But We Like Him, Don't We?

A lot of us, including me, have enjoyed spending this week whacking away at Chris Christie. Will Fort Lee-gate (or GWB-gate) be his undoing if he tries to run for President? Depends on the American attention span. But look, he wouldn’t be a contender unless there was something about him we liked. Go on, admit it.

He is perceived as a plain speaker who says what’s on his mind when it needs to be said, even if we don’t like what he says sometimes. The scandal will prove his undoing only if he is shown to be an outright liar – or at the least, a very poor administrator who didn’t know what he should have known (the latter isn’t a deal-breaker by any means: Ronald Reagan?).

President Obama is not perceived as a plain speaker, but as someone who seems to talk out of both sides of his mouth when he feels it necessary, or whose opinions “evolve” when it’s politically convenient. That doesn’t mean he is any worse, though, than recent occupants of the office, or than politicians in general.

But remember Herman Cain? He shot to the top of the Republican heap very quickly, because he had mastered the art of plain speaking. His plans were oversimplifications, though, and his problems with women also undid him. Still, that quality was attractive.

Voters found plain speaking attractive in Harry Truman – in spite of the fact that he approved dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

If Teddy Roosevelt were a zombie, I would vote for him. He is generally thought of as the plainest of speakers, totally unafraid to stand up to special interests. Walking softly, carrying the big stick. Obviously, he wasn’t as simple as all that. Here’s the guy who became the hero of our national park system, who loved the environment – and also enjoyed hunting. But he was perceived as caring about the average citizen. Who’s the last President to have done that – and meant it?  

Maybe we can get Aaron Sorkin to deisgn us a President. The guy Martin Sheen played in The West Wing wasn’t perfect – but would probably work for me.

Android technology still has a ways to go yet, though, so for the time being, we’re stuck with finding someone who can speak to us. But it’s not just plain words. Believe it or not, dumbing down doesn’t work with the majority of voters. It’s about connecting. Can our system produce someone who really connects with us, even if we disagree sometimes -- someone we TRUST? I haven’t given up on it quite yet. But I think we’re all more than ready. We'll know it when we see it -- and listen when we hear it.

A Bad Time for Control Freaks

Occasionally it seems that Mother Nature feels the need to remind us that we aren’t in control, and that there are no guarantees in life, and no place, on Earth at least, where we’re 100 percent safe.

Just when Americans start to feel that catastrophic events don’t really happen here, we get a Katrina, or a Sandy, or an F5 tornado. Earthquakes happen where they aren’t supposed to – at least in our narrow little concept of what we call history. We talk about 100-year storms and 500-year storms. What was Sandy? A 1,000-year storm? There’s no file footage for when the last time this happened.

I was moved by two things this morning in the media reporting about Sandy. The female Weather Channel anchor was cold, tired, and feeling a little giddy, and made sort of an inappropriate joke (which I won’t explain). Her co-anchors weren’t sure what to do with it. But they chalked it up to her being punchy after many hours with no sleep, soaked to the skin. Then there was the New Jersey reporter standing in the middle of a hard-hit coastal town who broke down for a few seconds – as did the police chief of the same town whom he had interviewed a half-hour earlier. When disasters happen, reporters and public safety people don’t get to be human beings – at least right away – but eventually, it has to come out. Control goes out the window.

What hasn’t happened yet, at least on a large scale, is the blame game – who should have done what when. But there are some events that are way beyond games like that, and this is one of them. This is even beyond “you chose to live there and you should have known better.” There’s no argument about big government or small government – maybe this is one of those times that no government can ever be quite big enough. The absolute last thing he’s thinking about right now, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, is next week’s election. All of a sudden, control over time, in the form of a schedule, is secondary. Or tertiary, or whatever comes after that.

In the space of a few hours, what we’ve earned, what we’ve built, what we’ve collected, can disappear. The control freak’s worst nightmare isn’t a Katrina or a Sandy. It’s having to rely on others for help.

As John Lennon once said, life is what happens when you’ve made other plans. But life is also about flexibility, and our ability, and even the opportunity, to make new ones when we have to.

Is My Microwave Oven Spying On Me?

We are by no means Luddites in my house, but we were perfectly content to use a microwave oven that was the better part of 40 years old, until it began emitting strange sparks and flashes not seen since the original 1931 version of “Frankenstein.” It’s a little early for Halloween movie rentals. But we had to think about safety first.

So, we bit the bullet and decided to buy a new oven, and this is a whole different animal in many ways. For one thing, it puts out twice as much cooking power. For another, it has all kinds of bells and whistles the other one didn’t have. With the old one, we just turned the time dial to the desired cooking duration and pressed the button. When it was done, it was done. The new one not only has a digital display, but seems to know what you’re going to cook ahead of time – or maybe it’s my imagination.

There’s a particularly intriguing feature called Total Cook Plus. With this one, you read a code off the package of microwave food you want to cook, punch it in with the oven’s keypad, and the oven cooks the food according to specification – you don’t even have to read the directions on the package.

But here’s the thing: To activate this feature, you have to put in your Zip code. Why on earth would an oven want your Zip code? Well, it figures out the atmospheric pressure where you live. and it makes adjustments accordingly. Such things affect cooking, apparently.

Well, at least that’s what they say. But how do I know it doesn’t have other applications? You’ve been hearing the stories about how electronic devices made in China and sold here are feared to have some “back-door” technology that allows someone sitting at a computer in Fujian or someplace to control the device. I suppose if I’m cooking Chinese food, and someone in China has a better idea of how to do it than the oven does, I should remain open to suggestions. But what else is that oven doing? What kind of data is it mining? It already knows what I eat. What’s next?

This all reminds me of a movie from the 1970s called “The Demon Seed,” in which a computer tries to get Julie Christie pregnant. Maybe that’s a better rental for Halloween.