This harsh race for the Democratic nomination has boiled well beyond the melting point of igneous rock, and today's meltdown - by the erstwhile king of the netroots bloggers, no less - is no cooler. Indeed, the intemperate screed launched by Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos, singed every Democrat who read it and had to give those of us who battle it out online a reason to pause (or in one case, to purr at a pat on the head). Put on your asbestos suits and read what Kos said about the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton:
She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.
This sad embarassment has me eager, nay, desperate for another path. I'm sick of fighting nasty Democrats 'round here. Besides, it's St. Patrick's Day and as MA Peel reminds me, "something in the Celtic soul that has a natural affinity for the complex and the poetic."
So we need a third way, and I don't mean Al Gore at the convention (though, for the first time I might welcome a compromise candidate in this mess) - I'm talking culture. The fab Ms. Peel, good Irish lass that she is, has a great up over at newcritics titled Irish Altered States. She plumbs the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson. Here's a taste, but head over and leave your thoughts:
Can all these Irish souls be in such constant pain that they need to
be continously anesthetized? I don’t know if that’s how McPherson and
Collins see it. Some of the characters dance around stereotypes, but
then become more dimensional. As for the cosmic root of the
drinking–the centuries of oppression idea is not so far-fetched. It’s
certainly part of what created the Irish epithet: “their wars are happy
and all their songs are sad.”
To someone on the outside, it’s hard not to see an underlying
sadness in these daily lives, yet you admire them for getting on with
it all, as best they can.
To those on the outside of this political blogging whirl, those of us engaged in the warfare of words must also feel some of that underlying sadness - the Irish of it. I do. Hence, the salve of skippy - the moral equivalent of a pint of Guinness on this fine evening.