For the Moment

Au Bon Pain is getting mighty cold, isn't it? For some inexplicable reason, the delightful outside terrasade attracts polar winds from both arctic zones, and concentrates them into miniature hurricanes. Just as you settle down with sandwich and beverage in tow, a foul wind interrupts your incipient feast. Before there is time to anchor your delicious repaste, the sandwich, dripping with honey mustard, has soared from your table, and is making a quick getaway through the outstretched hands of the homeless--who, after all rely on such fortuities to survive.

As you throw your clumsy gait into hot pursuit, the sandwich checks its bank account, buys a copy of Vanity Fair and nose-dives into the T-stop. Once there it rushes past the hordes of outdated punks on the escalator, skillfully nutting one or two with its crusty end, and just manages to get on the tram going downtown (disguised all the while as a proper baguette). At your generous and unwitting expense, your ex-lunch is probably, at this very moment, holidaying in the Bahamas and sipping on fruity cocktails. Meanwhile, back in that social epicentre and fair of wit and beauty so seductively titled in French, your coffee is cold. It stares up at you with glum foreboding, challenging you to consume. The courage is not within you. The newspaper is casually opened, and you avoid the glances of fellow patrons who negotiated their eating with more success.

At such a moment of despair, I came across a rather stimulating article in The New York Times. In its "Campaign 92" pages was a piece bemoaning the lack of caustic political humor in this year's campaign. It seems that the most telling political humor only establishes itself under authoritarian regimes: the weight of government peering over the shoulders of the citizens of communist states drives the etiolated spirit to renewal via satire. Satire's effectiveness is one nurtured in tiny Smoke-filled rooms, where combatants of wit can exchange furtive one-liners knowing that Big Brother has temporarily been shut out. Dilute the genre with television and viewing figures and you get an insipid attempt at such humor, because, hey kids, it's really not that controversial. You are not going to be spending a night in a urinous prison cell after visiting Catch a Rising Star. Such a pity.

The biting comment exchanged over the potato counter in Stalinist Moscow is not for here. But there is humor elsewhere, not in the queazy attempts at stand-up savagery, but the politics themselves. How can you poke fun at American politics when the thing itself is so damn hilarious? Why make endless quips about that nice Mr. Quayle when one look at his squidgy visage, writhing with stupidity, outdoes anything a comedian could express. All the way through the Vice-Presidential debate I was doubled up with laughter as cliche rebounded off smirk, off slick quip, off tear-jerking'''real-life'" story. And then that charming Admiral Stockdale (with a passing resemblance to my grandfather) devastated his opponents with a faculty of articulacy as yet unseen in the Western world. Laugh? I positively wet myself.

This air of comic unreality not only pervades the debates, but also the whole parade of presidential electioneering. Currently I have a fascination with spin-doctors, those masters of empty chatter who pump up their clients in press gatherings before major appearances. These wonderful creatures infest the debate halls, taking the spoken language to undiscovered levels of pap, hot air and irrelevance in order to make journalists do the same. The pity is that these spinners should only exist in the political domain.

I have seriously considered employing my own spin-doctor, to be of use in several circumstances. Imagine it's a Saturday night, you're stumbling to a party through mists of rain, the brain clouded with a few spirits. At the soiree, as you leave your coat and gloves with the attendant, and your presence is announced to the assembled gathering, you suddenly see, through a passing haze of colored silk and crystal glass, a man/woman to your liking. Unfortuately the necessary preamble of introduction and mutual mental exploration simply isn't within your power. Call the spin-doctor. Along trots Dr. Spin, who meets your beloved's spinner. "Tony's on form tonight, a bit of drink, but nothing to impede effective performance. We have several suitable conversation topics lined up--the late 19th century Russian novel, landscape gardening - so talk won't be a problem. Physical state not so hot, but if you persevere with Tony, you are fully recompensed. In short, a good deal - may come across a bit shaky, but I think his mastery of World War Two statistics is a known charmer. Pecker's raring, and there's a three pack in the left-hand pocket. He's roaring, you're going to see the best of him tonight." Meanwhile you rest in the corner, patiently expecting a chance to move in, with your reputation built up to unprecedented heights. It's most definitely an improvement on "Hi, I'm X. Haven't I seen you in class Y?".

I love American Politics. I love the kitsch, the glamour, the lies, the outrageous slander. However it is so overtly theatrical, a circus of the grotesque and iniquitous (is Ross Perot's campaign chief really named Orson Swindle?), that's it's hard to believe it really matters. When the candidates hurl statistics at each other, assign the problems of a nation to its deficit, or impugn each others' characters, we are lost in a sea of words and accusations, whose truth and importance lies beyond cognition. As campaign teams battle with Vietnam, or tax rises, they attempt to sway a public opinion which is unanchored in any certainty. Perot's astuteness is to play `honest', to pretend it's all ready to be understood and changed. But it isn't. Government and politics in the U.S. is an enormously complicated matrix of power upon which bewildered voters are expected to decide every four years. Modern day life--a vast chasm of unknowing. In its place, the theater of politics rolls on. And my sandwich laughs on in bliss.