Chip Benson

THE ECONOMY, IT'S STUPID

The Providence Journal: May 5, 2008

AS THE LAST few billion dollars of liquidity are sucked into the national debt and scarfed up by Wall Street, strange things are happening with the U.S. dollar and American economy in general. Bonds are inverted, Chinese goods are expensive, and John McCain may soon be in charge of it all!

The winning political slogan of the 1990s was “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In ’08 for McCain, it should be “The economy: It’s stupid”.

In political terms this is also known as turning a negative into a positive, because when John McCain tries to talk about economics he starts to grammaticate like George Bush. He means well, but perhaps somewhere in the wings waits VP Mitt Romney.

However, no one, not even Mitt, really knows what’s going on with high finance; the New York Times said so!

A rising tide of economic uncertainty floats all boats of opinion equally, elevating non-economists like me, John McCain, and our new slogan, “The economy: It’s stupid.”

The economy is stupid because we made it so. Too many tax cuts, unfunded social programs, unfunded wars and other failed policies from the last 25 years have been tucked away into the mother of all subprime mortgages, the $10 trillion national debt.

Wall Street’s got nuthin’ on Washington when it comes to credit issues. Admonishing the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Citibank, Bank of America and others is like a stern lecture from “Mr. T” regarding fiscal discipline.

The elephant in the room, with a big dunce cap on, is the national debt. It’s the unspoken, unintended punch line to all of the CNBC punditry-talk. It’s a black hole from which all rational economic law and free-market principles are slowly disappearing into, along with Jim Cramer. At some point soon it will render moot the discussion of stocks, bonds, and interest rates; do not pass Go, or collect $200, proceed directly to Jail!

The economy: It’s stupid. There is no believable explanation for the markets, and perhaps soon the American system, because so much has not been paid for. John Adams once “United the States of America,” but today we are more like Thomas Jefferson in our insolvency.

“In God We Trust” has given way to “In Debt We Trust.” It was spending money that united us post 9/11, E Pluribus Unum now means, “From many, one giant, stupid debt.”

It’s a conversation my mother and I have had for years. We start things off with, “Where does money come from?” From there it gets very complicated, but now we know that we’re on the same level as Ben Bernanke.

The economy: It’s stupid. I think that McCain could actually run on this slogan, with the promise that we need to pay down the national debt for it and us to make sense again.

Bring on the marketers and branded entertainment pros. We need a catchy advertising campaign for the national debt! When it’s time to get serious, it’s time for a coordinated media plan. There will be dress-down breakout meetings to get a creative handle on what the national debt should look like — Spielberg’s final shot in Indiana Jones?

If we’ve become a nation of compartmentalizers, than this surely is the biggest deposit of them all.

THE CRAZY CLEMENS-BUSH NEXUS

The Providence Journal: February 13, 2008

“You must misremember this… A syringe is just a syringe… An abscess is just an abscess…. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by...”  Play it again, Sam.

There will be movies. There will be books. There will be viral videos.

The Clemens steroid hearings set a new standard for spectacle, an instant classic. Part Anita Hill Hearings, part O.J. Simpson’s search for “the real killers”, and part C-Span “point of parliamentary procedure”, all rolled into five hours of reality on television like no other. New words of insincerity entered the American vocabulary like “misremember” and “knowingly knowing”, taking their place alongside “that depends what is, is”.

Republicans acted like defense attorneys! Democrats like prosecutors. Heroes lied and snitches told the truth. Testosterone Winstrol! Intramuscular injections! Bloodied designer jeans! A door of deceit was flung open and a road of anarchy exposed before a hoard of lawyers and other bought-and-paid-for experts threw themselves on the whole mess.

Then an existential river flowed.

In the absence of a public hearing in Congress over the decision to go to War in Iraq, with George Bush as the main witness, the closest thing America will ever get is the “He said, he said” Clemens steroid hearings. Substitute George Bush for Roger Clemens and the parallel begins.

In this “crazy, mixed-up world where the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans," weapons of mass-destruction are steroids.

Clemens and his Republican autograph seekers think the end justifies the means. That because he worked hard, meant well, kept no alcohol at home, and spoke to charities; he must be above reproach, and is going to heaven. This Texas style system of paternal justice and brinkmanship-also on display to the rest of the world from the White House-had its most absurd moment at the end of the five-hour hearings, when the fair-minded Committee chair (D) Henry Waxman grilled Clemens about his potential witness intimidation of his former nanny.

