Tidelock

As much fun as 2004 and 2008 were for me as a blogger, I didn't really want to get sucked into the election cycle this year. It's my last pre-40 presidential election and I feel like I've already started to lose some of the zip on the ole fastball, if you know what I mean. My sexual inadequacies aside, I'm also not quite as violently moved by politics as I was when I was newly-to-mid-30s. If you live your life correctly, as you get older, the world should get bigger, not smaller. More complicated, not simplified. Less Manichean, more nuanced. The monochrome of surety disintegrated by the Technicolor explosion pushing out the borders of a universe-widening perspective.

Does it help that the president is not only a guy from what I used to think of as "my team," but a black guy as well? It doesn't hurt, I'll say that. If a country founded on slavery can elect a (half-)black president, then look, maybe the whole system isn't fundamentally and inherently broken. Seeing a surprising and welcome result takes some of the sting out of the arguments for Unrelenting Partisan Bloodletting And Armageddon at the turn of every quadrennial. The System whirred and coughed and gurgled and smoked and belched out this aberration. It took me a while to get my head around it, sure, but I looked as closely as I could and nope, that's not soot from The Machine all over him, he really does look like that. The lines demarcating accident, statistical improbability and miracle got a little fuzzy for me.

None of this makes me a conservative; don't misunderstand. This is not me making the predictable rightward drift as I wax elder and accumulate more shit I don't want the government putting their grubby meathooks on. I still enjoy a good meathooking time and again, I honestly do. I just have less vinegary vim colicking up my vital organs. Plus there's way more good TV to get to than there was in the late, unlamented Aughts. Manning the barricades or Mad Men? A guy has to learn to prioritize.

All of this is by way of semi-apology. Because as much as I don't want to get bogged down in the shoe-swallowing Okefenokee of early-contest primary season, here I am with my second consecutive weekly post about Newt Gingrich. Well, not yet, but here comes:

How am I supposed to ignore a guy fighting for his political life who stops to give a serious policy speech in the days ahead of a make-or-break primary about (and this is absolutely with a straight face) moon colonization?

I'm trying to mind my own business, I really am. There's plenty else I could have written about. It's the Super Bowl lull, we've got Navy SEALs killing Somali pirates, the Oscar nominations came out, I've got this pain in my ribcage that is either a slightly pulled muscle or avian flu and yet I can't not talk about Newt Disney's Mission to Luna Base 1. It's frustrating to me.

I really want to ignore it. I do. All the moreso because it's such an obvious pander to a crowd in an area from which space shuttles are no longer launched, kept or maintained. It's him saying "You know who you gonna vote for yet? Nah, don't tell me, let it be a surprise. Oh hey, not for nothin', I found $100 billion laying on the sidewalk over there. Did you drop this? I think you dropped this."

I also don't imagine it's much of a coincidence that this magically ridiculous pivot point plants itself in the ground when a lot of the national political mindspace has been commandeered by the open marriage fooferaw from last week and other shit like Bob Dole calling Newt a corrupt, friendless, unendearing fucktard.

The moon thing is a technique with the deceptively straightforward name "misdirection," a staple of magicians, thieves and parents of toddlers in restaurants. It's an attempt to accomplish an undertaking by subterfuge by employing a distraction. The unsaid act of distraction is always "Look at the shiny thing!" such as the flourish of a wand (magicians), the rapid shuffling of three ordinary-looking playing cards (thieves) or a rag lovingly sprinkled with diethyl ether (parents). I think it speaks to the hubris of the man when he tries the same trick on an audience of tens of millions using the second biggest, shiniest thing we have readily available to us, our one and only natural satellite.

I started this post with the intention of venting my outrage, but the farther I get, it's hard not to be a little impressed.

I told you I was getting old.