Getting A Grip On 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Internet is already groaning under the weight of prose dedicated to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's watershed sci-fi epic. I've downloaded and read dozens of books and compilations of essays about the film. They range from the interesting and insightful to the square peg-round hole hammering by those with an agenda (gender roles etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).

Many point to the humor, much of it subversive, expressed by Kubrick in spite of the po-faced actors and (intentionally) stilted dialogue. I harbor no illusions that this post will be revelatory but as I pondered the film after an umpteenth viewing and reading many essays on AI, war, etc. one theme kept recurring to me: Get A Grip. The phrase is usually a caustic, direct distillation of the self-help culture if not a refutation of it. 'Get a grip!' is most often an admonishment to abandon the touchy-feely nonsense and deal with reality on reality's own terms.

Kubrick has all but stated that he intended the film to be a restatement of 'Man's reach should exceed his grasp' which fits nicely with this theme. In 2001, Get A Grip can be seen or inferred in many scenes. At the risk of exhausting the metaphor, this is by no means a comprehensive list but one done from memory ('to get' is conjugated as necessary):

-Moon-Watcher (the chief primate) Gets A Grip on a bone, making it a club (weapon). His primate clan Get A Grip on their meager vegetarian food while snarling at the competing tapirs.

-The primates, scared out of their wits, eventually get a grip on the monolith by running their hands up and down its surface.

-The Pan Am stewardess Gets A Grip with her grip shoes (too easy) on the deck of the space plane

-The same stewardess Gets A Grip on Dr Floyd's floataway pen, even as he fails to Get A Grip on his seat by falling asleep and allowing his arm to drift weightlessly.

-Once on board the space station, Dr Floyd Gets A Grip and is able to walk normally thanks to artificial gravity (as Bowman & Poole do on the Discovery later)

-The Russian contingent fail to Get A Grip on the nature of Floyd's visit to the moon as he refuses to be drawn on the matter

-Dr Floyd urges the meeting's attendees to Get (and keep) A Grip on the cover story meant to fob off the curious and nervous

-On the moon shuttle, Floyd and his colleagues, despite their knowledge, security clearances and good cheer, admit they have failed to Get A Grip on the monolith's origin and purpose

-At the dig site, Floyd et al attempt to Get A Grip on the monolith just as their primate ancestors did.

-As the monolith delivers its piercing shriek, the scientists attempt to Get A Grip and obey the urge to cover their ears, only to be foiled by the very helmets that are keeping them alive in the vacuum.

-On the Discovery, the astronauts Get A Grip on news about earth while the earth Gets A Grip on news about them. Both parties admit they cannot fully Get A Grip on HAL 9000's human-like ability to interact with the world.

-Poole attempts to Get A Grip on (or at least retain) man's supremacy over machines by challenging HAL to chess

-Poole must literally and figuratively Get A Grip on the Discovery's exterior and on the electronic components he must replace while working in zero gravity

-Bowman & Poole attempt to Get A Grip on the specifics of the 'failed' AE35 unit and, soon after, admit that they must Get A Grip on HAL's apparent malfunction and Get A Grip on the prospect of disabling HAL.

-Simultaneously, HAL feigns confusion when he fails to Get A Grip on his prediction of failure and on Mission Control's confirmation of his error.

-HAL Gets A Grip on the astronauts' scheme by lip-reading

-HAL, controlling the space pod, Gets A Grip on Poole by attacking him and severing his air hose

-Poole, hurtling into space, attempts but fails to Get A Grip on the severed hose

-Bowman Gets A Grip on Poole after a rescue mission in another space pod

-Bowman must Get A Grip when the now openly-hostile HAL refuses to comply with his instructions Bowman must, in order to enter the airlock, Un-Get A Grip on his shipmate to manipulate the controls

-After his successful space pod escape, Bowman must desperately Get A Grip on the emergency repressurization handle

-Back onboard, Bowman Gets A Grip on a wrench, the implement of HAL's destruction

-HAL attempts to Get A Grip on Bowman by suggesting that Bowman himself Get A Grip ('take a stress pill')

-HAL attempts to Get (or Retain) A Grip while his electronic brain is slowly shut down

-After viewing the secret video briefing by Dr Floyd, Bowman must Get A Grip on the true nature of the mission, his role in it and his immediate future

-The entire Star Gate sequence can be seen as Bowman Getting A Grip on the vastness of space, the ultra-advanced intelligence of the aliens he is encountering and the surreality of his eventual landing site.

