Well Played, Mr. President

If rumors are to be believed, and this blog's view is that, depending on the honor and social stature of the teller, they are, President Obama has taken a significant step above the scalawaggery of the campaign season, setting a profound example of gentlemanly conduct.

As his opponent tapped young Congressman Ryan as his running mate, announcing the intention to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to relieve the burdens of taxation on our nation's heroic billionaires as a core platform of his campaign, the President appears ready to nominate the august Erskine Bowles, proponent of cutting Social Security and Medicare, to head the Treasury Department.

It is a rare gentleman in public life with the courtesy and good manners to agree to advance his opponent's agenda ahead of an election, sparing all parties the awkward humiliations of appealing to the public.

Kudos, Mr. President. If compromise is the grandest of virtues, then Grand Compromise is grander still.

One might even call it "legacy material."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021109625

It's Uncouth to Make Fun of Exorcisms

One of the most distasteful parts of the campaign season is known euphemistically as "vetting," although the term hardly conveys the audacious, insolent, and impertinent manner in which some members of the news media and indeed some of our own tribunes of democracy confront potential office holders with the things that those people have said and done in the past, as though such information could have the slightest bearing on their capacity to hold office responsibly in the future.

Consider the way that the honorable Governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's brave actions as a university undergraduate in protecting a female companion from danger have been crudely twisted to imply that he is some sort of religious zealot. If this is the kind of character in evidence at Mother Jones, then I fear Grandmother Jones may be resting uneasily in the grave.

Although a reader of honor and good breeding should require no further convincing, let us consider in detail author Tim Murphy's depraved lust for libel, a compulsion to smear and slander that even led him to use Jindal's own words against him.

Though Jindal was suitably modest in describing his own heroic actions, I trust the reader will grasp the extent of his chivalry, courage, and wisdom.

The tale begins with Jindal escorting "Susan," a platonic-yet-intimate female friend to a Christian a capella concert following a meeting of a campus christian fellowship which Susan had departed

in a very sullen mood.

Very few young men would have the emotional intelligence to recognize that the cure for someone left cold by nondenominational evangelical Christian worship is more nondenominational evangelical Christian worship, and this decision alone should be applauded.

Yet, the uplifting sounds of the concert failed to buoy the young lady's spirits. A person of low character, raised on soap operas and romance novels might conclude that the source of Susan's displeasure was sitting right next to her, in the form of a man who was, in the regrettable words of television strumpets, "just not that into her." Young Jindal, of course, had good cause for jilting her, however difficult the decision was for him

We had succumbed to pressure from our friends and de­cided we should not be so emotionally interdependent without a deeper commitment. To be honest, my fears of a relationship and the constraints of commitment had kept us apart; our friends' objec­tions merely provided a convenient excuse.

and took the gentlemanly step of softening the blow of heartache by taking her on an outing free from any prospect of romantic requittal. Although Young Jindal was also too respectful of a lady's privacy to mention it in his recollection, Susan had also recently been diagnosed with cancer, making his decision to escort her all the more gracious and no doubt comforting to her. Thus, when Susan abruptly left the concert that evening and experienced a seizure the next day, Jindal was wise enough to correctly diagnose the cause: demonic possession.

This diagnosis was confirmed when Jindal bravely gathered together every undergraduate Christian organization leader he could find in Susan's dorm room and instructed them to wave crucifixes at her. Truly, nothing but demonic possession could account for her reaction:

She suddenly leapt up and ran for the door, despite the many hands holding her down. 

Although his ears were confronted with the most vile of utterances from this unfortunate young lady

At first, Susan responded to biblical passages with curses and profanities. Mixed in with her vile attacks were short and desperate pleas for help.

Not your typical callow undergraduate, Jindal keenly recognized that Susan's pleas for help--which one of the mental invalids at the median of our society's bell curves of intellect and common sense might have interpreted as beseeching relief from her human interlocutors--were in fact pleas to be rescued from demons. Jindal's steadfast leadership saved the day:

In the same breath that she attacked Christ, the Bible's authenticity, and everyone assembled in prayer, Susan would suddenly urge us to rescue her. It appeared as if we were observing a tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange evil force. But the momentum had shifted and we now sensed that victory was at hand.

Bobby Jindal is a moral and intellectual giant among men, and to use this story to suggest that he resides at the corner of Rain Man Avenue and Spanish Inquisition Parkway is positively uncouth.

I'm returning because my country needs me.

My loyal readers must accept my apology for personal and professional matters have kept me from my calling to moral instruction in public discourse. I trust that a full explanation of those matters will be unnecessary; the honor system suffices among the gentlemen of Wall Street, and thus certainly suffices for this humble blog.

