The Stepford Staff

The Stepford Wives (1975 film)

In case you missed it, President Obama referred to himself 199 times in a 40 minute speech in Austin this past Thursday … see: CNS News Story. And this was with the requisite backdrop of nodding, laughing, applauding toadies. (How can these people allow themselves to be abased and used as human wallpaper?)

And, of course, this speech was delivered in Obama’s increasingly malicious, acerbic, mean, immature, snide, condescending, sarcastic, puerile, mocking, cynical, sophomoric, and derisive manner. (I could go on, but it certainly was not what we know as presidential.) It almost makes no difference what the subject of this talking-down was … for it was stomach turning. Even liberals such as Bob Beckel and James Carville found it offensive.

The TV show, "The Five,” posited last Friday why no one in Obama’s inner circle will disabuse him of such inflammatory (and egotistical) rhetoric. The Five group coined a new term which I liked a lot … cleverly referring to those surrounding Obama in the White House … as "the Stepford staff.”

This is an entry for the next Urban Dictionary.

(If this movie reference does not connect with you ... please see: Wikipedia Explanation).

J.D. Salinger

PBS has just aired a two-hour documentary on J.D. Salinger, the best-selling author of The Catcher in the Rye … originally published in 1951 … and his book sales have once again soared … see: Twin Cities Link.  This documentary revealed many aspects of this writer’s life I had not known … his military service… his first marriage to a German agent … his writing for the New Yorker … his penchant for young girls … his two children by his second marriage … his egomania.  But it really didn’t explain why his first book, The Catcher, was his only true mega- success … see The Daily Beast Story.

As a high-school tutor west of Boston, I have had to reread this book and discuss it with a few of my students … and, in my opinion, it doesn’t hold up well in today’s society.  Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, spends most of this novel’s verbiage railing against the establishment and its icons … puritanical morality, honoring one’s parents, good sportsmanship, hard work, scholastic achievement, and even, believe it or not, diversity.  Good stuff for a kid of the 50’s and early 60’s, but Holden’s targets have now been relegated to the trash heap of modern society.  Most of his dragons have already been slain.

So Salinger’s obsessive desire for the privacy of rural New Hampshire … with his occasional sought-out ego burnishing by the literati set … had it seems some perceptive rationale. Maybe he understood that his ideas would not really age well.  After his passing last year at age 91, I am still left wondering the fate of his second wife and children.  For more of his life story see: IMDB Entry.