Ever realize you don’t have an opinion on anything? That’s sort of where I’m at during these dog days of January. I follow the news, I watch a few movies, I read a few books and all I can say is “meh.”
Not a great attitude for somebody who feels the need to update his blog once in awhile. Normally, the news about John Edwards — (a) finally owning up to his transparent paternity lie, and (b) heading to Haiti in a transparent ploy to wipe some of the chicken crap off his image — normally that would be something to have fun with. But it’s January, and the days are short and the skies are chilly and gray, and all I can come up with is something along the lines of, “Yeah. That guy’s really an asshole. But how about those Saints?”
Then there’s the endlessly discussed Democratic fiasco in Massachusetts, where the party not only lost a Senate seat, but lost it to a guy who’s OK with waterboarding and posing nude for fatuous magazines. Surely any blogger worthy of his coffee-stained bathrobe feels strongly about that, right? My response: Well, it wasn’t like the Democrats were going to use their super majority anyway; they’d already proven otherwise. So who cares?
As I say: Maybe I’m not cut out for this blogging thing. I also missed a bet with Sarah Palin, the new Fox News analyst who manages to make the obvious incomprehensible. I could have mocked her incessantly, but why bother? If you really listen to what any analyst says on any network (except maybe David Gergen), you accept that none of them are saying much more than she does, and like her, they’re all just preaching to the choir. I can’t summon much sarcasm for her mangled syntax, especially when the other 3 million knee-jerk pundits have already seized the low-hanging fruit.
Ditto with Pat Robertson. It would be news if he revealed that he struck a deal with the devil, but saying the poor Haitians did? Hell, he’s been fiddling a variation of that tune for the last two decades: God visits calamity on those who are not followers of Pat Robertson. Big deal. We get it, Pat. My only question was this: Somebody had to be watching Pat Robertson for this latest foolish statement to have become public knowledge, and who in the hell could that have been?
You’d think the Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno imbroglio might have spurred a comment or two. But no. All I could do was wonder why anybody cares very much about two talk shows that viewers have been ignoring in droves. We haven’t seen the last of either man, so it’s not like we’re witnessing the end of an era. Bottom line: both have more wealth and more fame today than they did last week, and this pundit fearlessly predicts that trend will continue.
I like this post of apathy about the issues. It’s different.
And do you really own a blog-specific, coffee-stained bathrobe?
That’s my early/often comment.
Nah, the bathrobe thing is just a joke. Most of the time.
Seems like you still have a few opinions in you!
I’ve fought this thing for decades. As an editorial cartooonist I’m always expected to have an opinion. But sometimes I just don’t care to express it. Some days I’d go to work dreading having to say anything in print about anything.
I said that once to another cartoonist, Chip Bok. It pissed him off royally. It was as if I had said, “Maybe Mary wasn’t a virgin” to the Pope. Oh, well. In my case, at least, it’s not so much not having an opinion as it is not caring whether anyone else agrees with me. And for a cartoonist that translates to nothing much to say.
But congrats on saying you have nothing much to say in such an interesting way.