Joy of Cooking’s recipe for eggnog.

Damn good.  And you know why?  Because the recipe contains not one, but two, risque jokes:

a.) when adding liquor, remember always Mark Twain’s dictum that “too much of anything is a bad thing, but too much whiskey is just enough.”

b.) beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry.

Got to love Old Lady Rombauer.  A horny, boozy widow who could cook like hell.

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Of the things I say about Texas.  Like, the educational system is so goddamned pathetic that raising your child here is tantamount of child abuse. 

To which I say, hmmm…. take a looky here.  According to the state’s own statistics (and we won’t even ask what they’re not publishing), 16% of 9th-graders are held back a year.  One out of every six students, in other words, flunks so many classes they have to stay another year in the prison of public schools.  This, my friends, is what comes from a wholesale abandonment of a commitment to that fine principle writ in stone on the face of the Boston Public Library: The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty. 

Or, for instance, that Texans are so goddamned hateful that they’ll spout the most patently nonesensical bullshit just for the sake of being nasty. 

To which I say, hmmm…. take a looky here.  Leaving aside for the moment the contradiction between the first and second paragraphs (a contradiction that appears in the original report as well), let me highlight the comments made by the spokeswoman from the Eagle Forum (and I quote): “I believe that the preparers of that report have totally lost track of reality,” Adams said. “There is no question in my mind that illegal aliens are a burden to taxpayers, especially middle-class taxpayers. There is an immeasurable amount of spending that is taking place to provide these folks with healthcare, education and all the rest.”

Shorter version: I don’t care what the report says, I know what I know, and that’s that I hate brown people.  Oh, and I will also make an epistemological claim that the costs to “taxpayers” associated with undocumented immigration literally cannot be measured.  So don’t even try, ’cause I don’t want to hear anything that contradicts my hatred. LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.

By, the by, I gotta hand it to our lovely comptroller, CKS.  She makes a virtue out of a vice by saying, in essence, that our regressive tax structure (most of the state’s revenue comes from sales tax) means that illegal immigration more than pays for itself. 

Love it.  We are literally exploiting these people in every way we can.

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No really.

Think about it for a second.  George Bush and all his lickspittle buttboys (e.g., Michael Novak among countless other hacks) constantly go on about how war is a matter of “will,” that the reason why we lost Vietnam was that we “backed down,” that the only way we’ll lose Iraq is if we “lose our will.”

I’m sorry, but when did we elect a spoiled child* to be our president?  As if war were a matter of banging on the fucking table with your goddamned spoon?  As if conquering your enemies consisted mainly in screaming your bloody head off and then holding your breath until you’re blue in the face?  As if sending your best buddy into Toys ‘R Us so that he could throw a fucking hissy fit, demanding that nobody but us gets to play with all the best toys, would result in anything other than embarassed looks of sympathy?  As if winning the war in Iraq is simply a matter of steppin’ up and talkin’ shit.

I simply don’t get it.  Did Barbara never discipline this child? 

*I nearly linked to something re: Stewie Griffen.  And then I realized that that would just be wrong.  So instead I propose a new nickname for George: Veruca Salt.

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I am tired of electoral politics, people. 

I know that may come as a surprise to those who know me.  Especially those who’ve ever sat around the dinner table at my parents’ house and listened to not just endless talk of who’s running, who’s getting what appointment, who’s made promises to what constituency, who’s backstabbed whom, etc., but seemingly-bottomless discussions of policy minutiae, historical background, and first-names-only gossip.

But ya know what?  Last time I checked the calendar, it was still 2006.  I don’t care to discuss who’s running in ‘08 for at least 9 months, at which time I might consider who’s laying the proper groundwork for Iowa and New Hampshire. 

Until then, I shall try to maintain a properly obscure rhetorical distance by discussing, instead, political theory (hah!  and you thought you were safe from the jargon monster!  Oh no, he’s coming to bore you to death!).

In response to a posting on another site, I offer the following:

So, I’m teaching a course right now that’s on a somewhat related topic. One of the things we cover is how people choose candidates and parties.

I’d note that ABB apparently weights her candidate preferences heavily on personal characteristics (such as assertiveness, trustworthiness, and smarts).  Leaving aside the notion that one might choose other personal characteristics (such as the proverbial “guy I’d have a beer with”), it’s worth noting what she doesn’t mention: neither issues, nor ascriptive attributes (such as gender or race). 

