Obama is Boring Us to Death

By Alan Caruba

About halfway into his fifteen minute televised address on Monday evening, it occurred to me that Obama is literally boring Americans to death. He was elected to a great degree based on his eloquence and he delivers a speech well, but last night’s speech is the one we have been hearing since January and earlier.

I really don’t give a hoot about “millionaires and billionaires.” Heck, I want to be a millionaire!

“Corporate jets”? What’s that all about? Even Playboy’s Hugh Hefner once had a corporate jet. I would love to have a private jet if only to avoid having to go through airport security these days.

“Corporate taxes”? US corporations pay the highest tax rates of virtually every other nation. Yes, they look for loopholes. You would, too!

“Hedge fund managers”? I don’t know any. Are they doing something criminal? No. They are making bets on the economy. Better that than blowing the money in a casino.

Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, bestselling author, and now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, last Saturday wrote “The president, if he is seriously trying to avert a debt crisis, should stay in his office, meet with members, and work the phones, all with a new humility, which would be well received. It is odd how he patronizes those with more experience and depth in national affairs.”

And then she said, “He should keep his face off TV. He should encourage, cajole, work things through, be serious, get a responsible deal, and then re-emerge with joy and the look of a winner...” Noonan concluded saying, “he should choose Strategic Silence. Really, recent presidents forget to shut up. They lose sight of how grating they are.”

Obama’s first year in office was distinguished by his being on television all the time, from The View to late night comedy shows. He loves the camera, loves the attention, and loves himself to the point of an unseemly, off-putting narcissism.

Instead of taking Noonan’s advice, he has become the National Mosquito, always buzzing around somewhere in the room.

Why was the Monday night speech necessary? Both Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, a Democrat, and John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, a Republican, have concluded that Obama had to be cut out of the discussions regarding the necessity to raise the debt ceiling because he was a hindrance to achieving any deal. To put it more bluntly, both concluded that Obama could not be trusted.

Reid and Boehner have essentially cut Obama out of the process. They have asserted the independence and the role of the legislative branch. Together they will send Obama a debt ceiling bill and tell him to take it or leave it. If he finds a reason to veto it, they will over-ride his veto and the rest of us will know that Obama’s agenda has always been the destruction of the nation.

Obama’s polling numbers reflect the growing realization of his arrogance and his incompetence. The advisors he chose and the programs he initiated have all proved to be failures and very costly ones at that. Unemployment rates today equal those of the Great Depression. Millions are on food stamps. Economic growth is an anemic one percent or so. Even people who don’t listen to presidential speeches or follow the news that closely know he is a loser.

There will always be at least 20% of voters who will support Obama no matter what happens. They are the true believers, the core that Democrats have always depended upon, unions, minorities, and federal employees.

The political pundits all said that the speech was aimed at the independents, always the most critical factor in recent national elections. The problem for Obama is that the next election isn’t until November 2012 and people tend to have very short memories. A lot of voters don’t make up their minds until they are in the booth. A year and a half from now is an eternity for these “undecideds.”

The speech was a bore, a repeat of all the poll-tested words and phrases he will repeat between now and November 2012. He’s become a windup doll, the White House Chatty Cathy.

It would be nice if we could ignore him and millions of American wish they could. The bad news is that he’s not going away for at least a year and a half. The good news is that he’s about to be neutered by both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Boredom

By Alan Caruba

I have this theory about boredom. I think it is the cause of a great deal of mischief in people’s lives and even may underlie why nations go to war. Even the current turmoil throughout the Maghreb and the Middle East may have an element of boredom as people grow tired of their current despots and seek to overthrow them.

In 1984 I created a media spoof called The Boring Institute© and it was tremendously popular. I averaged a thousand radio interviews a year, learning in the process that American cultural figures were well known worldwide. Through films and television, foreigners followed our homegrown personalities and, of course, both provide an escape from boredom.

After 9/11, I put the Institute on hiatus and, not until 2010 did I revive its popular list of “The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year”, but my absence of nearly a decade ensured a limited media response. I had, however, learned a lot about boredom’s impact on our lives.

Peter Toohey is a professor of classics in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary. He might be deemed an unlikely author of “Boredom, A Lively History” ($26.00, Yale University Press), but the subject, but the book jacket says he “has long been bemused by boredom”, i.e. “lost in thought” by definition.

The result is an exhaustive study of boredom; an intellectual exercise that ultimately tests the reader’s willingness to explore every novel, every painting, every cultural and historical artifact regarding the subject. This is the nature of intellectuals and not really a criticism of Prof. Toohey who has done a masterful job.

“To my mind, existential boredom is a hotchpotch of a category, and one whose basis is more intellectual than experiential—it is a condition which seems to me to be more read about and discussed than actually experienced. This book will unapologetically give simple boredom an equal billing,” said Prof. Toohey in his preface.

