End of era, but life still good

First, please let me offer a note of relief and resignation:

When all is said and done, I believe the Clintons at long last are done, done in by the Second Coming. Their White House hopes may not totally be dashed by the primaries on the first Tuesday in March, but the writing on the wall is plain as day.

The old Democratic victory song seems totally stilted now: “Happy days are here again.” In reality, the old Clinton era is toast. As we collectively swoon over Obama, he’ll bring a new tune to Washington: “I did it my way.”

All too true. We’ll celebrate as our most liberal member formerly of Congress takes the oath of office next Inauguration Day. Then what? Nothing that Congress--being much more moderate--will tolerate. You may think there’s been gridlock before. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
And now, back to my regularly scheduled, typically upbeat column

“I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be....Old age, I decided, is a gift.”

That was from an Internet piece forwarded by a friend who urged me to write something along those same lines.

Yeah, I’d agree with the woman quoted. I have a home that’s paid for, a nice pension and a wife who’s still my first one. Further, I can still get around and sleep well at night. My wife may view that gift of old age not quite so generously, since she’s been in various sorts of pain for a long time.

My being from Texas and all that, I’ve always felt pretty confident and don’t usually dwell on darker subjects. Truth to tell, I avoid them whenever I can, and usually succeed. We’ve had our share of heartaches, for sure. Anyone who’s raised three children to adulthood could hardly avoid them.

Even so, optimism, although interrupted by such things as the current stock market’s pitiful performance, has ruled my life. Perhaps overly so? Perhaps.

A book reviewer brought me up short recently, describing accurately how I sometimes look at things. Colin McGinn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted that we happy types, “...[A]re apt to be bland, superficial, static, hollow, one-sided...and foolish. Sold on the ideal of the happy smile and the cheerful salutation, [they are] locked inside their own dreams of a secure and unblemished world, oblivious to objective reality, cocooned in a protective layer of bemused well-being.”

Ouch. Then he makes the book’s case “for the dark night of the soul [that] brings a much needed corrective to today’s mania for cheerfulness.” The book is “Against Happiness” by Eric G. Wilson. I’ll not read it. I don’t read most books, or hadn’t you noticed?

Rather than dwell on any of my “bemused” happiness foregone or wasted, I prefer to make light of life’s burdens involved in growing old, at least to age 75. Others do. Here’s Julie Andrews in a special appearance at Radio City Music Hall in observance of her 69th birthday.

She wowed the crowd with new lyrics to her famous rendition of “My Favorite Things” from the movie “Sound of Music.” Such as:
“Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions, No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions, Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring, These are a few of my favorite things...
“When the joints ache, When the hips break, When the eyes grow dim, Then I remember the great life I've had, And then I don't feel so bad.Right on.

It all brings to mind another song I particularly enjoy: “Forget your troubles and just get happy; the Lord is waitin’ to take your hand.”

And I’ll be darned if I’ll go, kicking and screaming. How ungrateful that would be for all the joys I’ve had in this world, this country and this community, being around people I care a great deal about.

Too syrupy? OK, I’ll back off and growl a bit. But wait. I just thought of something else about the good times of later life. A guy writing about getting through midlife misery claims accurately that it’s not so bad in some respects. As writer Melik Kaylin notes, again in a piece in the Wall Street Journal, it’s when finally you’re past being “troubled by a pretty face...[and] you can look on pretty faces with equanimity...”

That says a mouthful. Senator McCain, please copy.

Breeding value, not distrust

My usual pithy takes on the news and local events must take a backseat today. For I'm about to cut loose with something original, at least as far as I can tell.The subject is hybrid vigor, plus presidential politics, which I'll get to shortly.

But first let me dwell on some stuff I learned long ago at Texas A&M where I was an animal husbandry major (shortly before the specialty became “animal science").I know that’s ancient history now, but the concept of hybrid vigor in organisms isn't. It comes to mind today, and I'll tell you why in a minute.

But first you should know that my dad was a grower of purebred Hereford cattle. The breed was the most popular among beef cattle, and certainly the most physically attractive with their white faces and light-brown bodies. Their main competition was the Black Angus.Hereford breeders would shortly be aghast to find that Herefords were being bred to Anguses to produce what some called white-faced blacks and still do. These offspring were found to possess hybrid vigor, as evidenced in increased and more efficient production of beef than either of their parents could achieve from mating just within their own breed.

It's no secret today that some folks who are people of pallor and similar in beliefs to those old Hereford breeders (like my dad) are aghast that we contemporary Americans have also been known to do some cross-breeding ourselves. It's also no secret that some of the offspring have become exceptional individuals.

