Loose Cans

In person. My old friend Olivia, a lot of you met her the other night, is a campaign volunteer and she smuggled me, past a line that stretched two blocks, into the Cooper Union auditorium. We milled around some, I ended up helping to man the door (once a campaign intern, always a campaign intern), and then we found seats in the way, way overcrowded house (they turned away hundreds). Jerry Nadler, looking not a pound over 300 following his stomach-stapling surgery, introduced a woman, a vet, who had returned from Iraq to find herself completely fucked over, jobless, practically homeless and adrift. It didn't sound like fun. He gave a ten-minute speech about her, and then she came on and did something I totally didn't see coming: she led the hall in the pledge of Allegiance.

Now, come on. When was the last time you had to do that? My last time was fifth grade. But then she said, very simply, "Please stand for the pledge of Allegiance." It was jarring, an unexpected intrusion. It was unsettlingly anachronistic. Imagine looking at your feet and seeing saddle shoes where your Merrills were a moment ago. The Pledge is a thing fixed with hard-carved meaning and laden with leaden weight. Pledge. Rhymes with sledge. Its meaning can't be appropriated, rationalized. Its sixth-day meaning is unchangeable. And to the snarky PoMo liberal, this is a frightening thing, a meaning we can't move forward. So there was this slowness in the standing, a vague trepidation, like, "Is this right?" But the cameras told us to. Cameras everywhere, some pointed at us, the bright bulbs atop the lens sweeping the crowd, looking for the face of the Party.

But then we began to recite, and the rumor of allegiance moving over the hall smoothly synched into a rhythmic, catechistic response: I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic. for which it stands, we knew the pauses as well as we knew the words, one nation, under God, passed without timidity, indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. It was this inscrutably affecting moment, half-demoralizing, half-affirming: the rote was recontextualized...and remained rote. The pledge of allegiance is invincibly rote. But still, for me, hints of a renewal of vows with my country. A second honeymoon. I, Sam Ashworth, being of sound mind and healthy body, take this country to be my lawfully wedded home, till death or deportation do us part. No pre-nup, no chance of divorce. Life sentence, death sentence. Shackled and secure in an arranged marriage. Inescapably American. Sadie knows what I mean.

Then, finally, the man we came to see. The good Senator Kerry stepped out onstage to a hurricane of applause. General delirium, hysteria, pandemonium, the messiah riding in on a donkey. He was very well-lit. He had that trademarked grin where half his face grins and the other doesn't. Not a judgement, just an observation. He was botoxed, wasn't he? Oh, well. Who cares? He's very tall, hell of a coif. Have to say, he looks awfully presidential. Good suit, too, light blue tie. Calm blue tie. I admire calm. Calm implies some potential for fury. Potential energy. He had it. But not gobs of it. His magnetism derived more from his being Democratic nominee than his being John Kerry. This of course was to be expected. Kerry is more signified than signifier, but this is not his fault. When so much meaning is put into a thing, so much hope and desperation, there is not much that thing can do to give itself any kind of identity distinct from its meaning. The Onion was right: Kerry Unveils One-Point Plan For Better America. What else does he need to say? What else, really, can he say?

Well, as it turns out, a few things. He talked about the middle-class at length. I liked this, naturally, being so; it's kind of rare that I hear a politician talking about my demographic (and that youth one doesn't count). He was pretty excellent on the middle class, but I really wanted to hear him say what he'd done with that huge-ass tax cut he got, like Clinton did. I wonder what he did with it. If he didn't do something productive with it, I'll be a little pissed. Then he went after Swift Boat Vets (debunkage here and everywhere), after which he swung into a both-barrels-blazing attack on the Bush campaign, accusing them (rightly) of hiding behind the SBV's. He accused them of conducting a campaign of "fear and smear," and refusing to take him on any of the issues simply because they had no record they could run on. Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Hmm. But amid the charged bluster and maniac applause, there was something lacking. It wasn't in his speech. It wasn't anything he could have done anything about. I mean, you can't exactly fault someone for not being eighty feet tall.

Because this is the size I demand from my president. I demand a superhuman, mythical president. No, not even that: I demand a digital, infallible president, pixellated or projected. High-definition. I demand a televised president, because on television everything is clean, clinical, antiseptic. The people are beautiful and right. As he was, human, 6'2", gleaming white hair, he was all too much like me. I don't want someone like me. I'm a schmuck. I want my president to be a god. And where can we find gods but on Television? A task so gargantuan as running a country I am learning to be impossibly huge cannot fall to a little man or woman. One piddling human, in one little office, calling the shots? This does not inspire great trust. But a face on every television screen, staring down each citizen, glowing in the living room? This is what to have faith in.

Apropos, from Berke Breathed:

Incidentally, not only is Family Guy coming back, but Seth MacFarlane, Family Guy's creator, as well as the voice of Brian, Stewie, Peter, Tom Tucker and Quagmire, has created another show on Fox, American Dad. It looks every bit as good as its predecessor.

Ruben Bolling at his scarcely ironic, pissed-off best:

Aimee Mann's new album, Lost In Space, is the best goddamn thing I have ever heard. It makes Magnolia, hitherto the best goddamn thing I'd ever heard, look amateurish. Go and buy.

Also, apologize for the lack of blogging; Road Runner shut down the other day and I just got it running again this morning.

GREAT WALLOPING PARTY TONIGHT FOR SAM WARREN KAY AND ROZ WHOM NONE OF YOU KNOW BUT THAT'S OKAY SHE ROCKS TRUST ME. ALSO APPEARING ARE KAY'S JAPANESE FRIENDS WHO ARE PROBABLY HOT. EN PLUS LOADS AND I MEAN LOADS OF DELICIOUS FOOD AND DRINK. PARTY ON GARTH. PARTY ON WAYNE.