The Perils of Politics and Alcohol

Never mix politics or political discussion with alcohol. Take it from people who should know better.

Too much alcohol can make you maudlin, causing you to cry at inappropriate moments, like when you're trying to get the party you control to screw the American public to the wall. It also alienates your associates, especially when you bark orders about their "getting their asses in line." And eating too much pizza with your booze, might make for unpleasant, uncontrollable smells on the House floor as well as unseemly accidents.

Never drink alcohol before breakfast or in place of breakfast. Not only do you find that you say inappropriate things, but also you find that you project your own inadequacies on the objects of your criticism. The President isn't a loser, Peggy, you are for daring to appear on our television screens at that time of the morning and in that state.

If you have a penchant for the old Chablis, avoid anything like that which might be offered you in the green room before a panel discussion. You never know who might sit next to you, and losing all your inhibitions after imbibing, you might find the real you (and all your inherent ugly prejudices) some spilling out over your tongue. For example, you might be sitting beside Van Jones and start screaming out that Eldridge Cleaver (your image of what a real black man should be like) had a big cock (or at least, that's what you've been led to believe about black men). Maybe someone should tell Katrina that when her tumescent Cleaver died, religiously, he was closer to Mitt Romney than any of her secular idols and politically, he'd turned into the prototype that's now known as Herman Cain. Still, The Priory in London will take your money for rehab, dear. Oh, and comb your hair.

Never drink alone late at night, and if you do, don't go on Twitter. Drink regresses you until you become a mean-girl Heather adolescent, spewing racist comments at people who aren't fortunate enough to occupy your bully pulpit - with emphasis on the word "bully." Once you've sobered up, you'll find you'll make a butt-clinchingly embarrassing fool of yourself trying to suck up to all the famous people you haven't insulted, just to prove you have minority friends. And sometimes when you're drunk, you end up making people like Rick Warren and Andrew Breitbart look almost honourable.

Indulging in a long, liquid lunch isn't as much a substitute for Viagra as it is a warning for an onset of inappropriate prurience. One might find oneself returning to one's place of work and assuming that your position of influence might make you more desireable in the eyes of that younger woman administrative staffer you've been ogling for the past few months. Trust me, it doesn't. It makes you look like a horny old hoofer, but she'll make a few bob off the legal suit that comes from your sexual harassment.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Pundit-and-Politico Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Radical Chic Pay Lip Service to the Poor

In yesterday's New York Times, Charles Blow, one of my favourite opinion writers, wrote a brilliant and poignantly evocative exhortation to politicians of all stripes not to forget the poor in all their shenanigans and manouevres.

Blow called upon his own life's experience, growing up poor and black in rural Louisiana. Blow's not many years younger than I, and growing up where he did, I'm sure he remembers just as many raggedy, barefoot and hungry poor white kids in his vicinity than not.

The poor are always with us and in the South, they're juxtaposed, black and white, and never far from each other. I was in elementary school in the Sixties, in a rural four-room schoolhouse off the beaten track yet 65 miles from that civilisation known as Washington DC. I'll always remember Bascombe and Zady May Darnell, two transplanted Tennessee mountain kids whose father had meandered into the vicinity to work for slave wages on a rich man's farm nearby.

Bascombe always missed most of September and October. Big for his age, he had to help with the harvest. He was already twelve years old, looked sixteen, and sat in a classroom of third graders. Zady May had already caught up with him. From April until the end of school in June (and throughout most of the summer) the Darnells walked to school barefooted, not just because the weather was fine and the days hot, but also because they got one pair of shoes every two years - Doc Martens - and they were meticulously saved for cold or inclement weather.

Both kids just disappeared after third grade ended and were never seen again.

Yesterday, as well, Senator Bernie Sanders also wrote about the condition of the poor at present in the country. This is what Senator Sanders does best, as the conscience of the Senate. He's a real socialist, who genuinely believes to each according to his ability and for each according to his need. The government taxes the haves in order to look after the have nots. Only fair.

Two great voices echoing the same message, only to be appropriated by a third, for recognition purposes.

As soon as Blow's and Senator Sanders's words were in print, Lady Radical, herself, Katrina vanden Heuvel weighed in on Twitter, exhorting all her followers to "remember the poor."

That's it then. Katrina's done her bit. She's acknowledged something her class always know, and that's that the poor are always with us. Yes, let's remember them. I'm kind and liberal. Now, next question?

Yes, Katrina knows about the poor. She's read about them; maybe she's even glimpsed them from a distance as she lives in the upper end of Harlem in a brownstone mansion, but that's probably as far as it goes. Write about them from time to time, and she's done her bit, at least enough to justify her Progressive credentials.

Katrina probably knows all the fashionable and au fait parts of London and Paris, but she probably doesn't know anything about the sink estate high rises in New Addington, Croydon, just south of the Thames (we call them "the projects") or the fetid banlieux of Paris. She's probably never ventured into the provincial towns in Britain to view the obese poor trawling through cut price supermarkets for BOGOFS (buy-one-get-one-free) of bags of French fries and tins of baked beans to feed a family for a week.

And in the US, her trips to the South have probably only included the upper end of Atlanta or a fashionable resort in Florida. Going into the mountains of Appalachia would give her nosebleed, and she couldn't bear the thought of breathing the same air as so many shit-kicking, inbread, banjo-strumming, trailerpark trash-talking Rush listeners, banging Bibles and speaking in tongues, who were probably all neo-Confederate racists. At least, that's what she's been told. Besides, she'd probably leave with cooties, if she even understood what they were saying.

It's better to gaze from afar and opine from the safety of one's drawing room and ensure any written endeavour gets pride of place in the trust fund gift of a publication bought by Daddy to amuse her and establish her in a topflight career that really took no effort from her at all.

There now. The poor have been suitably acknowledged. Time to move on and continue freedom-fighting at Saks.

Jesus, how I miss Joe Bageant.