So like while you were all working today I was getting a fabulous massage from a woman named Pao, and I had like this great idea for my blog today and I was going to call it like the Poly Bodytick and it was going to be awesome.
And now I barely remember my awesome idea. This is what happens when you spend 4 days in Jazz Fest in N’awlins celebrating your15th wedding anniversary. Your brain turns to happy mush. I almost never left the gospel tent by the by–we gawn have us some church here at jazz fest today!–and ohmigod did we ever. I LOVE the gospel tent. I want to live in the gospel tent.
Back to the poly bodytick. It goes something like this. Activists and politicians are not scientists. We don’t have the luxury of isolating the variables that make social change possible. We want to win, and win fast. So when we go after a problem, we throw everything we’ve got at it. Or, at least, I’ve always believed we should. We sue the bastards, introduce a bill, show up in droves to protest, run someone against ’em, you name it. And then if, say, their approval rating drops 20 points in a month, we have no idea how to replicate our success.
We often do the same thing when we’re in pain, don’t we? Like my right shoulder has been giving me grief for 3 years straight. When it gets really bad what do I do? In the space of a month, I make appointments for my internist, my acupuncturist, a physical therapist, a spiritual healer, a massage therapist, a cranio-sacral therapist, an Alexander technique teacher and Maori healers in town from New Zealand for only a week–I’m not taking any chances, this is pain I’m talkin’ ’bout–we gawn have us some pain here tonight! (I am convinced that the Maori Healers work best by the way, $200 for 20 minutes of excruciating pain–we’re talking childbirth here–and then for 6 months, no pain whatsoever–these huge people are like pain collection agents, they stand on your body, pull you limb from limb until you give up the pain, okay! okay! you win, you can have the pain, just take it! Take it! I’ll tell you where it is!… Let me know if you want to be on the list when they’re next in town.)
The point is, everything I’m learning now is making me question whether this blitzkreig on pain or the Governator is effective. Might it make more sense to slow down, pick one thing to do and do it really really well?
My concern about the blitzkreig on Arnold is that it’s happening a little more than a year too early. Can the Dems (and affiliates) keep up this pressure for over a year into the 2006 election? Can Angelides or Westly be sufficiently pumped up to beat a weak Arnold? (Remember 2002, Gray Davis wasn’t real popular, and considered weak by some, but Bill Simon was pathetic comparatively.)