mp3 version of this post by the author - Issues, Tissues, and Tushes

OK, as in poetry readings I must define my terms. Here is one I have not heard before and one I have not used before but I know one should exist just to save keyboard width. The word, the acronym, the term is tsh.

You can put the ‘u’ in there if you want. When I say it, I give myself a choice of vowels and the ‘u’ just pops right up. You try it. I know the preacher’s wife is sitting there. Come on let yourself go. In fact try each vowel aloud and let the preacher’s wife judge. Share the fun. Say a e i o u but with the acronym wrapped around it each time. OK, here we go. Say with me: tash tesh tish tosh tush. See what I mean? Tush works. Tish came real close. The others are way too dysfunctional.

OH, the definition — talk show host!

All Talk and No Walk — Just a Swagger. Those who swagger most work for TV channels I do not watch. Hey, keep this in mind as we talk. I am not big on TV anyway. I did not have one except for my old German one on which I watch old tapes like the funeral of Wille Brandt. Never mind.

I did not watch TV from shortly after 911 until the 2008 vying for pole position started. Immediately after 911 I was busy getting my mate home to Florida from her erstwhile secure homeland of New York City. Once she was home I had enough of TV (except for occasional glimpses of Moira (Maura) Tierney on ER). But, I quit watching TV. Not that I was addicted anyway.

And I must insert this. [sorry I don't focus well, does it show?] Another thing I did not do was wait around for a direct object when somebody would start a sentence with “Oh, President Bush wouldn’t do thaaaaattttt.” Actually, I did not wait for the direct object. As soon as they put the word ‘president’ in front of the undesirable foliage, I was deserting ship and looking for another nautical notion. Any politician, like any other human, in fact more like any other human, will like any other human DO ANYTHING. The politican is just quicker on the uptake. E.g. the politician already has a lobbyist or five on the line arranging payment for the action. May as well be paid twice or more. That is what McCain means when he says Obama does NOT have experience.

By the way, let’s clear this one other thing up on the way to the subject of this blog. 9-1-1 was not a type OH back there. I meant it. It was not nine eleven until the first person thought and mentioned that it would be cool if they did the nine one one thing on nine eleven.

Imagine. And imagining is how you get to Second Level Opinion. Imagine Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bush and Nixon. Well, OK, don’t imagine Nixon except in ghost form. Imagine a Nixon mood or ambiance. But while we’re talking about Nixon, did you ever notice that no one ever described Nixon as nondescript?

Anyway, OK, imagine they are all sitting there planning nine eleven. Hey, I hear you grumbling. Quit being so verklempt. Trust me. Right now you could not possibly imagine those guys doing nine eleven to their own country. But by the time you spend a few paragraphs with me imagining it:

• it will sound perfectly reasonable
• you will be complimenting me on my role casting prowess
• you will be doing side imaginations sotto voce imagining Osama Bin Laden sitting at the table with the others luxuriating in having spent a sizable part of his CIA salary on Cuban cigars.
• you will already feel yourself becoming a more regular person in your movements
• you will be babbling gobbledegook like Sarah Palin at a glossolalia service
• you will have forgotten to ask me what ‘verklempt’ means

OK, so they are all sitting there and for the umpteenth time Wolfy brings up the thing about how something as big as nine eleven would be the only thing that would get the USians to start yelling “death to them all, love it or leave it and other tough stuff” while they go mix another drink.

And they take their drink back to WATCH Bill O’Reilly exercise yet more logical fallacies as they put their drink down to applaud O’Reilly. Not applauding him because of an original turn of a logical fallacy no one has plied the air waves with before. Not that astute. No, impressed by Bill’s unflinching courage in hounding whoever the non-GOP fool crazy enough to come on TV and let Bill rip him apart with ever such an abundant passion.

Essentially the viewer is watch the tush swagger. Flying by the seat of his/her pants. That is required behavior for a tush. The swagger. The overconfident swagger that reveals the tush is assured the viewer knows squat about logical fallacies.

With one part time exception. The exception is the TV channel you see advertised on this web site. With that exception, the important issues about the candidates for election for the highest office in the land do not get discussed. They have been running for almost two years and the talk show hosts (tshes for short, you can put the letter ‘u’ in if you want. The candidates and the tushes must be tired but they cannot bring themselves to discuss a real issue.

