Frontier Justice 19: Meeting of da Minds

“Town meeting.” Town meeting.” With all this talk of town meetings — it’s more the news media setting these things up than the politicians, though they share a certain amount of guilt — with all this talk of town meetings, this is what I want. I want town meetings to be the way they should be, with a belfry full of townspeople who are fucking pissed and aren’t going to take it anymore. I want pitchforks. Sharpened hoes. I want it all to be filmed in black and white. I want a septuagenarian to stand up and cry foul. I want someone to pull the pity card, whimpering during a quiet moment, “Won’t you save my plot of land, kind sir/ma’am?” I want the blacksmiths to be back in their lairs, throwing uneasy glances over their shoulders, stoking the hot oil, “just in case.” I want the speaker — whoever she or he may be — to be un-mic’d and using his or her own vocal chords to convey to this angry crowd just what’s going to happen with the $700 dollars a gallon question. Abraham Lincoln, 1858: “I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows I said this!”

In my mind, the farmers, shopkeepers, lawyers, town medical professionals, policemen, firemen, and professional gamblers are all crowding the stage, all shouting at once; in my mind, the world outside the stained glass windows of the church where this town meeting is happening is alive with the glow of torches. And that shit was lit with vegetable oil recovered from Five Guys.

No offense to Brit Hume and the like. Times have changed. We rock flat-screens, not pitchforks; our view of the world isn’t in black and white. And yet, there’s something way wrong with the election results that surface on walls made of electronics and sputter in-house jibber-jabber from the five-tiered line of yes-people CNN has lined up as Wolf Blitzer’s chewing fodder for the next few hours of “The Situation Room.” “America’s Best News Team!” “America’s Best News Team!’” OK, we get it. Shut up, and let me imagine you in the garb of an 18th century commoner.

JTL

Tags: Frontier Justice, Town Meeting, Situation Room, America’s Best New Team, Wolf Blitzer