A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
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27 April 2017
Dear Adam,
We haven’t had a genuine heart-to-heart chat for a long time.
What’s that?
Okay, okay. Actually we’ve never had one, and maybe the crazy dream I had last night helps to explain why.
You were right there in the dream, all buttoned down and ambitious like usual, accessing your devices. Your hair wasn’t short like it is now. It was long and unruly like Ludwig van Beethoven’s, and I kept making interpretive gestures with my hands because I figured you couldn’t hear me.
Of course, you can’t hear me, but it’s nothing to do with your hair, and the world’s best hearing aids probably wouldn’t.
Except maybe I’m thinking of Deaf Gahan instead.
In the dream, you approached me and began describing the importance of an upcoming Democratic Party meeting. Seeing as I’m invariably polite and well-mannered, I didn’t bother waiting until you were finished to make an incisive comment.
“You realize that I don’t like you very much at all.”
Not a beat was skipped.
“And I don’t like you much, either.”
There was a pervasive and refreshing feeling, not unlike air freshener. It was as though I’d been cleansed, but before I could walk toward the pulsating Bud Light over yonder, consciousness returned. With it came the feeling I get most mournings, that of being stuck inside of Nawbany with the Bamberg blues again.
Make no mistake, Adam. This wasn’t a nightmare, just a documentary film in my head. It provides a mature basis for the future of our relationship. Consequently, perhaps it’s time for us to review my banishment from the Floyd County Democratic Party’s social media feeds.
C'mon, you miss me -- don’t you?
It’s been three years since you lubed the muzzle and convicted me in absentia of violating double secret protocols. Let’s put it behind us. Today I’m asking that you restore these inelegantly severed communications immediately, prior to the 2019 primary, when I’ll likely be running as a Democrat(ic Socialist).
And those things people say about you not sticking to a party chairman’s impartiality during primary season? They’re just jealous of your unctuousness.
As a side note, does anyone know how much Bernie charges for campaign appearances?
The Bored of Works might temporarily close Spring Street, with the rally at 11th, so close to my councilman’s house that he’d still escape cognitive dissonance via his back door, and into the alley.
Everything’s on the table, you know.
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Seriously, your being seen as a vindictive and punitive censor in this scenario might further damage the party – and it’s already taking on serious seawater at precisely the time when you might be leading the principled opposition to Trumpolini.
Except that it’s complicated, isn’t it? Just because we’re not close at all doesn’t mean the sickening irony’s not out to get you, so if you please, allow me to ice down my stiletto and carve the turkey.
Even the elderly heating and air guy who calls the your shots for you knows deep down that the party is in a perilous position. Gahan’s unforced errors are mounting, and Dear Leader’s well along his inevitable transition to millstone-like liability.
Deaf’s vote share fell 12% in 2015, and now he’s breathlessly alienating the ever slimmer 4% standing between a glorious third term and an ignominious loss to Mark Seabrook, Al Knable, or the ghost of Thomas Dewey.
Sorry to say it, Adam, but Advanced Disney Appreciation didn’t really prepare you for the current reality, did it?
You’re selflessly toiling out on the street, trashing Trumpism and preparing for your own quixotic anti-Clere house quest, while over on the other side of town, your local superdupermayoralstar is busy cementing his reputation as the Eastwick Drive version of Daddy Trumpbucks, albeit it with half the money – but give Gahan enough paving projects and the funding gap is sure to narrow.
The hypocrisy keeps getting deeper, the metaphorical sewage is rising, and pretty soon coffee break will be over, and it’ll be back to standing on your head, counting the recent catastrophes.
The Lorch city council attorney beheading?
Ridiculously botched.
The Summit Springs capitulation and appeasement?
It’s an object of widespread and unremitting public derision and loathing.
A sewer rate increase?
About as helpful as the cup of decaf coffee mentioned above.
One by one, the voters of the 4% are dripping down your rusty commode’s edge – and this was before Gahan’s decision to split his own party with an inept “Make Public Housing Great Again” campaign, thus fully Trumping the Donald.
Were you the one advising him to come out of the bunker and pretend to pretend leading for once? It must have terrified you when those veteran Democrats – a Bill Cochran award winner among them – finally stopped chugging the Kool-Aid and started asking unanswerable questions.
(By the way, I’ll give you credit for the way you helped Gahan pack the New Albany Housing Authority’s board with scentless sycophants. It was startlingly artistic in a Nixonian throwback sort of way, and akin to a date rape drug for former veneer salesmen.)
However, the rebellion of the Democratic elders isn’t what I noticed during the roll-out of the public housing putsch. Rather, it was the revulsion of ordinary New Albanians, as accompanied by the clueless silence of the Gahan Youth.
And Adam, about your farm system … oy vey.
There are plenty of banjo hitters and 150-lb offensive lineman, but not very much in the way of star quality. Who’s going to replace Bob Caesar some sweet day when he takes his talents to West Palm Beach (or Holiday World)?
Never mind. I’ll just call the animal shelter myself to see which mutts are up for adoption.
It wasn’t that your prospective big leaguers were averting their eyes from the horror. It’s that they didn’t even grasp it, and had no idea that the bilge spewing from Gahan in their own backyard contradicted so much of their party's platform and history.
Did you so much as try to use it as a teaching moment, or is the cancer too far along? Concurrently, the single best statement of principle during Gahan’s war on the working poor came from a young New Albanian by the name of Nick Vaughn.
He’s not one of yours, is he?
Ye Gods, chairman: When it's the Republicans talking sense about poverty while a Democrat dances a jig atop the bleached bones of affordable housing, there's not enough whiskey in Bardstown to help get you through the night.
I could go on and on, and likely will.
In the interim, just one last question.
How’s that non-transparent authoritarian censorship mode been working for you these past few election cycles?
Sweet dreams, Beethoven.
“Ode to Joy” may not be coming to Floyd County Democratic Party playlists any time soon, although there is so very much entertainment to be gained from comic opera.
Your friend,
The Rajah
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Recent columns:
April 20: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad? It was a modest start.
April 13: ON THE AVENUES: Ain't it funny how we all seem to look the same?
April 6: ON THE AVENUES: On swill and tornadoes, circa '75.
March 30: ON THE AVENUES: Our great and noble leader is here to stay, so let's break out the țuică and make a joyful noise.
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