Here are a few:

• who is for nuclear energy, to what extent, and don’t they know that choosing that energy path reveals their ignorance about the efficacy of others.
• does any candidate have a goody list of new energy things they are willing to put their money and their power into? for example the new wallpaper like photovoltaic strips that are almost as cheap as anything currently in use.
• why do all the politicians (both [yuk] “sides of the aisle” talk about what a great man John McInane is” in obvious revelation they have never read anything biographically truthfully about the man?
• why do the tush imitate the politicians in this regard?
• why does no one really discuss the character of McInane? the hot temper? the really bad voting record blow by blow? the acquiescence of McCain to Bush’s requirement that he be given full torture power or be marked as a McCANE
• did the stupidity of McInane place him 790 out of 795 in his class at Annapolis or was his placement due to his [arghhh] “maverick” irresponsibility? either way, doesn’t either one of those disqualify a candidate in anybody’s mind or AT LEAST PROVOKE a question to be discussed soooooooome where?
• I am not lying when I tell you this. As I began conceiving this post, I was fishing for some way to reach my tush-analyst idols (Keith and Rachel) to see about interest, leg up, discussion on my conception of “O’REALLY, O’REILLY” and I had passed the last McInane item and was thinking about why McCain is hailed as a hero and received, I think six, war medals for destroying 30 million dollars jets (two in training) in missions against the North Vietnamese before being shot down, then captured, then POWed. So, Lieutenant McEjectButtonHappy was POW for five years. I was thinking, five years POW gotta really factor a person up psychologically. I am pretty certain I do not want a POW wingnut for a president any more than I want a poster child for stupidity.

As I was thinking over that last item I was tuning in Rachel on Air America and I’ll be horn swoggled [as they say in Arizona] if Rachel was not discussing the issue with a guest.

So my BIG QUESTION here is this. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE REST OF YOU NEWS ANALYSTS AND TUSHES THAT YOU CANNOT BRING YOURSELVES TO ASK THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS? R U VERKLEMPT

Remember how I left you in the middle of the Nits o’the Roundtable discussion and Wolfy was saying the USians would have to be hit with some real trauma if they were to give up their freedoms, allow martial law, permit their children to be poisoned by radioactive Depleted Uranium, give birth to deformed children, allow their economy to be bartered out from under them.

OK, I want to guide you back into your imagination with that last paragraph as you hear Rumsfeld saying “I really think we should refer to it as nine one one because nine one one is a call for help and brings up some serious emotions in the citizenry and most assuredly bend them our way.”

Now, as I close out this post, let me leave you to continue imagining on your own. You can float your little boat down the river of thought and as you pass through the last several years, you can imagine how often you have been bilked, inveigled, shell gamed, fooled, cuckolded, lied to and consider how well off are those who among others things would continue to draw their same high salary forever if they lost their elected post in congress.

You might envisage how much money has been pushed deep down into the pockets of those who sold their birthright to the devil in exchange for those stock dividends and that mortgage — all gone belly up, baby.

Go get another drink. Hell, get a truckload. Whatever you need to get it out of your system, bucko. Then come on back. Because we have some more imagining to do. Let’s go with a starter list of issues that we want President Obama to go to work on. Let’s imagine ways we can keep his nose to the grindstone to get them done. Let’s imagine ourselves into a recovery. Let’s imagine ourselves being healthy, wealthy, and wise citizens who will never be fooled again into murdering and torturing thousands of innocent people and burning, mutilating and deforming thousands of innocent children.

And then let’s sit down on the hillside by my house and look out over a Pacific Ocean that contains the water we run our cars on with no need for gasoline.

And let’s imagine what needs to be done and what has to be done. Let’s indict those responsible for trickle down morality from whoever is guilty of that radioactive baby dying from leukemia to those who are guilty of making those people dive out skyscraper windows to avoid burning to death.

And when the heads of the guilty are lacquered post top knobs lining Pennsylvania Avenue, let’s imagine how guilty we all are for letting it happen. Let’s use that guilt to challenge ourselves into getting up and getting to work because Utopia is still a ways down the road.

And that is our destination, nation.

jack luna MOTH