Je suis un homme sérieux. (I am a serious man)  Charles de Gaulle fancied himself one. So did Richard Nixon.  They are annoying because they take themselves so, so very seriously and insist by their body language and wooden faces, that we all do the same.

The Latin gravitas, having substance, weight, is another word that describes them. They are unwilling to loosen up. For some weird reason that I don't understand their affectation works with the hoi polloi or, as H. L. Mencken described them, the great American booboisie.  

Two of the most fatuous clowns strutting about the current stage are unctuous, righteous Joe Lieberman, and the scowling, so-very-responsible William Bennett.  Whenever I see either one on the box, I grind my teeth, not necessarily at what they have to say, but rather their pontificating certainty.  Lou Dobbs is another "serious man" whom idiots apparently find believable.

When I see William Bennett sitting there in a CNN lineup of political "analysts" scowling, certain that he is morally correct and better than everybody else, I want to land the top of my foot in his cojones.  He is not just another body that CNN rounded up to comment on, say, the incoming election results. He is suffering to be included among them as an apparent equal. He is better then them, and he wants us all to know it. When he, harrumph, makes a comment, it is with a scowl. He suffers the question from his lesser. As a voice of authority, his is second to his precious God.

William Kristol tries to affect gravitas, but he is too lightweight to pull it off. Newt Gingrich also does his best, but in the end, he is a giggle. This narcissistic condition is mostly, but not entirely, a conservative affectation. For all his many worthwhile achievements, Jimmy Carter, alas, is sometimes a bit much. He has a pious upper lip.  David Gergen manages to stop just short of being an offensive homme sérieux.  He does this by a remarkable ability to appear sensible and halfway independent. And every once in a while, he will concede a point or agree with somebody else.

Among females, Barbara Walters is the best example of this species. In one of my early novels, I had Fidel Castro escape incognito from a hotel in New York. As he shaves his beard, he wonders what it would be like to shag Ba-wa Wa-wa. Would she show emotion?

The charm of the Clintons is that they are able to display a range of genuine human feeling. Hillary Clinton's wonderful haw, haw, haw laugh takes over her face. It is genuine. And it is delightful. Barack Obama can give a terrific speech one day and show up at a working-class hamburger joint the next.  He can play basketball or shuffle out to the mound in baggy jeans to deliver the first pitch of the baseball season. As the Aussies would say, good on 'im.

Having set out my thesis of offensive posturing and faux seriousness, I encourage you all to reply with more examples. Or dump on me. Your druthers. I finish this post with a smile. I am serious yes, but I also appreciate the craziness.

 

Why is it we shy away from confronting the single largest irony of this young century? 

To understand this irony, one has to understand that Islam regards the Quran as a continuation of the word of Allah (God in Arabic.) Allah gave the Old Testament to the Jewish prophets. The same Archangel Gabriel who foretold the birth of Jesus (Isa in the Quoran) and later dictated the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. If you want to be quarrelsome, you can say that Muhammad plagiarized large chunks of the Bible. Muslims simply say the Quran was Allah's update of his earlier communications to the Jewish prophets and Christians. Muslim holy men often urge their followers to read the Bible to better understand the Quran. Yes! Amazing!

The Quran has its own version of the Garden found in Genesis. The story of Adam and his wife is virtually the same as in Genesis. (Eve is not named; Muslims call her Hawa.) When she was expelled from the Garden for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, Hawa became the literal, physical incarnation of shahwa (lust, sexual desire.) Shahwa is the emotion of Satan (aka Iblis.)  If women's shahwa is not controlled it leads to fitna (social chaos.) Women provoke men by flaunting their "ornaments" (boobs, behinds, crotches.) Muslim require women to wear veils and smothering costumes so as to control their shahwa. Used as slang, fitna means a beautiful woman.

The Quran has the story of Moses, Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale, and other stories from the Bible.

The fear of sex dominates Islam. It likewise dominates the imagination of Evangelical Christians (pushing abstinence, railing against sin and licentiousness, pretending to be horrified at Janet Jackson's nipple, and so on).

Muslims want Sharia (Allah's law.)

Evangelical Christians push for Sharia-Lite (variants of God's law pushed by the Bush administration and conservative Republicans. No abortion. No studying evolution. And so on. These are less harsh demands, true, but it is a matter of degree, not kind. Let them have their way and see how quickly their demands would escalate.)

When a male Evangelical Christian zealot looks in the mirror, he sees a Muslim looking back; he is willfully blind to the beard.

When a female Evangelical Christian zealot looks in the mirror, she sees a Muslim woman looking back; she is willfully blind to the veil.

We all look the other way and pretend these are two separate religions. They are not. Islam is a continuation of the Christianity imagined by fundamentalist, born-again Evangelical Christians who take the Bible as the literal word of God and believe it is their duty to inflict "God's law" on the rest of us. Let's be honest here; their idea of divine law, is Sharia-Lite.

This friends, is the great, unacknowledged irony of our times.

You here on Talking Points Memo never talk about it, if you ever thought about it.

Evangelical Christians (fundamentalists, born-agains) are in fact, terrorists within.

No, no, no, you cry!

What about the Alfred T. Murrah building in Oklahoma City that Timothy McVeigh and his pal Terry Nichols flattened on April 19, 1995. Well, you say, that only killed 168 people and wounded 800. Hmmm. We lost 3000 people to Muslim fanatics on September 11, 2001.