Having already thrown his deceased mother under the bus for recommending Vitamin B12 shots (code for HGH), Clemens licked his lying lips (according to the MSNBC body language expert), and told Waxman that he contacted his nanny to protect the vital national security interests of the United States. Did I mention that an existential river is flowing here?

Clemens said in plain terms that he did this to “help the committee” with her testimony, much in the same way that George Bush helped our national security by cherry-picking WMD intelligence to simply get the evildoers.

Much has been made of a comment regarding Clemens by the former Red Sox General Manager, Dan Duquette, in 1996.  For over ten years Duquette has been vilified for saying that Clemens was in the twilight of his career. Something dramatically changed that; something that allowed Clemens, Barry Bonds and others to defy natural law and recognized law. What about international law you say?

Leave that to President Bush.

TALKS LIKE A DEMOCRAT, LIVES LIKE A REPUBLICAN

The Providence Journal: January 17, 2008

There’s a new breed of American voter these days. Privately they’re sub prime, publicly they’re tightwads. Foreign issues demand a front yard “Not on My Watch” sign, but local issues are consigned to backyard neglect. Dressed like a fair trader, they shop like free traders at Costco and Wal-Mart.

They talk like a Democrat, but live like a Republican.

They work all day pursuing hard-nosed private sector profits, but once stoked, prefer pie-in-the-sky cocktail conversation about public sector programs. They drive SUV’s to work instead of public transportation, but at night watch “Planet Earth” on Discovery and talk furtively about warming icebergs and penguin habitat.

Where have all the Republicans gone? Investment bankers just love Obama! Soccer Mom’s are with Hillary! Lawyers love John Edwards going after the rich and powerful! It takes one to know one to sue one?

Yet this presidential season within a writer’s strike, wrapped around an unpopular president, is a long road filled with pretend talk.

Just as no one will admit to voting for George Bush, they also will not acknowledge watching Reality-TV. Well someone in the form of a voting majority did and does! The point may be humiliating, but the votes, be they tallied for Idols or Losers, by clickers or chads, tell the story that reality ultimately sells.

That reality is that we are a nation of buyers and sellers, not savers and doers. Talk is cheap, and trendy, just like primary elections. Eventually, the conversation will matter. The general election votes will count for something, and then will the real American Idol please stand up!

That Idol should represent an economic and pragmatic America.   Not a political or religious one. We vote with our wallet and clicker, and not necessarily for right or for wrong. We’re against the war but we’re for the troops. We support the local retailer but spend it on the multinational. We speak one thing publicly, and eat something entirely different in private.

We want to look good, be liked, and be right, but mostly to advance our own interests! Do we really want a Democrat to make amends with the world through appearance and speech? Or will we choose not to apologize, and match action with deed to stay a course we have affirmed already once just three years ago.

THE NEW, NEW THIRD WAY

The Providence Journal: August 17, 2007

I cannot bite my tongue for any longer.

Rudy, you need to divorce Judith Nathan, and run for the White House while you do it! It’s just your style. Yes, you are presidential timber, but Judith is the woman that every wife dreads her husband meeting at work. That kind of woman. Even in the age of “Desperate Housewives” she cannot be allowed to be the First Lady of The United States.

Who are we, France? Where they just almost elected Mrs. and Mr. Segolene Royal. A couple that is no longer on speaking terms! Eventually this is going to happen to you and Judith, so let’s clear things up now for the voters in 2008.

Here are the marital brass tacks of the next Presidential Election; Hillary Clinton will run as someone that should have divorced, but stayed together because she can’t run without him. Michael Bloomberg will run stag as a divorced billionaire because he can. That leaves you as someone with the courage to get divorced while on “The Road to the White House”. It’s the “New, New Third Way” in politics, with divorce attorney Raul Felder as the campaign director.

This is beyond a New Yorker’s dream election. It’s just too New Yorky to be true! In that way this New, New Third Way is you, Rudy, progressive and maverick and tough. Think of the political benefits (and you know who you are). If you are willing to divorce your wife while running for President, there’s nothing you won’t do! Clean up Washington? Easy decision! End the War on Drugs? Done! The War on Terror? Ditto!

