Rain? Don't get your hopes up

I guess you have to be born a weather junkie, as I was, to gripe about Southern California weather. Wednesday, the forecast suggested a change (!) in the weather, calling for a windy, cloudy, day Thursday with a chance of sprinkles (!!) and more clouds and moisture for Friday.

On Thursday afternoon, sure enough, the wind rose, clouds came over, and a sprinkle of rain fell from the sky just long enough for me to raise my face and catch a couple of drops in my eyes. And with that, it was gone. Now it is Friday morning, 10 a.m. Outside there is not a cloud between here and Hawaii. There is some sprinkly weather, all right, but it is about 100 miles north of us. The good weather always goes north of us. I am a twin to Charlie Brown, and Lucy Van Pelt is the weather bureau. "C'mon, Charlie Brown, I mean it this time, it is going to rain with clouds and wind, and temperature in the 60s. I'll bring this weather, I promise, so you can go ahead and get your hopes up."

So I do, every time, and out there right now the sky is a beautiful, deep, warm, blue, and I am working up a sweat, sweeping up another splintered pile of dashed hopes. I know this is unreasonable. People spend millions of dollars to leave the East and move to Southern California for the weather. I love our weather, I really do. The East gets snowstorms, we get sunstorms. Who's to complain? Yet I have the feeling there are other Charlie Brown cousins out there this morning, wondering why they feel so grumpy.

The depressing effects of gray weather on humans is documented. Light-emitting devices have been invented and marketed to counter these effects. I have always thought such devices were silly, but no sillier, I suppose, than a device to block out sunstruck blue skies and drip water on your head. I am the reverse Joe Btfsplk. In "Li'l Abner," Joe went around with a gray, sprinkly cloud over his head. I go around in a spotlight of blue sky. When I go home to visit Texas, I always hope there will be some weather. There never is. When I moved to San Diego in 1972, God decided that was it for me. I stepped forever on the bad side of the Weather Nazi. No rain for you. No thunder, no lightning. Old friends in Texas know of my plight. When they get a thunderstorm, they actually call on the phone and let me listen.

I would never have been able to spell "Joe Btfsplk" without Google. I wonder if Al Capp, fulminating in his grave, feels betrayed by Google for providing such easy access to a secret he thought would probably be secure forever, outside of a circle of devoted comic strip scholars. With that kind of power, I would think I could Google "rain" and sit back and wait for a shower within the hour. Hm. I actually haven't tried that yet. I will go do that now, and let you know what happens. Sounds like a last resort, doesn't it?

Let computers wake up at human speed

News arrives in today's Times that the computer industry is working to introduce computers that boot up faster. This work is in response to human impatience with the time it takes a computer to boot up. Those three minutes, the impatient humans say, feel like "an eternity."

Let me go on record as believing this is not a good idea. For more than 65 years I have been operating a computer that makes the PCs and Macs look like a box of cotton wads. Operating at what researchers say is only 10 percent of its capacity, this computer provides me five, and sometimes six, senses, a huge memory cache, and an ability to turn blankness into thought into action at astounding speeds.

Yet there is one thing my computer is not very good at, and that is starting up. When I wake up in the morning, it may be not three minutes, but four or five, before I am alert enough to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and search for the floor. Then I hear my computer issuing sort of DOS commands: "Stand." "Walk." "Bathroom." "Kitchen." "Coffee." "Sit." It may be a full 10 or 15 minutes before the computer is ready to check email.

I know my computer can boot up a lot faster, but it doesn't like it. When I was in Army officer training, at 5 a.m. lights went on and voices boomed commands and threats of what would happen if we weren't outside and in ranks in 60 seconds. I think the point was to teach us that we could boot up that fast if we had to. I also knew, standing in ranks, that it would be another couple of minutes before I could point a rifle and hit anything.

Living in Southern California, I have been awakened by earthquakes, and the process was the same. Quick response, slow reaction. Computers have no choice but to jump at the first surge of electricity, but they stay groggy while circuits hook up. Functions in those moments are prioritized. So it was in the first moments after the 1994 Northridge quake: "Stand!" "Run!" "Warn children!" Not until I banged on the door of my teenaged daughter and step-daughter and, when they opened the door, followed their eyes, did I become aware that I was totally naked. I take solace, knowing they were also booting up, that they probably didn't register me very well.

