A Pilgrim’s Digression

This is the real deal, my blog entry for Monday. So a woman goes into a pharmacy and asks for a product to remove the hair from her schnauzer … Wait, that’s a bad dirty joke my Grandpa told me last week. And by “bad” I don’t mean “good.” I mean bad. Suffice it to say, it ends with the woman unable to sit down for a week. OK, rewind. I’m bopping along to Elvis on my lunch break, so I’m feeling free to ramble. I’m just rubbernecking today, watching the news go by and events transpire. Just so I can earn the right to be critical of the Republicans in September, let me make a few cracks about Kerry and his compatriots in Boston.
The song currently playing on my iPod is in honor of John and Teresa Kerry and the Democrat Convention in Boston: “I Got a Woman” by Elvis Presley. No, it isn’t “I got a woman mean as she can be …” that’s a different “I Got a Woman” (Mean Woman Blues by Roy Orbison). This one goes

I got a woman

Way cross town

She’s good to me

Yesterday, Teresa apparently exhibited two of the more charming traits of the Parisian French: 1. Inability to admit she is wrong, 2. Rudeness. Here you can check out the story and video behind Teresa going all-out French on that Pittsburgh reporter. Go get ‘em, Ketchup Queen! Actually, any number of Elvis tunes could apply to John Kerry and the Democrat Convention right now. Take the tune “One Sided Love Affair” for example. Or how about “Money Honey.”

I called the woman that I loved the best.

I finally got my baby about half past three,

She said I’d like to know what you want with me.

I said,

Money, honey.

Money, honey.

Money, honey,

If you want to get along with me.

The protesters in their razor-wire “Mad Max” cage could always sing “Jailhouse Rock” to pass the time. If the convention gets out of hand–or even if it stays under control–some might say the song “Paralyzed” fits it pretty well. And if Kerry loses in November, he can offer as his farewell a cover of “I Was The One.”

I read today in the New York Times that the Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps. I have to wonder whether or not it even matters whether bloggers are covering events in Boston from Boston. Everyone knows there is little news that actually comes out of these conventions, and so I suspect the bloggers will be left to report ironically on the ironies of a stage-managed political convention. They could do that from the comfort of their home. The Washington Post has a lengthy article about Kerry’s political life, John Kerry: A Political Life: Shifting Within Party to Regain His Footing. The media latches on to these handy generalizations about candidates, such as Kerry’s waffling, or Bush’s stubbornness, and pretty soon the candidate is trapped in his own caricature. Every Senator who has ever run for President, including Dole in ‘96, has the same problem: overcoming the fact that to the critical eyes of outsiders, for various reasons, their voting record may not be consistent. Consistency may be something one demands of a spouse, but why do we expect our political leaders’ views to be immutable once they take political office? Is it not a good thing to change one’s mind? To me, inconsistency reflects a willingness to reconsider one’s actions or beliefs in the light of new evidence, better logic, or simply a change of heart. Oh wait, that’s constancy we demand of our spouses, not consistency.

I intend to watch the coverage of the convention tonight. I hope to have something to say about it tomorrow, but I would not want to make a bet on that. My past experience tells me these events are real snoozers, like the State of the Union, or any other public political event where all spontaneity, imagination, and vision is sytematically sucked out of the event like the spent confetti after the event is over and the delegates have gone home.

Song playing on my iPod now: “Le Monde Comme Un Bébé” by Angélique Kidjo. My transcription may be imperfect:

Je sais le monde imparfait

Je sais comment le changer

Imagine le monde comme un Bébé

Carresser et beaucoup pardonner

Those are sentiments to which I would hope everyone can assent.