Has anyone out there had this experience?

You put in a call to customer service of a company whose stated goals are to correct problems, field complaints, offer instructions or make reservations for airlines or hotels or whatever. This service is advertised heavily and assures the customer that all inquiries will be prompt, efficient and helpful.

An automated voice will prompt you to make decisions that will hasten your inquiry and either attempt to correct your problem by pushing buttons or, if a live agent is busy, politely ask you to wait. Many of these automated services will give you a heads up on how long it will be before you are connected with a live operator.

Most of us have accepted this impersonal process and have put up with it despite the frustrations and one-sided inability to react to a human voice connected to a human intelligence.

I guess one might justify this hardship on the basis of our tolerance of paying the price in inconvenience that comes along with the astounding gadgetry that has revolutionized our lives. Those of us who grew up in another era where such matters were handled via live people exercising human intelligence might curse this increasingly automated world, but the fact is that it is here to stay and I suppose we will have to accept its frustrations and live with it.

My beef, which is the subject of this essay, is what occurs when you do, at long last, reach a live person. What we usually get on the other end of the line is someone that speaks in a tongue that is allegedly English but is, for the most part, incomprehensible, deeply accented and missing the subtle nuances and pronunciation that makes all the difference in clear and comprehensive voice communication.

I am all for the global marketplace, but in this area of the spoken word, my experience has been so frustrating that I must lodge a fervent protest, even to the wind, that this practice by some of our most beloved and successful companies is painfully counterproductive and, in a number of ways, irritating and regressive

The most obvious negative concerns employment. In this time of high unemployment why can’t these jobs be filled by our own countrymen and women who speak American English?  Think of the thousands of unemployed who would use their native born assets to earn their keep and help us all crawl out of the terrible burdens imposed by unemployment.

Yes, I can understand that there are Americans who will resist taking back breaking seasonal agricultural jobs now being filled by cheap and desperate labor from Mexico, but customer service is the kind of job that Americans can welcome and, in the process, improve the public relations of those companies who employ thousands of workers in third world countries.

Am I the only complaining party? Where is the outrage? I have resisted mentioning the companies I deal with by name, although it is a common practice of all American based companies these days.

Whenever I get a heavily accented voice on a customer service line my blood pressure goes up ten points as I try my best to communicate with the person on the other end of the call. I try to be polite but it wastes precious time and energy to make the connection, if ever. Sometimes I will simply hang up in frustration and seriously try to avoid the company that employs these foreign voices. Such practices seem to negate the whole idea of customer service.

Okay, it is not true of everybody, and I suppose the companies calculate that if they get fair results fifty percent of the time it is worth the candle, especially since they are employing labor at what is undoubtedly cheaper wages than they would have to pay Americans.

Having spilled some bile over this, I’ll bet you have me down as an ingrate for not mentioning the problems of Spanish speakers and those immigrants who arrive in America with no knowledge of English. I do not know of the difficulties encountered when callers choose Spanish language customer service.

Having grown up in a world of immigrants speaking another language, I can sympathize with their plight. On the other hand it is inescapable that the English language will continue to predominate in America for the foreseeable future and those who do not use and understand it as a necessity to live and flourish in our culture will be marginalized and their futures seriously obstructed.

I understand the realities of the global marketplace and disparity in the cost of labor that makes American companies salivate when they can shrink their labor cost by hiring foreign workers. While I do admit a jingoistic urge when it comes to sending jobs overseas, I understand also the realities of cost reduction and the profit motive.

In this case, however, I have no reservations in calling for these jobs to be brought back to our shores.  It is a foolish and counterproductive practice in an era of high unemployment at home. I suppose an argument can be made that these global companies are helping third world citizens to become consumers of American products, but that offers no solace to those here at home who are having a tough time finding jobs.

It is not often when a personal predilection and complaint fits into such dual categories meaning that it would be both good for people like me who use customer services frequently and good for providing jobs for unemployed Americans.