I have never known, certainly never lived with, a human who could boot up in seconds, and I expect the first one I see will be in either a science fiction or an aggravation movie. It seems unreasonable to me to expect it of PCs and Macs, which, compared to our onboard models, are third-rate systems second to none.
I do feel the annoyance of being personally up to speed, then starting up my PC and twiddling my thumbs while it wakes up. It's the same annoyance we feel trying to get children out of bed.

But we have to watch what we wish for. Given the choice, considering the past decade and peering into the next, I think we're better off if we engineer computers to wake up like sleepy people, instead of engineering them to be instantly up and dressed and ready to work, thus allowing the digital age to whittle our patience even closer to the bone. We still will live in the analog world, and patience is the analog world's cartilage.

The campaign through the lens of media literacy

Some background: The rate of media illiteracy in America is about 99.5 percent. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. The other 238.93 million Americans have received no media education because it is not a required subject in the American educational system. Media professionals work in businesses whose missions are to provide information, entertainment and persuasion products to media consumers. The products can be complex, but all are based on 12 media values and one definition. The definition: News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. The 12 media values: conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism and curiosity.

Here is the way a media literate sees the campaign.

Barack Obama is a natural newsmaker. He exhales news. News flies off of him the way bees fly out from the hive on the audacious mission to find sweet nectar and pollinate the world.

John McCain is plain, a hard-working uncle with a war story. As a newsmaker he is an anchor, reading news from a script, and he knows it. He suffers from crotch, which of course does not look comfortable on camera. His appearance regularly suggests the character Howard Beale from the movie "Network."

The media is the battleground on which the campaign is fought, in a long series of battles. There is little time for issues in a 24-hour media war cycle. The adversaries have the same mission, to make the most news which resolves conflict for the greatest number of viewers. The man who achieves that will win.

Obama has had a consistent advantage in the timeliness and novelty values. His being the first black American running for president will not get old. Nor, after the last eight years, will his initial campaign strategy of change. In fact change is so durable a topic that McCain's media team has worked to co-opt it.

In June, McCain realized his newsmaker disadvantages against such opposition and brought in a team of veteran media professionals from the 2004 Bush campaign. Their hard-hitting expertise helped create numerous media opportunities for McCain. Obama's lack of experience and his former associations became conflict items for the McCain team. A "celebrity" angle was tried, but didn't work very well because viewers like celebrities.

In the debates, Obama looked cool, collected and lawyerly, McCain came across as crotchety. Most of the news – polls, money, huge crowds, war, crashing economy, GOP defections – was breaking Obama's way. Then McCain made the biggest news of the campaign: Sarah Palin. She brought with her a "Sarah who?" conflict, but her novelty and sensational values were off the chart and she represented an untapped demographic.

Novelty and sensationalism erode quickly, though, and soon they needed some other value to give them legs. Palin's experience conflict was coming into news play, and into "SNL" scripts, while Colin Powell's endorsement removed Obama's experience conflict altogether. GOP crowd reactions made news and introduced a thread of dread into the campaign that McCain had to address. Obama provided the McCain team some new grist in Joe the Plumber, and Main Street, with its proximity value, became a theme that gave Palin folksy continuity in targeting Obama with an "elitist" conflict. That theme was severely compromised by the news of Palin's $150,000 campaign wardrobe.

In the closing days, the media community is wondering how McCain's team could have so badly mismanaged his newsmaking. It is the subject of a long analysis in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

In this media literate's view, McCain has one last hole card. He can pop. The hard-working uncle can get out from behind the anchor desk, tell his inept media managers to go to hell, take Cindy and Sarah by the hand, lean into the camera and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore. I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!'"

That will definitely make news the old-fashioned way. How it played out on election day would be the last exciting threat to the status quo of the campaign.