Islamic Fundamentalists never divorce or discard their wives (especially through a press conference), they just keep adding more. Your actions in divorce court-patriotic at this point-would really put them on their heels.

Who was the one guy the German’s feared in World War II? That’s right, your hero Winston Churchill, because they thought he was crazy. Drinking, smoking, never sleeping, dictating battle orders from a bathtub, okay he only had one wife, but still.

Think of the possibilities, not the penalties. If you acknowledge that marriage is impossible in this day and age, you’ll truly be tapping into the silent majority. Sure, there would be several weeks of bad publicity, but that could soon be followed by a Dr. Phil “Reunited” show with your children, and besides they are the ones you can truly never get away from!

The recent nine-page Vanity Fair article detailing Judith Nathan’s crimes and misdemeanors of the social kind is just the beginning of a covert intervention on behalf of your true friends, ex-political hacks and your true enemies. In fairness, no one can really have this conversation with you. Everyone close to you works for you and therefore, really, they work for her.

Three marriages and three divorces, so ya’ got a blind spot. Who doesn’t!

So you’re a little crazy. Well, who else was going to clean up NYC!

So you’re getting a divorce during a national campaign.

So you’re tough enough to be President!

AND THIS YEAR, THE OSCAR GOES TO...YOU!

The Providence Journal: February 13, 2007

“And the Oscar goes to…..You!”

“Me?” As in, me who put the “you” in YouTube? I’ve been dreaming of winning an Academy Award my whole life, even though I’m not, technically, an actor. Could this finally be my year?

I still tear up when they remember to thank Mom & Dad-and those are real tears Hollywood-albeit at the end of a very long list of agents, managers and underarm Botox fixers.

Let me explain. Several months ago I won Time’s Person of the Year award “You”. What a year it was for me to win “You”! Since then, I’ve sworn off social climbing. The way to the top without leaving your house is social networking sites.

The signature moment of last year’s Golden Globes Award show occurred before the actual ceremony during the all-important live telecast of the red-carpet arrivals. This is where the true YouTube moments happen.

The designer turned actor turned designer, Isaac Mizrahi, greeted Scarlett Johansson with the obligatory “Who are you wearing”, this is what passes for “Hello” in Hollywood, and then, while admiring her dress, he groped her bosom. It’s okay. He’s gay! Coincidently he behaves just like my Avatar!

I myself, or “You” as I am also known, have watched this clip many times, for purely professional reasons! Apparently, it is through this type of obsessive heterosexual behavior, whereby I put the “you” in YouTube, and determine just who is the what!

Before this column descends any further into Grammy Awards-speak let me give Al Gore his due. Whereas the Dixie Chicks were vindicated at the Grammy’s, so too shall “Al Bore” get redemption at the Academy Awards. The environmentalist turned Vice-President turned environmentalist deserves an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” if only for doing it the old-fashioned pre-YouTube way. He went around by foot for years lecturing about global warming with a slideshow!

Social networking sites like YouTube and other digital grassroots technologies have propelled the excellent documentary from the obscurity of film festivals all the way to the forefront of public consciousness. When Isaac Mizrahi gropes Al Gore on the red carpet, but asks him about his carbon neutral tuxedo, you are watching 21^st Century democracy in action. This is what’s to come, someone tell the Shia’s and Shiite’s to tune in too!

Yes, the underlying theme at the Oscars this year will be vindication. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins will be celebrating the recent election results and I say, whew! Relax you’re good looking. I just want to enjoy what they’re wearing and that the actresses aren’t wearing very much at all. I’ll do my part at home, and together, we’ll vote the next sexy, er, cause it’s very own award, one YouTube boob at a time.

THE DEATH OF THE DOCUMENTARY

The Providence Journal: June 7, 2006

The conclusions reached in the new documentary Giuliani Time recall the Oliver Stone movie JFK -- a general misconception that is now a movie! Another documentary. Another conspiracy theory.
The phrase "Giuliani Time," meaning tolerance for police brutality, was never attributed to a New York City police officer. It was never said in the police-brutality case of Abner Louima, and it was never an unofficial policy of the New York Police Department. A reporter coined the phrase! No matter, several years go by and it's now the basis for a film documentary. In fact, Rudy Giuliani's reputation as a law-and-order mayor obscures the reality that he had a very contentious relationship with the police unions and police commissioners, and was hardly a beloved figure among the rank and file who would have carried out "Giuliani Time" justice.

