Attending my commencement at Iowa City long ago, my father, who never went to college and had a self-made man's robust disdain for things academic, said, "Well, last year you got your B.S.* --everybody knows what that is. And now you've got your M.S: that's just More of the Same. When're you going to get your Piled higher and Deeper?"
*Actually, it was a BA (and an MA); but even my father understood poetic license.
I seem to keep running across MS, if not PhD. A late example is the sodden, tear- and beer-stained resignation of the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois, who, only days after his winning the primary election, was apparently discovered to have (1) abused his former wife, (2) abused steroids, presumably in a different fashion, and (3) held a knife to the throat of a former girlfriend (who, the news helpfully added, was a prostitute, although it was not made clear whether this factoid cast further aspersions on him or, contrariwise, mitigated the offense).
The resignation took place during the Super Bowl, in a Chicago bar. And he really did cry. Scott Lee Cohen (actually sort of a cool name for a political candidate), who had been spamming me for weeks in the run-up to his unexpected electoral triumph, has seen his star fall even more rapidly than it rose. Of course, Democratic politics in Illinois are now, as always, in pretty much of a muddle: who should have the now-vacant ballot slot bestowed on him? the runner-up? the third- or fourth-place finisher, each of whom has claims to enormous, heretofore untapped, political resources that will benefit the ticket? The personal preference of the Governor?
The Lieutenant Governor-ship, an office for which one party's nominee, years ago, ran on the sole proposal that the office itself should be eliminated, has become a hot commodity, now that, for the third time in my own recollection, a former governor seems to be on his way to prison and so was, last year, relieved of his post by our alert legislators.
For me, all this was a billboard on the expressway: I felt free to ignore it, because of a recent personal decision. I no longer participate in the electoral process. After decades of patriotically voting, even in Chicago's oddly-timed and inconvenient (so as to minimize turnout and thus insulate the political machine from casual voter disgust) municipal elections, I decided this winter to dispense with that formality. As long as one senator in D.C. can thwart the electorally-expressed will of a majority of the population, and forbid the President his choice of a cabinet member, agency head, or sanitary district commissioner, who am I to presume to express my preferences by voting?
It's FOP; and having identified it, if tardily, I owe it to my self-respect to walk away from it. After all, I'm a Dapper Dan man.
