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A week or two ago I attended a rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.  The two featured speakers were P.J. O’Rourke and Michelle Malkin.

Now, I would probably not have gone there at all if O’Rourke had not been invited.  He’s one of my favorite writers, and he was signing books, and you could not have kept me away if my skin were brown and the Arizona Highway Patrol had been lined up blocking the door.  I paid my money, which included lunch, and signed up.

I had thought I might leave right after O’Rourke’s presentation, but I didn’t want to forego the lunch I had paid for, so I sat through the rest of the speakers.

O’Rourke was, all by himself, more than worth the price of admission.  There were a couple of speakers who presented statistics showing how bad liberal policies are, which was mildly interesting.  Dr. Milton Wolf, the President’s cousin, was mildly amusing.  Michelle Malkin absolutely set my teeth on edge.  She sneered; she was mean, even caustic.  The crowd laughed and cheered.  I was embarrassed.

One of my coworkers was there, too, and when we got back to the office I commented on how much I had disliked Malkin’s presentation. My coworker, who likes Michelle Malkin very much, reminded me that O’Rourke is at least as sarcastic as Malkin.  He’s right.

So what’s the difference?  I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Sarcasm is sometimes defined as a taunting or caustic remark.  My favorite informal definition is that sarcasm is when you say something positive and mean just the opposite.  And any definition of sarcasm would have to include the intent to be derisive or contemptuous.

By any definition, O’Rourke is sarcastic. 

But he is also one of the wittiest people I have ever read.  And I think that’s the difference.

Anyone can be sarcastic.  Really.  As a matter of fact, some of the stupidest people I know are the most sarcastic, because they don’t know the difference between sarcasm and wit.  They hurt people without making any kind of a contribution.  They’re the ones who turn to a child who has just spilled a glass of milk and say, “Good job!”  And then they laugh because they think they’re being funny.

Bare naked sarcasm requires no intelligence, no wit, no research, no effort.  I find it small-minded.  In my eyes it diminishes the person using it.  Michelle Malkin is a pretty, intelligent, and personable woman.  But I will never think well of her.

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Mankind starts unchecked global warming by burning fossil fuels.

Earth compensates and restores normal climate.

Earth continues to compensate, overdoes it, and starts unchecked global cooling.

Mankind must burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels to keep the planet from becoming a ball of ice.

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I recently wrote to a correspondent who lives in the Bay Area that I am a Midwesterner by temperament.  He wrote back asking what that means, and “how to recognize one.”

That set me back a notch, because I realized I couldn’t define my terms; I couldn’t put into words just what it means to feel like a Midwesterner.  So I have been surveying friends who have lived both here and elsewhere, and I think I now have some insights:

Midwesterners are the base of the pyramid, the rock-solid foundation that holds steady in times of volatility. 

We are the original back-to-the-basics folks, and we don’t much hold with some of that foolishness out there.

We are exasperatingly provincial.

While few of us work the land any more, even those of us living in the cities are seldom more than one degree of separation from those who do.  Big-city dwellers near the coasts may know where there is a sheep farm to see lambs in the spring, or a pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins in the fall, but I know the sheep farmer and the pumpkin patch owner by name.

Whatever frivolous trends may show up far east and west of us, you can be sure that by the time it gets here it will be passé wherever it originated, and whatever version of it we choose to adopt will be pretty tame.  After all, we’re not going to toss it out just because some durn-fool designer says it’s no longer fashionable.

Visiting family on the west coast a year or two ago, I was told that, no matter what my age or my weight, out there I would be expected to wear form-fitting clothes; and, if I insisted on wearing overblouses that loosely cover my stomach and my rear end, everyone who looked at me would know I was from Kansas.  It was not said unkindly, but I wish I had spoken up and said that I don’t consider being obviously from Kansas a bad thing.

The fact is, around here you’re expected to know when you shouldn’t dress like that any more.  You’re expected to be aware, when the combination of your age and weight has passed some critical point, that it’s time to cover up a little more.  If I wore form-fitting clothes around here, people would ask each other if I had looked in the mirror before I walked out the door.  And my good friends would ask me if I were okay.

