Attention universe:
I am a crappy gift-wrapper.
I just wrapped my husband’s two holiday gifts. The small one turned out okay. Not Martha Stewart-worthy, but not laughable either.
My wrapping job on the large second gift was verkakte. Verkakte is a Yiddish word that roughly translates to “screwed up.” It also roughly translates to “oy, vey, Naomaleh, you’re 42 years old and you can’t even wrap a present!”
There’s plenty of intelligent programming on my TiVo lineup. PBS Newshour. Jeopardy. The Colbert Report. There’s also an embarrassing amount of mindless, patriarchal jibber-jabber on my TiVo—the kind of stuff that smart people say they watch “because it’s a train wreck” or “for ironic pleasure” or “because I’m looking forward to the apocalypse.”
Would we be better off if members of Congress abandoned all vestiges of civility, and instead went after each other with a cruel barrage of insults?
This goes against our modern sense of how politics is supposed to function. In 2009, when a South Carolina Congressman shouted, “You lie!” as President Obama spoke, people were horrified. What has happened, we bemoaned, to civility in American politics? It’s bad enough that commentators are screaming at each other on Fox News, but now, in the House of Representatives?
But then, this past weekend, I went to see Lincoln. And to me, the most fascinating part was watching the Congressmen debating each other in the circa-1864 House of Representatives. These weren’t just any debates. Out of the mouths of these distinguished gentlemen came personal attacks and painfully clever barbs, which were followed by partisan roars of approval. Along with the cigars and spittoons, I almost expected to see these guys with frothy mugs of lager. They may as well have been at the pub.
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