Mark Morford — Mitt Romney vs. Dead Potted Plant
It is not very easy to care about Mitt Romney.
It’s a bit of a phenomenon, actually. It has proven almost impossible for most Americans to muster interest in this numbly rich, exceedingly bland caricature of a candidate, a man who is almost completely devoid of deep ideas or astute observation, who stands for nothing and says nothing you can ever remember, whose last ten speeches can be rolled into a fist-sized ball of palliative mush, hurled against a wall and then observed to ooze slowly to the floor, ending in a moist, displeasing plop. Fun!Even ‘Instagram’ can’t make Mitt Romney look exciting.
There have been articles. There have been alarming notes coming in from all over the Interwebs talking about Mitt Revulsion Syndrome (MRS); websites and blogs, newspapers and TV shows alike have found that feature pieces about the GOP’s favorite tepid Mormon get the fewest clicks, viewers race away in droves, no one cares. Turns out Americans will do anything to escape Mitt’s creepy glare, his heavily shellacked aura, his vacuous everything. In short, Mitt is traffic poison.
(Author’s Note: So dangerous is MRS that I was hesitant to put his name in the headline to this column. Are you reading it now? Then I am lucky. Or perhaps I changed the headline to “Porn Star iPhone 5 Naked Gosling!” to get you to click on it. Did I? Sorry).
But try I must. To care. After all, these are urgent and trying times. The issues at stake are more vital and volatile than ever. Global warming, the economy, greed and corporatization, paranoid gun owners in a fresh panic that Obama is coming for their guns, their daughters, their Fear of Everything.
So I ponder. I pace up and down my very long hallway here in my San Francisco flat, from my front office to back kitchen, furrowing my brow and sighing a lot as I search for a point of Mitt-related interest, something besides the man’s insufferable personality or his obvious distaste for everything and everyone you or I hold dear.
My hallway, by the way, runs nearly the entire length of my apartment, in an almost perfectly straight line, maybe 80 feet of lovely, well-worn hardwood. Classic San Francisco, really, narrow and arterial. I stroll this meditative passage countless times a day. I stand in the kitchen after refilling my coffee, pondering column ideas as I look outside onto the tiny back porch. I notice my plants need watering. I notice one pot in particular.
Man, just look at that sad sight. Such a failure. The location is just too tricky. I’ve tried at least four or five arrangements in that large pot, to no avail. San Francisco weather! That weird little spot – did you see the picture? – gets errant blasts of sun, wind, fog, cold shade. I have tried vines, small, hardy flowers, tomatoes. Nothing seems to survive more than a few months. I am not much of an urban gardener, I admit. But lo, I am perplexed. What do you think? Maybe if I tried…
Whoa. Damn. Do you see what just happened? Do you see what struggles I, working here in the periphery of the mainstream media, must face?Alas, what can grow in such a forlorn, weatherbeaten spot? Maybe I should just put a small BBQ there instead? What would Mitt do?
Read more.. http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2012/08/14/mitt-romney-potted-plant/
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