Sorry for the sparse posting of late, and putting off the promised second half of the essay about why I am taking such mean-spirited pleasure in watching the Chosen One, the Fresh Prince of Chicago, metaphorically crash’n’burn right in front of a large and amused audience. Pity he appears to be taking the stock market, the auto industry, and a nice selection of old-line city newspapers along with him… oh, the old Stalinist saying about eggs and omelets may apply here. Where will this all end… it remains to be seen, as the TV reporters standing in front of a Significant Gummit Building always announce portentously, as they wrap up their brow-knittingly serious examination of whatever it is that they have just gotten two or three minutes of local news huffing and puffing about. Probably the serious and potential effect of Lint In Small Children’s Belly-Buttons! This Scourge, If Left Unattended And Without A Lot of Dollars Thrown At It… Think of the Cheeeeldren! (or possibly at the foundation run by the person whose generated news release was just lightly re-written for the news story itself)… Oh, I wouldn’t know about the current local TV news scourge-de-jour, I only watch local news when Downtown is under water, or in danger of being glazed over with ice. Of the national news scourge-de-jour, I have heard vaguely of the ruckus over a sweet little tot in… Florida, was it? Went missing, body searched for by volunteers, mother suspected, name-something-Anthony… no, I don’t watch national channels much either. And although I used to love the various NPR shows – even with their decided tilt… I just got fed up with them, too. When the Bush-bashing and the Obama adoration got to a certain level on Prairie Home Companion – and even on, god save us, Car Talk… well, that was it.

Even before the local public radio affiliate fired me and about fifteen other part-timers, last year… I was seriously considering asking if I could have back every pledge dollar I had ever contributed. I get most of my news from the internet, hopping from story to story, blog to blog, and if I want expert comment, there are another couple of blogs that I will go to, rather than open my local newspaper and consider the maunderings of whatever NY-Times retread or local lamoid who has been so dazzled with an offer of a local byline that they will condescend to dribble away for a couple of paragraphs. (All but TH Fehrenbach… I’d read him. Pity he doesn’t have a blog or something. Maybe he does. I’ll have to check. Nope, no website and no blog – only links to his columns for the newspaper … He’s our local Victor Davis Hansen, just not quite so prolific. By the last couple of columns, it doesn’t look like I am missing much, in having canceled my subscription over a particularly scurrilous cartoon by the on-tap cartoonist Branch, a couple of years ago. It was about the Haditha Marines, and I pulled the plug on the weekend edition within about three minutes of seeing it.)

So, there you go… a fair amount of worry about the way things are apparently headed, under the benign yet feckless aegis of the Affirmative Action President and his boatload of Chicago cronies. I got involved with the local effort to host a Tea Party in San Antonio, through another San Antonio milblogger, the Ranten Raven. Before you could say Jack Robinson, or some other interesting and prophetic phrase, I volunteered… what was it, they used to say, about never volunteering? Yeah… don’t. Too late, I’m in, coordinating news releases, writing speeches and coaching those who have committed to deliver them, coordinating volunteers to have expertise in doing all that, and who have interesting contacts in local media. With luck, and eventually, said local media persons may begin returning phone calls. For this Tea Party may be something big, something splendid and awesome. It’s getting a little frightening; at how fast it has grown – from a handful of people who came to the first planning meeting, to well over a hundred last night… and a hundred or so who were vocal, engaged, and willing to step forward…and to contribute funds. At my estimation, about half were political enthusiasts, who have many years experience in the fray, in support of their various causes – but the rest were new, unblooded and engaged, fresh and energized. So one of them was only a candidate running for city council – sensing the presence of a large body of potential voters, or at least, an audience, although it was definitely comic, watching the way that everyone sidled away from him at the end of the meeting, as he launched into his set speech. All props to paying attention to what is going on locally – but minus-points for not paying a whit of attention to what had been said for about an hour and something; which was, that we all were desperately unhappy with the current lot of our elected officials, albeit at a much higher level than that of city councilperson.

It would appear that the cause of a lot of this interest in the San Antonio Tea Party was the video that I posted previously. It wound up being aired on a national news program of which I know nothing, and excited the interest of a news commentator of whom I had to confess that I also had never heard of. Until this week, I thought Glenn Beck was a guitarist with one of the noisier rock bands… eh, maybe I should pay more attention to this sort of thing… except that I am a writer, and live a fairly cloistered life. I spend more of my time and energy in the 19th century than perhaps I ought to, in these times.

So, Tea Party on the 15th, somewhere in San Antonio. The committee is still working out the venue. But I’ll be there. God knows, I’ll probably be one of the speakers, too. The rule about speakers has been pretty firmly established by the committee. No politicians.

Absolutely no politicians. They will have to come and listen to us. For once.