It was a productive weekend, so let the anonymous hate mail begin!

The past weekend was busy, with numerous festivals, picnics and events, and for some unknown reason, my muse wouldn’t let me be.

Redistricting: Grudgingly coming soon to a laggard city near you.

Council obstructionists, now burdened with the responsibility of fulfilling the redistricting mandate publicly, and with transparence, can now be counted upon to mobilize the misdirected malice of downtrodden ratepayers and (what else?) strenuously object to being forced to pay the legal costs accrued solely by reason of the council’s own vacuous indolence.

Ritz, Whiz and Ripple: Envious troglodytes point random disinformation generator at the Carnegie Center, demand full investigation of wine and cheese.

Seeing as incomprehension and disinformation are veritable birthrights of New Albany’s “little people,” it’s safe to assume that for at least some of them, neither an educational evening spent at the Carnegie Center for Art and History, nor the Center’s annual habit of pairing one such evening with a fundraising wine and cheese tasting, is quite enough to quell the pain and anger dwelling within the breasts of those for whom the existence of well-adjusted, rational people is an insufferable daily affront.

Randy Hubbard and the headlong flight from ideas.

Apparently Plan A is the hope is that (Doug) England will commit an unforced error capable of being exploited for electoral gain. There seems to be no Plan B. In the interim, Hubbard’s attempted gravitas seems increasingly less plausible than what is almost certainly the non-spinnable reality: A comprehensive absence of platform content, grasp and ideas on the part of a reluctant candidate desperately recruited by his own party for the sole reason of warding off an expected insurgency emanating from the upstart outsider residing at the Admiral Bicknell.

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Turning to the national page, I haven’t seen yesterday’s New York Times, but last Sunday the inimitable Frank Rich offered another of his devastatingly accurate indictments of the lamentable “Reign of Error” otherwise known as the presidency of George W. Bush. It came at the end of a requiem for Karl Rove:

Last weekend's Iowa straw poll was a more somber but equally anachronistic spectacle. Again, it's a young conservative commentator, Ryan Sager, writing in The New York Sun, who put it best: “The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate.” That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.

Speaking of entertaining collapses on the part of the GOP, the Tribune’s fine young guest columnist took the Republicans to task yesterday for abandoning one of their own in his time of need:

Where’s the loyalty?, by Daniel Robison.

Another local resident has made it to the big-time spotlight. Lately, he was all over the Internet, radio, newspapers — you name it. He was at the center of national debate; talking heads and bloggers yakked and spun prose, respectively, about his personal and professional life. Even Jay Leno made a joke at his expense — a tried and true indication that a person has hit the big time.

But this local is not famous; he is infamous. Fingered in a police report as committing a sex act on a sleeping man, president of the Young Republican National Federation and Clark County resident Glenn Murphy Jr., is now a poster child for what happens when one’s personal, professional and political lives meet at an unfortunate impasse.

Daniel exhibits praiseworthy compassion at Murphy’s personal plight:

But that is no excuse for how the GOP has hung him out to dry. If he’s eventually charged and convicted, fine, that’s grounds for cutting ties. But right now it seems that Murphy’s Republican friends and colleagues have abandoned him, and that’s no way to treat one of their own.

Fortunately, Murphy lives in kinder, gentler times, and he'll not be forced into the solution presented to Colonel Alfred Redl by the Austrian high command.

Not that Rove wouldn't have offered it ...

Self-described “mouthpiece” for right-wing dogma crashes and burns. Can the Christian re-education camp be far behind?

Up until recently, I was sure that the following description of life in America was the official slogan of the excremental George W. Bush reign of error, although I’ll readily concede that it might be better used as an epitaph for the most futile presidency in our nation's history*:

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

But now, given hilarious breaking local developments, I’m leaning toward another statement of bedrock-solid, right-wing principle:

Young Republicans: Their members interact, jack ...

There’ll be no trashing the messenger, because I’m not making this up. Visit the website of the Young Republican National Federation and read the text for yourself:

While the YRs are best known for political activism and service to our communities, YR events also provide a great opportunity for interaction amongst membership. This interaction allows for the exchange of ideas, networking, and friendships that will last a lifetime.

Ah, the good old summertime.

The deliveries are floating toward the plate as big as beach balls, and the bat feels as light as the ideological content of Mike Sodrel’s briefcase.

WHACK … sure got all of that one, and there goes another Republican hypocrite slamming face first into the outfield wall, but to be perfectly honest, it’s just no challenge when it’s this easy.

No steroids - honest. Viagra's another matter.

It would be positively joyful for me to mock the fallen wunderkind’s best available plea of consensual fellatio, and yet there is precious little happiness to be derived from any of it, and I greeted the news with equal measures of resignation and sadness. As the scandal broke, Murphy’s own political peer group managed to erase his name from the Young Republican website faster than Uber-Mensch-Super-Man’s speeding bullet. That’s positively Orwellian, isn’t it?

But seriously.

It is vital to understand that whatever Glenn Murphy Jr. or any other American does on their own time in the company of like minded and consenting adults matters not one jot, but of course it all goes out the window when politics comes into play. Ludicrously, Murphy and others of his expediently ideological “values” ilk have forged careers cynically parlaying baseless fears and prejudices into ready-made political platforms for persecution of people who, as the remarkable irony turns, are actually just like themselves.

For proof that the hypocrisy is a nationwide epidemic, here’s another recent case: Operation Yellow Elephant.

It is neither pretty to look on as unchecked hubris claims another victim, nor enriching to observe the flailing and disassembling that accompanies the ritualistic public lashings to follow, as we scream, howl, and learn absolutely nothing from the experience, our attention spans having been reduced to the length of 30-second television blurbs, the grammatical brilliance of Steve Price’s collected fireside chats or the velvet case for a microchip -- whichever's smaller.

Sadly, I suppose the endlessly repeated spectacle remains necessary in some pitifully human way, perhaps reflecting a desperate hope that someone, somewhere might seize upon equilibrium, compassion, understanding and respect as hopeful ways of making sense of our fellow human beings and co-existing in a community with them.

I’ll not be holding my breath. People hereabouts are plainly too willing to embrace nonsense for me or anyone else to be optimistic any time soon.

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* That's right, Millard Fillmore. You're officially off the hook.