shine. And where I can abuse her from time to time for being a yankee liberal.