It is a cruel kind of sadness that the families of the dead at Fort Hood will have to endure. I would not want to see the story of the military gunman who opened fire on his fellow soldiers yesterday incessantly played and replayed on all the news stations for the next two weeks if I were a surviving family member.

Even as I write these words, there are news producers in studios across the country who are estimating how much of a ratings spike this horrific event will give them the next few days. There are Aryan brotherhoods who are incorporating Major Nidal Malik Hasan's name into their recruitment speeches. Muslim American soldiers who are steeling themselves for a potential backlash within the ranks of their own fellow troops.

These are the kind of real life things, real life but nonsensical, that will go on the next few weeks.

The blood has long stopped flowing from the bullet holes in those thirteen people who died yesterday. The eviscerated flesh around the edges of their wounds have begun to harden. Loved ones, still in shock, are having to scurry about, quietly digging up life insurance policies, forlornly selecting the last pieces of clothing their dead family members will ever wear in this world.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

From Thanatopsis
William Cullen Bryant

I was required to memorize the phrases above by Bryant almost thirty years ago in high school. It is in times like this that it comes back to me, as clearly as if I had only committed it to memory yesterday.

Yesterday, as I turned the channel to get away from scenes of the chaos, in my mind's eye those thirteen people whose lives were so suddenly snatched from them took their own chambers in the silent halls of death.

The perennial stereotype of the horse racing gambler has been recounted in books and movies as the kind of person who is able to see attributes in the horses that they inevitably lose money on that just aren't there. It almost seemed that they got more pleasure out of not winning than they ever could if their horse actually came in first.

The post race political spin last night was starting to sound the same way as the Democrats began to explain why losing the governor's races in New Jersey and New York wasn't indicative of anything at all other than the will of the voters. "The president", said the White House spokesman, "is not watching returns."

This was one of the funnier quotes of the night - what the hell else would a wonkish pol like Obama, who lives at ground zero in the most political city in the country, be doing? Bowling? Playing Scrabble with the girls? Updating his Fantasy Football picks?

The article "It's The Spending, Stupid" that was released before the results were final in New York's District 23 by Cynthia Lummis, a Republican Congresswoman from Wyoming, was just as funny. "Doug Hoffman's ascendance is a referendum on the reckless spending of the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress." It's kind of hard to call this race a referendum on spending when an unknown Democrat actually won the race last night in District 23, but I'm sure Rep. Lummis will come up with an inventive way to recast this outcome into a positive development.

The races themselves almost seem incidental, so hungry is our political establishment on both sides of the aisle for a chance to trumpet their agendas. I've often wondered why, in such a large country, we can't just accept the fact that people who call themselves Democrats or Republicans in one part of the country may not have the same ideological beliefs as those in another part - that the membership in a political party is an affiliation of similarly minded people in the truest sense of the word, rather than a brain washing syndicate that attempts to indoctrinate its ranks from coast to coast the way fascist dictators do.

The people of New Jersey and Virginia and New York's District 23 know these people running for office better than anyone on the national level ever could. When the smoke clears, and the cameras and the reporters are gone, the voters don't care about the national agendas - they care about what's happening on their streets, in their school systems, and in their neighborhoods and downtowns.

But reporters don't call regular citizens to ask them what they are thinking. They call experts and analysts instead. Then they call Sarah Palin and Glen Beck and Keith Olbermann to get the final word on the matter. They use old articles for research. They listen to other journalists and op-ed writers, and end up publishing coverage that reinforces a binary version of reality, as if we are not a multi-dimensional, multiple narrative population who may or may not act in ways that protect our own self-interests.

It would be easy to say that we have devolved into a nation that is all talk and no action, but that isn't really the case. In many ways, to the people who package and sell political talk, reporting on the saying is is much more lucrative than reporting on the doing - how many ways can you describe the construction of a new bridge that will take two years to complete?

But view that bridge through the eyes of an editor, or a public relations specialist, and all of a sudden the building of forms and the pouring of concrete take on a whole new light as we are bombarded by accusations of graft and corruption, payoffs and kickbacks, shoddy workmanship and back room dealmaking.

To the people who need the bridge, the politics of it is secondary to actually getting it completed so they can drive over it to get where they are going.

It would be disingenuous to write all of this and not admit that there is certain amount of irony in my writing this, since I have my own political and cultural opinion blog. At the end of the week, I've written a whole lot more than anything I've done to take action. Maybe what I have to say ads to America's political narrative. Maybe it doesn't.

The upshot of all of this is that for the next two weeks, you will be bombarded with headlines like "Palin's Candidate Loses In NY Congressional Race", "How Will Obama Respond To GOP Wins In VA And NJ?", "Dems, Incumbents Get Wake-Up Call", "Analysis: Elections Not A Referendum On Obama", "A Warning To Democrats: It's Not 2008 Anymore", "GOP Wins Reveal Cracks In Obama Coalition", and "VA and NJ Elections: Obama World Stayed Home".

These headlines, however stirring, will do nothing to alleviate the high unemployment rate, and will have no bearing on any efforts to stimulate the economy, the two things America is really interested in seeing improve.

Newt Gingrich and I have the same alma mater.

I had no idea that we both graduated from Emory University.

The publication the school put out for alumni was in the mail today. Emory Magazine, which has got to be one of the best put together university communications out there, is used mainly to let us know what's going on back at the ranch, remind us of how much all the educational majesty leading up to pomp and circumstance for this generation costs, and prime us for the fundraising phone call from a student...

...a solicitation phone call that ironically came between the time I flipped through the magazine and the time, half an hour later, when I sat down to write this piece.

Gingrich was on the cover of this issue, his white capped head covering nearly half the page in a jowly pose similar to the one in the picture above that made me think of Tip O'Neill in the twilight of his career. I didn't know that he was the founder of Emory's Young Republican chapter. What I had always felt was a deep respect for his intellect, even if I didn't agree with many of the political positions he has espoused over the years.

His latest reincarnation, in which he is teaming up with Al Sharpton to push for improvements in the nation's educational systems, may seem odd from the outside, but I have always been amazed at the idea of a professor with a PhD turning his theories into action. No matter how much you may dislike the conclusions he arrives at, there is no way to deny that Gingrich is a first rate thinker.

One of my buddies, another Emory alum, thinks Gingrich is biding his time until the Sarah Palin types wear out their welcome, when my buddy insists that "Newt can take this thing." What my buddy doesn't realize is how much credibility Gingrich's association with Sharpton has cost him with the army of wingnut zombies following Glen Beck and Michelle Malkin, an army who mistakenly believe that they are real Republicans.

The reality for Gingrich is that his time to run for president has passed him by. As he comments in the Emory Magazine article The Man With The Plan, "I was in an airport, and these students came up and said, 'you're in our history book,'", Gingrich says. "I felt very odd at that point."

I don't know what he and Sharpton and Arne Duncan are cooking up, but I think Gingrich's academic background, his political instincts, and his stature will serve the groundbreaking educational tour well. As a matter of fact, this threesome will be in New Orleans tomorrow, November 3rd, and in Baltimore on November 13th.

In a recent interview that included both Gingrich and Sharpton, Sharpton told NBC, "The parents need to be challenged with the message of `no excuses.'" Gingrich responded, "I think that he has it exactly right, that education has to be the No. 1 civil right of the 21st century and I've been passionate about reforming education. And we can't get it done as a partisan issue."

"Amen" to that.