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?