Giuliani Time is not really a documentary, or anywhere close to the truth. How about Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? The book-publisher promotion says, "Read The Truth." If there's no truth in advertising, what can there possibly be in advertising about politics?

Chaim Yavin, the so-called Walter Cronkite of Israel, after 38 years of reporting on the Palestinian question, recently produced his first documentary, Land of the Settlers, and says he feels better now that he's been able to tell the truth. Okay, but what's he been reporting the last 38 years?
The so-called documentary Giuliani Time, produced by Kevin Keating, premiered in Manhattan and Los Angeles on May 12, and is another nail in the coffin for the original meaning of the word documentary--which in future dictionaries shall be defined as "not facts, but what I really think," "primarily left-wing," and "conspiracy theory."

It's all Michael Moore's fault. He started it with the entertaining Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, although to his credit Moore entered the latter into the regular-movie category for the Academy Awards, instead of the documentary group (better cocktail parties too).
Just as a quaint reminder, documentary is a video/film form of news analysis meant to document the facts of an important subject. Just don't let it get in the way of entertainment!
Running endlessly on the local Cox Cable television this election year are promotions for a documentary about Rhode Island state-treasurer candidate Frank Caprio--produced by Frank Caprio! It's unintentionally entertaining, but please--for the love of truthiness--call it a movie, a work of fiction, and don't bring home any documentary awards from those conspicuous documentary-film festivals. Everyone has one already, anyhow.

Giuliani Time and An Inconvenient Truth are political Trojan Horses, meant to seem at first as earnest works of artistic journalism. Once inside the walls of the theatre, though, they reveal themselves to be political animals. What will they end up destroying?
Certainly not number-one Yankee fan and Republican Rudy Giuliani, who at a recent fundraiser in Boston--of all places--was given a Red Sox jersey with "08" on the back! Mitt Romney, John Kerry: Take note. Rudy's first big fundraiser is scheduled in New York, on June 13.

The documentary Giuliani Time scores points for picking a terrific story. Rudy is America's most popular politician, and some say he has a very good chance of becoming the next president of the United States. For his actions on 9/11, he's become the American Churchill.

Churchill was also voted out of office after winning World War II, by a constituency that had tired of his omnipresence. The same can be said about Rudy after two hands-on four-year terms as mayor of the greatest if not toughest city in the world. Sixty years later, historians credit Churchill with providing nothing less than every Briton's freedom, to say nothing of Western Europe's. Rudy saved New York from itself, and then, perhaps, the entire country following 9/11.

Giuliani Time chooses to mix up the weariness that many New Yorkers had with Rudy's personality after eight years with the utter effectiveness of his policies. The film will stand as a record--in only this sense a documentary--of the head scratching that is still going on among New York Democrats over the Giuliani administration and policies that effectively debunked and cleared out 30 years of failed liberal government.

Giuliani Time is not a work of history or a factual documenting. It is a well-timed political hit job, meant to ride a Michael Moore-ish wave of hysteria in tandem with other like-minded investigative-journalism efforts, such as the claims that a missile and not a plane hit the Pentagon.

Now that's entertainment!

PRESIDENT STEWART

The Providence Journal: February 27, 2006

For many diffident Americans George W. Bush is still not their president.

Remember January's televised State of the Union speech? "Turn it off!" "Why bother" "He's an idiot" "And so are you".

Yes, most voting Democrats remain in the country, but it's an ongoing out-of-body political experience for those not represented by him.

In this time of great social denial, the other-half-of-America cannot even look in the direction of the Bush Administration. In fact, they can't watch traditional news coverage anymore, because they don't take anyone seriously that takes the president seriously.

Instead, the other-half-of-America is watching news satire programs like Jon Stewart's  The Daily Show, on Comedy Central, followed by The Colbert Report, with fake interviews, and other programs like Bill Maher's Real Time on HBO. The formula goes something like this, "Ha, ha, ha. He's not really our president."

Mr Stewart speaks to the hearts and minds of the other-half-of-America. He is the newsman of choice for the Democrats. He is the darling of American pop culture, with one deft foot in politics, which is why he was chosen to be the host of the 2006 Academy Awards, to be held tomorrow night.