I’m confused.

I listen carefully to what our leaders feed the media. I watch them on television. I read their words on numerous Internet sites. Because I was once in the public relations business I do understand parsing, spin, slant, timing, and story placement.

In fact, I orchestrated it on more than one occasion. It was my job and I understand the mechanics of information manipulation. Indeed, the march of technology has made it even more possible to manipulate masses of people, especially the discouraged young, to rock concert frenzies and protestations. Unfortunately it is a doubled-edged sword.

It has given the disgruntled and oppressed a powerful weapon. It has also empowered the terrorists, jihadists and a vast variety of cultists and anarchists. It has provided mobilizing energy to anyone with a cause, however noble or destructive, in the name of God or the devil.

I have seen how information was managed during all of our wars from World War 2 to the present day. I was a soldier in the Korean War where I served in the Pentagon as the Washington Correspondent for Armed Forces Press service.

During that Pentagon service I attended daily briefings on the course of combat by various military spokesman. The briefings were feckless and transparently self-serving and all of us reporters were in on the spin.

But of all the monumental baloney I have heard in my lifetime, the reasons given for our Libyan military adventure is beyond even feckless. Worse, it is transparently incompetent, wrong headed and, for what my opinion is worth, dangerous to the aspirations of our country.

In a nutshell here is what we have been told by the two highest authorities in our country, the President and the Secretary of State.

We are in the fight to prevent the loony brutal dictator of Libya from killing his own people and paving the way for a new group about which we know absolutely nothing and who could, if that is possible, be worse than the displaced dictator.

Thus, it is now declared policy of our country to go to war to prevent dictators from killing their own people.

Posing behind a tsunami of self-righteous feel good compassion, we are now committed to a world-wide cleansing of all those tin horn, greedy, corrupt dictators who without blinking an eye are perfectly willing to kill their own citizens to remain in power. That would mean we are committed to be the world’s disciplinarian, willing to spend the blood of our young people and the treasure of our country on a hopeless mission to destroy human evil. That is hardly an exaggeration,

Under this new plan are we now prepared to send our planes and missiles to punish the leaders of the Syrians, the Saudis, the Yemenites, the Jordanians, the Bahranians, the Iranians, the Ivory Coast dictators, and a bevy of bad actors on all the continents on the planet too numerous to record here?

How can our Secretary of State and the President declare such a policy with a straight face? It is scary and indefensible and is sure to lead to our being sucked in to all the murderous feuds, religious, tribal and secular that plague our planet.

I’m not certain my own outrage is shared by others in our country. I hope so. Indeed, I once believed in the great idea of the United Nations, a caretaker of a united world of free people with the goal of creating a peaceful planet. That dream died years ago.   What a mess that organization proved to be.

Are we in America now committed to take orders from this incompetent Tower of Babel, where most of the power is now concentrated among those corrupt leaders who we are now committed to destroy?

How is it possible that with eyes wide open, we elected people who are so far out of their depth that they are putting all of us at risk of demolition?

It may be that it is time to give voice to the unthinkable. Perhaps, like some incurable disease, all the drugs of compassion, good intentions, and sanctimony are impotent against the relentlessly destructive virus of evil.

Lets try withdrawing the medicine for a while and maybe, just maybe, a world immune system will kick in from some magical source and affect the cure.

I won’t hold my breath.

The standoff in Wisconsin reminds me of Woody Allen’s great quote that “ninety percent of life is just showing up.”

It reminds me, too, of Alexander Hamilton who signed on to the Constitution when the other two members from New York marched away from the convention in an angry funk after disagreeing with the resultant document. If he hadn’t signed for New York, one might speculate that the Constitution could have been delayed, significantly changed or scrapped. Who knows?

Perhaps I am too much of a purist about democracy having grown up in an age, when the bedrock rules of a free country were enshrined in the democratic process. As Winston Churchill had opined, it is a messy business indeed but apparently the only way yet devised to channel the people’s will into some kind of orderly intent.

