4 — Friday, August 7, 1992 — North Shore News ‘They’ are all too like the rest of us I SEE my friend and fellow North Shore News columnist Bob Hunter does and doesn’t like politicians, sort of. SOME MODELS IN LIMITED STOCK I am not doing justice to his thoughtful and many-layered argument. I am preposterously compressing his views, comparable to reviewing Moby Dick by saying it’s a book about a whale, or observing that Shakespeare was a writer fascinated by sex and vio- lence. However, | assume that most News readers have memorized his July 29 column. Tie others can look it up. By this time, if you are an ex- perienced reader of columnists, you have called for a double whisky, shaken off your shoes, put your feet up on the couch for your spouse to rub, and happily settled down expecting me to dump all over Bob’s opinions. Well, I like to doublecross readers now and then. Kecps them humble, ard awake. So let it be understood that I pretiy weil agrce with Bob. in fact, readers might have a legiti- mate complaint that this is merely Bob’s column, badly rewritten. The thrust of the award-winn- ing Bob's piece was that politi- cians are a bunch of power-seek- ing egomaniacs, but still he ad- mires their guts for engaging in such a filthy business. Of course, he couldn't put ii that tersely and still expect to get a columnists full-cay’s pay. (A king’s ransom, I can tell you.) However, speaking as a non- award-winning columnist — and is’s no solace that that may be at- tributable to my never entering contests — |] vary from the learn- ed Hunter’s judgment on a couple of points. One, he stereotypes all politi- cians. Two, which is so close to the above that maybe it should be 1(a), politicians are not alone in their egoism and longing for power. The real knock on them is that they’ re all too fike the rest of us. Ego and power-lust also char- acterize members of any group you care to name: not just business execs, movie stars, pop singers, rock bands, and writers, but also labor unions, feminist tobbies, gay lobbies, ethnic lob- bies, native lobbies, and lobbies for the poor, the blind, the men- tally retarded, and the short — all of which have changed these descriptions to kinder, gentler euphemisms. And even Tony Bennett, who can still be heard singing If 1 Rul- ed the World — the anthem of the benevolent despot who would force happiness and universal peace on us whether we wanted it or not — even he reflects the ter- rible human ego-drive and craving for power and domination. Yet Bob singles out one group that he says suffers for their arro- gancce and presumption. He writes: **What I’m trying to express is an appreciation for their will- ingness to interfere so massively with the lives of others, especially since, in the process, they are fre- quently scarred for life, their rep- utations and fortunes ruined, and their psyches scorched beyond repair.” I had to read that paragraph three times before I realized he wasn’t talking about columnists. Incidentally, it won't surprise readers to learn that [ have no ego whatever. True, | always beat everyone else to the phone whenever it rings, certain that the New York Times is finally offering me a col- umn and my name on the mast- head. But it is always someone offering to clean my rugs for $39.95. Three, if you’re still counting, I Trevor Lautens — ad * va GARDEN OF BIASES think Bob could have explored this point: that any elected politi- cian instantly becomes a slave to the despotism of the democratic, to the dictatorship of democracy. He rot only foists; he’s foisted upon. Winston Churchill briiliantly measured both the disturbing nar- rowness and the saving vastness between the democratic and other kinds of government in his famous observation that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. But the state everywhere relent- lessly tends toward gigantism and conformity and self-perpeiuation. Its servants - - the politicians and members of the enduring govern- ment, the bureaucrats — may thrust their way to its altar with their own visions, dreams, per- sonal goals. But the altar remains. The state remorsclessly squeezes them, and they are gone. And while there, the politicians are like the employee in a hum- drum job who fantasizes about weiggling from under the heel of his boss and having the freedom ef atning his own restaurant — only to find that now he is servant to countless bosses, his customers, the whole public. Bob charges that ** ‘You’ and ‘they’ (i-e., the politicians) merge like amoebas."’ That's a union that Bob deplores, but that a poli- tician adores, That’s popularity. And I say this most sincerely: Pve known many a politician who disguises his intellect, his depth as a thinker, his complexity in order to attain that popularity. Nuance doesn't play. Bob says politicians are despis- ed. As opinion polls show. Yes, in a democracy, the little and not- so-little guy has an overwhelming need to feel superior to someone. He can vent this need — a func- tion of ego and power-lust ~ ina socially acceptable manner by be- ing contemptuous of the people he elects, few if any of whom are worthy to represent his own pretty damned perfect self. I disagree strongly with Bob on one point. He writes: “After a person has been an elected politician for a while, you can’t get a straight answer out of them any more.”' (Italics added.) Bob, Bob — how could you write this grammatically barbaric sentence, switching from the sin- gular ‘‘a person’’ to the plural “them'’? Surely you didn’t use this in- creasingly common construction in order to ingratiate yourself with its originator —~ the feminists’ language police? And in a column about politi- cians debasing themselves to get elected? ! hardly need remind you, of ail people, Bob, that Lady Acton might have said: ‘‘Popularity cor- rupts, and absolute popularity makes you a prime minister or a best-selling novelist. 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