"Ha, ha, ha. He's not really our president" will be the theme of the night, along with Brokeback Mountain. At their intersection is the Dick Cheney hunting accident, otherwise known as the Goldmine of Comedy.

Mr. Stewart's monologue and remarks throughout the awards ceremony will no doubt be highly political, funny, and ultimately represent the Hollywood filmmakers "reel" opinion regarding the state of the union, and George Bush in particular. With all due respect to Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, Mr. Stewart is today's truth-teller, at least for his many followers.

Politicians and newsmen spin Steven Colbert's "truthiness", but comedians and Democrats have the laughter to make their medicine go down. They hope it will cure what is sick in America.

Mr. Stewart will have a larger and arguably more rapt audience than did President Bush for his State of the Union and for continued good reason.

The other week Stewart deftly showed clips from the Fox News Channel of the anchors and reporters throughout the day dismissing the need as "obsessive" and "unnecessary" for continued coverage of Dick Cheney's hunting accident, given all the other important news going on. This came after Cheney's exclusive interview on Fox.

But then Stewart showed Fox's coverage of the "other important news", which turned out to be hours of helicopter-TV coverage of Neil Entwistle's arrival by car for arraignment in Framingham, Mass., for the murder of his wife and young child.

Things may have to get pretty funny in America before they get any better.

POMPOUS COMICS FOR POWER

The Providence Journal: January 5, 2006

Hide the women and children--it's comedy hour! It's not just the profanity, but the insufferable self-righteousness and awkward anger that make top comedians like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Howard Stern increasingly unfunny. The laughs are still there, but now what often follows a punch line is a viscous political diatribe launched from a smug posture of entitlement.

Is there anything more uncomfortable to watch than a political roundtable discussion between comedians and actual hard-working, serious people? The genre started at ABC with Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, and has now been copied by other shows like Jon Stewart's Daily Show and continues on Maher's HBO program Real Time.

Whether the guests are scientists or politicians, it's like observing a discussion between spoiled children and their earnest parents. The children (comedians) stomp and scream presumptuous, juvenile pronouncements, while the parents make exasperated pleas for common sense and some sense of reality. Comedians used to rail against the establishment, but with the rise of America's pop culture society, comedians have become the establishment. Howard Stern, who has in the past taken on figures like former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, the Federal Communications Commission and the evangelical political movement, is now to be paid $500 million by Sirius Satellite Radio to basically launch an entire new industry. The last few weeks he has been making the rounds like a CEO, talking up stock valuations, market growth and IPOs.

No longer content to be mere court jesters, today's comedians have the money, and now they want the power. Jon Stewart's scolding and Bill Maher's disapproval may boil over one day like that of the comedian Al Franken. The talented comic of Saturday Night Live fame started out writing funny books like Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot, and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, but now is considering a run for a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, and has a book out boringly titled The Truth.

The world can be a complex and dangerous place, but even more so when comedians get so angry that they're no longer funny. Soon, instead of laughter gentle ribbing, and what the late, great Richard Pryor started--comedy without jokes--there will be just screaming, finger-pointing or what the English call Prime Minister's Questions.

Smirking around the corner is the next generation of insufferable vulgarians. At the top of the heap is Sarah Silverman with a new music video titled Give The Jew Girl Toys, a strange, maudlin satire of Christmas materialism that gives new definition to the phrase "self-hating Jews." If and when she runs for office, look out organized religion!

There is not a fine line between being a comedian and being a political leader, but today's pop culture society seems to think so. Perhaps one day there will be a comedian-president just as there was an actor-president. Heading the list could be the Boston comic Denis Leary, and his stand-up routine regarding police and fire unions. If old-fashioned protectionism, entitlements and bare-knuckled strike violence is ever back in favor, Mr. Leary could ride his angry routine all the way to the White House. But throw in a few laughs for old times sake.

The great comic George Carlin, now rehabbed from drugs and alcohol, has put on 20 pounds and is suddenly dead serious about the deficit, global warming and weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that after all the years of laughter, he calls himself a "disappointed idealist". Perhaps the laughter has gone to his head.

OUR PATHETIC POKER OBSESSION

The Providence Journal: Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Lets get one thing straight: Real men don't play poker. Poker is about bluffing, and real men don't have to bluff. Also, any man worth his salt doesn't hide behind a pair of sunglasses and under a cowboy hat--indoors--while playing cards on a table with an ad for Levitra running down the middle of it.

