All Politics Explained

I read two interesting articles after the election. One said all the television ads and direct mail pieces made no difference at all. The most effective way to campaign was word-of-mouth, identifying community leaders and creating a herd mentality. For Obama's people, this meant sending community organizers to barbershops and beauty salons to talk up their candidate, leave brochures and posters, and train the shop workers to talk to their customers and encourage them to vote.

The other article was about Karl Rove's SuperPac, and despite its millions of dollars in funding that underwrote attack ads in a dozen campaigns, its success rate was 1 percent.

It appears that all these super PACs are just job creation mechanisms, creating jobs for the organizers of the PACs, that is, and the people who claim they are political strategists, the Josh Lymans and Toby Zieglers of the world. They subtract a great deal of money from the rich and the corporations, pocket some of it, and then inject that money into the media. Television and radio stations collected a bonanza in sales, as well as whoever printed all the oversized postcards I received in the mail.

We try to make politics and the art of winning mysterious and complicated, but I think it's very simple. It's all emotional.

In my lifetime, I can explain how every president got elected by emotion.

Eisenhower beat Stevenson because he was Gen. Eisenhower. We had just come out of a devastating world war, quickly followed by Korea. We were at odds with another superpower, Russia. We felt we needed a general, not the effete, divorced Stevenson. Curiously, the Democrats nominated him again in 1956 to be beaten by the same Gen. Eisenhower under the same world conditions.

Kennedy beat Nixon because he was young and handsome, and Nixon was sweaty and shifty looking, and after eight years of Republican rule, we were all excited for something new and different.

Johnson beat Goldwater because Kennedy was assassinated and we felt bad. Plus Goldwater looked like the 1950s, not that Johnson seemed any more modern. Plus Johnson made us feel like Goldwater might launch a nuclear bomb for no good reason.

Nixon beat Humphrey because Humphrey was a bigger joke than Nixon and supported the Vietnam War, which nobody liked anymore, and the Democrats really had too many guys in the field and split up their base. Vietnam was perceived as the Democrat's war, which was a problem. Robert Kennedy would have beat Nixon, but there was that issue with also being assassinated. Nixon didn't actually get us out of the war fast enough because he needed it to win reelection. McGovern was too liberal and too bald, and the real threat to Nixon, Ted Kennedy, although he was not assassinated, he did leave a woman to drown at Chappaquiddick, so the Democrats were too embarrassed to nominate him.

After having no choice but to vote for Nixon, we then got rid of him another way and ended up with the bland Gerald Ford, who was only vice president because Spiro Agnew was a crook. Jimmy Carter beat Ford because Ford pardoned Nixon, and was also bland, although we all liked Betty a lot.

Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter because of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which was embarrassing to us and launched Ted Koppel's career as the host of Nightline, which started out as a nightly special report on the Iranian Hostage Crisis. That's how embarrassed we were. Plus, Reagan was tall. Carter was not. At the debates, Carter looked like a midget. We needed a tall Hollywood guy to stand up to crazies like Ayatollahs.

Reagan beat Mondale because Mondale was a joke and had bags under his eyes. Not very Hollywood. The Democrats had nothing taller than Reagan to offer, and Gary Hart couldn't stand much scrutiny due to his sketchy past and womanizing. He was Bill Clinton, but without any political smarts or likeability.

George Bush beat Dukakis because of the goodwill of the Reagan years, and Dukakis' name was Dukakis. He also took a silly picture wearing a helmet and riding in a tank that political cartoonists loved, and he didn't react to a crazy question during the debates about what if his wife was raped. Then there was that thing about pardoning murderer Willie Horton. This was when political action committees actually did seem to work, and the politics of today was created by the evil Lee Atwater, the diabolical spiritual father of Karl Rove. If you haven't seen the documentary, "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," you need to. Atwater was punished by God, but successfully destroyed modern American politics before he was smited.

Bill Clinton beat George Bush because Lee Atwater was too sick to work his evil magic again, and Clinton had that Kennedyish charm. After 12 years of Republican rule, we were ready for the new and different. Plus Clinton had the Democratic version of Lee Atwater in James Carville. With Gore as his running mate, the "Double Bubba" ticket seemed charming.

Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole because Dole was a joke, a worn out politico who always seemed uncomfortable, and everything seemed to be going good under Clinton, so why change? Dole was a WWII veteran and Clinton got a deferment from the Vietnam War, but that didn't mean as much in the 1990s and was a poor strategy.

