All rise for Judge Mental...

I watched the Democratic Convention, something I never did from 1972 to 2004. During that time, not only did I rarely vote, I was fond of saying things like, Artists don't go bowling and of writing in Frank Zappa for everything from president to JP, when I deigned to visit the polls. It was my way of underscoring the Olympian detachment needed for creative work. My reward for this pissy outlook was The Current Occupant, and I've never missed a chance at the ballot box since. Also, as the world continued its collision course towards hell in a handbasket, I started reading newspapers, blogs, and the tea leaves, to understand why so many of us were making idiotic choices. Perhaps memory blurs everything into a fine mush, but even during the fuzziest counter-culture times, I don't remember most Americans as either chicken or gullible. But it seems those are the settings on the Politico-Meter these days.

Now it's the RNC up to bat, along with a storm named Gustav, and why not, plus a blinkered VP pick who seems to have trotted out of Northern Exposure, custom-tailored for the wack factor. Pertaining to the wanly-credentialed Sara Palin, as one ghastly revelation follows another, each is seized as a positive talking point by the right. Her 17 year old daughter is up the stick by a self-professed redneck? "It's a challenge every family can relate to." Her support of The Bridge to Nowhere? "She has always been a firm opponent of government earmarks." Her stated belief that the founding fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance? "She is a true patriot who has energized The Base."

Black is white, day is night, the earth is flat, unicorns exist, and the Rapture is coming.

In the meantime, there have been sizable (a reported 8,000 participants) protests at the RNC. In these virtual times, that's a great big burning hunka-hunka protest. Plus, said protestors have been showered variously with tear gas and rubber bullets, members of the press have been arrested, and raids on so-called "hippie-houses" were conducted avant the RNC. I only discovered this by scooting over to Alternet and The Daily Kos, since all this has been predictably ignored by the MSM, and what else is new?

When millions participated in global marches against the Iraq war, this was also ignored by the MSM. Here in Dallas , thousands marched in one of the largest protest displays the city had seen. When I looked for news about it, there was no TV coverage, no newspaper coverage, and even our counter-culture rag, The Dallas Observer, ignored it too. At the time, I was stupidly bewildered. Why was the news so biased? Ans. Get a clue. I was, I discovered, dangerously checked out. Somehow, like a fly trapped in honey, I was stuck in a gluey world compounded of NPR, flawed memories of the 60's, unexamined progressive truisms, and a misplaced faith in human nature. It took some seismic and very painful upheavals to dislodge my comfortable limosine-liberal outlook.

I suppose all this tsuris is good, as Buddhist theology postulates. It's better to be awake and aware when the house is crashing down around your ears.

Better than dozing, only to find you're buried in rubble.