-Bowman Gets A Grip on daily life as a zoo creature but eventually fails to Get A Grip on his champagne glass, thus signaling a transition

-Bowman, in the last extremity, sees the monolith and once again attempts to Get A Grip on it by feebly reaching out

-The aliens Get A Grip on Bowman by re-birthing him as one of them (or as a new species of hybrid)

-Finally, the Star Child Gets A Grip on his power while the Earth, implicitly, must Get A Grip on what has arrived or, more accurately, returned to them

Quail Hollow - In Which The Author Gets Well Fargoed

It’s always seemed a bit odd that the most important dates on the PGA TOUR (I’ll use their self-important all caps construction once) have nothing to do with the PGA Tour (see?) itself. In other words, the Masters, US Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship are staged by entities other than the Tour. Each major has its own flavor, traditions, famous stories, champions, etc. The winner’s checks are nice but those players want that trophy first and foremost.

There is justifiable focus on the majors from players, public and media alike, but that still leaves the Tour proper with dozens of events occupying nearly the entire calendar year. Those giant purses don’t fill themselves so sponsors and commercial tie-ins are the financial lifeblood of the Tour. Unfortunately, this frequently manifests itself in a tawdry county fair/football tailgate atmosphere, with food tents, beverage/snack stands and ubiquitous, er, ‘comfort stations.’

Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament immediately springs to mind as an exception. But it’s a measure of the Tour’s money-grubbing instincts that it requires the iron will and year-long involvement of the game’s greatest player to stave off the sideshow.

The Tour’s so-called Fifth Major, THE PLAYERS (here we go again) Championship, is an orgy of excess exemplified by the overrated Stadium course with the lottery staged at its silly 17th hole. Creativity, usually considered the essence of golf in thought and deed, is banned there in favor of luck. The array of hospitality tents at Sawgrass dwarfs a wartime army base during emergency mobilization.

The Wells Fargo Championship, staged (geddit?) at Quail Hollow CC in Charlotte, NC, seems to fall in a very small patch of grey between the tacky and the well-mannered. Perhaps it’s the course, the clubhouse, the geography - with Charlotte serving as a gateway to the South albeit one inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Yankee refugees – or the banking-related sponsor and profile of many members. How long does new money take to become old money? Let’s just say the money has salt-and-pepper hair at this point. But there’s certainly enough of it to pay for redesigns of holes, greens and to handle the expense of a massive clear-out of trees similar to that undertaken by Oakmont CC. In Oakmont’s case, it earned (or confirmed) a US Open in 2007 and another in 2016. Quail Hollow’s makeover was part of a carrot-and-stick scheme that will bring the PGA Championship to the club in 2017 and not before time: 2013 was a disaster as unpredictable and often inclement weather led to a superintendent’s nightmare as fairways and greens alike suffered greatly. The players in last year’s event made no secret of their displeasure. A few made their excuses and withdrew after honoring their pro-am commitment (perhaps they got a sufficient taste of the conditions then) before arriving ahead of schedule for The Players.

The 2014 edition of the course and the weather for the tournament stood in stark contrast to the ’13 nightmare. All was green and bright. A respectable list of names were entered including Phil Mickelson, still the Pied Piper in Tiger’s absence and occasionally in Tiger’s presence, and Rory McIlroy, already a previous winner of the event despite his youth.

