Oh For Crayon Out Loud

You occasionally hear about art critics who laud works of art by unknown artists for their depth, emotion, nuance, and whatever else art critics look for in a work, only to find out that the artist was a juvenile elephant or a geriatric chimpanzee.  These reports are meant to be provocative inquiries into the objective value of art and the subjective tastes of critics.  Is art less appreciable when it is created by random acts of pachyderm than by tortured emotions of humans?  Another way of saying this might be, does the quality of the message depend on the quality of the messenger?

What if we found a story written in poorly formed letters of crayon:  Page after page of juvenile chicken scratch across countless pieces of construction paper that happened to be a work of Shakespearean quality?  Would the value of the work depend upon the value of the medium in which it was delivered?

I ask that in order to ponder this:  Do we emphasize the quality of the messenger and the clarity of the delivery too much in politics?

Mama He's Lazy

It isn't hard to read the headline: "Santorum Defends Satan Comments" and think, "oh boy, here we go again."  I've been pondering for weeks what exactly to say about Rick Santorum.  I even thought for awhile that I might avoid saying anything at all in the mistaken hope that he would fade away as a candidate--or maybe be forced out by a tragic sweater vest accident.  Alas it wasn't to be.

Therefore, my basic conclusion is that Rick Santorum isn't crazy, he's lazy. 

I admit that crazy is the more popular moniker, and it doesn't require an opposition research team to build the case.  I also allow that accusing a law school educated, eight time father, former congressman, former senator, and leading presidential candidate of being lazy is to risk appearing mentally unstable myself.  Nevertheless, that is what I'm going to try and do.

The Bay State Boys

It is not a good time to be competing under the banner of Massachusetts.  This February has provided a bruising reality check to two Bay Staters in two very different fields of competition.  Both are unusually handsome men.  Both have experienced phenomenal success in their careers.  Each was born out of state, but achieved his highest success in Boston.  Both lost four years ago, and both expected to win in 2012.  Yes, February has been unkind to Tom Brady and Mitt Romney.

Unfortunately, each might well have done better with the other man's playbook.  Messrs Brady and Romney might enjoy shared drinks and commiseration, but they would have done well to have swapped game plans before and forgotten hindsight and hand wringing now.  From this humble observer's perspective, each got it wrong in a way that would have worked for the other.

Sandbox Saturation

I suppose it is fitting that it is early February, because I find the ever-escalating Syria kerfuffle so irritatingly repetitive that it is rather like the old Bill Murray movie Groundhogs Day.  (Although I note CNN hasn't the good grace to play Sonny and Cher between segments.)  How long must we suffer through an endless parade of Middle East woes?  When is it one tinpot dictator too many for the dictates of conscience to decide? 

I admit to pining for the days before we spoke fluidly about Sunni's and Shiites, fundamental Islam and Fatwas. Before Iraq went south, Afghanistan went nowhere, and Iran went nuclear.  Alas, just as I was lamenting the dictator fatigue presented by Bashar Assad's ghastly reminder of the perilousness of anything so bold as civilization, I went dumpster diving through the archives of my parent's basement. 

There I found a yellowed newspaper--actually newspapers--which my 11 year old self had obviously kept to commemorate the Gulf War; it was dated January 14, 1991.  It wasn't the paper with the six inch letters spelling war, but one of the lead-up issues as the world was drawn into the inevitable.  I was struck by an article discussing none other than Syria.  There was some question whether then "president" Hafez Assad would back his Ba'ath party counterpart  in Iraq-- Saddam Hussein-- or join the rest of the Arab and Western world in resisting Saddam's push into Kuwait.  The short article lacked substance, but it got me to thinking: what is Syria's deal?

It seemed interesting to me that Syria backed the worldwide consensus then and is the ire of international will now.  From there I wondered like others about the surprising steel in the back of the Arab League--not exactly a poster child of democracy and liberalism.  What about Russia's willingness to incur the undiplomatic wrath of everyone from France to Qatar? 

And then I remembered the old saw that nations have no friends, but only interests.

Plural Potential

When I was in grammar school I learned a mnemonic poem designed to force me to memorize anything under the guise of making me memorize something about the tenses of the verb to be.  Allowing for variance over time, it went something like this:

An is is just a was that was and that is very small,
An is is was so fast it hardly was an is at all,
And as an is advances to become a was you see,
Another is must take its place and cease to be will be. 

I say this because I am somewhat proud of having remembered the ditty over multiple decades now, and to establish that I know something of the English language.

I also know this: while it may take two to tango, it certainly takes two to plural. 

Which leads me to an inevitable point about Newt Gingrich.  Newt was ridiculed and left for naught last summer when his campaign staff resigned en masse.  I know, I heard it on the radio.  At the time and many times since, the erstwhile Speaker has insisted that he would run a "campaign of big ideas" all in open contradiction to the rules of presidential campaigns which are meant to be run by small minds.  This was and is a noble purpose.

Even a Blind Nut Gets Squirrely

Mitt Romney--a man of whom it might be said "He lacks the vision thing"-- had an interesting week.  He decisively won the Florida primary by carefully articulating no vision, while instead single mindedly focusing on the expensive evisceration of Mr. Gingrich. 

Heretofore nothing interesting about which to type. 

Fortunately, the world was spared the boredom of perfectly predictable politics when Mr. Romney rose on Wednesday morning.  Whether he'd enjoyed one too many celebratory appletinis, as has been suggested, or he simply felt a little squirrely remains unknown.  What we do know is that he came close to saying something relevant.  Close.