Disappointment

Before I get into this, a quick Oscars note. I could stay on topic by manufacturing some disappointment over a few of the winners, but I really wasn't disappointed. The Hurt Locker was an awesome movie and I'm glad it won (if that other movie about blue people, which I refuse to see or mention by name, had beaten The Hurt Locker for best picture, I would have done 5 blogs complaining about it). Sure, I would have liked to have seen that girl from Precious win, just because she seems really nice and it might have made Oprah so happy she would have given us all cars, but I like Sandra Bullock so I can't even really complain about that. And yes, 500 Days of Summer was easily my favorite movie of the last year, and it didn't get nominated for anything, but that has more to do with there not being a comedy category than anything else. So I was really pretty fine with the Oscars. Oh well. Anyway, onto things that do disappoint me.

Everyone knows New York is the best city in the world. It's an undisputed fact. Being from somewhere else doesn't mean you're from somewhere that sucks, it just means you're from somewhere that's less awesome than it could be. Like a cheeseburger without bacon, or a gun without bullets, or a milkshake without bacon, really anything without bacon is a solid example here. I was in the middle of a thought, now I'm just thinking about things I could add bacon to, where was I? Oh yeah, my hometown is great. That's why I'm so disappointed in New York politics lately.

I submit that all these problems started with New York's Senators. No scandals there, but I wasn't impressed with either of them. I once heard someone (Jon Stewart maybe) refer to Chuck Schumer as a human strip mall. I'm still not sure exactly what that meant, but it sure sounds right. Senator Schumer used to visit the university I worked at in New York sometimes and give little speeches. I remember always being underwhelmed.

The other Senate seat currently belongs to someone named Kirsten. That's really all I know about her, but I had a friend named Kirsten when I was a kid, so Senator Kirsten is plus one with me so far. But her predecessor, Hillary Clinton, was another disappointment for me. A carpetbagger from Arkansas and Washington who was clearly using the state as a stepping stone to a run for the White House. We elected her because we knew her name and it had a D next to it. I thought New Yorkers were smarter than that.

Now, you could look at both of those elections and say they weren't really so bad, and you'd probably be right. But I don't know, maybe if we had examined these two little mistakes more closely, we could have avoided the rest of this nonsense.

Eliot Spitzer wasn't really a disappointment (at least not for me) so much as he was an embarrassment. Governor Spitzer liked whores. I don't like whores, but some people do, and that's really between them and their wives. I mean, it's not like it's a crime. What? It is a crime? Oh yeah, that's right. OK, so maybe a slightly disappointing embarrassment.

Wait, the voice in my head wants to know how I can say I don't like whores if I've never tried one. That's an interesting point, voice in my head. But I have a somewhat related counterpoint. I've never tried hepatitis either, but I'm fairly certain I wouldn't like it. Hey, voice in my head! How come other people have a conscience that tries to get them to do good things but you're always doing things like trying to get me to try a hooker or betting me I can't drink a whole bottle of Jack Daniels on St. Patrick's Day in college without blacking out (mission accomplished, by the way)? The voice doesn't have an answer, that's what I thought.

Spitzer's shameful resignation ushered in the David Paterson era, which has been like a Lollapalooza of unethical behavior. On the main stage, there was his immediate admission of cheating on his wife, followed by his admission to trying almost every drug ever invented. And just as the main stage show was winding down, we found out that he allegedly used state police to intimidate a woman who was making accusations against one of his staffers. Oh, and did I mention he's also legally blind? Blindness isn't funny, but you have to see the irony in a blind Governor so blatantly misusing officers of the justice system.

What actually got me going on this are the commercials I've been seeing about this stupid soda tax they've proposed in New York. I know, they already tax cigarettes and alcohol and 17 other things that people like even though they're bad for us. That doesn't mean I have to like it. How does the awesome, cool state become the no smoking in bars, soda tax state?

I should mention, at this point, that I won't make fun of that Massa guy from the 29th district. For one thing, New York's 29th district could easily be called northern Pennsylvania, it barely counts. Also, what I've heard so far about what he supposedly did doesn't really sound that bad. Most importantly, that dude has cancer, so I think I should leave him alone.

OK. So far, I can't really be disappointed in the voters. They haven't voted on the soda thing yet, and even if I could blame the Governors on them, I could just blame it on the voters from the weird upstate part of New York, and not the good part where the people are. Is there anything specific to the city that can be reasonably blamed on voter stupidity?

Well, how about Charlie Rangel? It would be easier to list all the House ethics rules he isn't accused of violating. And Congressman Rangel's been re-elected something like 52 times. Specific to the city? Check. Voter stupidity? Probably not. Even with the story out there for weeks, it's still a little hard to get your head around exactly what the Congressman did. I'm not sure you can blame voters for electing him when it was still a secret.

Oh, I got it! Bloomberg! Mayor Mike ignored his term limit and then bought an election, which the good people of New York were more than happy to let him do. Yeah, that's not good. Bloomberg's the first non-Democrat I've mentioned. It's not that I'm intentionally picking on the Democrats. New York Republicans are no picnic. Peter King is a New York Republican, he's also completely out of his mind.

You can say other states are just as bad, maybe even worse. We know South Carolina is a mess. Mark Sanford is still the Governor there (seriously, I swear I'm not joking). And there's Minnesota. They've got Michelle Bachmann, who's crazy enough all on her own, but they've also got Al Franken and they had Jesse Ventura. What's wrong with Al Franken? One day, maybe I'll make a big list of rules to live by, like Leroy Jethro Gibbs. When I do, one of the rules will definitely be, "if the best option you can find for Senator is a stand-up comedian, look harder".

But that's sort of my point. Disappointment is all about expectations. I know New York isn't any worse than many other states, but that's not good enough. New York is supposed to be the best, the Empire state, home of the greatest city in the world. Now, it seems, New York is no better than anywhere else. That's a disappointment.

I'm not doing this to bash New York. My home state needs an intervention. How about Governor Giuliani? Hear me out. I know Rudy's gone pretty crazy lately, but I think it was leaving New York that turned him crazy, and I know how he feels. When he was the Mayor, he was a little crazy, but he was our kind of crazy. Oh, but he had scandals too. That's the sad part, I could spend the next year doing nothing but searching for a truly clean politician and still never find one. So, I'm still going with Governor Giuliani. It's just my first idea, I'm open to better ones. Maybe we need someone who would come with expectations so low, he couldn't possibly disappoint us. Hmmm, Harry Reid should be available after November.