DailyMail tries to transcribe Fetterman’s question to a bureaucrat about the recent major problem on I95 in Philly. (It wasn’t a failure of the bridge itself; it was a tanker truck that burned up a bridge. So it wasn’t a Federal policy concern, and didn’t need to be discussed in Congress.)
“I, uh, would just, um, really like to, you know — the 95, 95, 95. You know?
Obviously, you’re pretty much preoccupied with 95, and I, I certainly am too… and we know its a major atery (sic), not just for Pennsylvania, but for the East Coast.”
The sentence irresistibly reminded me of an earlier incoherent politician who was being pranked by his speechwriter:
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Bill Snodgrass was a history prof at Phillips. In class he was openly conservative and Republican. He was also close friends with the remarkable Angie Debo, an open Marxist who lived openly with a female companion in the small town of Marshall. Debo edited the MAGNIFICENTLY objective WPA Guide to Oklahoma in 1941.
Snodgrass brought in Debo for a class lecture once. She gave us a perfectly objective view of Okla history, and then engaged in a cheerful play-fight with Snodgrass. There was no enmity. Both understood the reasons for both sides, and both enjoyed striking a few sparks for the benefit of the overly idealistic students.
In his active Republican side, Snodgrass wrote speeches for Happy Camp III, a Waukomis banker who was the congressman for Enid at that time. He told us that Happy was a dumb but loyal party hack. Snodgrass enjoyed playing with Happy’s stupidity, inserting fancy words in the speeches.
Later I heard one of those speeches and appreciated Snodgrass’s playwork. Happy was speaking in Tonkawa, proposing a new dam on the Walnut River. “I know that you are tired of the Walnut flooding every year. I am just as tired of the flooding, and of the de de de de De Vast Ation that it causes.”
Nobody in politics today could imagine PLAY-FIGHTING and PLAYFUL PRANKS. Nobody could imagine open admissions of pranks. Nobody could imagine a conservative inviting a Marxist to give a lecture. Nobody could imagine the Marxist providing strictly objective facts. Or vice versa.
Everything in politics is a permanently sealed Top Secret. Every “election” is the most important event in all of human history, and every pointless “law” and “executive order” is an existential necessity or an existential world-ending apocalypse, depending on which label is attached.
Politics used to be openly treated as ENTERTAINMENT, just as science used to be openly treated as ENTERTAINMENT.
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Addendum: Now nobody could imagine building a dam to prevent floods. Now we tear down dams and build flood-generators.
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