This view of the campaign is a simplification, as an Ibsen play or a Faulkner novel is a simplification. The advantage of literacy, in this case media literacy, in viewing these works is that it lets the viewer grasp the complexities, because he understands the shorthand.

Who knew Neiman's was on Main Street?

Well, so much for Joe the Plumber. He couldn't replace washers fast enough make the kind of money John McCain was willing to spend on outfitting his vice-presidential candidate. We won't be hearing about Joe any more.

Another silver lining: Sarah Palin won't be saying much about Main Street America any more, where the question of the day is no longer about the economy, per se, but about the GOP economy, plus speed. How long does it take to spend $75,000 in one visit to Neiman Marcus? Would the boxes fit into the kind of Main Street car that gets 35 miles per gallon?

So that's what they meant by pro-America and spreading the wealth around. I can't think of an American, starting with my wife, who would object to spending $150,000 in one month on clothes, and you have to believe that Neiman's, Sak's, Bloomingdales, Macy's, Barney's of New York, and Atelier are beaming today over McCain's spread-the-wealth campaign.

I can't believe they spent $4,716.49 in one month on Sarah's hair and makeup.
I would expect more in the way of results, but Karen didn't think that was the point. She could easily see spending $75,000 in one sitting at Neiman's, but she was totally shocked that it was possible for one woman in one month to spend $4,716.49 on her hair and makeup. No way I could have known that, as a man. I figure $1,000 a month would be outright extravagant, but the economy could be a lot better than it is now, and we still wouldn't have to worry about that.

So it is the women voters of America who have the better sense of what kind of money we are talking about here. As a man, I can understand things like knowing where the interview time went. Sarah couldn't give any interviews because she was busy shopping. She crammed for the debate from reading summaries taped to the walls of the fitting booth. She carries Trig because somebody has to carry the luggage.

But the women. Talk about a distraction. At the office, at lunch, in board rooms, playing a game of break-it-down, the things Sarah most likely bought that would add up to $75,000 in one sweep. I think it would be more fun if, instead of spending the money on Michele Bachmann's proposed study of Congress to see who is pro- or anti-America, the media studied Main Street women for their conclusions on how that much money could have been spent that fast. (Michele's hair is looking a lot better – fuller, more body – this week than it did last Friday, by the way.) McCain's men have to come up with a way to capitalize. How about, "A chick in every pot"?

What Kristol doesn't know about media elites

William Kristol in his Monday column in The New York Times says some things about media elites that cannot be left unchallenged.

I take it personally, for one thing. I hate it when anyone, William Kristol included, goes off half-cocked about who I am. I am a media elite. After 35 years in the business, I know way too much about media to be anything but an elite. Call me Mike the Media Elite. Go ahead, mock me on “Saturday Night Live.” I have written enough newspaper stories to fill several books, and I teach 200-225 students annually the principles on which, in time, they may become media elites.

Kristol says media elites like telling readers “what’s going to happen,” because it “puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.”

If The New York Times gives Kristol a column to write, it means he must be some kind of media elite himself, and I cannot find a way to square that stature with his words in the last paragraph. Unless he is lying. Otherwise, he wants me to believe he understands no more of the media-public relationship than an 18-year-old freshman walking into the classroom on the first day of the semester.

One of the first principles the freshmen learn about media – in this case, journalism – is the Definition of News: “News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.” Immediately upon learning that, students are taught that the media did not create the Definition of News. Do you know who did? PEOPLE. Most of the core principles, rules, and definitions of media were created by people long before the media existed. When the technology became available, the media came into existence because it took those people-created principles, rules, and definitions and turned them into a business.

The business was providing people – readers – with information they needed, or information they wanted. Why? Because information was not only the original human need, it was an instinct: Where’s the food? Where’s the water? Still possessed of the damnedest instinct to survive, people still insist on information, and they insist that we media elites provide it for them.

Back at the origin of these instincts, people were infatuated, perhaps not intellectually, but viscerally, by the threat to the status quo. The change to the status quo is anything that has happened. The threat to the status quo is anything that MIGHT happen. I don’t know when humans hit on the thought of the crystal ball, but I would nominate a night up under some dark, semi-protected ledge with lightning crashing, water rushing, volcanoes erupting, the ground shaking, and big mean hungry cats howling all around.

