Watch the Green Witch Melt

Ghost Woman of the Hotel Del Coronado
Pretty Much Gone


The Cowboy wants to be honest for a few sentences. Well get back to the truth later…

Your Humble Cowboy spent a strange grey week hunting for the fabled ghost of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. There was off-season foul weather, a double conference of lawyers and a mild case of this years’ inoculation (and alcohol) resistant flu strain to set the tone. The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, as the old man said. The ghost proved elusive, but those dayless hours made it clear why this wooden wonder of beachside Americana was the inspiration for Frank Baum to write the Wizard of OZ.

While ghost-hunting, it became clear that, like the green witch, Hillary is suddenly done. (Apparently she also melts under exposure to something as innocuous as fresh water to the face.) It is a strange and twisted experience, like watching a hanging.

We appear to be a country obsessed with watching fools perish at the gibbet of modern media humiliation. Our media, like so much more of Salem’s puritans, delivers a steady viewing of doomed young dreamers and damaged souls alike. Lead by the likes of “American Idol” or that anger-loving Trump show whateverthehell it is called. However, in the real reality, we don’t like to see that stuff. It is uncomfortable, and it reveals us all to be a bit diseased.

We don’t mind a small dose of “yeah but for the grace of God go I..”. The genre ages fast, however, when the poor bastard being wrongfully humiliated, eating bugs or wetting themselves purposely, all towards an obviously losing effort, bears so much resemblance to, well, to us.

Even the Foxwatchers are uncomfortable watching the end of Hillary.

Admit it now, you felt shocked and disturbed when the suffering green witch got melted by that brat farm girl in blue gingham. Sure, the damned flying monkeys were an order of magnitude of terror never seen on the screen before. But still that chemical warfare was extreme. During those terrible final seconds we saw a witch that was somehow less wicked and more vulnerable, more mature. Dorothy looked like she actually savored the sight of her grieving, widowed, dust bowl surviving Aunt getting dissolved away in agony.

Maybe in hind sight, OZ would have been better off with the Wicked Witch. She was experienced, thick-skinned and strong enough to keep the damned terror monkeys from grabbing up all the funny little people and dropping them to their deaths on the dark cliffs above the far off sunless sea. We will never know.

The little farm kid followed a brainless, gutless, soulless trio down to the place of dead roads, only to see the kingdom’s fragile economy and territorial security collapse drunkenly because of one compelling child's’ fantasy. (In the old days that kind of hopeful innocence was called "being naive".) The bratty child escaped back from dreamland. But the little guys were left to fend off flesh eating winged monkeys while watching the technological “grid” of their society collapse into anarchy while the previous wizard stole away with a balloon basket full of looted gold paving stones.

Sound familiar?

Barack Obama may be the best thing to happen to America. There is no doubt that his ability to give young Americans hope and faith in the country may be the exact turn we need to survive. The Cowboy really hopes this is the case. Yet it is alarming how little we really know about the guy.

We don’t know anything about his real intentions, his true values and his actual opinions about things like climate change, the Supreme Court, the Chinese, The FISA Act, Internet regulation, management of our vast and dwindling public lands and many other issues that remain unexplored by Obama's "I Have A Dream" speechwriters. He has a wonderfully brief history of words, but no history of deeds to engender our confidence. The ideas he espouses are stellar (because they come directly from MLK and other great minds). But in his practical abilities there is no proof of life.

The media is a straw man, afraid of pushing, afraid of probing into what he really intends to do as President. Journalism is (still) dead and getting deader. The media would rather hoist Hillary to her demise, as difficult as that is turning out even for them to handle, than confront Obama about his real values and prejudices. It is a sad repetition of history, by good men who do nothing. Like when W. first ran for office, or later when American journalism failed to question his path to War.

Your naive Cowboy wonders if there might even be a connection between the fact that Presidential campaigns shovel several billion dollars of advertising money into the hands of our corporatized media, and their unwillingness to ask tough questions...

It may be fine to once again trust a charismatic young politician with blind faith. But let's not call it change because it is nothing new. It would nice to hear some of this Man’s real ideas, presented with his own words in a legitimate journalistic interview. The inspiring, but intellectually plagiarised speeches of Obama may well lead to a new Camelot, for a new generation. But Camelot was short lived.

And then there are those damned flying monkeys to be dealt with.



Thanks for playing.