Oh shut up

I thought Spiro Agnew had a point that night in Iowa when he blasted guys like Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite for their "instant analyses" of presidential speeches.  (Full disclosure: I'd been drinking and wasn't even in the Des Moines hall where the veep ranted. I was at Joe's  in Iowa City, recuperating from a  day of reporting the public university industry's  plans to slip another inch into the body of taxpayers. So I had to watch Spiro on Joe's black and white teevee set.)

Spiro hated television news for the wrong reasons.  Because teevee hated his meal ticket, Nixon. Logic dictates that we should hate it is because it is a community of celebrity thespians posing as an information source.

This is never more apparent than on days of high political ceremony.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The American public will get a competing mix of rhetoric and imagery in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday, a speech that offers a heavy dose on the economy even as it plays out against a visual backdrop dominated by the current national debate over guns.

Please note the phrases "rhetoric and imagery" and  "visual backdrop."

First lady Michelle Obama will sit with the parents of a Chicago teenager shot and killed just days after she performed at the president's inauguration. Twenty-two House members have invited people affected by gun violence...That confluence of message and symbolism illustrates where Obama is in his presidency following his re-election.

When presidential  speeches deal with large problems, they ought to be analyzed, both instantly and more reflectively.  That's one of the ways we keep ourselves from being flim-flammed. But how the Hell do you analyze the face of an aggrieved mother, one eye teared up with honest grief and the other shining in the glory of being on national television? With Michelle. Herself!

You don't analyze it of course. You just hope your image consultants are correct in predicting that it will persuade x per cent more of x demographic to  jump on your bandwagon.  Or that they're incorrect, if you happen to be on the other side.

The result is a cesspool dunking of logical thought processes -- of sober discussion of what's wrong and what might fix it at what cost. One other result among decent folk is revulsion at the exploitation of ordinary people -- the real and imagined victims -- paraded before the closeup lenses to stir emotion in advancement of a political agenda.

This little essay probably ought to be written tomorrow, after the Obama performance. It is not because the ravenous goat of teevee time-filling has already begun analyzing the president's undelivered monologue. Further, it has the complete lowdown on the rebuttals from Rubio and Paul. Analyses don't get much more instant than that, do they Spiro?


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As your candidate for president, I offer a partial solution. I shall decline to contribute to a great national psychodrama, the annual posture-fest posing as serious debate about  how America should administer its affairs.  At no time will I address the congress in the presence of television cameras. I will simply obey Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution of the United States.

He (the president) shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. 

He need not do it in a Barnum and Bailey extravaganza, in the Big Top. under the lights. He doesn't even have to do it in person. Or annually.

I will do it as often as necessary, in writing with annotated footnotes to verify or explain my factual allegations.  No pictures. None. Copies will be freely available to every citizen -- from crazed bag ladies on down to electronic news personalities and congresspersons.

I guess it is another way of  intoning my own "I have a Dreeeeeeem."  I dream of an America where citizens sit around the coffee tables with policy proposals in front of them, in large type black and white. They quietly read and think and react, "if...then..it follows."

Should they find then "then"  reasonable, they applaud and support me. Should they find it otherwise they deem me full of shit and vote for someone else.

It might help, but, of course, it might not. We should try it anyway, if only to spare ourselves the annual aesthetic embarrassment of nationally televised tears soaking through the first lady's bodice.

Storm Nemo and the Runway Set

A diminutive and lovely American woman in a smart Connecticut home sat out Nemo with her elderly parents. Among other things she waded through deep snow to find and clear furnace vents; she used a pole to shake snow from her service electrical lines and nearby trees.

I wasn't there, more's the pity, but there's no doubt in my mind that she needed no last-minute dash for milk and toilet paper, meaning she was no candidate for a dramatic feature story on the horrors of being  suddenly trapped in her car in a storm well-advertised for days.

With preparations made and immediately necessary actions taken, she seemed to  enjoy her little break from the outside world, laughing and joking her way through white Armageddon, warm, secure, properly fed and I confidently guess, properly wined. After all, she bears an honest Irish surname.