While I understand that it is a wrenching process to eliminate expectations once promised, especially if it hits people in their pocketbook, I must acknowledge that changing times demand changing priorities and the first principle of democracy is that majority rules.

That said, I have to take issue with the elected lawmakers who have chosen to escape their responsibilities because they do not like the results attained by the majority. Frankly it is a bit scary although the protests are, so far, peaceful. The right of protest is inherent in our concept of freedom. So is the obligation to serve when voted into office to represent a constituency.

Indeed, there is an inherent contract between voter and candidate. Just as in sports, a team plays to the bitter end even if the odds against it are insurmountable. Every sports fan and team player understands this arrangement. Grace and courage in defeat is one of the great hallmarks of sportsmanship.

As a citizen, there are lots of things I object to in the various laws enacted by those legislatures that directly affect my life. But if my fairly elected representative chose to escape his or her responsibility by scooting out on the process because he didn’t agree with the result, I would shoo him out of office at the first opportunity. In my opinion, whatever their arguments, they have disgraced the democratic process and that, to me, is a high crime against the fundamental concept of a free society.

One can find both merit and demerit in the various arguments being bandied about as to the fairness of what the Governor of Wisconsin and his allies in the legislature have proposed and it is easy to take sides in the protective comfort of distance from the fray. But there are some basic issues that demand comment, especially in an age when the Internet hands anyone a megaphone, including yours truly.

There are some issues where silence is not an option and this is one of them.

If Egypt and, indeed, the whole Arab world need a role model for how to conduct their governments in the ways of democracy, they should look no further than to one of their closest neighbors.

Israel.

Sounds crazy. It’s not.

To do this young Arabs must rewire the tangles put in their minds by decades of hateful rhetoric and bloody confrontations that have led them into a kind of intellectual and political oblivion and crippled their capacity to make rational decisions on behalf of themselves. It is time they started to learn from their neighbor and stopped demonizing it. It has brought them nothing but death and despair.

Israel is a true democracy, albeit messy, unruly, argumentative and fractious but somehow miraculously workable. Every point of view has its passionate representation including religious orthodoxy and its Arab citizens. They have an excellent military under civilian oversight.

Indeed, there are religious parties in Israel with similarly rigid ideas as some Muslim sects.  They debate their secular opponents. They are loud, raucous and insistent that they represent the true path to salvation and can, through religious doctrine, lead the country into the future. The Israelis have made them inclusive and they have influence but not enough to compromise the bedrock idea of a secular state with a Jewish identity.

Israel’s secular parties, which dominate the political culture, represent every spectrum of political life, left, right and center. They are perpetually ranged against each other like contentious gladiators. They draw blood, but it’s more like Hollywood blood, hardly the real thing. Nevertheless, with all this Tower of Babel cacophony they manage to move the country’s agenda in the path of freedom and prosperity.

However far apart they are on the issues they do not kill each other and somehow they advance what they deem the common good. The case of the Rabin assassination was an aberration and filled almost all Israelis with disgust and anger.

Considering how Israel has been treated by their neighbors since their founding, and the blood they have shed maintaining their sovereignty, one can understand why they have often been reluctantly forced into making draconian decisions to ensure their survival.

Despite this, they have managed to function and grow and have built the most viable, prosperous and creative democratic state in their geographical neighborhood while their cousins, the Arabs, are lost in dysfunction, corruption, fantasies and antagonisms that have kept their people in a state of  stasis for centuries.

Many of these Arab countries are swimming in oil and wealth, but other than a handful of autocrats and exploiters most citizens of these states share none of its largesse. They have allowed themselves, quite literarily, to be oppressed, manipulated, abused and largely impoverished by a small group of greedy and corrupt overseers.

In the case of the Iranians who are not Arabs, a dictatorial extremist Muslim theocracy rules by oppression of its people and poses a frightening danger to the entire world. One hopes that their young people begin to awake with the same zeal, commitment and courage as the Egyptian youth.