I would say such hybrid vigor helps explain the superiority of notables like Tiger Woods in golf, and perhaps even Barack Obama in politics. The latter, by the way, is typically mislabeled, in my humble opinion. He's no black. He is truly an African-American. His father was a Kenyan, his mother a white Kansan.Not that I intend to cast a vote for a Democrat, please understand. But it wouldn't surprise me to see Obama win the presidency. Hybrid vigor explains it as well as anything else. Regardless, ABC: Anybody But Clinton.

Now let me segue to a couple of comments from respondents who get my columns via e-mail.
Regarding my complaint last fall that mental patients now may hardly ever be forcibly confined, friend Dr. Manuel Belandres chimed in. You may recall he practiced many years in Stafford before being de facto retired by outrageously rising liability insurance premiums.

“Ben, in 1969-77, I was still in New York City when the wonder drugs invaded mental hospitals. They worked so well the decision was made to release all the mentally ill patients and set up outpatient mental health facilities. To continue in-house treatment was deemed too expensive and no longer necessary....But then the patients became the newly homeless. What went wrong? Who would expect that these patients would regularly take their daily dose of wonder drugs? By then it was too late to resurrect the mental wards.”

And check this illuminating clarification from a fan of Sen. Jim Webb, who I had dissed for being rude to President Bush at a White House reception:

“Senator Webb had just had a lengthy conversation with President Bush about Webb's son in Iraq before the media showed up. Then Bush asked him the same question--one they had just a moment before discussed thoroughly, "How's your son in Iraq." For the benefit of the media.”
True? I hadn’t ever heard that explanation of the incident. Any substantiation?

Latest on politics and dim bulbs

From Slick Willie to Trick Hillie: Elect one and get both.

How could we be so stupid? I’ll vote for anybody who can beat those crooks. Bill is due to reap $30 million soon from a recent financial deal and Hillary has more skeletons in their closet than Mafia bosses ever did.

What can voters be thinking? Or ignoring?

So there. Now I feel better. From now on, until next November, I’ll try to keep my columns free of further erudite analyses of those two bad actors. Hock-tooey.

Now to return to my usual fare of tender expressions and light touch. Such as: Washington wants to avoid another recession by throwing cash out of airplanes, with bipartisan hurrahs, and hoping consumers will spend it all and hype the economy. Swell, but don’t expect any change except a growing national debt. And when all those GOP presidential candidates claimed they’d also reduce government speaking, I hope everyone laughed out loud.

Perhaps from all the above, you may suspect I’ve become pessimistic lately. No way. True, unemployment is rising, the stock market is sick and so is the real estate market. And even our county’s budget teeters precariously, worsened by our new board of supervisors that is clearly falling apart as we speak.

But wait. We are now winning the war in Iraq, thanks to our troops and their enlightened leaders. Kudos to U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman: “It is our obligation as a free people to honor our heroes who sacrifice so that we may remain free.” Right on. The Iraq outcome, in the long run, will matter more for the USA than all our other current worries put together, except for our choice of a new president next fall.

On the lighter side, so to speak, I hear that we’ll soon have to throw out all our incandescent lights and screw in the new compact flourescent bulbs, which are dimmer. Why? To fight global warming, of course. You see, our old bulbs emit heat and the new ones don’t. But since the new ones require less electricity to burn (while costing much more), who cares if your winter heating bills rise as a consequence.

Further, as you know, when you drop an old bulb, all you get is broken glass. If you drop a new one, you’re in big trouble. One woman, according to a story in Forbes, dropped one and called to learn what to do, since she knew it contained mercury. Her poison control hotline directed her to her state’s environmental protection bureaucracy. They showed up and found the bulb boosted her mercury levels to six times the state standard. Inspectors gave her an estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room where the bulb broke.

Are we overly spooked by such alleged dangers? Obviously. When I was little, I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury it contained. Didn’t hurt me a bit. Where was I? Oh yes, Hillary cackles, and and Giants slay and and…

I failed to mention it, but my wife and I went to Florida in January to get away from the cold. It was mostly cloudy, so no sunburns--a disappointment. However, while there we took a day to drive to visit The Villages, that huge restricted cluster of homes for 55-plus folks like us (97 percent white, of race and hair) south of Ocala.

