TFP Column: Santa Is Coming ... Beware

 

While experiencing the briefest of mourning periods during the election cycle, I am back once more within the pages of the TFP website this week.  Self-chastised for being consistently wrong about the results of those elections yet again (which is why I don't bet), it seemed only fitting to change my focus from the painful subject of my own abjectly miserable performance and turn instead to the coming holiday season.

I think that you'll find "Santa Is Coming ... Beware" an amusing (if not troubling) effort, dripping with the kind of sarcasm required to put the commercial aspect of the holiday and it's symbolic leader in a slightly different (OK, warped) perspective.  Of course it's not surprising that there should be some contradictions in the secular version of mythical character who ends up being merged over time with a religious figure who actually existed.  Be aware however, that my analysis of someone whose traditional depiction bares a vague similarity to my own does not mean that I have spared my subject in any way, or that we share any of the potential personality quirks that I ascribe to him.

Since it's already a bit past mid-week, you're lucky that the 'Star' edition has already hit the streets to provide more serious counterpoint to my more fanciful offering.  With the weekend edition yet to come, there's plenty more still to look forward to, especially in Toledo and Northwest Ohio.  

What else would you expect however, from Toledo's largest Sunday circulation newspaper, one which has been named by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalism as the Best Weekly Newspaper in Ohio for the last five years running.  I'm speaking of course, of the Toledo Free Press.

Character

This being an election year, we are lectured regularly on the need for character in our candidates. We are told that character is in fact essential in a good political leader or candidate. Since this appears to be so important a trait and since I want to vote for the right kind of candidate, I decided that the best thing to do would be to look up the word in the dictionary. Much to my chagrin, Merriam Webster shows a number of different definitions of the word.

1. A symbol (as a letter or number) that represents information. Nope, I don't think that this is it, unless the man formerly known as Prince is running for something or if you are running for mayor of Sesame Street.
2. The aggregate of distinctive qualities of a breed, strain, or type. Nope, this sound like some form or racial profiling to me, so I am SURE that this cannot be what they are talking about.
3. The personality or part which an actor recreates. Now this one has some possibilities, as I am always convinced that politicians are always acting in public (and of course some actors have become politicians); but somehow this doesn't strike me as an ideal to strive for.
4. A short literary sketch of the qualities of a social type. More references to racial profiling, this time seemingly by documenting social status. Though it seems to me that only rich people can afford to run for political office, again I doubt that this is an enviable trait or one to be sought after.
5. Moral excellence and firmness. Oh this has got to be it, though I can only say this with a sense irony. While I freely admit that morals, unlike ethics, change with time and society; I refuse to believe that we have sunk to a level that the behavior exhibited by most politicians today could be called excellent or firm. Consistent maybe, but only in the way that one can say that tornadoes consistently damage property.

So maybe what everyone is trying to tell us is that the most important trait in a political candidate (or office holder) is something which we simply cannot define, and if we could, cannot actually have. I have to say that this is a disappointment to me. How am I to cast my vote properly in the upcoming elections in November? How are we to have those in office with the very trait that the political parties, and the candidates themselves, feel is so important? Why are they trying to make this so damn confusing?

Perhaps someone else out there has the answer and will share with the rest of us...

Though never a political candidate, nor aspiring to such office I have been told from time to time that I "am" a character, and I was never quite sure what was meant by it. Having done this research and looking back on it now, I suppose that I would have to go with #2. Some might additionally go so far as to say that I am a flawed character, though a flawed "aggregate of distinctive qualities" seems somewhat contradictory to me. Then again, perhaps it's the flaws that make me distinctive. Hey I like that!