A friend of a friend who does business with the Tour provided season-long clubhouses passes i.e. clubhouse access at every Tour stop (!) and with our blue PGA TOUR-imprinted lanyards we made a brave show of pseudo-officialdom as we trudged to the gates.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of modern America and the world beyond that the first encounters at any public gathering will inevitably be with police and private security. The Common Yellow Windbreaker is a species usually spotted at American football games, standing stoically with back turned to the action on the field for hours at a stretch as they stare menacingly (they hope) into the crowd before them. Apparently, this is supposed to prevent bad behavior among ticket holders who have paid handsomely for the privilege of being glared at but someone forgot to tell the ticket holders, because bad behavior still thrives among them. Overconsumption of alcohol is the most frequent culprit, of course, but there are plenty of sober gameday narcissists who believe that a group setting provides camouflage for their boorish antics or that the strangers around them have been waiting patiently to be a captive audience for a stream of filth and/or armchair expert commentary on the sporting action before them. Club seats are nice for the wet bar and private bathrooms, but the ability to watch a live sporting event in peace is well worth the investment.

In any case, The Common Yellow Windbreaker often believes that to don the uniform is to be transformed into a combination of Lord Nelson, Patton and Alexander The Great. They have power (or so they imagine) and they’re damn well going to use it. The well-heeled attendees at a PGA Tour event at a swanky country club in a highly affluent neighborhood could not rank any lower on the Potential Threat scale but in our modern police state all are assumed to harbor ill intent. So empty your pockets and submit to a ‘wanding.’ The Windbreakers obsessed over their wands as Merlin might have done. Let me wand you. Did you wand him? You can’t proceed until I wand you! Move to this side so you can be wanded! Are you carrying anything metal? Anything dangerous – say, a treatise by Locke? Are you still in possession of common sense? A remaining modicum of perspective? Demographic data that might obviate such foolishness? Never mind! Submit to your wanding immediately! It merely proved – again – Richard Littlejohn’s theory that authority will inevitably be abused by those unworthy of it.

Leaving the jumped-up Wanders behind at last, we stopped at the practice range. It will surprise nobody in this forum that players practice with the brand and model of golf ball they endorse/play on the course. Tournament workers piled a rainbow-like array of drawstring bags on their table; with brands identified by color (Titleist was red, by the way).

Players warming up included the 2013 champion Derek Ernst. Whippet-thin, he hit two or three balls to most of his peers’ one. It seemed less a gradual warm-up and more a dragstrip smoking of the tires. Ricky Barnes, who resembles a linebacker in person with rippling forearms to match, arrived. He chided a swing instructor for spending inordinate amounts of time with a wonder-boy pupil, the name of whom I was unable to discern from the context. Ricky joked that the instructor might need some WD-40 to allow the mystery player’s head to squeeze through doorways. Ooh, snarky! Vijay Singh, also a past champion of the event, warmed up on the far end of the range, alone literally and figuratively. As my uncle says of unpopular persons, they’ll have to hire pallbearers for his funeral. A few other players arrived directly and most spent their time hitting pitches to the 50-75-100-125 signs, which makes sense given the demands on their wedge play vis-à-vis scoring. It’s also a lesson to the 20 handicap who will burn through a bucket of balls hitting nothing but driver and wonder why he’s still a 20 handicap. Last to arrive before we left the range was El Pato, Angel Cabrera. Not since Ron Cey aka The Penguin has a sporting figure deserved his bird-inspired nickname more, for Cabrera’s waddling gait is duck-like indeed. Cabrera chatted away with caddie in their native Spanish and seemed to enjoy the fact that most on hand had no idea what they were saying.

The clubhouse aspect of the passes underwhelmed a bit. As expected, the clubhouse was roped off and chaperoned to a gratuitous level, with many areas deemed ‘players only’ and rightly so. It became more of a tunnel than a house with the restrictions. But we walked through anyway, feeling that we had some obligation to fully test the power of the pass. The pro shop counter, interestingly, was converted to a cocktail bar. Give the people what they want etc.

