Move over, Robert Ripley, your pen and ink freak show, creepy
museum and cheap TV program no longer startle, amuse or entertain. “Believe it
or Not” has become the template for real life.
Let’s go back to one of the grandfathers of the world of living
Mobius strips, Franz Kafka. The writer Kafka’s characters and situations
were so confused and confusing that we’ve co-opted his name to describe present
day America. Kafkaism.
One of his best-known stories, “Metamorphosis,” is about a guy who
wakes up one morning to realize that he is now no longer human but has turned
into a giant insect. The story was later made into a movie called “the
Fly,” but which could more accurately be called “Metamorphosis for Dummies.”
So when what appeared to be an ordinary house fly landed in the
hair of vice president Pence during the televised debate with Kamala Harris
Wednesday, conspiracy theorists, the neo-phrophets of the 21st Century started
to build some kind of… well… futuristic view of next week.
Pence’s Clairol white hair provided a stark visual contrast and
diverted attention from Vice President Smarm’s hypocritical and truth-free
on-stage meanderings, mutterings and lies. Of course, it is possible that
a similar bug may have landed on Sen. Harris’ head. But if it did, it
blended with her hair color and thus was invisible. Probably not.
The following morning, no one awoke having turned into a giant
insect. But the fly had symbolic value. Maybe Pence once was a fly
who awoke some years back in the form of an empty suit. Maybe the house
fly was a jilted lover trying to get back to her… or his mate. Or maybe
it was just a common house fly, attracted to … um … the excrement that attracts
every house fly.
Harris was a sharp-edged prosecutor, once. You’d think that
she’d have taken a flyswatter to the vice president. Or at least a strip
of flypaper. But no. She let him do to him what trump did to Biden in
their first debate.
Biden was un- flustered by the motor mouthed trump. In fact, the
rudeness worked in Biden's favor. Nor did Pence’s holier than thou
non-stoppery seem to throw Harris off her game. But now, it’s gotten serious.
We call the presidential crap show a “first debate,” because
that’s what it was supposed to be. At this writing we’re not sure there’s
going to be a second. The “president” was rankled because the debate sponsors
wanted to make the next meeting virtual, to guard against his infecting
everyone else in the room. Maybe there won’t be Debate 2.0.
Or maybe it’ll be postponed. Or something.
So who won the Wednesday night talk fest? You have to ask?
OBITS FROM ALL OVER:
(NEW YORK) -- To paraphrase the words quoted in his “official”
obituary: Jim Dwyer picked a fine day to lose his battle with cancer. It was,
he might continue, a brisk sunny autumn day at Sloan-Kettering where they treat
cancer and sometimes kill it before it kills you. Dwyer was a reporter’s
reporter and he wrote something like that for the Fordham University student
Newspaper tens of thousands of inches of print ago. From the pages of the
Fordham Ram to those of the New York Daily News and Newsday, and finally, the
New York Times Dwyer told stories of extraordinary things that happened to
ordinary people. He was 69 years old. And he was anything but ordinary.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome
to them. ®
Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2020
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