The Other Side of the Knife

“So, apparently, alas, it works both ways,” I moaned to my colleague Frank Belloc, combat psychologist.

“Yep,” he told me, “and that’s where I’m getting most of my work now, now that Obama has pretty much cinched the nomination. Most pundits and journalists have either leveled off or come to terms with what we’re calling ‘Leg Thrilling’ in the business.”

Leg Thrilling, or a newsman’s nervy inability to contain him/herself in the throes of an Obama speech; it had been Frank’s big job to talk them down since Iowa. But now he was working the flip side and, oy, my dear, supple readers, I was in need of it.

“Whereas the sort of blank slate of Obama rhetoric, the amorphous references to change and hope provide a lot of people in this country with a sort of screen on which to project their own best desires and hopes there is another reaction when they come to face anyone who challenges those perceptions and what people are doing then is to project their worst fears and enmities on to them; whomever that might be.”

Indeed. Sacre’Poutine! An old friend, Mugsy Seidel, and I sat down for an innocent glass of wine the other night, ostensibly to discuss the return of foie gras to the menus of his native Chicago. Mugsy runs a number of online poker sites and I’ve always considered him shrewd and savvy; the guy that knows the score, you know? A numbers man, un-inclined to the messy table of emotional politics. Before I knew it, as the second bottle of Vermentino was opened, he lashed out at me. The details too embarrassing to recount, I will say I was galled by his ferocity and his willingness to repaint his conception of me as a race hating, sycophant of women. Moi? Nom de Dieu!

“It’s a harder road to slog through,” Frank told me. “Because you can’t talk to them. Certain people’s beliefs about the Democratic Nominee have turned the subject of him into the new taboo; it’s like abortion meets dad’s affair. You just don’t bring it up. For people like you, I have to say, avoidance is the best deterrent. Just let it lie until after the election. When he becomes President, the hope is that a need will have been satisfied and they will return to normal. There’s also another theory that I think plays into the post election psyche of the country as well; the things that we’ve projected as our core beliefs about Bush are going to come home to roost. I think a lot of people in this country have indulged their lesser natures on the account that as long as he was in charge, it was ok. That’s a whole other ball of wax to contend with.”