Determined to see more of the course than I did last year, we walked ‘against traffic’ i.e. from green to tee on the front nine. In doing so we saw most of the pairings with mid-morning tee times. I’ll switch from prose to list for notes on those we encountered:

Rory Sabbatini – definitely in the Camera Adds Ten Pounds (CATP) category. He’s probably concentrated more on his fitness recently but there was a distinct absence of any paunch. His name is mud among many but I’ve always appreciated his let’s-get-on-with-it attitude. He was paired with…

Hideki Matsuyama – taller than one might expect, he was as lithe and lean as most of his countrymen, especially his fellow golf professionals. Trailed by a small army of Japanese TV and still photographers as well as print reporters. It was odd to see his caddie’s notes, which obviously combined Western (Arabic) numerals for distances but all the rest in handwritten pictographs.

Kevin Chappell - could do no wrong on the day (until the last two holes). Got a break or two, including a ball that nestled in the second cut rather than bounce into heavy rough or a water hazard only feet away. Very easy-going; spoke to those he knew in the gallery. Played Nike V-Forged Irons that were quite rusty front and back – obviously very comfortable with and loyal to his ‘gamers.’ When faced with one of these ridiculous 250-yard par-3 holes (even downhill) he pulled out a long iron and hit a high, arcing ball right onto the green in the manner he described to his caddie moments before. Definitely one of those moments that reminds you these players are on a different plane of existence and that neither rusty clubs nor shiny new ones will admit us to Mt Olympus. Paired with…

Mike Weir – we’d encountered Mike and his caddie at a local watering hole the night before…literally water in Weir’s case as he was abstaining that night (and maybe a teetotaler given his BYU background) but had good reason to be there as a good Canadian: the hockey playoffs were on as well as a Toronto NBA game. Had a good yarn with his caddie who praised the course conditions and condemned last year’s. The caddie took a particular and obvious interest in my missus, which I suppose is a compliment of sorts, and it came as no surprise that he stopped to say hello to her again on Sunday. In fact, he stared her down during Weir’s setup and shot (I was monitoring him via peripheral vision behind sunglasses). Again, I took no offense, especially knowing that Tour caddies think about two things and one of them is golf.

Weir had a frustrating day, dropping three strokes in two holes. He tempted fate, as we all have done, by changing clubs at the last moment – in this case from hybrid to four-wood. ‘I’ll choke up a bit,’ he said without much confidence. ‘Too easy,’ he said regretfully as the shot landed well short of the green. The left-hander snap-hooked his drive on the next hole – so far right that he failed to reach the hazard line and was unable to drop and had to re-tee, only to push that drive into the rough. He had the sprays from that point forward, it seemed.

Martin Laird – was throwing absolute darts all day with nothing much to show for it.

Stewart Cink – I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think people still blame him for stealing (?) Tom Watson’s Open Championship. He received mostly silence for good shots or putts and got a few catcalls at the 18th as he finished.

Brendan de Jonge – 80 first day, course record-tying 62 the next. As you do. Member of the CATP club or not, he is a big lad.

Kevin Na – his worst tendencies seemed contained, although he still gave it a good half-dozen waggles.

Rory McIlroy – that hip flick is even more pronounced in person but the swing ‘a thing of joy and beauty,’ as one of my dear departed friends used to say of good shots. A large following with many from the British Isles, as you might expect.

Pat Perez – has been mostly out of the spotlight for some time but made good on his reputation by uttering only a single word of commentary after a tee shot. I quote him verbatim for accuracy and posterity: ‘F@*#!’

Ernie Els – revise that to the Camera Adds Twenty Pounds, please! Very tall, obviously, but very lean. Could watch that swing all day. Seemed very at ease and of course he had his new Adams bag and clubs.

Angel Cabrera – the aforementioned El Pato was having an off day and had adopted the thousand-yard stare.

