Life Is Not the Movies
Life is not the movies.
It needs better writers,
spoke
the screenwriter and I
thought about politics
(and popcorn
and previews and wished I
was in the aisle seat about mid-
way back
in the dark watching a great
political thriller, but here I am).
A political writer
said this is the most vacuous
campaign in memory.
(Maybe an
espionage flick like the most
recent Bourne would be even better.)
Ivy league
educated candidates who
can’t seem to utter a cogent
statement of
substance on any issue affecting
the masses yearning to be…(Hmmm,
yeah, maybe
that’s why the guys with numb tongues
are stuttering through the summer) free?
Maybe that really
is just another word for nothing left to lose
now that the house is gone — another phrase
I heard someone else say —
with my own apologies to the Oxford scholar who
wrote the song and the King of the Road and Janis who
sang it at different times —
one with a twang and the other with a scream.
Where is Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, Mark
Twain and, of
course, the ever quotable, “Unsinkable” Molly Ivins
when you need them (no, not the Comedy
Central guys),
not to write the memorable lines for the candid-
ates, but, at least, to give us something substan-
tive upon which
to chew and make us laugh and cry
while we ate our popcorn?