It’s not so much survival now, but humans STILL are fascinated by the threat to the status quo. Most of a later media business development, the entertainment business, is built directly on the threat to the status quo, and humans, knowing they aren’t going to get chomped, eat it up. They are addicted to it. And who do they count on to feed the addiction? The MEDIA, William! If “elite prognosticators” try to “stay ahead of the curve,” it’s because those so-called simple-minded people insist that’s where we position ourselves. They don’t like your “delusion of choice.” They would much rather know who is going to win. Millions of these people face two more weeks of actual physical agony before the election. Who do they look to for a breath of promise that it may go their way?

As a media elite, I wish the people knew why they felt this way. It would be so much better if they had some education about their role in what the media does, and why, but they don’t. It isn’t a required subject in the American educational system. It’s not healthy for the media, either. Technology has all but obliterated human patience, creating the media race to be first. U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics from May, 2007, identify about 1.5 million media professionals in the United States. That means that roughly 270 million Americans age 5 and over are functionally media illiterate. Or 270,000,001, counting William Kristol.

The bugs of October

I am in the 60th grade, and until yesterday, I never knew that ants could freeze to death.

They can. I went to the refrigerator for some ice and, reaching for the freezer door handle, I saw ants crawling around the sides of the door. I pulled the door open, and ants – little black ones – were crawling around INSIDE.

With ants, I always look first to see if I can tell where they are coming from. I saw a few ducking in and out of a seam, between the actual hard plastic structure of the freezer box and the white material that covers the refrigerator to make it look attractive. As you may be guessing, we are not talking about a top-of-the-line refrigerator.

The ants were arrayed across the entire width of the freezer box, but had not ventured in very far, except a dozen or so who had set off across the ice trays. These ants were dead. Against the white of the trays and the ice, they looked like crumpled, motionless explorers as seen from an airplane above the tundra.

There were two trays. I carried them to the sink and inverted them. The ant explorers slid right off. That was interesting. I thought they might have frozen to the ice. I ran water over the ice, a quick rinsing away of teeny ant tracks, if any.

I went to the hallway bathroom for the ant spray. I had left it there last week after a small invasion in and around the bathtub. October is a time of vigilance in Southern California. The days have been warm – even hot – and windy, with low humidity, so every time we step outside, we scan the horizon for smoke. In October, 2003, and again last October, we endured devastating wildfires. Inside, we constantly scan for ants. Last week, also, we found a scorpion in the house, a small one, in a large decorative bowl on a side table. First scorpion I have seen in 16 years in this house. But you have to be watchful. I had left the spray in the bathroom in the event the invaders returned.

This freezer entry seam was in an awkward position for spraying. I had an idea: I would spray a paper towel, then wipe the seam, and the rest of the ant populace across the width of the freezer. I enjoyed the idea; I thought it made up somewhat for a tiny mistake I had made on Saturday, leaving the car lights on all afternoon. We discovered it in the evening when we were about to go out and . . . well, that's another story.

Karen had been outside watering, and when she came in I called her over to "see something unusual." She took one look, immediately picked up the sprayer and aimed it at the entry seam. I protested, showing her my paper towel idea, but Karen is no-nonsense about bugs. She fired, carefully, to be sure, but there were drips to wipe away. Then we found more ants on the door itself, around the edges and a few on the storage shelves. Karen removed all this material and blasted those ants a good one. We carefully wiped down the door and let it air awhile. I put the spray in the corner by the sink, in case we needed it again in a hurry.

We have spiders, too, but no tarantulas yet, thank God. A tarantula once trapped me in a bathroom for half an hour until I was rescued. No solpugids, either. I lived in an adobe house for 20 years and you could count on several solpugids every summer and fall. A solpugid is like a giant cockroach, only segmented, like an ant, and the very devil to kill. You never want to see one peeking over your windowsill.

A shout-out for "Sarah's Base Hardener"

William F. Buckley is smiling down from heaven at John McCain, who has found a new, improved, way to continue work that Buckley started.

