The Desert Lover

Via Rick, a more-impressive-than-usual sampling of just plain raw unfettered stupidity from the Huffington Post.

We like to belabor the obvious here at The Blog That Nobody Reads…so first, we’ll read Ms. Haydn’s remarks in full…then some bullet points.

Have you ever gone through a really dry period sexually? At first you get angry that you’re being neglected and ignored, and you act out. Then one day you wake up with a sense of nonchalance and you start to marvel at how much you’re getting done, and how much easier it is not to care. And then… one day, maybe a stranger comes and begins to romance you and strokes your hair in a sort of contemplative way, uttering the most delightful insights. He touches your hand softly and then a little more firmly, awakening the feelings that you thought you’d left behind, and then you start speaking really poetically and hearing melodies and then suddenly you WANT IN! You want back in the game and you think ‘spring is here’… YES WE CAN!

Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino. We who have felt apathetic, angry at two (likely) stolen elections, K-Street hegemony, the “pornography of the trivial”* in journalism and culture; we who are heartbroken over a war we knew was wrong, we who thought (especially after Baby Bush got in a 2nd time) that America got what it asked for; we who stopped wanting to participate ’cause it doesn’t matter whether we do or don’t; we have a crush. We’re talking about it; we’re getting involved, we’re tuning in and turning out in numbers we haven’t seen in ages. My musician friends and I are writing songs to inspire people and couples all over America are making love again and shouting “yes we can” as they climax!

The downside is that when the Republican fear factory goes into full production come election time, and even superdelegate time, potentially causing the Dems to hand-pick Hillary instead of Prince Charming because we are afraid that America will vote McCain over a candidate who is willing to meet with Ahmadinejad, it is quite possible that all the passion and revolutionary spirit being stoked by Senator Obama could turn into an equally powerful force of apathy and even rage. We who never felt like participating in the democratic process before (or when we did our votes were not counted), could end up feeling more disappointed and disenfranchised than ever. It’s almost worse than never having cared at all. Beware the wrath of the forsaken lover.

Obama, and also Clinton, must be unequivocal in their rhetoric that the need for unity, which they both so often espouse, doesn’t just mean unifying around them. It means really unifying around the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates for every office, and holding them to task for all the promises of “justice and change.” We newly impassioned citizens need to feel included and incentivized, no matter who gets the nomination.

If Obama is like a lover who has awakened our desire to dream and participate again after so many years in the desert of political apathy, I would just ask that he be responsible and help us channel our newly stirred passion into something even bigger than him, whether or not it works out: the democratic process.

1. The whole point of the essay is not attributes of the “desert lover,” but feelings she has about him when he arrives. Not exactly complimentary to Sen. Obama. Insulting, really, when you think about it.
2. The feelings she has for the “desert lover,” in turn, are inspired by, more than anything else, the long period of time that elapsed before he arrived. Even more insulting toward Sen. Obama. Is there nothing remarkable about him worth mentioning? So many others among his fan base insist there is. Ms. Haydn seems to be the exception!
3. Ms. Haydn never once says definitively whether or not she voted in these two elections she coyly hints might have been stolen. Indeed, there is much verbiage to strongly suggest she did not. It would be strange to have such resentment over the theft of elections in which one did not participate, but by the time I’m done reading her screed I wouldn’t put much past her.
4. Ms. Haydn further insists that democracy is one of the few things that are “even bigger than him”; I wish she spent a few sentences defining what that means to her. She seems to have affection for it only when it produces an outcome she likes, so I believe she is having an Inigo Montoya moment with democracy. I do not believe it means what she thinks it means.

I have one other observation to make about this piece, or rather about a comment that appeared underneath it. I personally marked as a “Favorite” this remark from “Renoir” in response to a certain “Jake” who put down Ms. Haydn’s ramblings as nothing more than a schoolgirl crush:

Hi Jake…Maybe it’s a more mature crush than one of an adolescent, as you wittily describe. After all, he’s a known entity and we know he’s polite to his Mother. Maybe it’s the sort of crush that is mature enough to know the Real Deal and brave enough to try to believe again. You know… a winter romance! Just in the nick of time!

I marked it as a favorite because Renoir managed to work in one of my favorite phrases:

I’m still unconvinced that we have a definition for “real deal,” of any sort. The kind where, you isolate ten people who’ve been caught throwing this slogan around, question them in solitude, and you get back fewer than ten unique answers. One uniform answer? Forget it.

And so it falls to me, to pick out a functional use of the term, one that fits all, or most, of the popular uses of it.

Deep breath…here we go.

REAL DEAL: Flattering slang attached to an individual who possesses a unique ability to sell products unneeded.

I cringe in embarrassment for democrats when I review history and see what kind of individual earns all this adoring, heartsick praise from them. It’s not a 2008 phenomenon. It’s got something to do with being a fairly handsome male, but that isn’t it because they’ve been engaging in a long-term trend of showering “Mr. Universe” type adulation upon gentlemen who were just barely above average in the looks department.

They seem to be confusing mediocrity with excellence. That would make sense; that’s exactly what they want the rest of us to do.

But I’m afraid the truth is even darker than that. The one common trait Sen. Obama shares with Sen. Kennedy and Gov. Clinton, is what is the subject of Real Deal. The ability to sell ice cubes to eskimos. To motivate people to do things toward which they would be less than motivated, without the presence of a salesman who is so ambitious and motivated in his sales acumen, that he can make sales that are clearly less than helpful to the buyers’ interests.

Basically, to lie.

You review the history of overwhelmingly exciting candidates within the democrat party, and the attribute common to all of those super-exciting candidates is that they can sell things.

This is not good.

When the product is needed and decent, the salesmanship of he who sells it, is a non-issue.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

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