broken spirometers
Things Not To Do, Part MMMDCCXLVISJIASDF: Have MSNBC and your local lefty community radio station on at the same time, both with the sound on at equal volumes, with the former playing back Gov. Palin's resignation announcement at the same time that the latter is running a Democracy Now! special consisting of Noam Chomsky talking for a solid hour. (As has just occurred minutes ago in the room I'm sitting in.)
First, because if the sound waves collide, there'll be an explosion and people will die. Second, because the inability of either speaker to stay on a single topic for any length of time (Noam's talking about an old coup in Haiti, then he's talking about U.S. agricultural policy, then about the Constitution as an aristocratic document designed to thwart democracy, then about how horrible Obama's Af-Pak policy supposedly is, and bla, bla, bla; meanwhile, Palin's attention span is apparently shorter than your cat's), their separate meanderings just kind of tangle together into weird extremist spaghetti.
But third...life's just too short. Certain people's shtick only works when they're not in a position to be responsible for anything. Apparently Sarah Palin's just figured that out, and now she'll get to join Newt and Dick as irresponsible folk heroes for crazy people (no matter what she's about to be indicted for). And has the same ever been true of Chomsky for a lot of this decade, and especially this year. But certainly there are more pleasant ways to reach that conclusion than actually listening to them.
First, because if the sound waves collide, there'll be an explosion and people will die. Second, because the inability of either speaker to stay on a single topic for any length of time (Noam's talking about an old coup in Haiti, then he's talking about U.S. agricultural policy, then about the Constitution as an aristocratic document designed to thwart democracy, then about how horrible Obama's Af-Pak policy supposedly is, and bla, bla, bla; meanwhile, Palin's attention span is apparently shorter than your cat's), their separate meanderings just kind of tangle together into weird extremist spaghetti.
But third...life's just too short. Certain people's shtick only works when they're not in a position to be responsible for anything. Apparently Sarah Palin's just figured that out, and now she'll get to join Newt and Dick as irresponsible folk heroes for crazy people (no matter what she's about to be indicted for). And has the same ever been true of Chomsky for a lot of this decade, and especially this year. But certainly there are more pleasant ways to reach that conclusion than actually listening to them.