The educated cadre of young people who sparked the Egyptian protests were fed up with the lack of opportunity offered them. They are sick to death of the doors to employment and prosperity being slammed in their faces.  They have good reason to protest.

It is about time they started to wake up. Now that they have made their voices heard, they must be alert and vigilant so that their hopes and dreams are not crushed by ambitious theocrats or a repressive military dictatorship.

They represent the best and the brightest of their country, young people who have demonstrated that they believe in freedom, civil liberties, honest government free from corruption, a fair justice system, free speech, free elections, and  all the other benefits of a free and open society. It won’t be easy to undo the damage caused by years of oppression and brainwashing.

The Israelis are far from perfect. They have been made tough by adversity, suspicion, persecution, bigotry and a ceaseless drumbeat of hateful propaganda by their Arab neighbors. They yearn for peace and security and have managed to rise above their anxieties to exploit the possibilities that exist under a really free and democratic government.

Arab youths have good reasons to break the chains of oppression and it is time now to find the best path for what comes next. It is really not as far-fetched as it sounds to look to Israel for inspiration and practical knowledge on the real benefits of living in a free and open society, however messy and contentious.  Perhaps the Egyptians can build upon their cold peace with Israel and persuade their people that greater cooperation will be advantageous to both countries.

Instead of wanting to destroy the Jewish state, those Arab countries still in a state of war with Israel, can save themselves from drowning by seeking a helping hand from those who have been falsely accused of being their enemies.

All that is required is the courage to change as the young citizens of Egypt have just demonstrated.

When you have lived a long time through what is termed historical moments, you begin to see patterns at work that repeat themselves ad nauseam. Been there.  Saw that.

The scenario is normally played outdoors in a symbolic square or sacred area in some foreign country. It follows the same narrative line. Angry people, mostly young, erupt in a hysterical display of passionate frustration that often leads to violence.

We know in our gut that they do indeed represent the disenfranchised, the impoverished and the ignored. The villain, the target of their rage, is usually an entrenched leader or group that has been in power for decades.

Suddenly the media, and now the blogosphere in search of eyeballs and readers, come to life in a burst of sanctimonious chest beating, and in the safety of distance joining the fray and through ringing prose, ally themselves with the passionate protesters. Loaded words like dignity, justice, equality, fairness, decency and freedom punctuate the heated rants.

Politicians, ever on alert for voter support and pandering to prevailing opinion, join the fray seeking recognition of their self-righteous stand on sweeping away those thuggish dictators and oppressors that they had supported for years. After all, who is not on the side of freedom, dignity, equality and human rights, especially if someone puts a camera or microphone in one’s face?

Never mind that it has been the official policy of the United States to support and do business with these oppressors for decades before these various eruptions. One need not be a student of history to recall some examples of our relations with Germany under Hitler, the Philippines under Marcos, China, Iran under the Shah, Iraq under Saddam, and every single oppressive Arab nation from the Saudis on down, all of whom have been currently under various forms of dictatorship for years.

You could go around the continents in ten seconds and put the magnifying glass on Africa, South America and Asia and points north and south to truly understand the state of the world in which we live.  Indeed, the earth is stained with the blood of the self-righteous, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Inevitably the tyrant will depart. His ill-gotten loot, systematically obtained through corruption and guile, will have already found its way into coffers usually in western banks. Someone or a group of someones will take his place and, at first, pay lip service to the idea of democracy. The exiled tyrant will live on his mountain of stolen gold, bitter and eventually forgotten.

Unless the path has been strewn with the rose petals of institutional democratic architecture it is in danger of getting little traction and the result will be yet another form of oppression. With luck, it is possible and there are some, not many, examples of eventual reform and a transition to a real democratic government. Will the original protesters be satisfied? As they say, hope spring eternal.

Nor is this little essay designed to cast aspersions on the political leadership of this country or the media and the vast army of bloviators and camp followers that pander to the winds of change based on the images we see on video and the quickly shifting sands of public opinion.

Like any running back dodging potential tacklers, our leadership, often blundering and heavy handed, has managed to keep our team in play for more than 200 odd years scoring a number of policy touchdowns. More often than not, we have won the day, the proof being our survival as a united nation, imperfect in so many ways, but still strong, still viable, still proud, still hopeful.

How we will survive the years ahead is anybody’s guess. Religious fanaticism and nuclear proliferation is a very unhealthy brew. Few if any of us has the magic formula to keep us safe and free. Indeed, we feel for those who live in the dark world of oppression and poverty.

Our earthly ballroom is filled with predators. If we appear to be dancing with the devil at times, we sense that we will always be looking out for better less clumsy and more agile partners. But the objective, as always, is to keep on dancing, no matter what.

The aftermath of the attempted assassination of Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and the senseless killings of bystanders has exposed those who create the media conversation in America as appallingly ignorant of American history.

What is most egregious is that some of our major and normally respected media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and numerous talk show hosts have showcased their ignorance by attempting to pin the blame on political hate speech much of it emanating from the conservative end of the political spectrum.

Such nonsense is demeaning to American values. Worse, it is an indictment of our educational system that has spawned generations of Americans who know the minutia about the lives of Hollywood celebrities and entertainers and almost nothing about the lives of those who have been the major players in American history and the events that created the American experience.

Let us not delude ourselves. Our history is steeped in blood. We have fought brutal wars on American soil from the moment of our founding. There have always been bloody confrontations. American history records numerous wars against Indians, Mexicans, French, British, Canadians and on and on. I dare not cite the wars fought outside our boundaries up until the present moment.

As for assassination attempts on American political leaders, they are too numerous to mention within the confines of this short essay. Most one-off assassinations of political figures in this country have been the work of deluded and unbalanced misfits acting alone.

The facts are that most of the people who have succeeded or attempted to assassinate our political leaders, Presidents, for example, were people whose motives were based on personal unbalanced, inexplicable and uncontrollable rage that often had little do with hate speech and more to do with madness, vengeance and twisted and imagined disagreements on issues that had little to do with what is now called toxic political partisan discourse.

An unbalanced mind will often use public issues to motivate an act of personal violence against someone perceived to represent such an issue. It is a risk a public political personality takes and it cannot be avoided.

Indeed, there has always been what has been described as toxic political discourse and often outrageous militant and threatening political speech in America. Such are the perils of free speech.

There have been four successful assassination attempts on our Presidents and numerous attempted assassinations. I offer this list from Wikipedia, assuming its accuracy, although some of it is both shocking and surprising. One ventures to guess that if the files of the Secret Service were ever made public, Americans would be appalled at the number of threats made against our major political figures from every conceivable source.

1) Presidents assassinated

• Abraham Lincoln
• James A. Garfield
• William McKinley
• John F. Kennedy

2) Attempted assassinations

• Andrew Jackson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Harry S. Truman
• John F. Kennedy
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald Ford
  First assassination attempt
  Second assassination attempt
• Ronald Reagan
• George H. W. Bush
• Bill Clinton
• George W. Bush
• Barack Obama

3) Presidential deaths rumored to be assassinations

• Zachary Taylor
• Warren G. Harding 

Then there is the case of Robert Kennedy who was assassinated by a young man of Arab extraction who disagreed with American policy on Israel. Martin Luther King’s assassin was reputed to be a white supremacist. Then there was Malcolm X who was assassinated by three members of a rival Muslim group.

It is too easy to try to ascribe purely political or religious motives to these acts unless it is clearly acknowledged as such, like the case of the officer who perpetrated the killings in Fort Hood.  Then there are our homegrown monsters like Timothy McVeigh, angry men who act out their rage by mass killing. Or the Unabomber, a loner with a firm belief in his own meandering ideas of how the world should be run.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to killings out of rage and blind hatred. Most of these perpetrators are angry people, many of them mentally unstable who, for one reason or another, believe that this rage can be satisfied only by making a bloody statement involving killing a well known figure or a group of innocent bystanders.

We humans are a sorry lot. It is somewhat of a miracle that most of us here in America can go about our lives in peace and security avoiding the horrors and dangers that lurk within the human psyche. Compared to most countries of the world, we appear to do a lot better job of keeping the peace within our borders than others around the world.

It is indeed a complicated and often brutal world. Nevertheless our history has the power to teach us the truth about ourselves and perhaps in some mysterious way cause us to self-correct our behavior. But if, as most media contributors have revealed, we are uneducated about our history, we will never learn a thing and sink deeper and deeper into ignorance.

In the company I keep, mostly a large and vibrant circle of intellectuals, academics, literati, elitists, entrepreneurs, activists, lawyers, all articulate and eloquent, superb arguers and largely Democrats and liberals of both genders, I sometimes reach a point that compels me to slyly redirect the conversation. It is a rather mundane but an archly provocative process.

I say quite simply in a tone without emotion that I like Sarah Palin.

At first there is a profound silence, then a confused exchange of glances, then baffled shrugs and finally what passes as expressions of disbelief. Naturally, I am expected to offer an explanation as if I had just opined to a company of ardent priests that there is no God.

My explanation goes something like this.

Because I had lived in the West for more than a decade, I know and understand the type. Sarah is tough, combative, fearless and outspoken. She is fiercely independent, understands both the glorious and treacherous sides of the natural world, having lived in the midst of the often tyrannical Alaskan landscape and, in terms of her political stance, she has what is commonly called “attitude.” It is probably environmentally instigated.

When she talks of herself as a “Grizzly Mom” the image is reflective of a fiercely possessive maternal animal spirit where protecting one’s offspring is a paramount motivation. Devotion to her mate and family is a given. Within the family, she understands her role, which is not subservient, but cooperative and authoritative. Why many feminists detest her is a mystery to me, an ardent believer in the intrinsic power of her gender.

She is fearless and cunning, emotionally lethal weapons that she has wielded to knock out the old boy network that had controlled Alaska since its inception. In short, people push Sarah around at their peril. Mess with a woman like Sarah and you are in deep doody. In a male, such attitude is considered macho and commanding. In a woman, many think of her as a bitch.

Frankly, I admire her reaction to all the outrageous put-downs she has endured since pushed out onto the national stage. She has been pummeled by the so-called traditional media, taken to task for her use of the slangy American idiom, her too high pitched voice, her ambition,  her good looks, which she has tried unsuccessfully to mask with her glasses. Remember those Hollywood movies where the heroine is asked by the hero to take off her glasses and suddenly her beauty becomes magnetic and overpowering?

Like most of us who have endured put-downs, she has faced a relentless attempt by the mainstream media to diminish her, make her lesser, insult her intelligence, her background, her education, her speech, her lifestyle, her family, her parenting, her political experience, her religion, her point of view, her clothes, her hairstyle…you name it.  She has been excoriated, reviled, insulted and dismissed.

In the classic worm-turns universal plot of many a novel and movie, Sarah has done what many victims of such attacks might have fantasized about doing. She has fought back with double barreled wit and intensity. She has offered no apologies and has surrendered not one iota of her integrity. Hell, I asked for it, she opines.  And she has prevailed as a political force, whether you like her stated policies or not.

Her critics want her to go away. The mother of a previous President wants her to stay in Alaska. Now there is irony for you. Consider how many devoutly wished her son had stayed in Texas.

There is something quintessentially American in Sarah’s attitude, in her assumption of the role of the happy warrior, who goes into combat against all odds with a smile and a prayer. Remember that old World War II lyric “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” Hell, if this attitude was okay for the greatest generation it is okay for those living in America in the twenty-first century. In fact, it may be essential if we are to endure as an exceptional nation.

Did I write “exceptional”? Damn straight.

In an odd way, Sarah’s popularity reflects the abysmal decline of the traditional mainstream media. Their influence has dropped precipitously in the last few years, much of it self-inflicted. There are more pundits by far and less wisdom being proffered, more analysts and less meaningful unbiased analysis, more problems being cited and less solutions, more politicians professing leadership skills with little or none, lots of high-falutin baloney by intellectuals, academics and politicians with miniscule common sense and even less practical experience who think that most Americans are stupid, clueless and not worthy of respect.

If the majority of mainstream media had had its way Sarah would be toast and her political career extinguished, a fact which illustrates that the media as we once knew it has lost its power to control the American agenda, especially in politics.

I have no idea if this explanation penetrates the rigid mindset of my pals. Most of them will persist in their trailer trash view of Sarah, as opportunistic, crass, ignorant and without gravitas. The thought of her running for President gives them heartburn for which there is no cure.

Many in my circle think her politics are simple minded, the mantra of the tea party e.g. personal responsibility, smaller government, less Federal interference in our personal lives, fear of overspending, fervent patriotism and a militant stance against our enemies, especially Islamic Jihad which Sarah views as an existential threat. Expressing similar opinions in table talk conversations often puts me in the category of a wild Neanderthal menace, out of step with the complicated reality of America in the age of diversity and globalism.

Believe me, it takes a great deal of restraint and discipline to keep an open mind in the locked world of certainty and self-righteous indignation expressed in my circle. Nevertheless I am grateful for the civilized tolerance of my friends who manage to keep their internal seething in check and rise above their prejudices. On the larger stage, I hope that those who disagree would offer the same hearing and courtesy to Sarah Palin discarding the invective, anger and in some cases hair raising hatred.

They are baffled by her popularity and the admiration of so many who they characterize as the great unwashed, the flotsam of the boonies, the gun-lovers, the religious crackpots, the inane, poorly educated, redneck, fat assed hamburger flippers and assorted morons who, they truly believe, live like maggots in a rotting corpse. You know who I mean, as the big-shot from BP characterized them, the little people.

Oddly, in yet another ironic twist, my pals truly believe that they are morally invested in the welfare of these little people.

I will admit that I can’t as yet embrace the idea of Sarah taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But I sure would be more secure if the present resident would adopt some of Sarah’s “attitude”.

In Ron Chernow’s magnificent book about George Washington, the greatest President of all, he points out, almost as a throwaway line that three of our most important founding fathers, Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin never talked too much. But when they did, they got right to the point and did not dilly-dally with much ornamental and wasteful rhetoric.

Of all the recent Presidents in my memory, President Obama has talked and talked and talked. His well-crafted and seemingly endless string of speeches delivered with much panache, well honed enunciation and expert use of teleprompters is a good example of overkill and repetition.

After awhile, too much can be, well too much. He has allowed himself to become a kind of windup political doll whose battery never runs down. I’m not talking policy, which is another matter entirely.

When the message begins to sound like a long playing broken record, if you can forgive the antique analogy, people tend to tune out, their minds wander and all the surrounding gewgaws and pomp become more salient points of attention. I’m not saying he should fire his speech writers, not at a time when jobs are scarce, but perhaps he can give them more free time, maybe force them out for some tennis games on the White House courts.

How do you tell a politician, or anyone for that matter, that he or she talks too much? After all, he is the President. Who would dare confront him with the fact that his speeches are getting too frequent, too repetitive and, sorry sir, too boring and a lot less effective.

I would advise him to re-read Lincoln’s Gettysburg address which encompasses a mere 270 words and is probably the greatest speech ever delivered by an American President.

It is quite obvious that after the recent election drubbing of his party, that something has got to change if he wants to be a two term President. I believe he should start by cutting down the frequency of his speeches and their length and to wean himself away from those teleprompters. They make him appear too programmed, too contrived, too insecure.

