The South Carolina debate audience last night were like kids at a birthday party--excited and amazed and up on their haunches as the clown seemingly pulled the long list of scarves out of his mouth. The parents, though, the few chaperones who were invited, were the ones who noticed he left the place a mess and didn't make any of the African American children at the party a balloon animal.

Politics. It's like porn sometimes; it's addictive--literally. I access so many news sites, I'm embarrassed when Melissa comes in to the office and sees me, say, reading some Atlantic Monthly link on the Daily Beast. My urge is to click off quickly, as if she just caught me with my pants down, looking at Japanese twins on nothingbuttasians.com. 

To me, good political writing is like leaf blowing--all of a sudden, without the grass clippings and dried manure, I can see what's below me, what I'm standing on, what politicians tried to obfuscate. I read people like Charles Pierce of ESQUIRE and see writing so prescient, so lithe, so brilliantly succinct, it makes me want to do it. Thing is, Pierce stands on the high board and does a Forward 4 1/2 Somersault in the Tuck Position; I stand on the 3-foot board and do Cannonballs ... and then I want to give up the craft entirely and take up ceramics.  

When did we decide in this country that money could and should be made off of sickness and pain? When was it deemed okay for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and GlaxoSmithKline to make profits, for instance, on the care of children who have diabetes ... or leukemia?

What a peculiar strain in the American DNA--the willing acceptance of buffers between between patient and doctor. (Remember how Willi Cici in THE GODFATHER told the senate investigators, "Yeah, yeah, Corleone Family, we had a lot of buffers"?) That such a system is championed by Blue Cross/Blue Shield and GlaxoSmithKline is to be expected; that it's encouraged by every GOP candidate for president who stands behind a lectern is obscene. And speaking of THE GODFATHER, in Part II, when Senator Geary tried to shake down Michael Corleone for 5% of the gross from all the hotels in Vegas, we cringed at his smarminess and greed; yet, when insurance companies demand the same kind of kick-back from the care of sick little girls, we crow about having the best healthcare in the world.

You could argue that January 16 was a very bad day for the GOP. 

An all-white audience at the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina booed a black commentator (not, and I agree, that Juan Williams doesn't deserve a knee to the groin now and then) who had the temerity to ask Newt Gingrich whether he, Gingrich, wanted to explain his suggestion that black children should work as janitors or, at the very least, address those who thought his suggestion was insensitive--especially those parents who would rather not have their sons and daughters cleaning up the vomit and piss and lunch trays of the other youngens. The crowd also booed the mention of "Mexico"--just the menton--when it was brought up that Romney's father was born there. Plenty of reasons to boo Romney, but where Romney's grandmother broke her water is not one of them.

In other news, though, a little under the GOP radar (which is already subterranean) a legislator in Virginia, Republican Bob Marshal, suggested God punishes women by giving them disabled children for previously having abortions (one assumes that other disabled disabled children must be the result of mothers who merely considered abortion--or looked at porn); in Oklahoma, Republican Mike Reynolds, in an effort to wrestle the runner-up tiara from Miss Mississippi in the Miss Oh!merica pageant (in case Miss Arizona can't fulfill her duties), proposed a "Personhood" bill, which would strictly the limit the use of contraceptive alternatives and force women to carry unborn fetuses, even in cases of rape or incest, under penalty of imprisonment.

If Obama wins in November, leading Republicans will no doubt meet in Hilton Head or some similar location (the Kochs will take care of the bar and hors d'oeuvres) to review what happened, to discern what went wrong. 

January 16, for starters, went wrong.

John Huntsman dropped out of the race today.  Considering his rating from the NRA, his position on abortion, his waffling on climate change, his embrace of Paul Ryan, etc., I'm not sure how much of  a moderate he ever was; on the other hand, compared to the present crop of GOP candidates, he's Barney Frank singing Pink's "Fun House" at a lesbian wedding in Worcester, Mass. And as disappointed as Republicans are, they're playing rope-a-dope with their angst--especially considering Huntsman is about to endorse Romney, as will everyone else presently taking bites out of  Willard's ankles.  The thought of voting for Obama is enough to make them want to repeatedly stab themselves in the thigh with a cocktail fork, so they're going to vote for Romney, regardless of  how many times he makes stupid bets, talks about "firing" insurance companies, or does a Triple Lutz on a former policy position.  Oh, they may curse under their breath, mumble a little,  and grouse while waiting in line about how "they're all terrible," but the election commission won't care how forcefully they pull the lever for a particular candidate-- just that they have. The question, we Democrats have, is how many Republicans really will stay home in November because the thought of Romney placing his left hand on the Book of Mormon on Inaugural Day is worse to them than four more years of Obama.

Got into a discussion on Facebook with a chauffeur recently  (I know, I have to get out of the house more) who told me that he felt more of a kinship with the millionaire in the back of the limo than the 42-year-old single mother waiting at the bus stop he passes on the way to the country club. He--and let's call him Ty-- is unconcerned that he is literally thousands of paychecks away from the 1%-ers  he defends but only one or two from the Occupy (your city here) protestors he mocks. Worse, he has bought into the GOP notion (and now advances it) that the economy wasn't ruined by unscrupulous money manipulators who packaged, sold, resold, bought back, and then repackaged loans with all the due diligence of a real estate broker selling timeshares in the shitty part of Nassau, but, instead, was tanked by NPR, teachers making $42K/year in Michigan, and lazy, irresponsible parents who took their kids to emergency rooms to game the system (as if waiting four hours, surrounded by feverish meth addicts with a hacking coughs and men with facial gunshot wounds, is a victory).  I imagine as he drives away drive from the country club to which he will never be granted admission, much less membership, he is thinking about how unfair it will be when he can exempt only the first $5-million of his estate, oblivious to the fact the guy he just dropped off is thinking about how handsome his nephew will look in Ty's chauffer's hat. 

So Arthur Brisbane of the The New York Times asked the other day whether the press should pursue truth and, when dealing with candidates, bring along a pair of balls  (ovaries). It seems like one of those questions only a first-year journalism student would ask--right before he or she is advised to stop annoying the other students and major in Finance. The only people who benefit from otherwise sane human beings discussing this (How about a quick YES and YES as the answer?) are politicians--mostly GOP politicians, let's face it--who think that any question about anything ("Will you release your tax return, Governor?") and/or statement of fact ("But, Mme Congresswoman, no credible scientist endorses the notion that the world is only 2500 years old"), is evidence of the media's liberal bias and agenda.

As Charles Pierce of  Esquire might say, Jesus H. Christ buying raised engagement announcements at a Bridal Show in Oklahoma City, does anyone standing on stage at a GOP Presidential Debate really believe that two men in Santa Monica who want to get married will do more harm to the institution of marriage than the guy at the center left podium who got blown by a female staffer while his wife was undergoing chemo?

I don't know who's more annoying--Tim Tebow or the people who defend him.  It's like by running interference for him, even virtually, his supporters feel superior to the rest of us who just want to watch a football game without feeling like we walked in to a prayer breakfast at the Y and who, more importantly, have this notion that God has no dog in the AFC West fight. Those who quote Tebow, extoll Tebow, defend Tebow are suffering  (and willingly) from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome--they're Patty Hearst and Tebow is, unbeknownst to him, the Symbionese Liberation Army.