Unintended Consequences

Isn't it funny how we so often wind up achieving the opposite of what we intend?

The most spectacular example I can think of would be of course the Nazis. They tried to wipe out the entire population of Ashkenazic Jews in Europe. What was the result instead? The founding of the State of Israel.

On a less globe-shaking front, look at Major League Baseball. For nearly a century, baseball's team owners conspired to keep player salaries low by way of a dirty little form of indentured servitude known as the reserve clause. When the players finally burst this chain in the 1970s and won the right to free agency, their salaries skyrocketed to levels the owners probably never dreamed in their worst nightmares.

I was tending bar last night at my wife's company Christmas party, and no, I am not going to call it a "holiday party."

As I stood there mixing rum punch and popping the caps off bottles of Sam Adams that some joker had shaken before he put them into the refrigerator, I naturally overheard conversations. And one of the conversations I overheard was the one about how you had better plan on parking far away and taking the Metro into town if you're planning to attend the inauguration next month, because simply everyone will be wanting to come and Witness History.

Yes, Washington is all a-dither, all goosey-pimply over the big party it's getting ready to throw next month when the Anointed One steps up to be sworn in. Which, after listening to some of the breathless party-talk I heard about it last night, got me to reflecting on ... Newton's Third Law of Motion.

You all know about Newton's Third Law of Motion. That's the one that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You know, like when you push your boat away from the dock, the 20 pounds of "push" you apply to the dock makes the boat go 20 pounds' worth of the other way.

The law applies in more areas than physics. I just mentioned two: genocide and baseball.

The election campaign that just concluded last month,(after about five years) and will result in the Big Party next month, was, I was repeatedly told, the one that would "restore civility" to American politics.

Really? Then would someone tell me why this campaign that just wrapped up has ended more friendships than any presidential campaign I can remember in my lifetime? In 2004 I had friends who voted for Bush and friends who voted for Kerry. But when the election was over, we were all still speaking to each other. Right now I have two acquaintances and one cousin who have stopped speaking to me because I didn't vote for Obama.

Let's get a grip, people! Even Spike Lee said in an interview before the election that America's black population needed to "calm down" about Obama. After all, Lee pointed out, "He isn't Jesus."

He isn't even Elvis, whose name I mention because I'm remembering the night, many years ago, when I was working the graveyard shift in a 7-11 store in California. This was shortly after Elvis died. A random member of the Church of Elvis wandered into my store during the wee small hours, and while buying cigarettes, delivered herself of a eulogy for her fallen idol. When I said candidly that I didn't understand Elvis-olatry, that after all the guy was just a singer, albeit a talented one, and not St. Francis of Assisi, she grabbed her cigarettes and stormed out of there no doubt determined to boycott the Southland Corporation forever and take her business henceforth to Circle K.

This is like that. And it gets crazier. Sometimes, when I'm really bored, I will read the adult advertisements on Craigslist for laughs. I've never answered one, I just read them and surf on. Last week I saw one inviting any -- but not quite all -- interested swingers to a swapping-and-general-whoopee session somewhere out in northern Virginia. There was just one caveat: you were only welcome at the party if you voted for The Anointed One.

Great. Having voted for Obama is now a pre-req for exchanging body fluids (and STDs.)

Just call me a heretic, but the dirty rumors are true. I'm guilty as charged, all you Barry-olaters out there. I did not vote for Obama. And and as you head for my house with torches and pitchforks, I'll tell you something else. His skin was part of the reason -- not its color, its thickness, which seemed to me about one micron.

This is a guy so used to adoration and so unused to criticism that he cries "foul," "unfair," "low blow" and "distraction" if someone is gauche enough to point out that he's eating his shrimp cocktail with the wrong fork. The usual arguments about his inexperience and thin resume aside, that in itself was enough to wave me off the bandwagon. Now, believing as I do that the office generally makes the man and not the other way around, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this score and assume that the hard knocks that come with the job of being the most powerful person in the world will give him a fast education. But I think he should grab an opportunity and enroll in the three-week fast-track course that George W. Bush could teach him on learning to simply ignore it and carry on when you're being called every filthy name in the book and a few they have to make up. Because there will be a honeymoon, but it will end. And honeymoons are all Barack Obama knows. It's not all cheering crowds and flying underwear out there, and he's about to find that out.

And you Barry-olaters who think Elvis has re-entered the building are going to find out, too, and just as quickly as he.

So come on, Rob Lawson. Come on Julie Anderson. Come on, cousin Melissa. Smile and make a funny face. Elvis aside, this isn't church, although I think I might start attending again after all these years, if only because I think at this moment prayer is one of the few options left to those of us who believe in Newton's Third Law and wonder just where the ship of state is going to be sailing after having been given such an uncritically enthusiastic send-off.