Mind Marbles

The starving artist might be a myth. I once met a sculptor who said he made six figures. Imagine if the athlete Paul Coffey, the actor Mr. T, and the politician Harvey Milk had formed a law firm. It would be Coffey, T & Milk. It was just another day in San Francisco. A lesbian got her purse snatched, went to the police, looked at a line-up, and then fingered the wrong girl. A man fell in love with a stripper And worked all week just to tip her. Then he found out she didn’t like men, And he never tipped her again. As a culture, over the past fifty years, we’ve basically gone from watching The Dick Van Dyke Show to showing two dykes in a van with no dick. Imagine if the top 1% had an answer-protest to Occupy Wall Street called Occupy Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Stretch limousines roll into ghetto parks. Servants set up designer tents, croquet wickets, lawn bowling, badminton nets. Security is top notch. Plus, it’s catered. Now that’s a protest to join! How can anyone get elected to Congress? • Blame the incumbent and his party for everything bad in the economy. • Take full credit for anything good that ever happened to you in your life. • Give the incumbent no credit for anything good that happened while he was in office; say he was merely along for the ride, and, in fact, things would have been better without him. • Promise to lower taxes and increase spending. • Say “the children” often in your speeches, along with “this great nation,” “our valuable seniors,” “hard-working immigrants,” “gay rights,” and “a woman’s right to choose.” • Come up with a new entitlement, call it a “free benefit” that everyone has a “right” to, and say it will lower the deficit. • Then, after the country goes bankrupt, say you’re needed now more than ever to fix it, and surely will, if re-elected, provided (1) your opponents get out of the way, and (2) the rich finally start to pay their fair share of the taxes. A philosopher’s prayer: May I find the wisdom to identify linguistic and logical errors in myself and in others, the knowledge of how to correct them, and the judgment of whether it's worth bothering in any given case.