¡¡El Señoritíssimo Reducido al Absurdo!!

Perhaps I may solecise with impunity in a little known foreign tongue, Mr. Bones, and speak of an autoreducción al absurdo in honor of Master Davey Brooks’ latest pile of solemn horsepiffle? What the señorito to end all señoritos is self-reduced to is so absurd that only it itself could do the job; anybody else who thought of it would be so busy laughing that she would never get around to doing any reducing.

The little laddie itself

seems to be entirely without a sense of the ridiculous, which may be a precondition for its remainin’ alive and well and able to dabble in that trashy homebrew social- scientisin’ without which its life would evidently be meanin’less to itself.

Be that as it may, now in the fullness of time (i.e., under the sceptre of Barry Husáyn XLIV Obáma -- it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to Davidito itself that the latter should undertake an apostolic quest for, ta-DAA . . .

... a leader who is calm, prudent, reassuring and reasonable ...

Master Davey does not expressly mention that the snark it hunts must not be an incumbent President of the United States. But surely thee can see, Mr. Bones, why it takes that point for granted! If not, there be only be about forty years of age and fourteen orders of magnitude of gravitas to separate Señorito Brooks of the New York Times Company from ex-neocomrade Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

So, then, Davidito sets itself up to be the new José Antonio Primo de Rivera. For a variety of reasons, it seems unlikely that Davidito will nab any snarks at all, but if its John-the-Baptist imitation shtyk were actually to pan out, something like the late Generalíssimo would be not unlikely. In fact, "Nous, Philippe Pétain"

strikes me as an even likelier candidate, but in order to preserve rhetorical seemliness, I shall stick to the sunny side of the Pyrenees. France may be full of other species of displeasing political frogs and toads, but the specifically señoritoly element, without which Neocomrade D. Brooks of NYTC would be purely a discontinuity in the atmosphere, is not prominent.

Though thee and I can guess easily enough where Davidito’s projected voyage of discovery is likely to terminate, if it ever get past the preliminary belly-laughing from port and barkin’-’n’-bellowin’ to starboard, naturally the specimen itself has no clue at this point who will be found worthy of election. Accordin’ly, it spends most of its 750 words on conditions of worthiness or unworthiness stated abstractly, as for instance

[The New Hero] will have to explain that there are two theories of civic order. There is the liberal theory, in which teams of experts draw up plans to engineer order wherever problems arise. And there is the more conservative vision in which government sets certain rules, but mostly empowers the complex web of institutions in which the market is embedded. (...) The Republicans know they need to change but seem almost imprisoned by old themes that no longer resonate. The answer is to be found in devotion to community and order, and in the bonds that built the nation.

(( Notice, over on the right shoulder, Mr. Bones, how Master Davey has a tin ear for rhetoric: its figure of bonds buildin’ a nation is as ludicrous a literalter as St. George of Orwell’s octopus that had sung her swansong. [1] ))

That parenthetical deficiency may be conceptual as well as dialectical, however. Davidito’s cheapjack amateur sociologisin’ renders it very unfit even to guess at the answer to what has by now become a strictly historical question, "How was our holy Homeland™ originally built?" The political patient it wants to play quack to firmly believes in "History is bunk" and "That was THEN, this is NOW!", which means, in a sense, that quack and dupe are well met. Unfortunately for the little laddie’s future lustre as an ornament to its Party and its Ideology, anhistory is about the only point that Davidito and the mainstream GOP base-and-vile agree on at the moment, and it is not the sort of point that is likely to cross either of their minds.

This brings us to the question of what the señorito supposes itself to be doin’ vis-à-vis the really existin’ Party of Goldwater ’n’ Atwater. I shall be disappointed and even a tad amazed this afternoon if Neocomrade Dr. Limbaugh fails to kick this journalistic cur and patent RINO at least a little. Certainly I would. The kickin’ looks pretty good: it would be both easy and fun to mock the señorito (employed at that very dubious private/secret-sector business corporation the NYTC!) as finally havin’ examined a copy of Die Verfassung der Freiheit, but without even beginnin’ to understand the true Goldwater-Atwater implications thereof.

Up to a point, the darts and arrows of outrageous Limbaugh would be warrantable. The Big Party base and vile may not know exactly what new Hero of Error they are lookin’ for themselves, but the sweet puppies of Endarkenment certainly do not crave a Maréchal Pétain or José-Antonian Generalíssimo much more than thee and I do, Mr. Bones. I should guess about a fifty-fifty split between "Back to Reagan!" and "On to Galt!" in sweet puppiedom at the moment. Master Brooks has nothin’ worth mentionin’ of substance for either of those crews, and neither crew is likely to give an extraterrestrial RINO much credit for politely attemptin’ to communicate with them in a (highly bookish and heavily accented) form of their own vernacular lingo. "Why doesn’t David Brooks just quietly go away and join Benedict Arlen Specter someplace where it is very, very warm?" is the obvious reaction to be expected from Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh. (But not from Hooverville.)

That reaction is so obvious to expect that I am inclined to guess that the señorito itself can see what is comin’. On that hypothesis, it puts its today’s horsepiffle on the record so as to have it there to appeal back to later on, "Look, everybody, I *tried* to be friends with those people, did I not?"

Decide for theeself, Mr. Bones, exactly how sincerely and how diligently the señorito is tryin’ to befriend the Endarkeners.

I hesitate to make any really firm judgments on human events that can be observed only through all those barbed-wire fences around the grounds of the MEGOP Reservation and Lunatic Asylum. The weakest point of my guesswork is, I guess, that it assumes the señorito has already decided, more or less consciously and deliberately, to flirt with arlenspecteratin’. That is not altogether congruent with my own estimate of the Brooks specimen’s intellectual and cultural age. But God knows best.

Happy days.


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[1] Thee and I may recall, privately and secretly and as may appear seemly in the eyes of Princess Neoterica, that discussion in a French grammar book of how another grammarian was once flummoxed to be informed that Les poutres étaient la maison -- " *The beams were the house. "

To be sure, Davidito’s intellectual plight is not strictly parallel. Mad to suppose that it has some subtle étayer up its sleeve as well as the vulgar être! In any case, when he ran off the rails, little Davey was protestin’ that the beams had somehow BUILT the house.

(( Yes, I take thee’s point, Mr. Bones: a mental grown-up might have meant by Davidito’s childith lithpin’s that the beams were the causa exemplaria or causa formalis of the house, that the Republic was instantiated as an external framework to serve as macrocosmos to ‘bonds’ that had previously existed only in foro interiori. It sounds a good deal like the former Sir Filmer, yet if Mr. Locke could (pretend to) take that clown seriously, why, so can we.

(( Yet come along, sir: if you seriously believe a Master Davey Brooks capable of meanin’ that, why, you would believe anything! ))