As to what makes something boring, Prof. Toohey says it is “predictability, monotony, and confinement.” This is as good a definition as any, but my interest in boredom has been what results from this universal mind-numbing experience.

Over the many years I maintained the “Institute” I collected all manner of data in order to respond to serious questions about boredom. I probably should have written a book about and am glad that Prof. Toohey has.

Boredom and Social Problems

Criminal behavior provides a frisson of excitement in the same way that gambling does. A great deal of crime is committed by people in their teens and twenties. Desperately bored, it becomes an outlet for their energy and may well account for why communities deliberately sponsor athletic and volunteer activities to soak up that energy.

Boredom lies at the heart of why marriages grow stale and partners cheat on one another and often seek divorce. Sex with the same partner reflects Prof. Toohey’s identification of predictability and, to an extent, confinement. So boredom carries with it some real challenges for any society.

Entertainment media and even news is a major escape mechanism. Those that hold an audience’s attention thrive. Those that don’t fail. I suspect that, in the run-up to the 2012 elections, many will find the endless analysis and speculation boring enough to “turn off” and wait, as many do until the days just prior to the election to make up their mind.

For myself, boredom is your mind demanding to be “fed”, “stimulated”, fulfilled in the same way the body must be fed and for the same reason we explore different foods as opposed to eating the same thing every day. My late Mother taught haute cuisine, gourmet preparation and dining for three decades. She was never bored and neither were those in her classes. Dinner time at the Caruba home was always a treat.

It is an irony and a tragedy of our school system that education has been turned into a dreadful “teach to the test” exercise in boredom when learning new things should at its heart be one of the most exciting things youngsters (and adults) can do. It is the ultimate “food for thought.”

Boredom is such a danger to individuals and societies that we have created all manner of ways to avoid it. Sports, either as a participant or a spectator, are a valuable escape from boredom. Travel is another. All manner of community or business related organizations provide valuable outlets. Politics, a blood sport in America, is another.

Finally, as a longtime book reviewer, I cannot fail to say that reading is absolutely essential to avoid boredom. There are few pleasures that can rival a good book whether it is fiction or non-fiction. They shine a light in the dark and empty places of the mind.

Short periods of boredom are to be expected, but extended boredom is a good definition of depression. When the mind is deprived it turns in on itself and literally punishes an individual for starving it of activity. People do a lot of foolish things to escape boredom and that applies to entire nations as well.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Am I Boring You?

By Alan Caruba

Years ago, beginning around 1984, I became “famous” as the creator of The Boring Institute, a media spoof that literally garnered international attention for its annual list of “The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year.” Until around 2002 I averaged a thousand radio shows and television appearances as the result of the Institute’s spoofs.

Along the way, I became an expert on the subject of boredom and was astounded at the links between boredom and many social problems. It is a frequent factor in various addictions, in crime, as a reason why children drop out of school, why marriages fail, and a host of other problems in people’s lives. It can be an indicator of depression.

You can criticize people in many ways, but telling them they’re boring are fighting words.
We spend a lot of time avoiding boredom because it is such a constant factor in our lives. Watching television is for the most part boredom avoidance. Almost anything that does not require us to actively use our brains falls into this category. Thinking is scary.

So, because I tend to write about certain topics and am increasingly convinced that Barack Obama is just about the worse thing to happen to this nation since the horrid Jimmy Carter, my question is—am I boring you?

Because, if I am, I suspect a lot of other people are bored as well and I suspect that they are the people who voted for Barack Obama. One wag suggested his campaign motto was “This is a great nation and I am going to change all that.”

The rate of change occurring since he took the oath of office in January has been astonishing and it has been bad for America in almost every way. This determined effort to introduce changes swiftly suggests that, if given the normal discussion and debate, most if not all would have been rejected.

Given a rubber stamp Democrat-controlled Congress, however, Obama knows he has a small window of opportunity in which to enact changes that essentially seek to replace capitalism with socialism.

Writing a daily blog as I do, I find myself forced to return to certain themes, not the least of which is the fact that there is no “global warming”, as in a sudden, dramatic warming of the Earth, because the Earth in fact has been experiencing a cooling cycle for the past decade.

The repetition of this simple truth is a response to the daily torrent of lies being put forth from the White House, the Congress, government agencies, some corporations, and the countless environmental organizations all seeking damaging legislation such as “Cap and Trade”, entirely based on lies about “climate change.”

Chief among the lies is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a “pollutant” responsible for the non-existent “global warming” when, in fact, it plays no role whatever in climate change except to show up in larger quantities hundreds of years after a period of warming.

Imposing limits on CO2 emissions, resulting from of the use of all forms of energy, would raise the cost of everything our economy depends upon to produce goods, to transport them, and to use them. The Big Lie that carbon is a threat to all life on Earth ignores the fact that all life on Earth is based on carbon, including human beings.

