Stupid dog tricks

Segments of both "ends" of the USA's rather short political spectrum possess certain shibboleths that they cannot set aside, even when it is in their interest to do so. Those of us who lean more or less to the left can recite many of the other side's obsessions, whilst being blind to our own. I've commented several times on a couple of those articles of faith. I won't belabour them now. This comment is about the small group of the Brookline faithful working to ban the pledge of allegiance from classrooms.

I'm not outraged by the idea. I'm not incensed. I'm just shaking my head at the obstinacy of an (apparently) tiny group of people whose primary objective seems to be picking a fight with conservatives and reactionaries. Their actual motives seem unclear, perhaps because the objectives vary with the personal agenda of the supporters.

As I recall it, the pledge was a mindless morning ritual, and would probably remain so for the kids if adults would just keep their hands off it. I'm old enough to remember when "under god" was added. I was in first or second grade, and my chief reaction was resentment at having to add a new phrase to something I'd learnt by heart.

My advice to both sides is to stay off these energy-wasting bombasts. Either pick real fights or lay the fights aside to help the one country out of this mess. If you don't, there'll be no question of "love it or leave it," because more than likely the country will be leaving you. "One nation indivisible" is more a pious hope than a reality just now.

Another Daily Double

Once upon a time I worked--I'm blowing my cover--at the Paul Revere House. This was Bicentennial era, when the employees were mostly earnest young radical historians like me. Some of us arrived with chips on our shoulders set there by debunkers for cash; others were products of the new history that looked not at Great Men but at ordinary people. Some of us were both. Either way, we became fascinated by Revere and we loved to take on the snarky debunkers. Nothing made one's day like letting a wannabe debunker rant, then quietly walking to a drawer, pulling out Revere's own depositions about April 18-19, 1775, and reading them aloud. The wannabes would slink to the exits. Today, as I have heard it, the Revere House has returned to lying for dollars*, so the Grizzly had no opportunity to be exposed to evidence.

I do know where her followers came from. I suppose they were the same people who, as hyperactive snot-nosed brats, employed their time at the Revere House setting off fireworks in the courtyard. Changing history to suit their agenda is bred into their inbred little minds. It is a comfort that so many candidates are going after the same small percentage of psychotics, heedless of the fact that whomsoever wins will have to weasel back to the centre, or at least to sanity.

About the leg. My next opus will reflect on today's adventures in defensive medicine, in which untold thousands and six hours were spent to confirm the patient's own initial diagnosis. I would do that now, but I did get Vicodin as a party favour and I'm about thought out. Peace, dudes.

*
In those days we were wholly evidence-based. When tourists asked where the barn was or the name of Paul Revere's horse, we told them there was no evidence he even owned a horse until after the war.(Despatch riders didn't need to own horses.) Not long ago, a friend's family was assured that the perennials in the courtyard were planted by the patriot's own hand. Not: I helped the boss plant them myself in 1976...and that courtyard was the adjoining lot until well into the 20th century. If there is a difference between that lie and the lies the Tea Party has tried to throw up on Wikipedia to change history, it eludes me.

TGIF

The commentary is likely to spill over into Saturday, especially as Blogger.com observes Zulu time.

First political thought for the day:

Q: what's the difference between a republican and an anarchist?
A: a trust fund

Second ditto. Why is it that when the rest of the planet appears to be moving to the left, that any nation whose chief language is English seems determined to move even further to the right?

Third: tonight's news seems to be equally divided between coverage of unrest in the Middle East, and unrest in the Middle West. Considering that the Republicans have been making noises generally supportive of autocratic reactionaries, whatever they get in this country from those objecting to their domestic policies is just what they deserve. The punditocracy doesn't have enough spine to bring up an awkward and ever-more-obvious fact. The conservatives in the USA are the Democrats. The republicans are reactionaries of a particularly noxious stripe, who deserve to be treated exactly as Middle Eastern reactionary autocrats are being treated at the moment. Reaction of this sort has, in the past, led to only one outcome: revolution. It is much to the credit of the Middle Eastern revolutionaries that they've accomplished what they have so far without resort to the guillotine. One wonders what will happen here as long as our home-grown reactionaries keep their feet on the brakes.

And then we have the horrors (?) of men wearing skinny jeans, quite as if men had never worn skinny jeans. Let's crank up the WABAC machine and drop in on any moment between James Dean and the Beatles' Rubber Soul album. We will find men wearing skinny jeans in profusion. We will find sartorial reactionaries trying to ban them. What I remember most fondly is that the reactionaries insisted on banning blue jeans. Levi Strauss, never one to miss an opportunity, began to market skinny Levis in colours from pale khaki to white. "White Levis" were a contrarian badge for several years before bell bottoms. Jeans of a cut evidently acceptable to today's fashionistas were the emblem of dorks.

