A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Liberal Media Convenes

We met for breakfast this morning, one of those breathtaking cool and bright Northern California mornings we who live here take for granted. Seven old friends, journalists (or ex-journalists) who used to work together. Three women, four men, four Jews, one African-American, two on Social Security, two Easterners, two Midwesterners, one Southerner, one Southwesterner, one Californian, all more or less straight (although two of us have gay kids). And the question arose: Who were we voting for?

Hillary.
Hillary.
Maybe Obama, maybe Edwards, maybe Richardson.
Hillary reluctantly, though Edwards and Obama inspire more enthusiasm.
Richardson.
Hillary.
Edwards.

Consensus: It's going to be Hillary. But can she win? Is the America we don't live in -- the non-intellectual, non-affluent, non-urban, non-hyperconscious, non-reading, Fox-watching America -- going to go for Hillary?

A chill went through the room.

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