Boredom is often a response to too much information. The vast machinery of media in America continues to repeat the lies about the environment and, as a result people “tune out” much of it or uncritically accept it. Recent surveys by all the leading polling organizations demonstrate, however, that most Americans have concluded there is no global warming, rating it last among their concerns.

Recessions are known to last about 18 months and we are approaching that time limit. That suggests America will begin to emerge from this latest recession, the result of the “housing bubble” that burst, but most Americans are still unaware that it was caused by federal government intervention into the housing market by requiring banks and mortgage loan firms to make loans to people who were clearly unable to repay them.

Similarly, government intervention in the automotive market has been part of the cause for the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler by imposing mandates that increased cost, altered design and engineering. The Obama administration just imposed new, higher mileage requirements at the same time as it has interfered in the normal process of bankruptcy, providing taxpayer’s billions to these two companies that are not likely to ever be repaid.

These unconstitutional actions require a daily response but that in turn leaves many Americans confused and inclined to leave such matters to Congress. They have grown bored with the complexity of the issues. So Congress is able to pass legislation involving hundreds of pages that even its members do not read before voting.

A government calling for “energy independence” while shutting off access to the nation’s own vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas is engaged in a vast deception.

A government imposing baseless “global warming” taxes is impoverishing Americans, denying them the capital necessary not just for ordinary expenses, but vital for the growth of our economy.

Our system of government was designed to slow the process by which laws are passed. Government by crisis is an open door to deception and the destruction of the protections the Constitution extends to every citizen. When there are no “checks and balances” everyone is at risk as sacred concepts of private property and contractual law are thrown overboard.

Thus, writers like myself and many others face the prospect that our warnings are ignored by a public grown bored with the many weighty issues that will determine whether the nation emerges from its current economic woes and whether issues such as national security and even national sovereignty are cast aside.

Americans cannot afford to be bored by such matters.

The Boring Institute, R.I.P.

By Alan Caruba

It was this week in 1984, just prior to the famed Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, that it occurred to me that it looked the same, year after year. There’s nothing wrong in that. A parade is a parade, although it must be said that those in recent years seem all about merchandizing something or other.

I was practicing the magic arts of public relations back then and was well aware that the print and broadcast media were always susceptible to some utterly ludicrous claim. Their other passion is lists. This is why, at the beginning of every New Year or end of one, we are all assailed by lists of the Ten Best or Ten Worst.

I am possessed of a mind that endlessly entertains me. I make myself laugh. I don’t know if others do this, but I find my thoughts either astonishingly profound or amusingly idiotic. Either way, I am always surprised.

So, in 1984, I sat down to dash off a news release, but one has to have a “place” from which to dispatch news. I invented The Boring Institute® on the spot and proceeded to “announce” that experts at the Institute, after considerable research and analysis, had concluded that there was, in truth, no Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade occurring in New York! The whole thing was a huge hoax and everyone in the city knew it.

What people outside of New York were watching was a videotape of a previous parade, perhaps from a decade earlier! Moreover, I pronounced the whole thing a great bore.

If one is of a certain age—say older than five or at the most ten years of age, one knows that, in truth, the parade does look much the same each year and the enchantment of its balloons, the marching bands, and the elaborate floats begins to wear thin. By the time Santa Claus arrives, the question inevitably arises, if he is in the parade, why isn’t he at the North Pole?

For my part, I was simply amusing myself by satirizing the elements of any news release, postulating an imaginary “Institute”, filled with “experts”, and offering an absurd conclusion.

Little did I know I was setting off on an adventure that would last almost two decades. During that time, the Institute gained considerable fame putting out annual lists of the most boring films of the year, predicting which new television shows would be a bore, and, most famously, a list of the year’s most boring celebrities.

Though it may seem hard to believe, at the height of the Institute’s fame, I averaged a thousand radio interviews a year, all clustered around the various events, and even did some television appearances. I talked with radio hosts from Australia to England, New Zealand to Germany, and everywhere in America.

The ubiquity of American culture initially surprised me, but it was clear that it dominated the world. Everyone knew our celebrities, knew our films and television shows, knew an awful lot about America, and they wanted me to explain its mysteries and charms to them.

The real lesson, however, that I drew from the experience was the extraordinary role that boredom plays in everyone’s lives. It is a precursor to depression and suicide. It leads many into crime, often just for the excitement it offers. It leads married people to cheat on their spouse. It can be a root cause of divorce. In short, boredom is trouble, trouble, trouble!

After 9/11, I reckoned that putting out the annual lists was inappropriate to the times. Without any fanfare, I put The Boring Institute® on hiatus. I am reminded of it whenever the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is pending.

I won’t watch it or if I do I keep the sound on mute in order to avoid listening to the inane prattle of the television hosts who should, as an act of mercy, be dragged from their perch overlooking the parade and sequestered in Macy’s basement until the parade ends.

I had a lot of fun with The Boring Institute® but I think it will remain on hiatus and possibly moribund. The truth? After a while all that chattering on radio or the occasional five minutes of television fame became boring.