Gary Woodland – a fearsome power pairing with Cabrera. Both attempted to cut the corner on a 508-yard par-4 (another ridiculous hole length, downhill or otherwise). Woodland in the bunker, Cabrera in the rough. Neither happy.

I am gratified to report that we heard only a single ‘Get in da hole!’ all day. I still considered a seek-and-destroy mission but the voice sounded as if it came from the second deck of a viewing platform and I didn’t want to climb the stairs. Perhaps this cancer on the game is in remission?

I write this missive with after wearing my everyday trail running shoes to the tournament and returning safely - no injuries, broken bones, sprains or falls despite my reckless refusal to wear golf shoes. In fact, I saw only a handful of golf-shoe wearers all day. All others also managed to remain upright.

Tour wives were readily identified by vertiginous wedge heels, cascades of blonde hair and Titanic-class icebergs on their left ring finger.

It was an entirely cloudless day and while May was only a few days old the sun was quite direct and intense. It earned many – including me – the Red Badge Of Stupidity for capillary-inflaming consumption of adult beverages that only intensified my already-vivid hue although I applied wanton amounts of SPF.

But red was easily outdone as color du jour by orange, specifically the sherbet orange of Rickie Fowler. Although we didn’t see Fowler on the course, his clones were everywhere, mostly in the form of Puma-hatted adolescents with their flat brims. Pictures, digital or film, are lasting, especially with Mom as keeper of the vault, and one day they may regret their sartorial choices the way we cringe at leisure-suited photos from our youth. Still, it must be said that the marketing is working.

And speaking of marketing, the PGA Tour Traveling Church Of The Commercial Plug will now begin its weeklong High Mass Of Self Regard in its own front yard. We have been offered the same credentials for the Players. It’s very tempting, especially to see if the form of these players changes or stays the same week-to-week and, admittedly, to see the rebuilt Sawgrass course (I played it in 2004) but I’m sure that lodging will be remote and expensive, even on the Florida coast where hotels and motels outnumber houses. Perhaps by Thursday I’ll change my tune…

On The Origin Of The Species Known As Political Correctness.

Political Correctness is a force - unfortunately.  Its repeaters and amplifiers are motivated by man's most primal fear: exclusion and mockery. Without bears and mountain lions as predators, man's greatest opponent is man. As thinking beings (usually), disagreements are conducted with words not fists. In a hyperconcentrated hive of human activity like a large city, the pressure the author refers to is unrelenting - literally 24/7. Most are not up to the task. And if the energy born of social anxiety is not used to resist, it is almost always used to engage in enforcement of perceived social norms. That rush they feel at being 'on the right side of history' is merely the relief of fitting in.

In keeping with the hunter-gatherer analogy, women are even less apt to violate group boundaries i.e. take risks. They would prefer the boundaries be eliminated or at least unenforced. Those insipid 'Coexist' bumper stickers are merely a testament to cowardice and an unwillingness to admit that right and wrong exist - and wrong couldn't be happier about it.

Political Correctness is a an obvious latticework of lies (it has been accurately called a War On Noticing). We despair as it creeps into every corner of our lives but it could not do so without a critical mass of the weak-minded. The Times has been doing its bit for decades and now the schools and the pop culture (via unfunny doctrinaire comedy, boring autotuned 'music') have adopted their tactics to produce legions of the intellectually naked.

As Mad Men Begins To End

The first few years featured delicious character development but most of these people, despite this or that life event, have become static over multiple season, which is a shame. Or...they become the polar opposite of what they were before, which is a bit pat.

To state the obvious, the people and their jobs are the embodiment of the 60s zeitgeist which is why the show can and should wind up. It's a hall of mirrors as we regard our past selves, America regards its unprecedented postwar economic power and standard of living, we look back at morality and all the various isms that are part of the current lingua franca of politics and, in turn, current advertising.

