The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Happy Birthday to Me

Posted on | October 6, 2024 | No Comments

Among the ‘elite’ in 2017

Today is my 65th birthday — old enough to qualify for Social Security, but still working. It’s been four days since I updated the blog, but my day job kind of interfered with the blogging schedule this week. Also, I keep doing that thing where I begin an article, write hundreds or even thousands of words, and then abandon the draft because some news event interrupts. Do not accuse me of early-onset Alzheimer’s — I’ve always been somewhat scatter-breained this way, before they had such terms as “ADD” or “multi-tasking” to describe my modus operandi.

My greatest joy in journalism was the years I spent, from 2008 to 2012, in a blur of frenetic travel, doing shoe-leather reporting on the campaign trail. Being on the scene, reporting what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, provided infinitely more satisfaction than the mere quote-and-comment stuff of blogging. But the rigors of the campaign trail take their toll — it’s a young man’s game, and I was something of a senior citizen in the traveling press corps even when I was not yet 50. Nowadays, it seems, the business of covering campaigns is done mainly by kids fresh out of college, no doubt as a cost-saving measure by financially strapped media organizations.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s been so long ago that I was careening around upstate New York covering the Doug Hoffman campaign, furiously ratting the tip jar to pay for my gas and the rental car (that got ambushed by a deer one foggy night). That grassroots populist Tea Party campaign against the GOP Establishment (remember Dede Scozzafava?) was, as those of us who witnessed it predicted at the time, a template for the 2010 midterms, when Republicans recaptured the House in a historic landslide (see “The Republican Mandate,” Nov. 25, 2010). And, when you look at it in retrospect, one can trace a direct path from the populism of the Tea Party movement to the campaign that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and which now, less than a month before Election Day, bids fair to return Trump to the White House again.

Excuse the nostalgic reverie, but you get to be this old and find that most of what you have to offer the younger generation is (a) fabulous tales of Ye Olden Days, and (b) advice that they will, of course, ignore.

Portrait of the Author as an Old Man

However frustrating it is to get old, however, it is still preferable to the alternative. Merely being alive can be considered an achievement, at this point and, like Carl Spackler said after telling his story about the Dalai Lama: “So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”

Speaking of old guys, it’s a great misfortune that my old blog buddy John Hoge died last year. As you know, Hoge was an alumnus of Vanderbilt University and yesterday, the Commodores upset the Alabama Crimson Tide, the first time in 40 years that Vandy beat ’Bama, and the first time they had ever beat a team ranked No. 1 in the country. Why did this tragedy strike the Tide, which was riding high after knocking off Georgia a week earlier? My brother Kirby could preach you a sermon about what’s wrong with Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, but you probably wouldn’t want to hear that sermon. However, having received total consciousness (thank you, Dalai Lama), I view this world-historic event — Vandy beating Alabama — as a timely omen of November 5.

Maybe it’s just me who sees it this way, but if lowly Vanderbilt can triumph over the top-ranked team in the country, isn’t it possible that Donald Trump can achieve something no president has done since Grover Cleveland, winning the presidency in two non-consecutive terms?

Trust me on this one. I went to Harvard University. Once, on a road trip with Da Tech Guy in 2017. But at least I can say I went there.

What did I gain from that experience? Well, not total consciousness (again, thank you Dalai Lama), but merely walking across Harvard Yard has a mystical way of imparting the spirit of elite enlightenment, and from that experience I obtained a crucial esoteric insight that, to celebrate the occasion of my 65th birthday, I will now share with readers, i.e., the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

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Category: Journalism, Shoe Leather Fund

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