When the whites come back, I'll know the wheel has turned 360 degrees.

Drama and comedy

Drama

If John McCain had served in the army, his bewildering animosity toward repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" would be more understandable. The armies of the world have probably done much to perpetuate the idea that naval tradition is nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. The marines, as the Navy's hyper-macho bastard offspring, are probably in denial about the whole thing, hence their hostile approach. It's not like they don't have sea duty, after all.

For those who don't know, combat forces comprise about 20 percent of any modern land-based military service. One question is and remains why sexual orientation should be an issue for the 80 percent whose job it is to support the combat arms. Another is to wonder whether anyone in a combat arm would be able to break their concentration long enough to hit on a peer.

Back to McCain. Today's exchange between McCain and Adm. Mullen may hint at the long-standing family feud between McCain and the rest of the regular Navy officer corps. We've had all sorts of little dances about why this celebrity ex-POW did not advance to Rear Admiral, at least upon retirement. The most likely explanation is that he was seen as a troublemaker before he was captured and a troublemaker afterward. To this Navy veteran, Admiral Mullen seemed to be on the verge of forgetting he was addressing Senator McCain, and sliding toward reaming out Captain McCain for shooting his mouth off once again. There was just something in the respective body language. With that history, I'd bet that if Mullen said "black" on this question, McCain would say "white."

Comedy

Part of my job is to search the Internet for identifying information on physicians, when their surgical and treatment notes don't make their specialty and status clear. As I was doing that today, I came across the fact that specialists in disorders of the colon and rectum now prefer to be called colo-rectal specialists, rather than the old standby, proctologists. Why, ask the laypeople?

Their spokespeople dance as much of a hornpipe as McCain did before Mullen, but it seems clear that the goal is to disarm the abundance of medical humour aimed at proctologists. Although these people seem to enjoy their work, apparently they take exception to being, umm, the butt of so many jokes. For example:

• Q: What kind of accident did the proctologist have?
  A: He was rear-ended!

• A proctologist is a doctor who puts in a hard day at the orifice.

• A proctologist is a brain surgeon for lawyers.

Substitute colo-rectal specialist in any of the above and you'll see at once what they're up to: (Well, they may be up to the elbow, but never mind!)

Seeing that people in this field derive much of their amusement from their patients, it seems perfectly fair that amusement should be a two-way street.

So much for the benefits of reading. A combination of political ads and depressing news programming has pretty much done for the tiny bit of television I still watched. PBS is no help, what with having the most depressing news and a spate of very noir crime on Mystery.

So I read in bed and make my back stiff.

The sole comedy on the political front comes from the New Hampshire political ads on Boston-area TV. There is a measurement in advertising known as wasted impressions. They come in two flavours. First are the ads that you present to someone who has already seen your ad ten times, or who may already be a customer. After a few times, a little switch goes off in their heads, and you ad goes black. Or else, they may become really, really annoyed with you for repeating the message they've already bought, to the point where they take their business elsewhere. I'll be back to that in a moment.

The other flavour is created by presenting a product to audiences who will never, under any circumstances, wish to buy your product. This gets tricky. Sometimes, advertisers take a calculated risk and present their product in a market where they know perhaps half the audience doesn't buy the product and may even be grossed out by the product. (Think, ads for feminine sanitary supplies during football games.)

This second item, deliberately wasting impressions, explains why the few spaces of Massachusetts TV and radio ad time not consumed by Massachusetts attack ads is filled with New Hampshire attack ads, for and against people you never heard of. The Granite State has a pitiful handful of its own TV stations, and only one has statewide coverage. The most populous parts of the state have relied on Boston media since the invention of the telegraph.

This year's deluge takes the idea to extremes. For one thing, Massachusetts' population is four or five times larger than New Hampshire's. For another, the day is long gone when someone making an ad buy like this could assume their audience in Massachusetts had only a degree or two of separation from someone in New Hampshire. I'd bet that there are tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents who don't even know where the place is. And now the ones who can vote are all stoked to write in John Lynch for Massachusetts governor, Paul Hodes for Congress from whatever district...fill in the name of your choice.

But that first type of wasted impression may carry the day. It seems possible that we're on the verge of a time when all political advertising creates wasted impressions: because the percentage of the electorate who can be swayed by advertising is vanishingly small, and because the percentage who simply shut the stuff off is becoming huge. Past a certain point, saturation does not sell, it bores, and I think we're there.