No doubt Don Draper will be in the last shot of the series but then Don Draper was conceived and functions as a cipher so are you really seeing a person or merely looking at an illusion similar to that which he deftly created in his professional work and personal life? The crossover into the 70s has a couple of major signposts: the moon landing (have they included that already?), Woodstock (overrated but still lazy cultural shorthand) or merely Dec 31, 1969 becoming Jan 1, 1970. The producers have mostly resisted the temptation to do a 'Forrest Gump' by involving the characters directly in historical events but those events are freely used as a backdrop.

If we go beyond 1970, in keeping with the advertising theme, the end may coincide with Jan 1, 1971, when the ban on TV commercials for cigarettes was imposed. Given the prevalence of smoking (although it continued long thereafter) and the importance of tobacco advertising to the firm and its personnel as well as the show's characters and various storylines, it seems a most obvious dénouement.

While others have changed clothes, grown more hair and sideburns and beards, Draper still has his hat, side parting, white shirt, narrow black tie and grey suit - which furthers my belief that he appears differently to every character in the show i.e. he is a projection screen for them (and us) which explains the persuasive power that begets their sense of awe when they are around him.

As for Draper being 'exposed' within the world of the show, that ship sailed several years ago. Pete found out, threatened them and they called his bluff. Don's (ex) wife already knows anyway and his clients simply won't care about his past. But the question 'Will Draper be exposed to the audience?' is a legitimate one.

And so, even a minor change in the Don Draper archetype will signal the end of an era both on and offscreen. Perhaps he quits smoking. Perhaps he quits drinking. Perhaps his hair grows over his ears or he sports facial hair. Perhaps he tosses his hat out a window, off a roof or out of the car as he speeds along. Perhaps - I hope - he finally summits Mt. Joan. Whatever the resolution, I hope that Weiner can resist some 2014-vintage socially redemptive soul butter. The dissolve to/from young man to/from old man along with the tearful contemplation of the past has been done already in 'Saving Private Ryan.' No need to plagiarize.

There's no doubt in my mind it will be ambiguous, perhaps controversial, but I do hope he avoids taking the coward's way out as his mentor David Chase did with the Sopranos.

Let Juan Pablo up - he's had enough

Card-carrying cynics like us and many others are having a grand time swatting the large piñata that is Juan Pablo, along with his unfortunate female castmates.  It seems that even TPTB are getting in on the act.  But to the extent we want this show to survive it may be time to put the cat o’ nine tails back in the bag for now.

The internet has, for good or ill, eliminated much of the mystery and naivete from life.  Things that used to make us wonder, explore, read, etc. are resolved in a matter of seconds with a Google search.  But a cheap payoff usually means the lesson isn’t as lasting or memorable. Why stand in line for 2 hours in the blazing sun to see Star Wars in the cinema for the 12^th time?  Because it couldn’t be downloaded and viewed on a loop on one’s computer which didn’t yet exist. Social media, whatever you think of it, strips away any inscrutability. 99% of those in the Bachelor contestant demographic would sooner live without food and water than their phones.

In short, we have gone from ‘I have a healthy skepticism about the process but will defer judgment because lightning might strike’ to ‘This is a farce and a joke but I’m here so I might as well play along and have a laugh.’  I daresay even Chris Harrison has crossed this particular Rubicon.

I have no brief for some of the decisions made by Mike Fleiss et al but in the era of 350 million Truman Shows airing simultaneously, he has a thankless task in establishing and maintaining his bubble of isolation around the contestants. 

We used to mock the average cast member for sounding clueless and getting caught up in the fairy tale (although some revealed their true selves in Bachelor Pad, a much-missed outlet for the also-rans), but now we are hard-pressed to compete with the jaded, tongue-in-cheek attitudes of the contestants themselves.

This show and its whole-cloth soap opera are easy targets but if we want them to be around in future we sheath the long knives for now.

Obamacare Enrollment Shell Game

Let me see if I have this correct:

The federal government strongarms each and every American into purchasing something they may neither need nor want (in effect, signing a contract under duress for the remainder of their natural lives). At the stroke of a pen, all Americans are, in ways large or small, participating in this scheme.

