Enough slander is enough

ONE OF the less profound observations to seep virtually unnoticed from the McCain-Palin campaign was Cindy McCain's dyspeptic complaint that Barack Obama was waging  the "dirtiest campaign in America's history."  Obviously Cindy has not  been paying that much attention to her husband's joyless visits to Mudville.  But no matter.  We'll let her mindless remark pass as  a slip of the brain that was DOA.  What does matter are the incendiary hoots at the McCain-Palin rallies that should not be repeated to children.  THAT ONE, to whom McCain referred at the debate - the one with a middle name of, eh... Hussein - is incurring such slander from the mob (and a new McCain ad)  as "dangerous" and "dishonorable."  The rallies are also  producing such assaults as  "kill him" and "treason".  It's the sort of ugly audience participation that I heard some 30  years ago when I slipped into a KKK rally near New Philadelphia as epithets exploded  from the robed ones on the back of  a flatbed truck.   McCain and Palin can do themselves  and the nation a great deed by pausing during their remarks, staring at the vicinity of the shouter, and declaring: " Sorry, but I don't want a vote from your kind." After all, McCain has said more than once that he would conduct a "respectful" campaign.   

you susing 

Score another for stagecraft!

SO, ANOTHER alleged "debate" that again was so tightly wound, shrink-wrapped and orchestrated that both candidates could have mailed in their comments without losing face.  How in the world can anybody reduce the seemingly immovable problems we all face in an unfriendly world to a two-minute answer and a one minute response like they are rings round the bathtub?   You can't.  So we were forced to settle for a carefully rehearsed beauty contest.  Frankly, I don't see the point of audience participation other than to allow each questioner  play a cameo role in what is, after all, political theatre.  It is a pretentious way to suggest that democracy is alive and well in America.   These cautious events seldom live up to the expectations of the pundits and TV talkers anyway. And, by the way, Tom Brokaw's metallic utterances as the moderator did little to heighten the viewer's interest.  I think we should all vote tomorrow and get it over with.  

Sickma melta chi

AS ONE who has spent some time in and around the Chicago area, may I offer my condolences to the fraternally correct Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox for their rapid transit out of this year's post-season playoffs.   It must have been  particularly galling for the Cubs' fans, whose  ancestors haven't been on hand to witness  a World Series title since Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern.  (I exaggerate, of course, but not by much in geological time.)  As for the ChiSox, little more should have been expected for a team that muddled through the final weeks of the season as though they were waiting for former minor leaguer Michael Jordan to arrive for one last  at-bat to enliven their play.   The only way to salvage the final curtain is to schedule a brief inter-league series between the Cubs and ChiSox.  If you do the math, you will conclude that at least one Chicago baseball team will be a winner. 

A soul-less John McCain?

The tenor of the McCain-Palin campaign is becoming more chilling by the hour.  Both want you to believe that Barack Obama  is, at best,  a fellow-traveling terrorist - the unholy word that George Bush played so inelegantly in leading us into a dismal five-year war.  Today, when McCain questioned the true identity of Obama to a partisan audience, someone shouted: "Terrorist."   That's dangerous stuff.  Instead of lowering the temperature of his shouter, McCain drew a blank expression and moved on,  obviously pleased that he had a like-minded audience.    It recalled a moment during the primaries when  a woman  asked him how best to dispose of  Hillary Clinton, whom she called a bitch. McCain smiled.  Fun-eee.  He made no attempt to scold her.   Is he serious about getting to the White House by courting the worst in uncivilized behavior?  

OK.  Since the GOP ticket has dragooned the the Biblically-pure family values guide for its personal use in the campaign, may I humbly add a Biblical passage that is becoming more appropriate in these horribly dissembling final weeks: "What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"   It's happening, folks.   

Check out the dead cats

IF YOU have a few bucks left in your stock portfolio may I suggest a fertile investment scheme: Put the money into dead cats.   Fat ones.  Smelly ones.  The kind that give off foul odors when you splatter them against somebody.  There is nothing like a dead cat to soil and deface anybody you want to destroy.  Particularly if you think you ought to head to the vicinity of the White House, one way or another.  

On the basis of supply and demand, the market value on dead cats is rising these days as the maniacal mavericks sweep them up to hurl them forcefully at Barack Obama.  Like oil, when there are fewer dead cats for the rest of the world, the price will go up.  Bingo.  Good investment.