Buckley's work: "I've spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks."

Buckley has had another recent ally in George W. Bush, who by the sixth year of his administration had liberated so many conservatives from the base that Democrats carried the mid-term elections and gained control of the House. I recall thinking at the time that these liberated conservatives would become the founding members of a new movement called "Conscious Conservatism."

But the movement lagged, never gaining traction. In his general ineptitude, or indifference, it was another mission that Bush couldn't complete.

Enter Billy Pitchman. I can't remember his full name, but he is the guy who sells things on television: stain removers, carpet cleaners, scratch removers, tomato knives that also saw through nails. He has a full beard, wears a blue shirt, and has a voice like he was yelling at you through a hurricane. You've seen him?

Sarah Palin is Billy Pitchman in lipstick. John McCain put her to work hardening the base, and she is living up to the expectations of William F. Buckley. "Sarah's Base Hardener" is separating the right from the kooks in what the polls and the headlines indicate to be boatload numbers. Making the headlines are separating stalwart rightists like David Brooks, Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley, William Buckley's son, all of whom have floated to the top. But the real work takes place below the water line.

New, improved Sarah's Base Hardener features a secret ingredient that, when dumped into a tubful of conservatives, acts to eliminate choice. At the molecular level, it removes any molecule that doesn't look like and act like the molecule next to it. These molecules rise to the top, in a confused, multi-colored froth, while the base molecules, all exactly identical, sink to the bottom, so enraptured by their liberation from choice that they cry out against any agent of choice, including but not limited to Barack Obama, intoning, "Treason!" "Terrorist!" "Liar!" "Kill him!"

Sarah's Base Hardener has achieved such astonishing results in a few short weeks that accomplished base hardener sales hands like Rush Limbaugh are limp with envy. Looking at his own product, Limbaugh must wonder helplessly what Sarah's Base Hardener has, that his doesn't. She was on his radio show this week, and he said: "I'll tell you, I'm in a quandary here this morning. I admire you so much. I really don't even know what to ask."

But then he started to put two thoughts together, a very un-base-like thing to do (he might have wanted to rub his forehead with a little Sarah's Base Hardener, which can be applied topically), when he spoke of Sarah's "electrifying" speechmaking, and "partisan zeal." He could have been talking about Billy Pitchman and his hurricane-piercing voice. Could Sarah's Base Hardener's secret be as much about the delivery, as the product? Could be, said David Brooks, who said Sarah's "delivery skills are incredible." William Kristol, the kind of conservative for whom the choice between choice and base would have been particularly hard, but yielded quickly to Sarah's Base Hardener, said from the confused froth at the top of the tub that Sarah had "star quality. It matters a lot."

John McCain, meanwhile appears not to know what to do, with either the wonderfully hardened base or the froth at the top. His recent behavior indicates that a little Sarah's Base Hardener may have splashed on him, and he doesn't know which way to go. Rise or fall, at least he knows he has the gratitude of William F. Buckley.

Palin the media professional manipulator

Say what you will about Sarah Palin’s vice presidential credentials, she provides an excellent example of the dreadful state of media literacy in 2008 America.

Palin is a media literate, one of only about 1.5 million in America. Those 1.5 million acquired their media literacy through education. Palin has a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, and in 1988 she worked in television as a sports reporter. Take if from an old sports writer, it doesn’t get any more MSM than that. She knows all the definitions, principles, values and rules that media professionals use every day in their work. It’s not all that complicated; the study of journalism, and all the other media forms, is as black-and-white as learning English. The media uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs.

The other 99 percent of Americans have zero education in media. It simply is not a required subject in American schools, which is turning into more and more of a drastic educational oversight as we move deeper into the digital age, where anybody with a computer can be a “journalist.” Those people really, really do need to understand how the mainstream media works.

This literacy gap has become, and ominously provides, a wedge between the media and the public. In their illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The result is a growing American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy, vital to our society’s constant and reasonable demand for information and entertainment, and a hub of the economy.

