Too Much News…

Last night I joined in an IRC chat room with a couple dozen funny, well-mannered people. There was a token Republican among us, and more than a few were Greener than they were Dem, but none stepped outside the bounds of good taste as we shared our impressions of the proceedings.

Many of them watched the unedited streamed content from the DNC or C-SPAN or CNN while tossing a snarky comment or two into the chat. Others watched both the unedited stream on their computer while watching a network presentation on their TeeVee. The commentary from these people was more “meta,” comments on the people paid to comment on the news. I was probably the least tasteful participant. I found myself drawn to comparisons of botox treatments… Nancy Pelosi has obviously had a lot of work and she looks great. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg appeared to have had a little touch up in the region of her upper lip, a treatment that certainly made her no less attractive.

Lacking a conveniently placed TeeVee, I wasn’t distracted by the broadcast communications industry irrelevancies that dominate every mediated presentation of the news; but, I had a window on the effects of the idiocy on my fellow chatterers. How detached from reality would I have to be to care what Chris Matthews says about anything?

I want to believe in Princess Caroline. I want to believe that Uncle Teddy was the legitimate heir to a tradition of inspiring and responsible leadership and that he’s passing the torch to a new generation. I want to believe that the Obama family are avatars of the Kings, that Corretta and Martin walk together among us once more, raising our sights to the ideals that we hope will guide us all. But really, bottom line, we’re all just feeling our way here, aware that liberalism promises humane solutions to the complex problems of a huge and diverse population, but also aware of the muggings we have experienced from corporate thugs who talked a good humane and patriotic line.

Last night in the chat room, an upscale genteel snarkiness marked a dimension of quiet and respectful debate, a dimension bounded by a picture of the princess heiress, somewhat long in the tooth and lightly botoxed though she be, the daughter of the slain good king. And intersecting that narrative we are informed by the glass slipper fairy tale of honest work and truth and beauty rewarded, the middle class nuclear family forged in the crucible of constant struggle just to get by, hard work and honesty rewarded, the cream of the meritocracy model of the Ivy League rising to the top.

I buy that bullshit one hundred percent. It speaks to me on an emotional level. I cry for the Kennedy’s. My heart swells with pride in the knowledge that Barack and Michelle will likely be the next residents of the White House and the Arizona plutocrats will be consigned to the country club of their choosing, there to golf and suck mint juleps and drive around the manicured greenscape in little electric golf carts, saving our precious fossil fuels for the chauffeured ride home in the late afternoon.

But even though I buy it, a deeper truth, the voice of profound alienation rattles a cell door somewhere in the dungeon of my subconscious. And that voice can be heard reminding me of my own complicity in the high crimes that bound another dimension of this political reality, a dimension not much acknowledged in the upper middle chat rooms of the HDTV equipped cable subscribers, nor quite understood by the apple-bong sucking twenty somethings who will vote against the old guy in reaction to his wrinkliness and with little thought for the deeper reasons we must reject him.

That subconscious voice is echoed here by Billy Beck, in passages like: