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Back before the great breakout
in tuition pricing which so
distinguishes this generation
of first-time voters; back in
the simplified glory days of
impeachment for fellatio and
hypocrisies about perjury, of
euphemising strangulation as
triangulation of support, it
was common for a President to
lecture the lacklustrously wit-
ted on the cleverness of lead-
ing with a carrot and a stick.
This President now wants to
return to the White House, to
the everlasting amazement of
the 22nd Amendment, by smudg-
ing any grudging distinction
between the two poles. O, my.

Thus did it haplessly unfold, 

on a news day of unprecedented 

coincidence of capitulations of 

one kind and another, that we 

were treated to contortions of 

contrition in three shining 

exemplifications at once. The

strain upon the colanders of

our soothsayers was almost com-

ical, as icon after icon per-

formed the exculpatory equiv-

alent of confessional denial,

to bribe one's way back into

gaming the public's credulity.

From Rio de Janeiro, we learned from an array of mouthpieces for American swimmers, that they had found themselves immersed in a setting where mistakes, of one kind or another, may have been made. This was largely thought to refer to their collective defamation of the institutions and society of their host city, inspired by their own unprovoked vandalism and intimidation of the place, but one could scarcely be sure, from the surface of their statements. There might just have been an escapade so degenerate that no self-respecting breakfast cereal could sponsor it, and not just another endearingly gender-specific exercise of boys being boys. Still, for teasing with payoffs in the millions, these testaments could not help but dazzle.

And yet, may we say, there was nothing in our jocks' unraveling Rashomon to compare with the ingenuity of Donny Thump-Thump's showy striptease in Charlotte. How suddenly a new pollster-campaign manager did proclaim her arrival to his rescue, in a classic Music Man shell game of coming clean by blowing smoke. He complained openly of having, statistically inevitably, surely but non-specifically, some-time but somehow forgettably, more than hypothetically but less than actionably, possibly given offense by an incidental embrace or two of errant terminology. I heard 75 trombones with that one, didn't you?

But behind Door Number 3, we met a bribe with no pretext of an apology. Within this refreshing distinction, on the other hand, would be found the carrot and stick style of seduction which clouds the judgment for the necessary nanosecond of a news cycle - that suffocation of the attention span imposed by a false innocence. We actually heard an adult male say, he would stop humiliating the nation on the condition that we empower his wife. We had hoped, Balthasar would stop being beaten, not that we'd have to feed his abuser. 

Eduardo Seco
public wall
undated