Palin the media professional has been providing a highly visible example, manipulating naturally media-illiterate campaign crowds in Florida with remarks blaming Katie Couric’s line of questioning for her “less-than-successful interviews with kinda mainstream media.”

“At that,” reported Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, “”Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy’.”

MSM professionals understand that Palin’s manipulations are only for short-term political effect, but still it is always an aggravation to witness such abuse by one of its own. Much of the aggravation rises from our feeling of helplessness to do anything constructive for the manipulated masses. Palin has all the power here. When Palin tells a crowd she “doesn’t have a very high opinion of the mainstream media,” she says it with the understanding that, without the MSM, her message, and their response, won’t be heard beyond the arena lobby. The GOP anger language has reached a point where observers wonder if McCain and Palin shouldn’t face down offenders on the spot. I wonder if Palin shouldn’t look into a mirror and have a few words with herself.

I always wish the people being manipulated had some idea of what was going on, even when it is seven-year-old girls watching “Hannah Montana.” These are the little girls who will convince their moms to spend $4,000 for a couple of tickets to a Hannah Montana concert. Shouldn’t the parents at least know how it is done?

About Palin’s manipulations, my wishing becomes extreme. She essentially is inviting revolt against an institution that is the literal oxygen of democracy. What will the long-term effects be? Universal media education, I hope.

How bad could it get? Who knew?

This afternoon I looked through some of my old blogs relating to the Bush administration. I knew as soon as I did it that it was a big, fat, depressing mistake. Below is my blog from Nov. 8, 2006, the day after the midterm elections. What it foresaw was rosy, compared to where the nation stands on Oct. 5, 2008. We're not behind 150-14. We're behind a trillion to nothing. Here's the blog.

"The Tuesday elections have proven to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Democratic and independent candidates carried the day, and Republicans no longer possess a conservative majority in Congress.

"Either way, the nation was going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the first days after Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to 'work with,' then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority has been a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.

"It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress had remained Republican-controlled after the elections, who knows what the final score might have been? Now that Republicans have lost control – I don’t say, 'Democrats have gained control,' because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but now that Republicans have lost control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.

"Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.

"But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? 'Folks, you did your best.' Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.

"And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?

"I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, 'What it was, was football'? A well-oiled fellow next to Andy in the stands slaps him on the shoulder and says, 'Buddy, have a drink,' only Andy says, 'drank.' To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, 'Buddy, have a drank. Have several.' "

One thing has changed, this afternoon, from that November day two years ago. I am energized by the prospects of a party that has made Barack Obama its candidate for president. I think he has the makings of a patient leader and, equally important, a coach who knows the value of values, and who teaches that principles are principal. God knows we face a rebuilding program.

No refuge from Sarah Palin's wink

I'm sipping coffee at 7 a.m., minding my own business on a cozy, cloudy morning, in total thrall with no classes to teach on Friday when Karen says from across the kitchen nook table, "We need new tires. Can you do that this morning?"

Karen is so cool and dear. She and the sisterhood of women live in a non sequitur universe, wonderful in that way they can be sitting quietly when an idea that might as well have originated with the Big Bang and swirled around their universe for three billion years, suddenly arrives, zips through the window, goes in between the eyes, and comes right back out of the mouth thusly: "The bathroom needs painting; can you do that this afternoon?"

It's eerie how often the idea meets a man's need. Going for tires was just what I needed after the debate, the bailout, the mess of the world without. I walked into Discount Tire at 8 a.m. and entered a showplace of huge tires (they look so much bigger off the car) and hulking rims and manly refuge, not gym men but regular men, talking tires and treads and plies with a light seasoning of manly patois and one-liners, and at the counter, manly decisions being growled out: "Go ahead, put 'em on."

My guy was Willie. We agreed on some mileage credit and tires identical to the old ones, and Willie said, "How are we going to take care of that?" "I knew it would come to that," I said, and we chuckled together in a manly way. It was such a simple world. Willie told me it would take about 45 minutes.

Then Sarah Palin winked at me. She has winked at me at least once an hour since the debate ended, including all the hours in the middle of the night. She is the first human being related to either the presidency or the vice presidency of the United States who has ever winked at me. I take that back. Sometimes in ads for President's Day sales, there will be a dollar bill in the ad, and George Washington is winking at me. I never buy anything from the stores that believe George Washington would wink at his constituency or that I am going to be impressed by it.

