I find the following, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, an excellent metaphor for the current campaign, or anything else for that matter. I've always held an especial esteem for the Fruminous Bandersnatch and feel to this day that he has gotten short shrift from the liberal media elites.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?"
'Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I hope that this makes as much sense to you as the American political scene makes to me.
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From Eric Alterman-
ReplyDeleteHere's some manxome burbling from an influential member of our elite press corpse:
When you need your right-wing talking points accepted wholesale, who you gonna call? I'd call ABC's Charlie Gibson. From an interview with Barack Obama yesterday:
OBAMA: Well, look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we've raised in this campaign has been extraordinary and surprised me as much as anybody -- maybe more than anybody. What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.
GIBSON: But you haven't released their names.
OBAMA: We've got ...
GIBSON: We don't know who they are.
OBAMA: Well, look, the -- a whole bunch of them were out here today. I mean, you're looking the people who are giving 5, 10, $25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is ...
GIBSON: Shouldn't we know the names of that list?
No! Gibson surely is aware of FEC regulations, which require disclosure only of donations of more than $250. It's been like that for years -- that's the law. And Obama does that -- he just doesn't release the millions of names of people who give small donations, because it's not required and would be a massive task anyhow. It's not really clear what Gibson is alleging, nor was it clear when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis recently leveled the same charge, calling them "secret donations":
"And I only say 'secret' because I have no doubt that there are sort of -- the vast majority of those are probably legitimate," Davis explained. "But they're being kept secret by the Obama campaign, for no good reason."
Except for, you know, federal law. Davis knows it. Charlie Gibson knows it. But how many viewers do, after watching that interview?
(And also, anybody seen Palin's medical records yet? I didn't think so ...)
If cognitive dissonance is your drug of choice. . .
ReplyDeleteBehold the Republican candidate praising Hillary Clinton as a campaign strategy!
Well, I guess THIS didn't work out too well.
Maybe THIS would be more effective.
Although ultimately, McCain should have gone directly to THIS as his best shot.
Whaddaya think the McCampaign would be saying about Hillary if she were the Democratic nominee?
I like this bit of verse. It's a paean to that mythical, small town real America from Tom Lehrer's "My Home Town".
ReplyDeleteI really have a yen
To go back once again,
Back to the place where no one wears a frown,
To see once more those super-special just plain folks
In my home town.
No fellow could ignore
The little girl next door,
She sure looked sweet in her first evening gown.
Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free
In my home town.
I remember Dan, the druggist on the corner,
He was never mean or ornery,
He was swell.
He killed his mother-in-law and ground her up real well,
And sprinkled just a bit
Over each banana split.
The guy that taught us math,
Who never took a bath,
Acquired a certain measure of renown,
And after school he sold the most amazing pictures-
In my home town.
That fellow was no fool
Who taught our Sunday school,
And neither was our kindly parson Brown.
(I better leave this line out).
In my home town.
I remember Sam, he was the village idiot.
And though it seems a pity, it
Was so.
He loved to burn down houses just to watch the glow,
And nothing could be done,
Because he was the mayor's son.
The guy that took a knife
And monogrammed his wife,
Then dropped her in the pond and watched her drown.
Oh, yes indeed, the people there are just plain folks
In my home town.
The rough and tumble of the modern political campaign is sublimely rendered in this highly sophisticated work of art
ReplyDeleteDixville Notch goes all Obammy up in heah! O-15 M-6
ReplyDeleteThe question is, why only 21 eligible voters (from a population of 115), down from 26 in '04? Has the population shrunk? Have some gone off the political grid? Has vote suppression infiltrated even this remote locale?
Meanwhile, reports from Nawford's Crotch indicate that Herman the Ermine and his brother Willie the Weasel will split their votes between the candidates.