The thought arises not as an original idea from me.  The McCain-Palin campaign people are talking to anybody who will listen that they are planning a smelly attack-ad barrage against Barack Obama's character  to shift the voters' attention from the equally stinking economy and a lot of other things that have stalled McCain's bid for the Oval Office.  While McCain  is insisting that he is non-partisan (in Bush's favorite self-description,  a uniter, not a divider), Palin is doing her Project Runway schtick by questioning Obama's patriotism wherever she goes (but never on Sunday  to the networks), wondering without a blink whether he should even  be permitted to aspire to high office.  

The dead cats had been lying around in the dark streets and alleys of whisperers for several months before McCain & Co. whipped the reeking carcasses onto their tumbrels to dispose them widely in a more polite society.   To refer to Obama as a Muslim, for example, when it is verifiably clear that he is a Christian,   is a disgraceful lie for personal gain.   It also reaches  for the basest instincts of the voters.  If a candidate has nothing  less provable to lie about  in assailing an opponent, he or she should shut up and join the circus.   And for McCain to allow it to happen is a sign of his own abject desperation.

John, lay off the dead cats.  There can be more than one patriot in the crowd.   

Bailout, BJ style

The Beacon Journal retirees' blog has a list of newsroom staffers who have signed up  for buyouts. It notes that the paper must decide who among them will be offered a ticket out the door.   The BJ's target is a saving of $1.5 million.  The retirees blog estimates that those who have signed up represent 345 years of service.   Among them is music critic Elaine Guregian. If you want to know more, along with the names, you can access the blog with Google and BJ Retirees.  

Going, going... gone!

DAVID GIFFELS,  the Beacon Journal's talented young columnist and author, has accepted a buyout and will join the English Department at the University of Akron, according to two  sources familiar with the imminent move.  Also leaving with a buyout is Keith McKnight,  longtime deputy metro editor and former top-of-the-line investigative reporter.  Two more daggers to the heart of the paper,  and the list grows.  None of us takes much pleasure in the erosion of the Fourth Estate.  Some of us who worked for newspapers when they were, eh,  newspapers are the lucky ones who looked forward to a day in the newsroom.  So this is not a time for schadenfreude. 

She qualified for the role!

Some debate, huh?  What  restraint Joe Biden must have called upon to remain a perfect gentleman against an opponent who appeared to be auditioning for a high school class play! Sarah Palin would have won the role easily.   She repeated her lines perfectly as they skidded from one Republican talking point to another.  As scripted for her, she went after Obama/Biden like the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:  Win the war without surrender...cut taxes for Joe Sixpack ... reform the government (without mentioning  George Bush's central role in the meltdown)... deliver all of us from evil.  Tax-cutting has been a GOP staple  in the GOP playbook as far back as I can remember.  And guess what?  Read-my-lips Bush  (the present incumbent's father) campaigned fiercely against taxes and then went on to support new taxes.  Of course he did. So have others. 

Paul Krugman pointed out that Palin's closing testament to freedom was lifted from Ronald Reagan's appeal to the the wives of physicians in the early 1960s (not yet president) to resist, um...  socialistic Medicare.  Is that what she really wants to tell Joe Sixpack?

She also told Fox News (where else?) that she was annoyed by some of Katie Couric's questions and that she wants to talk to Americans "without the filter."  Bush, the current one, used to refer to filters, too.  He preferred to read the unfiltered morning briefings from his staff rather than  newspapers.  My hunch is that he was peeking at other printed words, too, but it's always comforting  to attack the left-wing media,  which is largely owned by Republican businessmen.

I've been thinking about filters and decided there is no higher calling than to filter the filters, the latter being those politicians and others who command public attention.  So journalistic filters must figure out how to discard the nonsense and find the stuff that is often purposely left out by the newsmakers.   That may be confusing, I know,  but I can live with it.       

Multiple choice

Was the Senate vote on the bailout bill last night prompted by attrition - or contrition?

Where does she go from here?

AS HER popularity numbers sink - but not as much as her muddled answers to simple questions and McCain's desperate defense of her - Sarah Palin is getting more advice from conservative pundits to either clean up her act or get out of the race.  Conservative Andrew Sullivan accused Palin of being a "liar"  who "cannot be taken on trust."  Sullivan didn't flat-out write that she should end her role as the life of the party.  He was simply downright nasty.  Still, I don't think calling her a liar many times over is strong enough to force her off the ticket at this late date.  That would suggest - can we say it?  - accepting  defeat without honor, in the oft-spoken words of the GOP nominee about another troubling  matter. Here's the problem: Who is available to step in as McCain's designated hitter?  The prettiest of the bunch, of course, is Mitt Romney.  But my problem with him is that he always seems to be posing for an altarpiece.