So in answer to your question, my more sophisticated friend, you can spot a Midwesterner because she’ll be wearing Sarah Palin glasses long after Sarah herself has quit wearing them, modest clothing if she’s no longer a youngster, and may have just a slight scent of pumpkin patch about her.

But, I guarantee you, you can depend on her.

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Several nights ago, having fallen asleep trying to watch television, I was awakened by a raucous commercial. A young, attractive couple had rushed into a pharmacy frantically looking for a specific sort of condom. They were breathlessly demanding that the pharmacist tell them where it was so that they could buy some and hurry home.

They were not in such a hurry that they couldn’t explain why it’s so wonderful. Apparently, “his side” and “her side” are coated with different chemicals, and they…well, I don’t know what they do. I was still partly asleep, although waking up rapidly.

So here’s my question.

If the condom comes rolled up in its wrapper, don’t the chemicals on “his side” and “her side” get all mixed together?

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In 2007, a tornado wiped out Greensburg, Kansas.

This past Labor Day weekend, more than 20 Greensburg residents were part of a team helping to rebuild a Boy Scout camp in Little Sioux, Iowa, that had been damaged by a tornado this past June.

Nice.

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The word “solstice” comes from the Latin sol, sun, and sistere, to stand. It is the time when the sun appears to stand still for a day or two in its relentless pacing from north to south and back again, the time when it pauses before turning to retrace the path it has been following as long as there has been an earth.

At the two equinoxes, the sun’s rising and setting place moves very fast across the horizon. But for a day or two on either side of June 21st and December 21st, it’s hard to tell that the spot has moved at all.

I sometimes speculate on how our ancestors must have felt as they watched their one source of warmth and light moving inexorably away, as the days grew shorter and colder. According to the elders, it had always come back before; but what if this time it just kept on going? Small wonder that December 25th, the first day the keenest-eyed member of the group could say for sure the sun had decided to return, has long been associated with joy, celebration, hope, and light.

The winter solstice, of course, marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is the official beginning of winter. For those of you who, like me, enjoy geometry, I offer my favorite definition: The winter solstice is the time at which the angle between the earth’s axis of rotation and the line connecting the South Pole to the center of the sun reaches its greatest value and begins decreasing again.

However you commemorate (or define) the season of the winter solstice, I wish you joy, celebration, and warmth.

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It’s hot here.

It’s Kansas, it’s July, it’s hot.  Go figure.

Everyone around me is complaining about the heat.  Next February we will be complaining about the cold.  We complain when the wind blows, and when there is no breeze.  We complain when it rains, and when it’s too dry.  Anything but 72 degrees and sunny elicits howls of outrage.

Recently I listened to an item on the radio about some of our soldiers in the Middle East working in temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit.  Outside.  Wearing body armour.  Carrying lots of equipment.

I listened to the item in my air-conditioned car driving from my air-conditioned office to my air-conditioned house.

I have decided, as a sacrifice of gratitude, to try my best never to complain about the weather again.  It’s a small gesture, and it probably won’t affect anyone but me.  But I think that’s the way sacrifices work.

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I am astonished at the uses some people come up with for the internet.  This is probably frivolous, but it’s such fun I can’t resist passing it on.  And there is no way this could have been done 30 years ago.

Recently I received in change a dollar bill with “Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com” stamped across the front.  I went to the web site and entered the denomonation, series, and serial number, and found out that that bill was last logged in in Wichita.  I left a note saying where I received it and where I plan to spend it.  From now on, anyone who logs that bill in will see what I wrote, and I will get an email notification.

What fun!

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Two profoundly disturbing items were aired on NPR earlier this week:

This one, in which the mayor of New Orleans wonders aloud how to keep his city from being overrun with Mexican workers, and a Latino construction company owner in New Orleans complains that African-Americans he hires don’t want to work very hard.

This one, in which the Italian government has authorized the fingerprinting of Roma citizens, whether there is evidence of wrongdoing or not. As always, loss of liberty is presented as necessary for the majority, and beneficial for the exploited minority.

I hereby give myself permission to stop feeling guilty over the overt bigotry evident in my own family two generations ago.

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