My wife said she had to call DC.  “All of it?” I asked.  Failed to even crack a smile—she must have left her funny bone in her briefcase.  I described her mom’s dog as a tennis ball with lips which seemed to be bred to be terrified of everything.  That had me zero for two, and losing ground quickly.

Today’s social networking technology allows one to take umbrage with everything from reform to how your neighbor shovels the snow from their sidewalk.  It’s an especially neat set of tools for those of us who have borderline control issues.  Which I do not, I told the unfunny woman next to me.  “You want to tell people how to tie their shoes because you think you do it better than them,” she remarked.  “Which is probably why flying bothers you so much; your nagging belief that the pilot isn’t qualified.”

Where was I before I interrupted myself?  Now, before anyone starts name-calling, I shall admit that I can be a bit of a heterodox.  Sometimes instead of talking I write, it’s like taking my thoughts for a walk in the park with an occasional pause at a fire hydrant.

I am beset by several unanswered questions about reform.  What do you think?  Is healthcare reform an attempt to make America a risk-free society, to rid people of what might be in order to exercise control where none exists?  Is it possible Jerry Springer was asked to provide ad hominem comment over the healthcare reform legislation, or that the plot line was a rerun of something written by David Mamet?  Does the tedium of reading the bill’s thousand-plus pages make stamp collecting seem like a full contact sport?

It’s too bad the Administration had the misfortune of drafting the reform legislation without having the luxury of hiding behind the Iraq maelstrom as we did during the Cheney presidency.  We may find some solace in that even with it now looking like some form of reform—version 5.0—will pass this year, our system will still be better than the UK’s, which is essential since they do much better with Shakespeare than us—I think it has something to do with their dedication to the diction of the British English.  “O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.” (Claudius in Hamlet.  Is this where Python got the idea for, “I’m not dead yet?”)

We would be more likely to turn Hamlet into a navel gazing rap musical, than try to do it justice by reciting the original English.  Perhaps that is why we enjoy PBS as it gives our snobbery a chance to imagine the world as a series of Masterpiece Theater renditions.

If the reform effort still smacks of vestiges of nineties healthcare kitsch, it may be because nostalgia is still what it used to be and never was.  Either way, it looks like we will have something more concrete at which we can pit our opinions.  It will cost in the neighborhood of nine hundred million dollars, and yet we still aren’t able to distill the main talking points on two or three PowerPoint slides.