if you are going
into a food fight, always
come with the most food

Not making a statement on either side, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times made me laugh when in her opinion piece, DeSantis’s Puddin’ Head Campaign, she quoted David Axelrod saying, “If they’re going to get into a food fight, Trump always comes with more food.”

First, though I have to recognize Ms. Dowd for the homage Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (please read if you haven’t – you won’t regret it) where the assembled crowd notes that, after the man (Mr. David “Pudd’nhead” Wilson) in question said something dumb, was a … “Perfect jackass — yes, and it ain’t going too far to say he is a pudd’nhead. If he ain’t a pudd’nhead, I ain’t no judge, that’s all.”

Then let me go to the simple wisdom of the Axelrod quote which I boiled down to today’s haiku.

if your are going
into a food fight, always
come with the most food

Is there a better description of our current political system as it now stands?

Back in the day I went to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Due to many and various reasons, I was starting in the Winter term, not in the fall like most folks.

Due to this, finding a place to live was a problem but through a kind hearted brother-in-law, I wound up ‘boarding’ at a frat house.

Living and dining at a frat while not a part of it.

It was a good deal.

I had a room, laundry facilities and meals.

When I signed my papers, it was explained to me that if I took a kitchen job to help out, I would get a break on the dining fees which is how I ended up making Sunday Noon Dinner for 40 guys but that’s another story.

We ate family style at 3 long tables.

The dishes for the meal where set down at the end of each table and then passed along and we helped ourselves.

There was this one kid who managed to arrive late for dinner one or two times a week.

The empty seats were always the furthest from the food and he would rush in late, sit down at the far end of a table and immediately ask for everything to be passed his way.

One night, this feller ran in and sat down, late, next to me at the end of the table, but before he could say anything, one of the other guys yelled out, “Pass the meat, please!”

Someone else yelled out, “Pass the potatoes, please!”

“Pass the bread, please!”

Then they stopped saying things and just passed everything on the table, napkins, salt & pepper shakers, dirty plates, everything was passed down.

Desserts had just been set out and the dessert was passed down and I found an entire banana cream pie sitting on the table in front of me.

The feller in question was oblivious to all of this but on the other side of me sat Bob.

Bob was a frat boy.

Bob was, in the most 1980’s way, preppy, stuffy, spoiled and insufferable.

I looked at the pie in front me.

A banana cream pie that could have come from the kitchens of the Three Stooges I am telling you.

I looked at Bob in his pink izod, dockers and duck shoes.

Bob looked at the pie and he looked me dead in the eye and started to say, “Don’t even think about it!”

He got as far as “Don’t …”

Bob later told me that he counted to ten before he reacted.

If that was true, he counted by banging my head against the table.

I had picked up the pie with both hands, without turning, and with one fast motion, lifted the pie to my left and into Bob’s face.

As Mr. Twain (again) would write about dropping a watermelon on someone’s head from a third floor window, “I doubted the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it, too, because so much of the resulting entertainment would fall to my share and so little to the other person.”

To this day I doubt the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it but it was, above all else, really funny.

I was laughing all the time Bob was banging my head on the table.

When Bob stopped I sat back with tears coming down my face, making streaks in pie smears.

Bob, himself covered in pie, grabbed double handfuls of pie and threw it in my face and then rubbed his hands through my hair for good measure and left the room, slamming a door.

It was not until then that I noticed that the explosion of pie had led to a general food fight in the dining room.

Rolls, handfuls of potatoes, jello (a real accomplishment if you ever tried to throw jello) and whatever else was left from dinner was all flying through the air.

I had read about such things but, truly, this was the only food fight I ever experienced.

The place was a mess and after things calmed down, the guy who functioned as frat steward stood up and asked everyone to leave and that I would be staying until the place was completely clean.

I stood up, accepted the responsibility for the moment and apologized for the mess and got to work on the clean.

Then a goofy thing happend.

I would guess about 10 or 12 other guys pitched in and helped me with the clean up.

Afterward we went somewhere and I bought them all a beer and thanked them.

I made a toast of thanks and then I had to ask, why did they help me?

They all laughed and one guy spoke for all of them.

“Are you kidding?” he asked?

“You got Bob!”

the times are changing
or, tempora mutantur
… and we change in them

Or Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, which can be translated as:

Times are changed; we also are changed with them

or

Times are changed; we, too, are changed within them.

We change WITH the changes?

We are changed BY the changes.

