All Rights Reserved © 2000 Thomas W. Day
"Eat the rich,
"There's only one thing that they're good for
"Eat the rich
"Take one bite now - come back for more " Aerosmith
I guess I first noticed this in the early 90's, when Neuter Gingrich and George ("I'm not always a wimp") Bush started speaking in public. Still, it amazes me that so many whining old men hold positions of power in Washington. What's up with that?
"Well, I woke up this morning
"On the wrong side of the bed
"And how I got to thinkin'
"About all those thing you said . . . "
A few weeks back, my clock radio woke me up with the simpering whine of Trent Lott and an equally pitiful sounding politico named "Connie Mack."
(I thought Connie Mack was a baseball minor league. When did a professional sports franchise get the right to run for public office? Did we allow our current pack of elected morons to hold a Constitutional Congress and I didn't hear about it?)
Anyway, these two doofuses were bawling about how traumatized they were by the federal government's "armed invasion" of the Miami home where Elian Gonzalez had been held. It sounded like a pair of East Coast trust fund babies trying to convince their mother to let them borrow the Mercedes and the mountain resort for the weekend. I practically smashed the bedside stand, trying to put a stop to that awful noise.
I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of irritant gets votes in the hope that they'll shut up once they get a job. It doesn't work. Quit voting for them, whoever you are.
"And I just can't see no humor
"About your way of life
"And I think I can do more for you
"With this here fork and knife "
A couple of decades ago, some brilliant media commentator went on record saying that no woman would ever be elected President of the United States because a woman's voice would not be capable of calming a panicked American public in times of crisis. Times have changed. For the last twenty years, we've been packing the House of Representatives and the Senate with rich and whimpering frat boys whose voices make blackboard scratching sound musical. Was this a liberal conspiracy to condition our ears for the first female Chief Executive? Make me listen to that Connie Mack character for thirty seconds and I'd vote to replace him with Phyllis Diller or Mad TV's Cabana Chat lady. If we'll tolerate these voices, discriminating against any human (or not) aural characteristic has come to an end.
Back in the 80's, I wondered about the aural capacity of folks who could tolerate listening to George Bush through four years. Things have gotten much worse. I'm astounded at the people who put up with thirty seconds of G.W. Bush. That man could irritate a rock. Combine a middle aged spoiled brat with that Texas "we all talk through our noses down here" thing and you'd think that ought to create a combination that would trap the man in his country club for life. You'd hope. And you'd be wrong again. All that moral damage we were told that rock and roll would cause has taken a different sort of toll on the American public. We're all freakin' deaf!
I guess it was bound to happen. After two hundred and some years of laughing at those grumpy old English men with speech impediments who punctuate every speech's conclusion with "hurumph, hurumph" or "here, here" followed by "mumbly, mumblay, mumbly," it's probably our turn to be stuck with an embarrassing sounding government. Now, the rest of the world can record our politicians' public utterances and play them back for comedy relief on their late night talk shows. I know that Danny Quaile provided the world with that sort of entertainment, so maybe we're just adding more fuel to the world's comedy quotient. Still, it's going to be painfully embarrassing to travel overseas until this problem is fixed.
For me, this is doubly humiliating. Not only are these whiners running my government, but they're, mostly, from my generation. We should have seen it coming. All of the macho guys from the Baby Booming generation got toasted in Vietnam, fried their brains on dope, got rich in rock and roll bands and have dropped so far out of the mainstream that they can't find it with a fishing pole, or gave up on politics, altogether, after wasting a few years charging windmills in the 70's. That leaves the country in the hands of the Ivy League dorks who couldn't get lucky or noticed, unless they waved the contents of their billfolds out the windows of their Porches and Beemers. What we're left with for public offices are the kids who were drawing an allowance from their parents long after their 40th birthdays.
Even knowing all that, I want to know why they're getting votes? When did Americans lose all aural discrimination? Are we so used to traffic noise, tinny television speakers, and crappy car radios that we don't know the voice of authority when we hear it? Maybe the way to fix American politics is to improve the noises we all live with. If we got a good stereo system installed in every kitchen, maybe we'd get a better class of politician.
July 2000
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