August 16, 2005
Words of wisdom
To quote someone generally not worth quoting, perhaps it's time we left those up to someone wiser. Whilst the estimible Mr. Sullivan is on his annual August vacation, he has had several different personalities fill space on his site. This week, it's been one Walter Kirn. Today, he had this to say (a selection follows), and I think it rather relevant. Outside the blogosphere, I find myself in significant agreement: I'd much rather talk about something other than politics.
"Other than Jen-and-Brad celebrity gossip and the serial popular novels posing as crime stories such as this Aruba thing, this hyped-up so-called politics is all people have to talk about now, it seems. I remember when people talked about themselves. At thee dinner table and in the diner you heard about that sports car-from-a-kit your neighbor was building, about some lady's kidney tumor, about who was wooing another man's wife, and about the bear that was eating from someone's apple tree. These little stories added up to life. You got a sense of how people were actually managing. Now you hear what they're thinking. What a bore. Most of them can't think, and have never tried, and are just repeating what others think and adding their own misinterpretations and biases. I could care less, frankly. I'd rather hear about what somebody's doing to get rid of the bat infestation in their attic. But no, it's Washington, Washington, Washington, which is thousand of miles away from western Montana but has somehow convinced us it's right next door. Well, it's not. The neighbors are next door. But because they talk only about politics, I have no idea what their lives are like and they don't either for the most part, they don't either. They're trying to join the "national conversation" and meanwhile the bears are eating their apples. "
