As IF Times

link News from The Associated Press.

There is an iconic German expression,  author unknown,  which goes, ” stadluft macht frei”, which means “city air makes you free”.  In the day when this was first coined, it meant that to live in the city away from the constraints and prying eyes of a rural community gave one the freedom of anonymity and therefore freedom to do as you wished.   In the city of course, there were many, many people and no one really cared what anyone else was up to.   In theory, this is a fertile environment for novel intellectual thought and so living in the city was supposed to foster intelligent discourse and a civilized society.

In the crucible of a great metropolis like New York, we can observe if this notion still has validity.  According to articles like the one in the link, being free these days means to be willfully indifferent to your social surroundings.  The article cites instances of people carrying on in the subways with all kinds of activity as if they were in their own living rooms, things such as eating, picking noses and inexplicably, clipping toenails.  Not being a resident of New York, I can’t comment on whether or not clipping toenails on the subway is common and acceptable behaviour.  If we see clippers for sale at the kiosks, then we’ll have our answer.  In addition, it’s difficult to imagine enjoying a twirl of spaghetti in the close confines of a subway car filled with the bodily gases of dozens of people. 

It appears that the ‘freedom’ so offered by city air has morphed more into outright anarchy as people’s behaviour has deteriorated to reflect only personal conveniences to the exclusion of the consideration of others.  Presently, in our society, the lines separating what is considered to be individualistic, eccentric and crazy are faint to non-existent.  So much so, that even the most outrageous behaviour rarely raises any eyebrows these days.  So many things are being done for publicity and shock value, that most everything appears routine.   When few things have any shock value, people as a whole become cynical, aloof and disengaged from the rest of their society.  Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we observe so many ‘celebrities’ engage in self indulgent and anti social behaviour.  They are living in a time when virtually anything they do has positive consequences, at least as far as publicity is concerned, which is really what celebrities crave.  It can’t be that hard to find any number of people on any given day in the New York subways that are real life Charlie Sheens. 

If unfettered behaviour is the hallmark of a civilized society, it may be time to be a bit less civilized.  It wouldn’t hurt to put up a few signs in the subway restricting activity that you would otherwise see in the Bronx Zoo.  I’m all for distinguishing  primate species.  At the very least, use deodorant.

link Rep. David Wu’s staff confronted him over concerns about his mental health | OregonLive.com.

The bizarre behavior of Mr. Wu has been documented by the local papers and paints a picture of someone who may not have all his wires connected.  What the newspaper fails to say is whether his odd behaviour is something that is normal for him and just became apparent, or if he just only recently went Hollywood star on them.  

Mr. Wu is hardly the first politician to exhibit bizarre behaviour.  The donning of a tiger costume may have been a bit unusual, but hey, it’s all good, he’s just eccentric.   The important thing is that he is of the correct political persuasion, so personal eccentricities can be overlooked.  When you take into account the recent utterances of many of his ideological brethren, wearing a tiger outfit and yelling incoherencies hardly moves the needle on the wacko meter.    According to staffers, he was loud and sometimes angry.  Has anyone ever heard of Alan Grayson, thankfully now the ex congressman from Florida?   The article goes on to state that he recently delivered a “belligerent and rambling 19 minute monologue” to fellow Democrats.  Does the name Keith Olbermann mean anything to anyone?  Finally, staffers testified that  “…Wu became unpredictable and sometimes loopy, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and often not making sense …”   Boy, should we list some names alphabetically?

I’m not sure exactly how they could discern that Wu was exhibiting anything other than acceptable  normal behavior for that party.  Incoherency, belligerence, anger?  The article goes on to recount how in 2007, he accused the Bush White House of acting like  “fake Klingons”, whatever that means.   The best incident was in 2003, when he appeared to go catatonic before a vote.  Clearly the sane response was to flee to another state and avoid the vote altogether.   I’m not sure what’s happening in the Democratic party, but if they start to weed out people like David Wu, good luck  fielding candidates in the next vote. 

As far as David Wu is concerned, he just had the misfortune to pick the wrong profession.  If he was in the entertainment business, he’d be adored, have his picture all over the gossip rags and his own TV show.  There just happens to be a job opening at CBS now that Charlie Sheen has gone.  That show would have had to be renamed One and Half Men, but didn’t poll well with focus groups.  On the other hand, Charlie has a possible career in politics…or MSNBC.