I am equally certain that my readers and the public at large have noticed the uncouth tone of the presidential campaigns. I have concluded that my silence is no longer permissible. My country needs me to explain, in the parlance of our times (lamentable though it is), what is cool, what is not OK, and where one should not even consider going.

Muslims, Mosques, and Manners

Amid all of the unseemly froofraw over the defilement of the hallowed ground of lower Manhattan, moral clarity has been lacking. Until now. Thanks to True Gentleman Adam Shaw of Baltimore, who reminds us of the need for sensitivity and tolerance:

The stated motive of building an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero is to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together, a worthwhile goal. Fostering good relations between different communities requires, above all else, sensitivity, and the ability to see through the eyes of the other.

Some Muslims, by insisting on their “right” to build this mosque where other Muslims killed thousands of Americans, show an astounding level of insensitivity and are thwarting their alleged goal of increasing understanding and harmony.

Adam hits the nail on the head. When one group refuses to have any relations at all with another, the polite thing for the second group to do is to accept it and disappear quietly. A polite government might even lend a helping hand.

Personally, I'm heartened by this insightful display of moderation, which harkens back to the era of civil rights, when, sadly, some Americans stirred up trouble (none having existed before) when they refused to consider and accommodate the sensitivities of their neighbors.

Kudos, Adam. You're a gentleman and a scholar and an inspiration to us all.

Manners Please, Mr. President!

Thanks to the intrepid reporting of Mark Leibovich at the Times, we know the cause of gridlock on health insurance reform: Barack Obama's appalling lack of social graces.

It was not always thus, however. The President in the past upheld the dictates of politeness by inviting Republican leaders to cocktail parties. Now, for no reason whatsoever, the President has evidently decided that the Republicans are not good-faith partners in politics and has shunned their pleasant company.

Though shocking, it's true! Leibovitch has left no stone unturned to find disinterested and impartial sources of information. Who better to ask why Obama is disinterested in working with Congressional Republicans than the Congressman who leads the caucus in political combat against the President's agenda?

Mr. Obama, who barely knew the leaders of the other party when he served in the Senate, seems to have lost any expectation that investing a lot of quality time with Republican leaders would help build a better relationship. (To wit: when asked in an interview what he would say to the president in a private meeting, Mr. Cantor said, “I would take the opportunity to press the president on why he thinks it’s better to ignore the public.”)

For those of you who might rudely question Cantor's impartiality, this blog has neither the time nor the inclination to tell you why you're wrong. Suffice it to say that Leibovich consulted a roughly equal number of partisan Democratic sources to present the other side of this profound debate, thus conforming to the highest standards of journalistic excellence.

I feel better knowing that the Paper of Record is there to extend a wagging finger to stem the currents of rudeness flowing through the capital city's social circuitry.

Hall of Uncouth: Alan Grayson

Readers must forgive my breach of my established standards that a long and distinguished career of indecorous and disrespectful behavior must precede induction to the Hall. Mr. Grayson has truly pushed the envelope of uncouthness with his insistence that economic and historical perspective and standards of fairness be applied to judging the actions of Wall Street bankers, rather than mere deference to their feelings.



Well done, Congressman. You've earned it.

I'm worried about the Roberts Court

Apparently, they've fallen into a vortex in which the passage of time no longer moves uniformly from "before" to "after", because they no longer have the ability that you and I callously take for granted to distinguish between what political candidates do before an election and what they do after taking office:

The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate.... The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials.

I'm particularly afraid for Justice Anthony Kennedy, since this vortex has evidently caused him particular distress; I can only conclude that in this other universe it is possible for campaign contributions to both corrupt elected officials and be completely irrelevant to their conduct. Since it would be uncouth to criticize a ruling written by five old conservative Catholic men in weird robes under the trying circumstances of crossing over into an alternate universe, I urge readers to refrain from speculation on the question of whether policies popular with the public are generally enacted if wealthy interests are aligned against them, or whether these kinds of donations buy influence. Now is not the time for such bickering and arguing.

Rather, since apparently they are close enough to an interdimensional portal to render judicial opinions that obey the laws of grammar and matter that prevail in our universe (I think the logical fallacies and specious reasoning are fairly attributed to crossing the boundary between dimensions), let us hope that the justices can find a rope, throw it back through the portal, and let the remaining justices pull them back to safety. With two ladies on the other side, I don't know if it'll work. Maybe Alito's hired Tim Tebow as a clerk in case any feats of strength are required in chambers? I shudder to contemplate Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy vanishing from our universe without a trace.