In the first, we change to meet the challenges brought by change.

In the second, we are changed by those challenges brought by change.

I have to say that things have changed in the world of politics in the time that I have been around.

Not to mention any names, but there was a time when, if a candidate for ANY OFFICE, from dog catcher to President of the United States, was named in headline, just NAMED, about an encounter of any kind, from a cup of coffee, to the beast with two backs, with anyone, let alone with a porn star, that candidate would be FINISHED.

Can anyone remember Gary Hart?

But Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

Times change and we changed with or we were changed by the times.

The current news cycle has a story about a candidate for Public Office who had a ‘tryst’ with a porn star.

No one denies that this happened.

No one denies that the candidate was married at the time.

No one denies that the candidate arranged for hush money to be paid to the porn star to keep the story quiet.

(UPDATE: truth be told, rereading the accounts, the candidate in question DOES deny the tryst took place 3/18/2023)

What is at question here is whether or not the candidate paid the porn star off with funds diverted from political contributions.

Because using money to pay off a porn star so the porn star would keep quiet about their ‘tryst’ would be WRONG if the money used to pay off the porn star so the porn star would keep quiet about their ‘tryst’ came from political contributions.

There is a tragedy here.

And it is not about the candidate.

That old wise man changed with the changes, watched and learned, and built a house on the rock with a firm foundation.

That old foolish man was changed by the changes and saw his house on the sand go splat.

dystopian farce
it is laughable if you
don’t have to live it

Adapted from the line, “It’s pretty much a dystopian farce,” said Kathleen Miller Green, an assistant professor of child development who attended the nearly six-hour, capacity-crowd meeting at the school’s student union building on Feb. 22. “It’s laughable if you don’t have to live it.”, in the New York Times article, The Politicization of North Idaho College, by Daniel Berehulak.

It was too good a line with too much application to today’s United States to let it go past.

“It’s pretty much a dystopian farce,” it’s laughable if you don’t have to live it.”

So quoted is Kathleen Miller Green, an assistant professor of child development at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, a town of 56,000 in the Idaho Panhandle.

See, according to the article, the county Republican Party holds a majority on the North Idaho College board. They have denounced liberal “indoctrination” by the college faculty and vowed to bring the school administration’s “deep state” to heel and “Make N.I.C. Great Again.”

I apologize to the people of the great state of Idaho but saying, Make North Idaho College Great Again out loud makes me laugh.

It’s IS laughable.

Until.

Until it isn’t.

And it isn’t as we all have to live it.

And is isn’t as it isn’t just the North Idaho College, it is small colleges, schools, churches, libraries, township boards and zoning commissions everywhere.

It gets very scary quickly.

Here in the low country of South Carolina, a feller was convicted of murder pretty much evidence from his own cell phone that showed where he was, or at least where his phone was (and he was NEVER with his phone), how his phone moved around, whether in a car or walking and what he used his phone for.

While I have little problem with this specific case, think of how, in general, we are all being tracked.

All that data is there.

All that data is real.

All that data can and will be used against you.

Live a good life and you got little to worry about.

Still, there is a concern over WHO has control or even access to this data.

Imagine a local police force, or for example, the Michigan State Police (an awful awe inspiring title when you think about it, so says Jim Harrison) with access to the data.

Or worse, imagine the North Idaho College Board of Regents with access to this data.

Tracking faculty.

Tracking students.

On the one hand, It’s pretty much a dystopian farce,”

On the one hand, it’s laughable

On the other hand, it’s laughable if you don’t have to live it.

And we all have live it.

We all have to live with it.

What part of this is making us great again?

For decades, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a daily column called simply, My Day.

If you wonder why any one would care about Mrs. Roosevelt’s day, just look at the subheadings in the online archive.

They include, White House Years (1935-1941), White House Years (1942-1945 WW2), United Nations, (1946-1951- Post UN years (1953-1962).

In her December 12, 1953 Column, she wrote about attending a meeting to celebrate Brandeis University and she commented about the ‘Red Scare’ that dominated US politics at the time.

She wrote: The attacks on our schools today and on our clergy are of course only incidents but they reflect a little the attitude toward educated people.

We are all of us opposed to the evils of fascism and communism but in fighting these evils we must beware lest we adopt the very methods used by fascists and communists and find ourselves destroying things of value in our own country when what we really are trying to destroy is a foreign concept with which we disagree and yet which we are being led to copy.