Intertube Fatigue

A quote flashed through my mind today, after reading James Lileks taking Garrison Keillor to task for something or other. Mr. Keillor has a tendency to pontificate about George Bush—it's a common failing, but a failing still—and Lileks has a tendency to freak out whenever he hears what he considers to be typically liberal muzzy thinking. It's a pity: When both of these guys do what they're good at, they're well worth reading, but hearing them bicker over this by-now very depressing and unenlightening subject just didn't do it for me. I knew the quote I wanted, but first I heard the elephantine chuffing and snorting of the trash truck, and had to run out to the curb. Then I came back and got the book Franny and Zooey down from the bookshelf. Zooey is the youngest son, now grown, in a family of precocious children who had once all appeared on a radio show about brainy youngsters called "It's A Wise Child." He's an actor, bitter and uncompromising about the banality of his field, and preoccupied with a spiritual crisis is younger sister is experiencing. His mother, also concerned (they all live together) has been having a long conversation with him, to which he's reacting with surface annoyance—in part because he's trying all the time to wash and get dressed, and she won't leave the bathroom—and suppressed love. In the end, she leaves, just as he's putting on his second shoe:

Mrs. Glass watched him pull it on. She didn't stay for the tying of the lace, however. Instead, she left the room. But slowly. Moving with a certain uncharacteristic heaviness—a drag, actually—that distracted Zooey. He looked up and over at her with considerable attention. "I just don't know any more what happened to all you children," Mrs. Glass said vaguely, without turning around. She stopped at one of the towel bars and straightened a washcloth. "In the old radio days, when you were all little and all, you all used to be so—smart and happy and—just lovely. Morning, noon, and night." She bent over and picked up from the tiled floor what appeared to be a long, mysteriously blondish human hair. She made a slight detour with it over to the wastebasket, saying, "I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy." Her back was toward Zooey as she moved again toward the door. "At least," she said, "you all used to be so sweet and loving to each other it was a joy to see." She opened the door, shaking her head. "Just a joy," she said firmly, and closed the door behind her.

Zooey, looking over at the closed door, inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. "Some exit lines you give yourself, buddy," he called after her—but only when he must have been sure that his voice wouldn't really reach her down the hall.

Well, Lileks and Keillor are both smart as whips and know a lot, but when they stoop to this sort of thing it makes me feel an uncharacteristic heaviness myself. I wish Keillor could watch a young girl play baseball without thinking, King Charles' head style, about the current occupant. And I wish Lileks could acknowledge that Keillor is a millionaire for a reason. And I wish they both had used their bully pulpits to do what they're better at, instead of lashing at each other with tired-out opinions, the way clowns hit each with rubber chickens. Which I suppose is my opinion, but I'm sticking to it. If you're looking for amusement and instruction on the Web today, I wish you good hunting. The day is young, at least in my own time zone.