catch 22

Politics is stuck in a Catch-22

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After I listened to Meet The Press this morning, I could not keep my mouth shut another minute. I could not believe  Chuck Todd nor his guests didn’t see what I heard: the Catch-22 in American politics today.

In 1961, Joseph Heller published Catch-22 and gave us the perfect example of what’s happening now. All political speech today is Catch-22. If you don’t know what it means, go to the dictionary and look it up. [Editor’s note: I’m not linking to it because Puff would like you to look it up yourself and we all do what Puff says around here.]

Politicians speak in Catch-22-ese, so voters don’t get real answers, and that’s why voter turnout is so low. But it’s not just on the politicians. All American people need a course in basic Logic, so they can discern whether something is a contradiction (black and white) or a contrast (grey matter).

We don’t have logic today; we live in Catch-22: politicians don’t want to say anything that someone might vote against, so nobody knows what they’re saying. We need to make people’s brains move a little bit better and argue a point. We need to look at something someone is saying and ask ourselves, “What are the points here?”

This really affects everyone out there who is running for election and all the elections coming up next week. Let’s see if the men and women who are running for office can speak in logical terms on election day.

Heart medals awarded to Katie Uhlaender, Jeremy Abbott, and Team USA Hockey

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I’ll let the basketball go this week because of the Olympics. Thought I did watch the Syracuse/Pittsburgh game. Syracuse won by 1 point — Pitt led all the way through, and then they get down to the end — overtime, in Pittsburgh — and Pitt lets Syracuse put a ball in the basket. The Syracuse guy who made the shot is an excellent shooter, and Pittsburgh probably didn’t want to foul him. That’s the name of the game.

Now, on to the big sports topic: Sochi.

The first medal from our hearts (heart medals) goes to Katie Uhlaender. She lost by POINT OH FOUR seconds in getting a skeleton downhill medal.

The other heart medal goes to Jeremy Abbott, men’s champion who fell in the short thing, then came in twelfth in the finals. He skated a free program but couldn’t do the big jumps because he apparently hurt his hips — and everybody looks for those damn jumps.

Another highlight from the men’s skating: 19-year old Jason Brown from Chicago — he hasn’t mastered the quadruple — ice dancing to Riverdance. He’s fluid, but I want to take our hats off to the Japanese. They were really outstanding.

And of course: GO USA HOCKEY. I don’t know how they scored that at the end — whoever made the first point won the game. Now, that was good. We’re really tickled that the US beat the Russians. This is where Putin wanted them to win the gold and now they’re out. The Russians could win the women’s figure skating, though, so Putin has something to look forward to. 

The American women are coming in with all the medals. The men did win gold, silver and bronze in some kind of snowboarding or skiing — dumb stuff. They have so many of those things with snow boarders and loops in the air — now they’re doing it with skis on. Why?

[A note from Puff’s husband: They ought to play the music from ice skating performances in the curling competition. It could use some excitement.]

And finally, on a different note: it would pay all of us to read a book that came out in 1961: Catch-22. I’ve just died laughing all the way through it recently; it’s so to-the-point it’s actually not funny. Yossarian is up on all the political people today. In my edition, Christopher Buckley wrote the forward and said Heller was one of his mentors. Here is a book that has sold millions of copies, never won an award, and it’s still top of the line. It’s a word in the American Heritage Dictionary; everyone throws around the word but they don’t know where it comes from. So wake up and read it, or re-read it.