I recently received one of New Hampshire State Senator Tom Eaton's campaign flyers in my mailbox, and took a look at the section entitled "Sponsoring and Passing Legislation that Makes a Difference". Among Eaton's proudest accomplishments is his sponsorship of SRJ 1, a bill described as follows: "Joining with every New Hampshire State Senator to honor our Red Sox". Boy, I got a good laugh out of that one. Could he be any more pompous and empty if he tried? It reminds me of John Kerry's "Who among us does not enjoy NASCAR?". Such populist posturing illuminates, wonderfully, how out-of-touch politicians really are. I can't wait to run for office myself, so that I can make such grand statements as: "I, too, place great importance on having a cold beer every now and then".
Politicians might as well stop trying to convince us that they're just "regular guys". It's insulting, and it's also a waste of their time. "Regular guys" are too busy living their pathetic lives to care much about politics, which is why insulated geeks like Kerry and Eaton run the world. Real "regular guys" "honor our Red Sox" by sitting in front of the TV for four hours every night as insipid, overprivileged demagogues run their country into the ground.
--LUKE BUCKHAM
3 comments:
Ah, that's right, I remember running into you when you were taking photos of both Eaton and John Sununu in a hardware store's parking lot.
I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable, for several reasons. I shook hands with both senators, whose faces, like the faces of most politicians, looked strangely tight and reptilian from smiling too much. And, as I recall, you and I made plans to meet up later downtown. But what really struck me was the feeling that you did not belong anywhere near these men. There was a sort of...awareness in your eyes that was lacking from theirs; a twinkle that in them had long ago died out, or never existed at all. This is a vague description, I know. But I honestly felt, for a moment, that a friend had been at least momentarily kidnapped by vampires, or bitten by zombies. I don't mean to suggest that you were under the sway of the senators' meager power. But it was a haunting feeling. Of course, it is a compliment to you that I considered these politicians to be unworthy of your company, and unworthy of your considerable talent as a photographer, too.
I had the same feeling when a friend of mine was working for a Democratic politician's campaign, whenever I would see him around his fellow campaigners; he looked strangely out of place, as if he were an undercover detective that had infiltrated a cult. I felt uncomfortable talking to him when he was amongst the party faithful. I felt as if I should try to rescue him, but I was not sure how. He certainly looked as if he wanted to be rescued, and later admitted to me that this was precisely how he had felt. I am not sure that that is how you felt in the parking lot that day, but I thought I saw something uneasy in your eyes; embarassment? You looked as if I had caught you just when you were about to steal something from my porch. Of course, this might all be paranoia, on my part. But it left an impression on me, that I have struggled to understand. You might consider this reminiscence too personal for a blog response, but it just now flowed out of me, so there it is. This is a place where lava runs like beer.
Yes, of course Eaton is a gentleman. He cannot afford to be otherwise, although after his gentlelady opponent, Molly Kelly, nudges him aside in the upcoming election, he will no longer be a senator, and then he may be able to let his hair down a little bit, if he has any hair left, at that point. If, against the odds, he wins, his face may actually explode from smiling too much, and then he'll have to use his mortician's skills to put it back together.
I met his opponent at a local speaking engagement at Keene State College. I went mostly for the free pizza. I was so bored by her ultra-PC speech that I almost started biting my toenails (my feet were clad in sandals, so this would've been possible). Governer Lynch was there too, and I met him. He was a gentleman, too, like every other public figure I have ever met. This is what I had to say about him afterwards (this from another letter to my local paper):
"Governor John Lynch's recent appearance at Keene State College had all the insight, soul and intellectual substance of an infomercial. The audience was gently pummeled with cliches, cliches like handfuls of popcorn and ping-pong balls, so many cliches that I squirmed in my chair in embarassment while the audience enthusiastically applauded every banality. But I take that back: handfuls of popcorn, or ping-pong balls, would have been much more delightful; the point is that the presentation was lightweight and lacked notable impact.
His theme, which he kept returning to like the tired chorus of a rain-soaked marching band, was the nobility and necessity of bipartisanship. It sounded nice: Lynch really seems to believe that it's best to size up the validity of a suggestion for its own worth, rather than judging it based on the party of the person making the suggestion. I agree. Of course, he didn't go into great detail on this point (and I believe I know why; but we'll get to that in a moment). I talked with Lynch after his speech about the growing fear, especially strong in parts of New Hampshire, that the U.S.A. is becoming in many ways reminiscent of a police state. He nodded sympathetically, and returned to his theme, sounding more and more like Charlie Brown's mother: that too much partisan bickering in Washington was to blame.
What Lynch fails to understand, or fails to admit, is that the biggest problem is not in where Democrats and Republicans, whether at the state or federal level, disagree; it's when they agree that they are truly dangerous. Both parties, at every level of our government, have by and large failed to take a real and radical stand for individual freedoms; both parties favor endless regulations on every area of American life, both parties favor a huge and omnipresent government. Both parties favor massive military spending and involuntary taxation, and neither do anything to elevate the intellectual level of debate in this country or throughout the world. Both are made queasy by truly candid talk. Bipartisanship, indeed."
Lynch, apparently, is one of the most popular governers in New Hampshire history, and, according to every prediction, will defeat his opponent by a record-setting margin. So some might say that my finger is not exactly on the pulse of New Hampshire. And that would be accurate: I have had my finger pressed to the vein for some time, and there is no pulse at all.
"The word 'bipartisan' means that some larger than usual deception is being carried out." --George Carlin
"To attach to a party programme - whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence - the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication." --C.S. Lewis
peace to you in this hour of amusement and dismay,
Luke
PS--
"He was a mortician (truly) for 25 years. That fact makes me laugh when I see that you are writing about him and John Kerry in the same paragraph."
Yes, it makes me laugh, too.
By the way, anyone who is reading this and wants to laugh more should go to
http://contratimes.blogspot.com/
and read "John Kerry: A Racy Joke", Bill's article concerning an incredibly sad subject: Kerry's recent attempts to be funny. It is excellent.
Luke
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