Cacophonous Effusions

I really don't want this to turn into a political blog, but I have been distracted from my mission (to examine the meaning of work in our lives) by events that cannot be ignored. A faithful reader has written an e-mail actually complimenting me on the previous entry. This is seductively encouraging for a writer. Lucky for the rest of you that I shot my wad on that piece so now I must go back to reading the paper for ideas.

I enjoyed this Opinion column by Joseph Epstein in the WSJ today .
Mr Epstein has the perfect way of keeping sane - trying to find literary parallels while trying to make sense of the sound and the fury of the political campaign. I hope he won't mind if I quote a few lines, (since you probably are to lazy to click on the link and actually read it without a tease).

"So enraptured have I become by the political morality play of the Democratic primaries that, with much shame, I have returned to watching the McLaughlin Group on PBS on Saturday nights. This shameful recidivism has occurred after a rigidly self-imposed, three-year absence from the cacophonous effusions of Eleanor Clift, Pat Buchanan, Mort Zuckerman and the rest.

"The barking of these dogs as the caravan passes should be beneath a man who prefers to think himself cultivated. What do I care what they think, especially when I already know what they think? Like so many of the punditi of our day, they are all, as E. M. Forster termed it in his "Aspects of the Novel," "flat characters," by which he meant characters utterly predictable in their opinions, behavior, character – characters from whom one should expect no surprises. "

I wish I'd said that.