{"id":163386,"date":"2020-06-29T12:01:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T11:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=163386"},"modified":"2020-06-24T10:55:38","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T09:55:38","slug":"satire-the-strange-and-curious-case-of-politicianitis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/satire-the-strange-and-curious-case-of-politicianitis\/","title":{"rendered":"(Satire) The Strange and Curious Case of \u201cPoliticianitis\u201d\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The soundtrack to daily life is a very specific tone of voice that is heard across all news outlets and entertainment channels. The voice of the generic talking head as he or she mouth platitudes and empty repetitive cliches\u2026.”<\/span><\/em>
\n \u2014 John Steppling<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wish it were not so, but it was, and is, so,\u2026and so it goes\u2026.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to say when precisely the phenomenon commenced, but because it was first recorded at a Commencement Ceremony at a very small and unimportant \u201cLiberal Arts\u201d college in the embarrassing \u201cfly-over\u201d part of the country, and somewhat deftly reported by a sophomore reporter for the college newspaper, it was at first entitled \u201cThe Commencement Malefaction.\u201d Later, in less polite society, owing to the slight paroxysm of embarrassed laughter that accompanied the eruption, some wag termed it, \u201cThe Gaseous Gyro.\u201d Then, some group complained about all the \u201cpolitical correctness,\u201d and another group complained about those complainants, and bedlam was about to break out until the enterprising student body president got up a petition entitled, \u201cLet\u2019s Just Call a Fart a Fart!\u201d And then it was known as the \u201cFarting Phenomenon,\u201d and, for a time, \u201cMouth-Farting,\u201d until an enterprising New York Times<\/em> reporter got hold of the story, decided that \u201call the news that\u2019s fit to print\u201d required an escalation of language, and, since the visible and olfactory aspects always involved politicians, the odious and odorous ailment came to be known simply as \u201cPoliticianitis.\u201d<\/p>\n

After it was re-named such, the general public weighed in and assertions were tweeted and emoji\u2019d that the earliest case had been observed (and whiffed) in Sheboygan, or Jersey City, or Los Angeles. But no one ever offered tenable proof!<\/p>\n

It happened this way: a politician would begin a speech with the usual spinning of words like drunken ballerinas\u2014words accoutered in tutus and tights\u2014and everything would go well (in terms of stupefying the audience, putting them to sleep, rousing them to violence, or whatever was the intention or inattention of the moment) and then, as the peroration neared, there would be an unintentional fart! Right out of the politician\u2019s mouth! Left or Right, Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Libertarian, Fascist, Antifa, Black or White, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Easterner\u2014it made no difference. As soon as he or she or Trans or Straight or LGBTQ or QTBGL began to say something political, there was a guttural rumbling and the air became fetid\u2026.<\/p>\n

Investigations were demanded, and Mr. Ambiguity himself\u2014Comey\u2013came out of retirment to see what role the Russians were playing. Intermittently\u2014like, every few hours\u2014the public was assured that \u201cThe Investigation\u201d was going well, results were imminently forthcoming, but there were always \u201cunforeseen circumstances,\u201d\u2014lost emails, hurricanes, Global Warming, and a slew of events \u201cbeyond our poor powers to add or detract\u201d (as Lincoln had said.)<\/p>\n

The public might have learned to put up with these \u201canamolies\u201d\u2014they had already suffered much at the hands of lying politicians, and only half of \u201cwe the people\u201d bothered to trot out to vote in the greatest Empire the world had yet imagined\u2014but, sadly, inevitably, the contagion spread.<\/p>\n

Fans of the Fox channel tried to ignore the reality when one of the attractive ladies on the thigh-high set let go with one of those \u201cslight paroxysms of embarrassed laughter,\u201d and her cohorts discreetly moved down the couch. When one of the white-bearded \u201celder statesmen\u201d at CNN evinced the same paroxysm in the midst of a vis a vis <\/i>interview\u2014with a general, no less!\u2014the public understood the full dimensions of the problem.<\/p>\n

But, things only got worse!<\/p>\n

University students began to complain that their classes were impossible to sit through. How could they possibly learn about Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or Bakunin when their professors were stomping about in mad efforts to diffuse the evidence of their transgressions and transmissions?<\/p>\n

But, things only got worse!<\/p>\n

Sports had long replaced Religion as the digestible \u201cfaith\u201d of the declared and decreed \u201cRepublic.\u201d Sports was where the herd went to forget their subjugation\u2014the whirring knives of Time inexorably approaching. Sports was vicariousness raised to the nth degree\u2014a quasi-mystical land of super-heroes and buxom cheerleaders; or, in the admittedly pseudo-world of wrestling\u2013freakish good guys and villains, and spilling-over mamary glands parading about the ring.<\/p>\n

But now it was all changed. For, with every tackle, with every toss on the mat, there was grunting, and with grunting came the paroxysms and soon the stadium or the arena was evacuated because of the \u201cfire hazard\u201d caused by the surfeit of gas.<\/p>\n

From politicians to academicians to sports figures and figurines, the phenomenon spread from group to group, and then, to the general public. And it was clear that there was a pandemic\u2014comparable, some wrote, (but would not say!) to the Plague of the Middle Ages. But others demurred and wrote, \u201cNo, it is much worse!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen can we hold our true love in our arms again,\u201d the poets wondered, \u201cand whisper tenderly to him\/her\/it, \u2018I love you,\u201d and kiss him\/her\/it\u2013without encountering a ghastly, but understandable, expression of reproach and rebuff?\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, speech died. The \u201ccitizens\u201d of the \u201cGreatest Country that ever was\u201d retreated to their \u201cdevices.\u201d Robotics stocks soared. And, soon enough, people forgot the spontaneous sound of the spoken word or the sung word, and nobody dared to remember\u2026.<\/p>\n

Sep 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr. <\/em>Gary Steven Corseri <\/em>is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/a> He <\/em>has published novels and poetry collections, and published\/posted poetry, prose and dramas at hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide, including <\/em>Transcend Media Service<\/a>, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, Village Voice and<\/em> The New York Times.\u00a0 He has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library, and his dramas have been presented on <\/em>PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere.\u00a0 He has taught at universities in the U.S. and Japan and in US public schools and prisons. <\/em>Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – dissidentvoice.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is difficult to say when precisely the phenomenon commenced, but because it was first recorded at a Commencement Ceremony at a very small and unimportant \u201cLiberal Arts\u201d college in the embarrassing \u201cfly-over\u201d part of the country, and somewhat deftly reported by a sophomore reporter for the college newspaper, it was at first entitled \u201cThe Commencement Malefaction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[1964],"class_list":["post-163386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-for-thought","tag-satire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}