The Summer Before the Fall

I remember cartoons that summer. In one of them, an ordinary couple is driving down a residential street with a common sign in a yard inscribed with: VOTE FOR MORGAN - on observing which the driver declares, "That does it; I'm voting for Morgan!" It was funny then, as ever when cartoons presage actual events. (Did you ever see the satire which became a documentary Network? You should.) It is considered a great advantage on behalf of any candidate to have vast sums behind him, and the purpose of spending in campaigns is to buy teevee advertising, the equivalent of great numbers of signs reading 'VOTE FOR MORGAN.' There was a summer, back before the fall. There was this campaign, see, for US Senator, one hundred and fifty two years ago, which featured two who spoke atop wagons and makeshift platforms in small towns for three hours between them, elucidating and suggesting issues both profound and petty, but in language, not image, and yet were they raptly followed by an engrossed audience ... which could not even vote for either, as the senator in those days was selected by state legislatures. But is it possible that the electorate today, who after all must be adults before they are enfranchised, would allow themselves to be called to the barn like cattle by the mere ringing of horns and the flashing of light? Consider. Palin, the infamous Quitter on Twitter, is, alas, rather dim. She whines that she was booby trapped by the interviewer Katy Couric into a conversation in which the candidate for the second highest position in the land was asked actual questions about her qualifications, or their lack. Sarah thought the topic would naturally be their children, for both she and Couric were mothers of youngsters. Now let's  elevate to the lobbyist back of the McWeathervane campaign on this national stage. They refudiate Simple Sarah's saga by reminding us that the setting for this interview had been picked by the Repugnant handlers themselves: the UN building. The stage was set to showcase Palin's foreign policy cred. Do you follow? "I have foreign policy gravitas because you can see clear to the UN behind me in this video!" Upon crossing the stage before the vice-presidential debate, the simple one asked Senator Biden if she could call him Joe. This was to set up a line fed to her from an old Blacksox-era baseball story: "Say it ain't so, Joe." (She added the equally insipid line from Reagan: "There you go again ..." which in 1980 inspired the string of vapid vocals which will not die; as witness from the same campaign of '08: "If you wanted to debate Bush, you should've run four years ago" which was duly picked up by the news business and promoted. I heard wiser rebuttals on my elementary school playground.) Our Kangaroo Kourt has delivered us to corporate greed, the Frankenstein's monster of our time, and that means great gobs of pander, slander, and lies with grand dollops of 'VOTE FOR MORGAN' banners electronically transmitted forever and forever amen ... We can take solace in my own state, in which a feckless eBay robot spent over 141 million of her own dollars to saturate the media with idiot ads insulting her opponent, only to be blown away by twelve points in the general election, proving not all provinces are cow pastures. Small victories.