Despite the universal, compulsory nature of this law, citizens, taxpayers and media must rely on 'signals' and 'estimates' when it comes to their so-called representative government providing honest, accurate enrollment numbers in order to gauge the financial viability of the program. Individuals who have, by the admission of HHS, merely 'selected a plan' are nevertheless declared 'enrolled' despite a fraction of that total actually paying for something, anything. Those responsible for conceiving, implementing and administering this panacea repeatedly and doggedly refuse to provide data even during testimony before a co-equal branch of government, for no other possible reason beyond the protection of fragile political egos during their eyeblink of history in DC seats of power.

The HHS press release suggests we 'hear stories of Americans enrolling in the Marketplace [capitalization theirs].' But how is the story of a cousin, a neighbor or a complete stranger 500 miles away relevant since all personal circumstances are unique? Very fond of stories, are these Democrats. Statistics tend to reveal unpleasant facts. Better to rely on a 'narrative.' Do we need stories of other Americans complying with laws regarding bank robbery or auto theft in order to decide whether to comply ourselves? And if noncompliance carries penalties, isn't such inspiration surplus to requirements?

You must pay the rent! And what is the rent? What will the rent be next month, next year or ten years hence? They're not saying. Funny sort of landlord.

Sally Satchelbottom, DC Bureaucrat

Sally Satchelbottom (not her real name) works as a data analyst and compiler in a cubicle at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  She is a product of a full 17 years of our self-esteem 'educational' system, graduated with a degree in economics from State U where her professors revered Marx and thought Keynes was a right-winger.  She couldn't wait to get to the DC area and go to work (?) for Uncle Sam where she could 'make a difference.'  She pays $2,000+/month for a 1,000 sq ft flat in a drab concrete high-rise built in the 60s.  She regards any place west of Hagerstown MD and south of Richmond VA as Terra Incognita full of rednecks wearing criss-cross cartridge belts, armed to the teeth, listening to David Allen Coe, driving their pickup trucks to the cleaners to drop off their Klan robes after the weekly cross burning rally.  Data she sees at work tells her these people have a wide variety of occupations but she believes it's all a front for a secret highly organized militia movement.

Sally proudly drives a Prius with its COEXIST bumper sticker.  She isn't a lesbian but has strongly considered adding a rainbow triangle sticker to show her solidarity with the gay movement.  Sally didn't date much in school (she's pleasantly plump) so a photo of her nephews (who live in Indiana, Ohio or one of those other flyover states) in a school-project yarn frame hangs from her rearview mirror along with her Federal ID security badge which keeps those icky citizens out of the halls of government by the people, for the people and of the people.

Sally is proud of the DC Metro and thinks that green public transport should be implemented everywhere especially in places she's never been like Texas and Montana.  But the Metro station is very crowded and noisy so she chooses to drive to work where she can listen to Tori Amos, doing an average of 15 mph on the Beltway along with thousands of kindred spirits who believe in reducing emissions at all costs.  She sees the empty HOV lane and swells with pride at 20% of the freeway lanes going unused.  She has contemplated stopping to get coffee and a bagel but the staff don't speak English at the places along her route.  Still, she believes that diversity is strength and that America would be better off if our borders were thrown open.  Needless to say, Sally voted for Obama.  She's contributed $100 to his campaign but hasn't yet received her 'O 2012' reelection sticker but plans to get one from the pile on her coworker's desk today.  Finally, Sally reaches the office.  She swipes her badge, sits at her desk and begins compiling Labor Statistics.

Now...what are the chances that Sally, her colleagues, and her like-minded bosses (appointed or elected) will produce numbers favorable to the Obama administration, no matter what manipulations of raw data and formulae are required?  Why is government trusted for one single second to evaluate its own performance?  It's akin to giving an NFL head coach the scoreboard controls and telling him to 'keep it close.'  Madness.