nixing the debates

The debates are on right now, both Canadian and American.  I watched a bit of both, and now I can't watch either.  Unfortunately, Sarah Palin has been well enough coached that she isn't hilariously inarticulate, like she was with Katie Couric; she's just mean and small-minded with a giant sparkly smile.  What kind of moron voter is warming to that fake folksy manner, I don't even want to imagine.

And up here, I think Dion is doing a good job of overcoming his accent, trying to connect with the public and get vital points across, which is hard when your English is barely comprehensible and you are small and nerdy.  Elizabeth May is a breath of fresh air, Jack Layton is a pit bull, Harper is a timber wolf in sheep's clothing, pretending to be just a nice aw shucks guy with the coldest blue eyes on the planet.  And  what the other guy is doing there, I have no idea.  Unbearable.

On Vision at the same time, there's a program on the Kindertransport - Jewish children shipped out of Germany before the war, to save their lives.  I watched a bit of that to give me perspective, and found it beyond unbearable.  The thought of putting my children on a train to God knows where ... what selfless courage.  What agony.

So much for tonight's television.  I'll have to wait for Jon Stewart to be able to watch something that doesn't hurt. 

Sunday's Write in the Garden workshop has been cancelled.  My writing friends have more sense than I - today was, in fact, freezing, so a day in the garden in October was not one of my best ideas.  I do, however, have four people working on their memoirs one on one with me - indoors.  Where it's warm.  If you have something you'd like to work on in my toasty office, let me know.

Today I had a call from my dear friend Lynn in the south of France.  She has had such bad laryngitis that she's been unable to speak for a week.  Today her voice was so growly and low, she sounded like a man.  But then she'd laugh and I'd get the hint that it was indeed my friend, not a manly baritone-voiced guy pretending to be her.

The same laryngitis hit an actress at the Shaw Festival today.  I know, because I was in the audience of "The President" at midday when someone came on stage to tell us that one of the actresses couldn't speak.  Instead of cancelling the show, they went ahead - the actress did her role, that of a very efficient secretary, with another actress who plays a second secretary standing behind her, saying her lines for her. It worked perfectly. 

Sarah Palin as a ventriloquist is not that good.  It's impossible to forget that a month ago she knew absolutely nothing about the wide world; that she couldn't tell Katie Couric a single newspaper or magazine that she reads; that her lines have all been fed to her by someone else. Impossible to forget that somehow, in this new surreal world, we are meant to take her seriously as a politician.

 

The comic Bill Maher, in a rant against religion, said that "praying is talking to your imaginary friend."  I am asking my imaginary friend, fervently, to make sure American and Canadian voters listen carefully to the voices jabbering at them tonight.  Listen closely.  Choose wisely.