Wampum

The first hit piece of the Cherokee Nation principal and vice-chiefs election was played over the weekend. One of the tribal council was referred to as the "Friend of the Freedman" in every line of text that could fit aesthetically on an oversized postcard.

It was interesting. The piece was addressed to a person, someone I know, and not "occupant". So it came from a list, or a universe of lists. As text it wasn't unreadable dribble, it would have drawn no worse than a "C" from my several high school and college nemeses. But the alliterative half-line, the primary structural unit in Anglo-Saxon verse, stuck out like a hand full of thore thumbs.

There really can't be any doubt about the policy and politics of the moment. In a citizen universe of two times ten to the fifth, altering the status of a subset of two times ten to the third, two orders of magnitude smaller, can have no substantive effect on budgetary claims and allocations. It works of course, because some people simply can't, or won't do the math, but it is really an artificial "crisis" for a policy indifferent political purpose -- re-election.

Someone made a film about that. Dustin Hoffman was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Hilary Henkin and David Mamet were nominated for Best Writing. The Congressional Black Caucus should be laughing their asses off at Chad Smith's transparent attempt to gin up a third term in a fight he fully intended to loose when he started the wheels in motion back in 2003. Wag the Dog was wicked funny when played by a really good cast (it got awards for that too). It is side-splitting when played "straight" by the cast of "Team Cherokee", who for the most part, weren't good enough to make it into the BushCo BIA.

The second hit piece is landing today and yesterday. "Loose with Money" joins the noose of "Friend of the Freedman", which sounds pretty damn honorable to me.