Sunday, August 19, 2007

"Holy Moley!"

cried Billy Batson that stalwart comic book character from an primordial era in American history. Sometimes Billy would shout other words, notably the magic acronym "SHAZAM!" and thus be transformed into the superhuman & righteous crimefighter Captain Marvel.
The good Captain came and went some fifty years ago, he was once the top selling super-hero comic but he went belly up in 1953 a victim of lagging sales and endless copyright lawsuits from DC Comics. I like to think he was just too pure and simple for even the Eisenhower era.
Mitt Romney likes to shout "Holy Moley" as well, or so the Boston Sunday Globe reports this morning, but there are no magic words to transform him from a cold aloof opportunist into a warm folksy j'es plain folks type caricature let alone a superhero in red tights.
So instead Mitt keeps spouting puerile expletives like "Heavens to Betsy" and "Gosh all fish hooks" and all like that hoping somehow to make a connection with voters. The Globe article suggests he is condescending to his audience, but I think he carries on in this ridiculous fashion because some image consultant thinks it obscures his origins as a former Governor of the hated state of Massachusetts.
After all, nobody even in the most remote recesses of the Berkshires carries on in this affected fashion, especially a graduate of Harvard and a fomer CEO of a venture capital corporation with a global reach.
Mind you, Hubert Humphrey used to talk this way, but he had an excuse he was raised in the rural depths of South Dakota when "Tarnation" was still a part of the local lexicon. Ole' Hubert may have also wanted to obscure his own background as a college professor of that strange mystical discipline political science.
Mitt Romney however grew up amidst privilege in Michigan and talking like he is Jed Clampett is just plain foolish.
However this is another Presidential campaign run by the corrupt on behalf of dangerously cynical candidates, we can expect worse than just stupid cliched' expletives before we are done.

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