Hell, Mr. President we’re in the age of Twitter and texting. Don’t overdo it. Less is more. Washington, Jefferson and Franklin got it and they didn’t do too badly.

I have to laugh at the outrage I find in the mainstream media about the amount of money, both corporate and union, that is being thrown into the midterm political elections.

Loudly proclaiming their self-righteous disgust at this state of affairs, meaning the piling up of filthy lucre to buy advertising time on television, cyberspace and print, indignant columnists, editorial writers and commentators have loosed a barrage of angry rhetoric against such practices.

Take the ideological issue out of the mix and you get to the truth of the matter. As a writer of occasional mystery books, the central issue, whether in real life or in the parallel world of mystery stories is “who benefits?”

Well then, who really benefits from all this money thrown into the political hopper. Is it this or that candidate or this or that political issue? To some degree, I’m sure, although there is a counter argument that posits that too much advertising often hurts a candidate’s chances because of the annoying repetition.

Others argue that pounding away at name identification or issue bias is the real message embedded in all those spots and newspaper ads. Nevertheless many a multi-millionaire or billionaire with unlimited expenditures has seen his political ambitions go down in flames.

What is truly laughable is the fact that those who decry the avalanche of campaign contributions the most, all those professional scolds and indignant moralists in the media are the principal beneficiaries of the outpouring of corporate and union cash.  Where do they think their paychecks come from? Without the infusion of cash during these seasonal money storms, they might lose their outlets to spout their self-righteous anger.

Note that the various media beneficiaries of such largesse, along with their equally venal political friends, do not wish to ban the spigots that fill the money pot.

There is a well known saying that “Money talks and bullshit walks.”  I’d amend that slightly to read “Money can talk too much and bullshit drowns in its own excreta.”

But then I always get too cynical during an election cycle.

Warren Adler is the author of 31 novels, 4 story collections, plays, essays and poetry.

The firing of Juan Williams by NPR reinforces my opinion that NPR is a far left, out of the main stream, rigidly biased, elitist, self-righteous broadcast enterprise that represents all that is wrong with American media.

Juan Williams is an outspoken media analyst and personality that never fails to speak his mind on any subject. He is a regular contributor on the Fox network and he is often at odds with his fellow panelists and a passionate defender of President Obama. He often argues vigorously with his colleagues.

On the Bill O’Reilly show on the Fox network he had the temerity to criticize Muslim radicals and his fear of potential Jihadists, a fear, by the way, shared by many aware citizens who express themselves frequently on this subject. The fact is, that once the stupidity of blind and foolish political correctness is torn away from its cocoon of restrictive speech it is highly likely that most citizens including many American Muslims share Juan Williams’ view on this subject.

NPR and its grating tin cup fund raising drives which supplement tax payer contributions has reached, in my opinion, the last frontier of broadcast bias. Years ago I refused to give them another dime because of their outrageous and inaccurate anti-Israel bias.

What happened to Juan Williams, a prominent journalist with a strong record on civil rights and a man who represents a point of view that is often at odds with his colleagues on the Fox network, and who has expressed his disagreement with Bill O’Reilly on many issues deserves our strong defense for the unprincipled and disgusting nature of his dismissal by NPR.

I am hopeful that a tsunami of criticism of NPR erupts after this horrendous act of bias by those who manage that enterprise.

Where have the managers of NPR been living in the last decade? Think of all the tax payer money and time wasting regulations that have been put into effect to protect Americans from the evil intentions of guess who? Is it a sin now to name our enemy? Is there anyone out there who disagrees with the identity of our enemy? Are we not allowed to name them?

I, for one, back Juan Williams to the hilt. He has been truthful. He has expressed the fears of the vast majority of Americans.

If that is a sin in the eyes of NPR, then NPR should be punished for its bias. Just don’t give them another dime.