One smart fella he felt smart.

 One smart fella he felt smart. 

   i

I don’t know Susan Page. I have heard her on The Diane Rehm Show, but I don’t read her columns. However, I doubt the claim made for her that she can separate “the facts” from “the farce,” as if they were held in colloidal suspension. They are not; they are the two protons and two neutrons of helium, the most stable element.

   ii

Inspired by Hans Weigel (See here.) I have been writing analogies. For example,

• John the Baptist is to Jesus as screaming is to laughter.
• Diogenes is to Aristippos as biting one’s lip is to sticking out one’s tongue.
• Paul is to Jesus as sunburn is to sun.
• Voltaire is to Rousseau as reason is to reality TV
• Plato is to Diogenes as fork is to fingers.
• Trump is to Clinton (either Clinton) as Pinocchio is to Machiavelli.

   iii

If the purpose of analogy is to give a true sense of how the world works, these fail, because like Weigel’s analogies, the reasoning can be followed. The world – to the antick at least – is more skewed; its “reasoning” looks more like this.

• Pepper is to cinnamon as sponge is to pea gravel.
• A cross-cut saw is to concrete as constipation is to Salem, Oregon.
•  Randall Cunningham is to Little Miss Muffet as ocher is to okra.
•  The written word is to mountain air as Richard Nixon is to carry-on luggage.

In short, farce is to facts as facts are to farce. Suck in a bit of helium and say that four times really fast. Or this: One smart fella he felt smart. Two smart fellas they felt smart. Three smart fellas they felt smart. Four smart fellas . . . .

 01.04. 16