I was as relieved as anybody when Palin didn't crash and burn. Surprised, too, unless she was sandbagging in those Katie Couric interviews, purposely lowering expectations as some people have suggested. The best debate reaction I have seen was provided by Steve Breen, editorial cartoonist for The San Diego Union-Tribune. In this morning's paper he shows a high-jump pit with the bar one foot off the ground. Lying on her back in the pit is Palin, big grin, fists pumped, and she is saying, "Cleared it!"

A couple of days ago on public radio, I listened to a discussion of probability theory, that branch of mathematics in which models can be created to predict the future. I would like to know, just out of curiosity, what the models would say about the effect on the stock market of Sarah Palin becoming President of the United States of America.

I'll tell you this, after the Biden-Palin debate, if John McCain is elected, I will be the man's most vocal champion. I will toast his deeds and health each evening as long as I can still afford the booze, and rise each morning in celebration of the news that he is still alive, reasonably certain in the bargain that another day will pass without him winking at me.

Here comes Willie. It has been an hour now; he promised 45 minutes. He sits, looks me in the eye – I am 100 percent certain he won't wink at me – and says sorry for the delay, but my tires are not in stock. He is going to upgrade me to Michelins, no extra charge. What a simple world it is, in here.

Sarah Palin on a motorcycle

Waiting for tonight’s vice presidential debate is like being passed by a motorcycle on the freeway. I’m going 70 and the motorcycle is going 90. This is very aggravating because nobody should be going 90 on four wheels, much less two, and if this guy cracks up right in front of me, I am going to be stuck with a dreadful nightmare for the rest of my life.

You can say jeez, that guy gets killed, and you are worrying about yourself? Well, yeah. That’s the way it is. I don’t want to see him get killed, particularly the way a person going 90 on a motorcycle down a freeway is likely to get killed. I do not want to see that. He sure won’t have to live with it, but I will.

In fact that is exactly what my brain is yelling at him when he goes by. Do you have a brain? Don’t you have parents? Who told you it was all right to go 90 on a motorcycle in front of other people on a busy freeway? Yes, he is an moron, but I hold my breath for him, and for me, until he is out of sight.

I am holding my breath for Sarah Palin today. When John McCain rolled a huge red motorcycle into her driveway that day in August, she should have said right then, “No way am I getting on that thing.” I know I would feel a lot better today, and so would John McCain, in spades no doubt. McCain isn’t just another driver on the freeway today, he’s on Palin’s buddy seat.

I don’t feel sorry for him because he should have known better. He wanted Joe Lieberman. No, said the party managers, if you want to be president you need this red motorcycle. Today, squirming on the buddy seat with Palin’s hair in his face, he might be thinking about Lieberman and feeling like he turned his back on Gandhi.

Am I sorry? No, but it still makes my hair stand on end. This GOP ticket looks just like another motorcycle I saw once, hauling through freeway traffic in San Diego, populated by the operator, who was a man; a woman, on the buddy seat behind him; a baby, facing backward, in a carrier on the woman’s back, and a rangy white dog, his hind feet wedged in the man’s crotch and his front feet on the handlebars. Does anybody that stupid deserve to crash? Yes. Does anybody want to watch it? No.

It’s only noon and I am in a flinch. I can’t get my eyes more than halfway open. She has to go 90 minutes with millions of people watching. She couldn’t go five minutes with Katie Couric without having to lean on her training wheels. Tina Fey, who after this debate may launch a second career playing Palin, was so funny on SNL when she said, “Katie, can I take a life line?”

I am worried that tonight it will be funny for five minutes and then we will have 85 minutes to go. Somebody, I think it was Judith Warner in the Times, wrote that McCain picking Palin was not only insulting, it was cruelty. I know, I could turn it off, not watch at all. But damn it, she is a candidate for the vice presidency of the United States of America. I am stuck on this freeway with 304 million people and I can’t get off.