CSotD: Time to Make the Sausage

I’ll start with the above Dunkin’ Donuts commercial for the benefit of readers either too young or living too distant from these shores to catch the reference.

Today’s headline is a portmanteau of that commercial along with the well-known wisecrack that one should not watch the making of laws or the making of sausage.

I can attest to the latter, since a good friend worked in a turkey processing plant and explained why he would never eat turkey loaf, the least gag-inducing portion of which was that turkeys that fell apart or fell on the floor, or fell apart and wound up on the floor, were what went into turkey loaf.

However, I have recently begun to wish that more people would spend time wandering among legislators, because simply watching CSPAN doesn’t give you a proper sense of how government functions.

It is true that proposals which had previously fallen apart or on the floor or both get tucked into bills, including relief for our poor millionaires, particularly when the end product, like turkey loaf, is mashed up enough that consumers won’t identify the individual parts.

But it’s not always that way and, if you’re going to comment intelligently on politics, you should get down into the nitty gritty of how it all works.

However, let’s start on a simpler level of things you’re supposed to know, with this

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Michael de Adder)

(In the Bleachers)

Perhaps I’m handicapped by having worked from home about half of my career, but I’m puzzled by the whole personal-sanitation issue that has come up.

I don’t necessarily buy the idea that you should dress for the office even when you’re working for home, and I’m not the least bit ashamed to work in sweat pants.

I suppose that, if it helps you get into the groove to be wearing your khakis, sport coat and tie, go for it, but I draw the line at the people who are obsessing over not being able to get a haircut.

You don’t need a freaking haircut after only three weeks. When you start looking like poor Ben Gunn, we’ll talk.

But there’s no reason to start smelling like poor Ben Gunn.

One of the most striking revelations of my second bachelorhood — the post-divorce one that began at 34 — was that I stood out among prospective beaus because I showered when it wasn’t even Sunday.

I wasn’t proud of me. I was embarrassed for them.

It seemed proof that a lot of guys really don’t read the articles in Playboy, because you can’t even be Hugh Hefner, much less James Bond, if you don’t have the goddam sense to wash up before getting all smoochy.

Or trying to.

Note they said “reads.”

 

On a more cosmic level

I’m not sure if David Rowe was satirizing Louis XIV, the fellow on the left, who declared “L’etat c’est moi,” or Louis XVI, the fellow on the right, who got his head lopped off in the sort of mutiny that Dear Leader said “is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch.”

Or some other king. Not the point.

Point is, that, as has been the case for, oh, about three years now, there’s not much point in trying to make sense of the things the President of These United States says, but I’m truly sorry the sound is carrying all the way to Australia.

 

And apparently, based on Dave Brown’s latest, they’re also getting a good dose of Trumperies over in Great Britain.

As appalled as I am that there are guys who haven’t gotten the message that they should wash regularly, I’m even more appalled by the humiliating notion that people in other countries have been watching the Five O’Clock Follies, even if they’re only getting the highlights.

I realize that we’re still the most powerful nation in the world in terms of being able to blow everyone to atomic smithereens, even if we’re not quite the biggest economic bully on the block anymore.

I also realize that we’ve exported all sorts of television programming of which we should be ashamed.

I read once that, when they showed “Laverne and Shirley” in Malaysia, they prefaced it with the explanation that it was a comedy about two insane women, so that the audience could understand WTF was going on.

I trust Dear Leader’s nightly sausage-making demonstration is being viewed in the same context.

 

Our governor is proposing an additional $300 a week pay boost for people who work in nursing homes and similar facilities, and I wonder if we shouldn’t also offer some kind of hazardous pay stipend for journalists who have to sit and, as Matt Wuerker puts it, listen to Dear Leader gnash his terrible teeth and roar his terrible roar.

I had the kitchen TV on last night, muted, so I could track things while I cooked, and when I went back long after dinner, Dear Leader was still prattling on, and I thought, you know, the guy will continue to talk as long as he’s got an audience.

I thought of my partner on the business beat, back in my newsroom days, who did a regular feature called “On the Job,” where he’d go work some job in the community and tell what it was like.

The city was having continual problems with its sewage treatment plant, and one of the other reporters joked, “Hey, Joe, sounds like an ‘On the Job’ story!”

He accepted the challenge.

He got in there up to his waist in the sludge and gave our readers a close-up, first-person look at the problem.

That was 25 years ago, and today Joe is editor of the paper and damn well deserves to be.

I hope the reporters who up to their waists in this sewage are equally recognized and rewarded for their efforts.

 

For my part, I’m content to read their summaries, and to hope, along with Mike Luckovich, that the good people of Wisconsin are a harbinger of November.