Chattering Class Rebellion

Blame it on Pledge Drive. I just stay cranky during Pledge Drive. Waking up to WABE locals yammering financial guilt into my ear at 6am does not make for a happy yupster. Not on top of having just been buffeted by confounding dreams of guilt and rage.

My karma's been all wrong lately, and I just had this overwhelming wave of despair come over me this morning with my coffee that things were just not going right at all, despite the (good?) news of Benhazir Bhutto's emotional return to Pakistan.

What with the drought and the State fighting so with The Feds (that kinda shit's just not funny to us Southerners), and this rain-tease God's working on us, and my kid having a meltdown this morning over whatever she wanted to wear to school being "too hot on her back" (I draw the line at backless halter tops and bikinis in elementary school), and this grossly dead tree in our condo yard that could fall on units and cars and cause lawsuits to the board members (me) if the board doesn't do something to get it down soon, and this guy I have a wicked-bad crush on who lives halfway around the world and doesn't even know I exist, and the fact that every woman I know my age, well almost, has The Cancer, and it's just a matter of time before it's me, and the brakes are now really squealling on the Volvo...

So what's a soccer mom to do to right things in her world? Well, I went right to The New Yorker and got myself a tattoo. I swear I feel better already.

Widening The Circle of Jerks

In case you somehow missed the train wreck, Bob Olin Butler expands this "circle jerk of self-righteousness" (his words) by going on NPR to talk ad nauseum about his affair, his former wife, and his thought-process and his overall literary greatness as a Pulitzer Prize winner. With husbands like this, any 'ole psychotic media baron crossing one's path starts to look real good I suppose.

And now, these folks have way over-extended their 15-minutes.

Should Have Gone To Law School

Wow -- if I'd taken my Dad's advice to heart years ago, I could have ended-up with a gub-mint job! See, a long long hazy time ago, when in college, I first expressed an interest in broadcasting and production. My dad, who was quite close to the Pat Robertson family (with Pat's brother Tad, who lived here in Atlanta until his death a few years ago), very much wanted me to go to wherever Pat Robertson's TV ministry was and learn TV production (and some kinda "values" too presumably) there.

However, not being terribly interested in All Things Evangelical at the time, nor am I now or will ever likely be, I politely declined the generous and well-meaning offer from Daddy "O" to try and help me get a foot in the door of that kinda TV biz. Back then, being young and impetuous, and just stupid and stubborn a lot of the time too, I mostly wanted to go my own route, and according to my own ability, into secular news coverage.

Had I gone the Pat Robertson route though, who's to say... I might have ended-up at his law school, and thereby almost guaranteed a job in the current Justice Department! Weirder things have happened I suppose, but the weirdest of all is the tale of the Christian law school, Regent University, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, "whose graduates have become influential in the Justice Department."

The whole story, as told by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, was on Fresh Air yesterday. Listen here. Fascinating. Scary too.

Timrod and Nimrod

Yowzer. I got a little panicky when I overheard something on Weekend Edition this morning about Bob Dylan "borrowing" from a Civil War-era poet on his latest album. (Doesn't Dylan "borrow" on every record he puts out? But that's neither here nor there.)

That kinda info, emanating vaguely in the background of the kitchen while whipping-up a Saturday morning omelet and pouring the coffee, was momentarily startling since my namesake is the Civil War-era poet, William John Grayson, an ancestor, lawyer, writer and Representative from South Carolina.

The poet of whom Dylan is rumored to reek is Grayson's contemporary and fellow South Carolinian, the tubercular nursery-room tutor, Henry Timrod, often cited as the "poet laureate of the Confederacy."

And that's a good thing as no one I'm aware of, including any of my immediate family, has ever been inspired by a single line of 'ole W. J.'s poetry. For good reasons, as Grayson's poems surely fall into the "had to have been there" category of Civil War poetry making. Rather, throughout the generations, we've about worn out the name.

An excerpt from Grayson's The Hireling and The Slave is here.