And yet poker is more popular than ever right now. Poker TV shows run constantly on the national television channel for men (ESPN) and the national television channel for women (E! The Entertainment Channel.) Bored celebrities, such as Mathew Perry and Ben Affleck, are recovering substance abusers, but they hold on to their street cred by keeping up other vices, like poker! They play-act with a vengeance.

It's getting pretty weird. The other night on ESPN, after a stare-down hand and then a "fold'em" over the virtual Viagra logo, two of the stars of Poker Stars- Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and "Juan Juanda"-took turns winging their cards from 10 feet away at a peeled banana mounted on a pedestal.

As I said before, real men don't throw cards indoors while wearing a large hat and sunglasses to try to pierce a peeled and mounted banana.

The smoke-filled rooms, mood lighting, and undercover-camera angles make poker TV shows look like focus groups for primal male behavior: lies, lies, and more lies, and the ability to bully the next guy into losing everything. Wait a minute. These poker shows are just like U.S. foreign policy. Kidding!

There is something socially evocative about the American poker craze-the absurdity and desperation of gambling-combined with the importance of presumptive appearance. It has been said that chess is the game of Europe, and that poker is its counterpart in America.The question is: Which game is the world playing today? Is it chess-the complex thinking man's game of strategy within a defined set of rules? Or is it No Rules Texas Hold'em- a game ultimately of chance, in which the nicknamed winners can take all all without holding as much as a pair of deuces?

These ridiculous poker shows are trying to tell us something. Ordinary Americans- anyone not in Washington, D.C., or New York City- realize that we are all in a final game of chance and desperation. The dire news surrounds us: natural disasters, nuclear proliferation, globalization-exploitation, a mountain of unpayable debt, and a new generation of Islamic extremists hell-bent on betting it all.

Simply put, we are at a poker table, along with a bunch of absurd characters. Why aren't we playing chess, instead?

THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE INFERENCE AGE

The Providence Journal: June, 2005

What an information Age this is! Suddenly, everyone, including Tom Cruise, is so informed that they've become argumentative experts on everything. There's so much information- too much information- on the Internet and television and in the press. It's beyond loud- as if our culture were a horror movie called The Spawn of Bill O'Reilly.

God forbid you end up on the wrong end of a withering conversation as Matt Lauer did with Tom Cruise on The Today Show, and find your ears pinned by "Matt, you don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Yes, there's a lot of information but poorer communication, and now a simple "Hello, how are you?" is just polite disguise for a then jarring and vicious "Point, Counterpoint" exchange. Conversation in America is beginning to resemble question time for the prime minister in the House of Commons on C-SPAN- now that's "reality TV." "My Right Honorable Friend is a Jerk!"

Yes, it's partly the fault of Fox News, and its cheap imitators, but the Internet has to take its share of the blame too. Consider bloggers-they take off their sheep's clothing and surprise! It's a veritable group of Nixon's plumbers!

But in light of all of this frightening conversation, a new form of verbal interaction is taking shape, right under our upturned noses. We're leaving the Information Age behind, and entering "the Inference Age!"

The art of conversation is being replaced by the art of inference.

A typical exchange contains just a few quick stabbing presumptions, along with the right body language, a few labels, and knowing asides regarding class distinctions, and presto: You've avoided an icky talk and come full-circle to an assumption. Besides, who has the time anymore for exhaustive and caustic political discussions? The marriages of America cannot survive any more of this!

So, it's the dawn of a new era, a post- election verbal truce. In the middle it's a virtual no- fly zone. We circle conversation, warily inferring this and inferring that, but never engaging in actual combat-speak, whew!

Is all this the path to enlightenment, a new form of passive-aggressive behavior or just a breather before the next election? Nowhere is infer-speak worse than in the oldest part of Europeanized America, that bastion of Democratic politics, Boston.

Nowhere else is it more tribal, and social class more fossilized. Woe to those who visit the Hub who haven't mastered the dark arts of the Inference Age: "To speak is human, to infer is divine."

However, this is a bipartisan column. How much more out as a writer can you get than that? So let me point out that our conversationally challenged commander-in-chief is solidly on the inference bandwagon as well. Why, just the other week, in his speech to buck up America for the Iraq war, he mentioned the phrase 9/11 five times in just 30 minutes.

There is nothing to fear but inference itself!