Whine Country

There's  nothing worse than taking a long-awaited vacation in the middle of the Republican National Convention. It's like getting a reservation at the French Laundry, while under doctor's orders to lose weight. I know it isn't good for me to watch the carnage in Tampa, hour-by-hour, but I just can't help myself. I've tried to take short-cuts, like just watching Jon Stewart's version of events, but it's no  more than an amuse-bouche.

It started with David Brooks' recent column in the New York Times, which was widely misunderstood as a take-down of Mitt Romney. The reason why it was widely misunderstood as a takedown of Mitt Romney, was because any fair reading of it took down Mitt Romney. It wasn't just tongue-in-cheek. In order for someone to apprehend that Brooks was not serious, one would have to have roomed with him at University of Chicago, or shared a bed with him, or given birth to him, perhaps. When I read it, I thought someone had either kidnaped Brooks and taken control of his keyboard, or returned his previously unused soul to him.

Gothamist, an on-line snark merchant, apparently broke the news that Brooks was going for satire in that bizarre column. The closest cognate equation to Brooks=Satire was when Tom  Lehrer was once asked why he no longer wrote funny political folk songs, and he replied that when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was no longer any need for satire. So here we are. Not only has Apple created complete technological convergence in 2012, but the GOP has merged satire, serious political commentary, and their convention, to create total political convergence. We no longer need political satire: Politics is now satire. Perhaps it began when a bow-tied Tucker Carlson criticized comedian Jon Stewart for not being a fair journalist, apparently missing the unsubtle point that Stewart is, indeed a comedian. The contagion of journalistic, political, and satirical convergence is now complete: Rand Paul has reiterated to  cheering masses his continuing dissent, that the Supreme Court's opinion on Constitutionality is irrelevant, and those that handed him the microphone not only knew he would say it, but expected it. The same masses who lionize American Exceptionalists do not believe that the Supreme Court had anything to do with forging this nation's historic greatness. It must have been States' rights that did so, or the lack of an income tax for the first century. Or something. They're always whining about some time that never was, or something they never actually had, that's been taken  away.

This all reminds me of Woody Allen's ageless quip that Commentary merged with Dissent, and formed Dysentery.

So here I sit, in Forestville, Ca., watching afar with a goblet of American wine, watching a political chain-reaction car accident. It's horrible to see, but I just can't look away. Or maybe I've just spent too many years working on car accident cases. . . .