Thank you, Dave --

for an idea for a late afternoon post. It's gorgeous, here, in Los Angeles, by the way, just the way I like it.

Dave is a newcomer to my blog and has begun to leave little nuggets or comments, here and there. I'm not sure, though, whether Dave is a troll or not because he doesn't have a blogger profile. Something tells me, though, that he's from Texas? Or maybe Arlington, VA?

Here's one of his comments on a post I wrote about two years ago when I had the honor of hearing John Updike, one of my literary heros, at UCLA:

wow, this says a lot about you. How do you feel now about Obama?

Maybe you should have listened to your parents, sounds like they knew right.

If Obama is proven to be the fool he looks like, will your children recgonize Rush Limbaugh knew more than you, and go listen to him speak at UCLA on warm Fall days? 


Dave -- what says a lot about me is that I LOVE a conflict, especially a political one. Your thinly veiled contempt is sort of bugging me enough to answer your questions above:


1. I feel now, about Obama, like I did when I voted for him. He's remarkably intelligent and reasoned, possesses the same values as I do -- or those that are "public" anyway. I fully recognize that he's a politician and a pretty damn good one at that. I do wish that he would push a little harder on the right. I go back and forth admiring and being frustrated by his ability to not enter the bullshit fray that the conservatives pull him into. But I recognize that he's governing the whole country, all the people and for the people.


2. My parents have always disliked Obama and still do. Happily, though, they have passed onto me a certain steadfastness in my beliefs. I'm not as fickle, I think, as the majority of the American populace and definitely that minority who would criticize Obama, despite having voted for him, barely two years into his term.


3. I disagree that Obama is a fool and as for Rush Limbaugh, I try not to think about him at all. If my kids go hear him speak at UCLA one day and he is as revered as John Updike (what the original post was about) -- well, hopefully, I'll be dead by then. 


4. From your other comment, you bemoaned the current state of children (namely, mine) as being unfazed by poverty, extreme crime and other modern ills. Uh -- with all due respect, what are you talking about?


Thanks, again, Dave for the dialog prompt.