The Chris Moeller Archives

You won't get out of October alive

You know how sometimes when you've almost arrived home in your car, a great song will come on the radio and so rather than turn into your drive, you continue straight and then weave around nearby streets for about four minutes until it ends? That happened to me tonight when I was motoring up the boulevard and "September" by Earth, Wind, and Fire cued up on KIOA. I turned off into my Sherman Hill neighborhood, the oldest in the city (est. 1870's), and found myself smack dab in the middle of a charming little Halloween block party.

Sherman Hill is marvelously underlit year-round by these old fashioned street lights patterned after the neighborhood's original gas-powered lamps, and I found myself unexpectedly staring at the frightening specter of Dr. Frankenstein's monster through the low-beams of my headlights. The first person protagonist of Mary Shelley's literary nightmare was moving slowly across my pathway ahead, carrying a heavy chain, standing seriously about eight feet tall (somehow), and existing rather lucky that I didn't ram him with the front grille of the Civic by sheer accident.

As I slowed down to pass, the ghastly ogre peered into my passenger side window, slowly waving the irons from which he had evidently just freed himself. If it were a dark and stormy night, I might have been scared literally shitless, but skies were clear above and I presently had Maurice and Verdine White jamming positive vibes into my ear. This was the most impressive Halloween costume I have seen in years, especially the aping of the gait and the impressive physical height of the Modern Prometheus, and looming, as he was, in this particularly spooky environment. Well done, anonymous neighbor. I can't imagine myself ever being this emotionally, randomly, or satisfyingly shaken if I was living in the suburbs.

---

The race to the bottom: "Human Resources Consulting Firm" Aon Hewitt has released a report stating that Iowa's public employees are overpaid because they reportedly make substantially more than private sector employees in similar positions... and this report should be completely disregarded. It's tried-and-true "Shock Doctrine" strategy to, after disarming labor unions, drive down private sector wages, and then continue the pay slash correspondingly across the board. This is the kind of government you get when your chief executive is a disaster capitalist like Terry Branstad or Augusto Pinochet.

---

The Des Moines Register's endorsement of Mitt Romney on Saturday is just another sign that the daily has become a vacant shell of its once-venerable self. I'm actually embarrassed for it. Granted, Obama's inept advisors treated the editorial board shabbily-- demanding that a face-to-face meeting with the candidate be "off the record," then after the meeting had been conducted, releasing the assayed transcript of the meeting to the media directly. How could the board publicly endorse Obama after the most secretive White House in our history had so nakedly exposed the paper's lack of journalistic guile and integrity? But the board didn't have to endorse either one of these two candidates. Writing an editorial instead that included the gut-busting claim that Mitt Romney has "fresh" economic ideas and then posting that editorial on their website so that any literate in the free world could read it is just 'dog in diapers' crazy. This won't turn out well for the company brand.

---

And then today in news from the Gannett Corporation's local outlet store, the editorial board scolds University of Iowa leadership and faculty for not being "tolerant" of so-called minority (read: conservative) political views even though the university had just won the frivolous lawsuit accusing them of otherwise.  The board's support of this currently fashionable trend to treat all political ideas with equal respect, regardless of their merit, is aiding in a dumbing down of the nation that has made Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" a near-reality.

Also, this headline on the front of the Register's Wednesday print edition: "Ann Romney: Voters Can Trust Mitt." Thanks for that provocative challenge, gang. Sister-wife Ann was in Des Moines Tuesday night, and I guess that occasion warrants a level of media attention for the Romney campaign that won't be afforded on any day this year to 80% of the presidential candidates appearing on 2012 Iowa ballots, but I think I'll hold off on determining my vote until we know who Malia Obama is endorsing.

posted by CM @ 9:01 PM