The Elephant and Butter has apparently been light on fillips lately. It happens. Sometimes one must spurn the ever-grabby internet and do and see some actual things in the actual world. So I've been out taking photographs of various curbs, studying library stuff, riding around on my white bicycle, watching the kids down at the skate park, buying horn-rims, and reading. Which brings me to Hendrik Hertzberg's
Politics. His crisp, moral and always-swashbuckling political rhetoric in the
The New Yorker pretty much got me through the last presidency, but only recently have I dug further back into his writing career. Yielding such food/prose thrills as:
"'We are not gray grains of oatmeal in a porridge of privilege,' said Lloyd Bentsen in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. Just so. Also, we are not cowflops of complacency in a meadow of mediocrity. We are not quasars of querulousness in a galaxy of greed. We are not pousse-cafés of presumption in a cocktail lounge of cronyism. We are not BMWs of braggadocio on a parkway of plutocracy. We are not courtesans of callousness in a massage parlor of mendacity. We are not sun-dried tomatoes of sanctimony in a warm salad of wealth."
It's like he knows me!
Now back to my sweet-ass hermitage of realia...
