ADullAche

A quick look at history tells us Regan’s trickle down theory was a bust. The rich got richer and the rest of us, well…we’re still the rest of us. However, as these things often go, the theory is sound, just misplaced.

In the current political climate it’s not economics that trickled down, but language; the parsing of words, the specificity of phrasing all the wannbe presidents use to run themselves up while running the other fella down. (Yeah, I said ‘fella.’ Just yesterday in Indiana, Paul Gipson, president of a steelworkers local, said Hillary has “testicular fortitude,” and if anyone knows testicles, it’s steelworkers…and Hillary…every night before she goes to sleep she gets to see Bill’s in that jar she keeps on the nightstand.)

This intentional – while at the same time hazy – use of language is relatively new. Back in Eisenhower’s day he just said stuff to confuse everyone, Nixon out and out lied, and Bush can barely put together a coherent sentence.

It came to our intention with First Gentleman in Waiting Bill Clinton’s “what is, is?”

Things have gone downhill from there.

In this election year it seems it’s not enough to “denounce” or “repudiate” you have to “reject” – as we learned with Obama and Farrakhan and now Obama and Wright…unless it’s not enough to “reject” and “repudiate” and you have to “renounce.” I’m pretty sure you have to do one of those and not the other if you want to run things… and you have to be fairly uncertain about the meaning of “torture.”

That’s not the problem. The trouble is now this kind of thinking has filtered down through our social fabric and last night it made its way into a kid’s 9-10 year old recreational league baseball game. (A rec league means everyone plays, regardless of talent, so expectations are low.) When I read the rules it seemed to say sportsmanship is paramount, no harassing the other team when they’re up at bat, none of the ol’ “Hey batter, batter, swing.”

But I was hearing plenty of “hey, batter, batter,” from both sides.

Well, it turns out one of the coaches – a clever lawyer who didn’t want to go to law school but play in the big leagues, and if not for an enormous lack of talent would have – read the rule carefully and found as long as the kids didn’t say “swing,” the could say, “hey batter, batter” all night long.

They could say, “hey batter, batter spit,” “hey batter, batter dance,” “hey batter, batter vote Gore as a write-in”, just not “hey batter, batter swing.”

Once again the letter of the law trumps the spirit of law, and common sense. Yeah, we’re leaving a real nice world for our kids to take over.

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