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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
THE WEEK BEFORE LABOR DAY
9/1/2009 5:43:53 AM
With unemployment at an all time high not seen since the dark days of the Great Depression, my email inbox is overflowing daily with all sorts of missives from, I suspect, too many people who either have no jobs to go to, or, while employed, have so little to do, they pass the time surfing the net and sending out emails to whomever happens to be in their address book.
Of course, some, like moi, are retired from corporate life. They, unlike me, have absolutely nothing to do, so I look forward to their daily emails—to the extent that if I do not hear from them, I worry they have perhaps shuffled off their mortal coil, and I will never hear from them again until we all meet on that beautiful shore.
It makes September and the “Labor Day end-of-summer” sort of a misnomer.
Because I write novels and short stories, I am always busy. It takes anywhere from nine months to two years to turn out a three to four hundred page manuscript, and short stories can take forever. Blogs such as this are cranked out while waiting for the coffee-maker to beep. But reading my emails can take up half a day.
Luckily, I am not bogged down with porn or spam (my server eradicates them post haste:) porn alone would occupy me for endless hours of delightful reverie, but it is not necessary. I have inane and insane politics to ponder. And when I run low on that, there are reams of religious and pseudo-psychological nonsense to keep me titillated.
The political agendas are worth considering. A recent spate of emails go to great lengths comparing bios of our current President with those of delirious dictators and other vermin: birth dates and places, education or lack of one, parental anomalies, birth certificates, qualifications and other suspicious paper trails, etc., etc. Generally all of it is negative (and erroneous,) and it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out the source. Fun reading and it beats porn (sort of.)
The other day, however, I received an email from an old friend, which gave me pause. At the end of his epistle, he asked a simple question. . . . This is what he wrote:
“I don’t know about you, but I am sick of the Whiners and Maligners. I ran across this while reading about a certain president, and I wanted to share it with you. The writer, whom I cannot attribute without giving it away,
reported . . .
‘His unpopularity on Capitol Hill and Wall Street—as a Chief Executive prone to rash impulses, self-advertisement, and fiscal irresponsibility—was extreme. Remarkably, though, the nation at large . . . regarded him quite differently, as political observers were everywhere conceding, not without bemusement. One of the most articulate attempts to explain this dichotomy of opinion was that of Henry Herzberg [a journalist] writing for the Charleston News. He ascribed the paradox to [the President’s] own “psychology of inconsistency,” illogically reflecting both an aristocratic will and a democratic desire to please. Hence, the President was both coordinated and conflicted, inimitable yet represented to a wide range of new, hard-to-define trends:
“SUCH A BOSOM OF NECESSITY MUST SURGE WITH OVERLEAPING AMBITION. THERE ARE PASSIONS EVER IMPELLING SOME RIGHTEOUS ACTION AND PROMPTING WHICH EVER RESTRAIN THESE MORAL IMPULSES. MR. [PRESIDENT] IS BOLD AND FEARLESS YET TIMID AND WARY; HE IS AMBITIOUS AND STRIVING, BUT CIRCUMSPECT AND CAUTIOUS. HE IS IMPERIOUS IN MIND, BUT THOUGHTFUL AND CONSIDERATE IN ACTION. WHETHER OR NOT THESE TEMPERAMENTAL TRAITS OF MR. [PRESIDENT] GIVE A PICTURE OF THE TYPICAL PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE IS DOUBTFUL, BUT CERTAIN IT IS THAT THE NERVOUS ENERGY, THE IRREPRESSIBLE AMBITION, THE FASCINATING ELEMENTS WHICH PREDOMINATE IN MR. [PRESIDENT’S] NATURE REPRESENT THE AMERICAN CHARACTER NOW IN THE MAKING.’ ”
My perspicacious correspondent left it at that, not revealing anything more definitive, except a final line: “Sound like anyone you know?”
Undaunted, I called him long distance; I had to know: “Who was he talking about?”
“I can’t tell you. Besides, it’s ‘whom’ was I talking about.”
“Tell me.”
“No. But I’ll give you a hint. The president was a Republican His likeness is predominant on Mount Rushmore. Have a nice holiday.” With that, he hung up.
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