Bush beat Gore because Gore was not very charming, Bush had Karl Rove working evil magic, and there was that whole sex scandal around Clinton that somehow tarnished Gore. And yet Gore still won the election, but the Republicans pulled shenanigans in Florida.

Cheney beat Kerry because....oh wait a minute. Technically Bush was the president even though Cheney was really the president. Bush beat Kerry because of 9/11 and all the terrorists, and he made an impromptu comment at Ground Zero that made us think he was a fighter, but actually anything encouraging anyone said at that place in time would have seemed encouraging and inspiring. So we got into another war, and somehow, even though Kerry had been in Vietnam and Bush had not, Kerry was swiftboated to appear cowardly. That whole swiftboat thing was a work of evil genius. Plus, Kerry was married to a rich lady with ketchup money, and somehow Democrats need to be a little poorer than that, a little more like you and me.

Obama beat McCain because what were the Republicans thinking with that old guy candidate who looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy with a trophy wife and a vice presidential candidate who seemed handpicked to be ridiculed by the media and comedians. Plus Obama was young and kind of black, and different, and had that whole hope and change thing going and a cool looking poster, and any Democrat after Bush could have won, really. People who seldom voted, like minorities and young people, voted.

And I think that's what happened again. The minorities and young came back to the polls. Women were somehow convinced they were going to lose their right to have abortions, and that was more important to them at this moment in time than jobs and the economy. (When they're 10 and 20 years older, they will not care about that as much, trust me. They will figure out how not to get pregnant when they don't want to be pregnant. They will want a job more.) The Republicans, instead of nominating someone equally young and handsome and full of false promises of hope and change, picked the most plastic of candidates, another millionaire we can't identify with, who didn't even drink soda, for goodness' sakes, because of religious beliefs. Who can identify with a guy who won't drink a Coke?

And that explains all politics.

I Need to Figure Out Religion

I need to figure out religion. I’ve gone to Protestant churches and studied for a year to be a Catholic, only to come up $800 short when they told me I couldn’t take communion unless I paid a fee to have my marriage annulled. I also had to fill out a long questionnaire that asked embarrassingly blunt questions about my sex life, which was going to be reviewed by a celibate junior priest. I rethought that and went back and retrieved it after turning it in. That ended my life as a Catholic, as much as I enjoyed the holy water and rosaries and crossing myself. And the priestly frocks and big hats and pots of smoke they would waft around. And the kneeling benches. And the candle lighting. And the statues.

The Baptists had none of that, only hymns that sounded like dirges, long, drowsy sermons, and a never-ending need to build yet another annex, so here comes the collection plate again. My most memorable moment in church was hearing the minister fuss about how hard it was to raise money for the new annex, yet if a storm came along and blew away every car in the parking lot, next Sunday it would be full of cars again. We’d find the money for that.

I was raised to believe every word in the Bible was true, that this was the true and accurate story of religion, that Revelations was what was really going to happen and my role at this point in time was to wait for it. Like a good Christian, I questioned none of it. That would be blasphemy.

Then I met a man I greatly admired who thought my acceptance of all this was tantamount to believing the cartoon animals and inanimate objects in Disney movies were sentient beings. Religion, he said, was just another story, made up. We often spent our time together debating it, and I have to say he made sense. My whole defense was built on a foundation of faith. That’s what I was told and I have to believe it.

It’s been 20 years now since I last talked to him. He died a decade ago, still a relatively young man. But he made a lasting impression and I still struggle with the fanciful stories of my youth sitting on hard pews and wonder what the truth really is. I mean, why did God pick 0 B.C. for Jesus to be born when we’ve gone more than another 2,000 years since then? And there's years of human history before 0 B.C. Thousands of years. Millions of years if you believe the evolutionists. What’s with the timing? Why give the savior of mankind a mere 33 years to make an impression during a time when there was no Internet or TV? There wasn’t even a printing press. That’s putting a lot of trust in word of mouth and scribes that might have their own agendas and are scratching it all out on parchments they hide in caves.

Today I finally figured out there is no hell or eternal damnation. A casual mention on Twitter about a verse in Matthew referencing the resurrection of the saints after the crucifixation…and how none of that makes sense…took me on an Internet search where I finally found the first plausible explanation of why a merciful God would condemn anyone to hell, especially people in isolated areas who have never heard about Jesus. This website said when we die, we are asleep. We are asleep, the good and evil both. We sleep until the day of judgment, and then those who believed are granted everlasting life, and those who did not are condemned to the (perhaps metaphorical) lake of fire, not to burn through eternity – because that would still be an everlasting life – but just to be burned into the nothingness of ashes. Gone. Oblivious. That seems a far more kinder eternity, and one most non-Christians believe they are going to anyway. Nothing. Fire, after all, destroys and goes out, it doesn’t burn endlessly. When your house burns down to ashes, you will not find your sofa still sitting there.