It was charming. The big town square was alive with nice shops, a polka band and lots of happy souls who were only too eager to extol the place and its more than 30,000 residents. Approaching in my rental car, I noticed there seemed to be more golf carts tooling along than cars. I remembered reading somewhere that the residents had only recently established a new Guinness book of world records by arranging the longest golf-cart parade in history.
Then I looked for a parking place, especially a convenient one for the handicapped, since I had brought along Carole Lee’s placard. There was none so designated. Puzzled at first (the mercury effect?), I soon realized that most everyone there could also qualify for one, so there weren’t any.

By the way, it was easy to guess that John McCain would win the Florida GOP primary election. He looks like most of the residents in The Villages, for sure, and also most of my white-haired friends around here. In contrast, Romney looks more like our boomer children.

Whatever it takes, just remember, ABC: Anybody but Clinton

Now a word from our sponsor

Thoughts on a long winter’s night keep intruding as I try to forge a coherent column on something or the other. In looking back over my past decade of published stuff at this time of year, the path of least resistance has generally done the trick: To wit, TV commercials. After all, it’s said the average viewer sees about 24,000 of them a year.

They reach the epitome of excess during the annual Super Bowl football game, of course.
Anheuser-Busch has traditionally been a huge source of humorous and costly beer ads. Their Clydesdales have nearly always been winners. Remember the horses’ football game, including kicking the extra point? And how about the newest installment, where the equine participants impatiently await the replay official’s verdict, to be delivered—appropriately—by a zebra. That’s what many fans call real referees wearing their black and white shirts.

So it was inevitable, I suppose, that competitor Miller Lite would tack onto the Clydesdale beer wagon thing and lampoon it. Typically the wagon features a tail-wagging Dalmatian mascot riding on top. In the Miller version, the dog leaps off the beer wagon and through a Miller truck’s open window into the cab, and then looks out happily.

One of Anheuser-Busch’s most affecting commercials of recent vintage has nothing to do with horses or beer or dogs. It depicts a typical airport lobby’s crowd scene when troops in fatigues, obviously just returned from overseas, start passing through the
waiting passengers. They start applauding. The scene is touching and memorable and honorable. Kudos.

Those flashy Super Bowl ad extravaganzas come and go. I remember one of recent vintage, again featuring animals. Cowboys are doing their best to try and round up a herd of—cats. It was hilarious. But who can remember its sponsor? It was EDS, the data management giant that Ross Perot founded and nobody ever hears much about.

Apart from Super Bowl excesses, recent commercial ad flops I’ve encountered include one by Sprint. It mimics those numerous ads for men’s sexual problems. In dissing competitors’ inadequate broadband coverage, it calls their malady “connectile dysfunction.” Ugh.

Another is a really bad new series of commercials by Toyota, where owners of older cars push their cars off cliffs, etc., so as to buy a new Toyota. I’m sure the insurance companies consider those fictional scenarios just hunky dory for real policy holders to emulate.

The only car commercial I’ve seen that seems effective is the recent one for Cadillac when the seductive young woman drives along and purrs, “When you turn it on, does it return the favor?” Nice.

And now for a local observation. Parroting advertisers, localities often adopt slogans to promote one thing or another. One with a political slant appears on D.C. license plates. In campaigning for the District to gain representation in Congress, the tags read “Taxation without Representation.” Pretty whiney, I’d say, and probably counterproductive. A more honest label: “Home of teen killers and tax cheats.” By the way, D.C. homicides in 2007 topped 180. That compares with only about 33 for all of Northern Virginia with a population that’s several times as large.

As for those numerous little spokes-creatures in commercials, lots of copycat ads try to mimic the successes of the GEICO Gekko and the AFLAC Duck. One failure, like most, is the “Gorilla in the room” commercial. They all soon get time-worn and boring.
GEICO has moved away from so much Gekko emphasis, but the substitutes haven’t worked, in my opinion. One series features news-style treatment of comics like Fred Flintstone and his family. The other series, more objectionable, presents a real customer plus backup commentary by assorted entertainment personalities. They may tickle some. Include me out.
Then there’s Peyton Manning, the Colts football star, running up and down a hotel hallway or giving sage advice. Get the hook.

I do enjoy a few commercials on occasion. One from the Internet investment service E-Trade demonstrates how many things one can do with a single finger, like plugging a leaking hole in the dam or letting your old stockbroker know he is no longer needed.

It’s also fun watching the Apple cool guy outsmarting the Microsoft PC nerd.

But my current favorites are Bill and Karolyn Slowski, the crabby old married turtles who still just love their slow dial-up Internet access, and not Comcast’s swift cable.
Political ads? No thanks. They’ll crowd out most of the good stuff in coming months. Unless there’s a repeat video of Hillary Clinton’s hilarious and endless cackling, I’ll switch the channel.