This I find interesting, inasmuch as I suspect that while a lot of people say they vote on the basis of issues they in fact don’t.  This can be demonstrated with all kinds of examples, but the theoretical point derives from the fact that most folks either don’t have enough information to make an “informed” choice on candidate stands on issues, or they rely on poor information — such as stereotypes and media-generated reputational hoo-hah for things like “maverick-ness”.  So, plenty of people say they’re libertarians, and then vote for the guy who’s busily tapping our phones.  Similarly, plenty of people say they’re pro-life, and then they go and vote for the party that hasn’t done shite about abortion (substantively, that is — they’ve passed plenty of purely symbolic bullshit like the ban on D&X procedures) despite having had complete control of two branches of government for six years. Plenty of people say they’re for “responsible spending” and “small government” and then reflexively punch the button for the party that hasn’t passed a balanced budget in a generation, and has presided over a massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy.  Plenty of people say they’re opposed to “judicial activism” and then proceed to stand up on the goddamned grandstands and cheer themselves hoarse when the Supreme Court prepares itself to do away with the last vestiges of our pathetic attempts at voluntary, locally-controlled school desegregation.  I cite these examples not merely to demonstrate that most voters are liars, hypocrites, or fools (though that may be true), but rather to demonstrate the point that American democracy is not “issue-driven.”  To persist — as many media pundits do, as most newspapers do, as nearly all candidates do, as as many voters apparently do — in the fantasy that our democracy is based on the notion that people tote up candidate positions and then match them against some internal scale is pure foolishness.  Or, in the words of a colleague of my partner, it is alright to have a fantasy, but you must understand it is a fantasy. 

Similarly, while a lot of people say they don’t vote on the basis of ascriptive characteristics, there’s plenty of evidence that they in fact do.  Usually this occurs in the form of using them as the basis for the stereotype-based “issue” inferences alluded to above — witness Richard Viguerie’s recent foamy-mouthed and barely-concealed racist and sexist imprecations regarding a “Pelosi/Conyers/Rangel-led Congress”.  This is a double fantasy — though not, technically, a meta-fantasy (hah!  I told you the jargon monster was waiting!) — inasmuch as it involves willfully denying one thing in order to say something else which, if anything, requires even more obfuscation that the initial act of mendacity (once the jargon monster strikes, he’s always hungry for another bite!).  One almost wishes for the day when people were straightforward about voting on the basis of ascribed characteristics — at least it involved only one imperfect assumption (that one’s interests “naturally” align with people who happen to share the same skin-color, genitalia, religion, sexual orientation, etc.), rather than two out-and-out falsies.

Now, if one attempts, as ABB does, to focus instead on personal characteristics — or, if I may be so bold, if one tries to look for “character” in a candidate — then one immediately comes up with a whole separate set of problems.  Problem #1: “character” is, at this point, damn near an empty signifier, inasmuch as certain political actors have deliberately muddied it with considerations of a quite different order.  So, President Clinton fell prey to accusations by the Christabigot hoards that he had no “character” because he wouldn’t confess publicly and properly to certain sexual sins.  By the same token, the Christabigot hoards tripped over themselves to vote for loudly self-proclaimed man of “character” too stupid and too incompetent to conduct a proper war.  “Character,” in other words, has become synonymous not with competence, trustworthiness, backbone, and intelligence (see any Jane Austen novel for backup on this definition), but rather with an ascribed characteristic — religion.*  Which is as much to say that most voters, even if they say they look for “character” in a candidate, in fact use pathetically poor stereotypes by which to judge “character” — and in doing so rob the concept of “character” of any real meaning.  

But this suggests to me a second-order problem.  Say that we could vote on the basis of “character” and not “issues” or ascribed characteristics.  This would suggest that a lot of the ways in which academics (or the mainstream media) typically think about the Presidency, and about American democracy, simply don’t match onto empirical reality.  Academics tend to describe the President in terms of his position as a party leader — i.e., someone elected on the basis of their promises regarding certain issues.  The media, on the other hand, tends to describe the President in terms of his possibilities as a celebrity — i.e., someone whom we like and adore, and whom we elect because we find their narrative (Camelot, “Sunshine in America,” “chopping brush on the ranch” etc.) compelling. 

ABB, however, seem to me to suggest that we ought to think of the President more in terms of their simple ability to get shit done.  And if they aren’t smart enough, or don’t have enough backbone, or aren’t reliable enough to manage the biggest damned bureaucracy this side of the UN without putting their filthy paws into the collective till, then we shouldn’t even give their resume a second glance.  Would that more voters thought her way, to be sure – perhaps we might then have a prayer of not electing an incompetent boob and all of his frat-boy bully boyfriends.  Would that we lived in a meritocracy, where talent and drive really did raise the cream to the top.  Would that we lived in some very different kind of polity, one that did not reward venality, demagoguery, and the racism-by-another-name-that-smells-just-as-putrid.

That, my friends, is a fantasy I’m willing to work for.

*I leave aside for the moment a discussion as to whether religion constitutes an ascribed versus a voluntary attribute.  Though most American religious sects (especially of the evangelical taint) are theoretically voluntary, in politics religion functions by ascription. 

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