Of course, now I have to think about Jesus’ words to the thief on the neighboring cross that "Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Paradise is not sleep. (Unless you're the parent of a newborn.) And today as in literally today? So much to figure out.

My Lame Whitney Houston Story

In 1992, my life was between acts. I was between marriages, between jobs, teaching myself this whole new computer graphics thing that was changing the world. I was sad and depressed and things were still two or three years away from beginning to work out again.

I occasionally went to movies alone, mostly romantic comedies, for distraction.  In 1992, I went to see “The Body Guard” at the theater closest to my apartment. It was a two-screen movie house in the parking lot of a shopping strip on Midlothian Turnpike, not far from the channel 12 tower, far from upscale. That whole part of the highway was going downhill fast as businesses fled west.

I was not a fan of Whitney Houston. I sort of liked Kevin Costner, almost entirely for “Bull Durham.” I had never been to a mainly black movie theater before, and realized once I got in the lobby, that’s where I was.

The first thing I noticed was the food. Unlike other theaters, this one didn’t mind if you brought in your own food. The usher didn’t stop a single person. The theatergoers had bags of food, buckets of chicken, even coolers on wheels with food and beverages in them. There was even beer! They brought children and babies. The children ran loose through the theater throughout the movie, as if it was a McDonaldland play area. The babies cried.

The second thing I noticed was no one settled down in their seats once the movie began. Throughout the showing, people were up and walking around and talking. They talked to each other in loud voices. They talked to the screen. They ate meals. It was a regular picnic with just a movie incidentally playing in the background. I tried to follow the story, but there were so many distractions. This was a cultural difference for me. I don’t know if there are any theaters in town like this anymore. I haven’t experienced this since.

Where I go to movies, the only illegal food that gets in has to fit in a purse. People with babies and children are reported to the ushers for eviction unless it’s a children's movie. And talkers are stared down or get their seats kicked.

I remember nothing about “The Body Guard” plot now, and when I saw it on TV recently, it was all new to me. That's how distracting that theater was. It's not there anymore, and that part of town is still waiting to be rehabilitated.

Not the World's Biggest Breasts After All

As a child, I was fascinated by Marilyn Monroe, whose movies I saw on TV. In my child brain, I thought she was famous because she had the biggest breasts in the whole world, and that was an amazing thing. I was several years into adulthood before I realized that wasn’t the case. Many women had bigger breasts, even in the days before fake ones.

This realization really came home when I was just the right weight…for maybe a year. I had finally gained enough weight to have a chest, and my waist had not given up yet. When I measured myself, I discovered to my shock I had the same dimensions as Marilyn Monroe! Almost! (She had a smaller waist.) How come I didn’t look like her? How come I wasn’t a sex symbol now that made men giddy?

Because there was so much more to her than her measurements.

If you look at photos of Janet Leigh from the same era, she was just as big in the bosom as Marilyn, if not more, but she didn’t dress provocatively, and she had the face of a wholesome girl next door. She wore her hair shorter and straighter. From the neck up, she was a librarian. Where Marilyn sold it was her face, her hooded eyes that she knew just how to squint to appear post-orgasm; her generous, pouty smile that was sly and beguiling. Watch how she keeps flexing her lips, even when she's not talking. Her hair was short, too, but not too short. It was soft and tousled looking. Up until the last years of her life (from “The Misfits” on) when she adopted an unflattering, brittle, helmet bouffant, she looked fun to be with, someone who didn’t mind getting her hair messed up.

She and Jackie Kennedy shared the same breathy voice, but Marilyn had a sighing baby-like tease to hers, while Jackie’s was guarded as if she was trying to enunciate very carefully. You couldn’t imagine Jackie calling a man “Daddy.” Marilyn looked and acted like a woman who liked men and liked being with them. Jackie looked like she’d rather be sitting on a throne someplace…alone. Marilyn looked like she liked to laugh. Jackie did not.

So Marilyn was special, but not for breasts. They were just part of the package. In her last years – and you need to remember she had just turned 36 when she died – she was already looking worn out. Her girlish voluptuousness had faded away and the notorious nude photos she did for photographer Bert Stern at the end reveal an ordinary body, thin, with drooping breasts. Nothing magical there. Her too blonde, too straight hair isn’t helping the illusion. Only her eyes still deliver the sex appeal. Her eyes always had it.