McVeigh said he blew the building up out of retaliation for the burning of the Branch Dravidian compound of religious nut balls in Waco, Texas,, and because he thought the government was out to destroy all Branch Dravidians.

All jihad means is "struggle" on behalf of Allah.

Face it, McVeigh was waging jihad on behalf of God.

The cost of retaliating against Muslim zealots? Well, largely the destruction of our national honor and reputation, that's not to mention the lives and limbs of our soldiers, and maybe our entire economy.

The cost of doing little to fight the Evangelical jihadists in our midst? 

Ask the young women who wanted abortions only to learn that the Christian jihadist in the White House, following the dictates of "God's law" demanded by his supporters, was doing everything to block them.

Ask the mothers and wives of the soldiers brought back from Iraq in coffins.

Ask people of various illnesses whose future relief was possibly delayed by prohibitions against stem cell research.

We allow the terrorists within to push us around politically in their attempt to inflict Sharia-Lite on us. We stand mute, our collective thumb up our national anus, because we have been taught that we are supposed to "respect" religion, no matter what the religionists are doing to us.

I say enough already. They have shown no respect for those who believe differently than they do. Why don't we speak up and tell the truth:

Evangelical Christians equal Muslims.

Fun to watch them hop up and down and throw tantrums at that comparison. But maybe we need to do that to put the final rout to the Repukes.

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are It,

Little jerkie patriot loved that rascal Tough,

And brought him lies and secrets and other fancy stuff, oh

 

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are IT

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are IT 

 

Together they would travel in a boast with billowed sail

Jerkie kept a lookout perched on Tough's gigantic tale

Noble kings and princes would bow wheneer they came,

Pirate ships would lower their flag when Tough roared out his name, oh

 

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are IT

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are IT

 

A moron lives forever but not so little boys

M-16s and killer things make way for other toys

One grey night it happened, Jerkie's loyalty came no more

And Tough the mighty moron, he ceased his fearless roar

 

His head was bent in sorrow, stupid sayings fell like rain

Tough no longer went to play along the bullshit lane

Without this life-long friend, Tough could not be brave

So Tough that mighty moron sadly slipped into his cave, oh

 

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in land called We are IT

Tough, the tragic moron lived by the shit

And frolicked in the frothy piss in a land called We are IT

Just a little fun. Comments? Wanna try your hand?

Nobody has to be Shakespeare to write a haiku. The rules are simple. A haiku (says Wikipedia) should have three lines: one with five syllables, followed by one with seven syllables, then another with five. A classic haiku should make some reference to kigo, meaning the weather, but often stretched to all things natural, mountains, a river, trees, clouds or whatever. People quarrel over the exact form, but those are the basics for those of us who want to have fun but don't speak Japanese

 

November. Sunrise.

The geese fly north. Hungry V

So grand. North?  I blink.

So give it a shot. Lets have some.

 

Nobody has to be Shakespeare to write a haiku. The rules are simple. A haiku (says Wikipedia) should have three lines: one with five syllables, followed by one with seven syllables, then another with five. A classic haiku should make some reference to kigo, meaning the weather, but often stretched to anything natural, mountains, a river, trees, clouds or whatever. People quarrel over the exact form, but those are the basics for those of us who want to have fun but don't speak Japanese

 

November. Sunrise.

The geese fly north. Hungry V

So grand. North?  I blink.

So give it a shot. Lets have some.

 

I’ve written more than two dozen thrillers and detective novels, some have gotten all kinds of hot damn reviews, others possibly weren’t as good. But never mind. One of the most important things to remember in writing fiction is the show-tell rule. Don’t tell the reader that a character is funny, intelligent, a dim-bulb, or angry. Have the character do things that are funny, smart, stupid, or pissed-off. Barack Obama doesn’t say, “I am even-tempered, classy, elegant, thoughtful, intelligent, considerate and et cetera.” He does things that are even-tempered, elegant, thoughtful, intelligent, and considerate. He keeps his mouth shut and lets us judge him by what he does.

 

John McCain’s problem is he tells us repeatedly that he’s a maverick, or that he puts his country ahead of himself, or that he’s honorable. Then he repeats the same old Repuke party-line crappola and cultural war nonsense. A movie director on Huffpost has written a little script saying essentially the same thing. Instead of announcing that he was going to Washington to save the country from financial disaster et cetera, he should have just gone there. Let the media figure it out. In other words he is constantly “telling” us. He should “show” us.  By telling us what he was going to do, he made himself out to be a narcissistic show-boater and set himself up for failure.

 

Dumb. One again, the rule is show, don’t tell.

Has anybody out there noticed McShame's bizarre blinking. When he's making a speech or answering a question on the tube his eyes go into a rapid fire blink mode. When he made his famous speech with the lime green back ground, he always got that sick, face smile and went blink-blink-blink before said, "That's not change you can believe in."

 I find myself watching his loopy blinking instead of whatever it is he's trying to say, which ordinarily isn't much, true. I Googled "rapid blinking" and found there are a number of explanations for a rapid blink rate, pressure being among them. This is apparently a personal tic that he can't control.

 I say a simple, cheap tactic--likely reprehensible--would be to use the web to call attention to this blinking so that people will be watching his bizarre blinking for the next couple of months rather than listening to whatever deceptive nonsense that he's spouting.