Meanwhile, a million less sentient northeasterners suffered --  out of Perrier, down to the last pound of lox, the electric teevee won't work, that sort of deprivation. Never mind the frantically punched wireless devices seeking word on how much they might get from FEMA as a result of living in a place where it snowed.

Still,  the Irish girl and her like represent a useful cadre of citizens, people with at least a modest ability to see more than two commercials ahead and plan for survival in comfort when nature does what it routinely does.  Their existence suggests a remaining hope for America, even in the age of Mommy Dotguv on whom all  happiness depends. (Please, Your Ineptness, make the Republicans stop causing blizzards.)  It is a cozy thought, so you shouldn't screw it up by reading the news.

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At New York's Fashion Week, women tottered on 4-inch heels through the snow to get to the tents to see designers' newest collections.

Another loophole, another snow...

(Sorry about the title. I'm still a sucker for old show tunes.)

We have a wimpy blizzard in the forecast, but the Sioux Falls loophole is still on.  We think we can be back hearthside before the weather starts this evening. If not we'll just have to trot our our northern plains survival skills, shelter in a MacDonald's or something.

The get list is skimpy. Recent loopholes have my gun lust in reasonable check, so the only planned search is for some appropriate  .30-06 rifle powder and a couple of shell holders for my neighbor, the fresh-hatched reloader.

Naturally, I'll be alert for good deals on components for my stash, but I don't expect much. The buying panic has enveloped that supply too.

To take some .22s along or not? Last weekend I sold two boxes of Winchester Wildcats for $6 each. I got the equivalent of about $70 for a Federal 550 pack on the Speedmaster purchase. I pulled the rest,  mostly because something just felt wrong about taking that much profit.  And maybe  because the the buyers might have a better guess about the return of the bullet than I do.

AAR to follow, assuming our survival.

'tis the same old shellelagh...

...that my friend Bill picked up for me a few years ago. It looks neat and would make an effective backup weapon in some circumstances. Still, I don't use it much. It is primarily a decorative fashion accessory for which ever wall seems barren to me at any given time -- or sometimes as a place holder in one  gun rack or another.

Lately it's been living on its own dedicated nail in the spot handiest to the desk and used from time to achy time in the wake of an aviation accident.

The wheels-up landing from the second step of shop entry stairs scared me for longer than I like being frightened, about 60 seconds, crookedly prone on ice and frozen crushed lime pebbles. That's the time it took to inventory the parts and determine the extent to which the usual processes had been modified by percussion. Inventory complete, I hobbled to the quarters, in fact with part of the kindling I'd just cut cradled in the left arm. The right was busy steadying  this veteran carcass on whatever was handy along the way -- a tree, a vehicle, the big garbage can and, finally, the hand rail.

I built the fire, popped some ibuprofen and settled on the couch. To ER or not ER, that is the question. The answer was "not yet, anyway."

That was all a week ago tonight. The bruises have cleared up, the questionable knee again dependable and the elbow fit for lifting. What's left of the mishap is some sort of torn or pulled or otherwise disheveled muscle or tendon. If I were to describe it clinically, scientifically, I'd call it "like, y'know, a charlie horse." 

It yields to five count-em-five ibuprofen every morning and, when I'm walking a lot, a little assist from the Irish persuader.  I would carry it all the time in hopes of eliciting sincere sympathy. Unfortunately I don't travel in circles like that. ("Humph. Old fart ought to be more careful.")

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If the reader believes this post is primarily for the purpose of relating a personal mishap, he or she is somewhat mistaken. Like all TMR communications, it is intended to edify. In this case on the matter of Irish weaponry and Irish history.

My shillelagh is phony, pure Midwest Brand X, like a Pakistani pocket knife.  It is the stem of a scrub cedar whereas it should be  blackthorn or, even more traditional, oak.

In the glory days of Hibernia, no Irish gentlemen would have set out for the pub without his oaken stick. Then came the bloody British looking for women prettier than their own and lumber for their ships.  They found both, captured a few our women and all of our trees. This accounts for  the blackthorn, the occasional attractive English person,  and the fact that many of you have heard of a sailor named Nelson.