"both parties require a good deal of watching...there is not prodigious difference between the moral characters of the one and the other." james thompson callender. richmond recorder 1 novenber 1802.__________________________william safire maintained that callender was slime because he put paid to an idealized, consensus vsion of the "founding fathers" while callander said he was doing "whatever was in my power to give a candid account of what went on in that place." ( specifically he was writing there of his tenure as a stenographer in the house of representatives...however his political reportage went well beyond the house )...well...safire was a nixonite speechwriter so i feel justified in calling him slime and the "founding fathers" were trysting long before there was a swamptown if you actually look into it...power hates those who present it with its less than noble actions so callender has been maligned and marginalized for reporting what he saw...politics in this country has always been a sleazy business and no less so on this election day...admittedly a local primary election with virtually no interest to virtually anyone given the turnout i witnessed this morning at the poll...
of little interest or not i have made an effort to vote in every election i am eligible to cast a ballot in since the above mentioned nixon stomped george mcgovern flat in 1972 ( and we all know what that led to, right? )...so i wandered down to the polling place this morning where i was completely outnumbered by poll workers, much less the shills, sycophants, and actual political hacks that were outside bombarding me with literature,screaming names, or, like one aged hack, creatively openeing his coat to flash a "vote for____: ( i am not going to shill for this bozo ) in gold letters on a red tshirt...perhaps the "committee to elect_____" was desperately short of cash this political season...who knows? moreover who cares? my main motivation in voting is that politicans don't like a turnout...it makes them nervous...if more people voted they just might have to pay a bit more attention to the polity's needs rather than serving their owners ( did i write "owners" instead of "donors"? or did i just think it? )...gerrymandering ( ah...elbridge gerry...one of those "founding fathers" ) is, after all, simply an attempt to make elections more predictable by selective disenfranchisement of those whose needs the political machinery wants to marginalize or completely ignore...as usual it was a negative choice...i went to vote ( past discomfiting the pols ) to make an effort to keep one specific dingus off the autumn ballot ( which entailed actually declaring a party allegiance...if politicans can be deceitful so can i ) and so off the city council...the municpality has enough trouble functioning as it stands...they don't need to complicate matters with someone who wouldn't make a good dogcatcher...and in doing so i ensured my name would remain on the roll of registered voters so i can, at least, try to make them think about what they're doing come november...possibly a forelorn hope but, to borrow one from alexander dubcek, hope dies last.
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