Gerhard’s magic bus

If his capitalism-baiting and the historically familiar looking Amerikaner-baiting ploys didn’t beef up his election chances, does he really think a magical touch of that good W juju will cure his electability problems?

It seems so.

In any event, your humble correspondent had the chance to “speak truth to the soon to be powerless” by airing views at the civil servants, hangers on, trade sheisters, and flunkies who came with the visiting Chancellor Schroeder with Ray of David’s Medienkritik. It gave us a chance to speak and hear back from German media, governmental commerce types, and foreign ministry types visiting DC with hat in hand.

Oddly enough they knew exactly what sort of anti-americanism we were talking about. We heard stories of editors tch-tching balanced news stories submitted by staff writers, among other things which gave us all the more reason to pity the poor idealistic shlubs who want to do balanced journalism, free of the perplexing hang-ups of the ’68 generation.

When German government representatives nod, (and not in that “un-hunh, take it easy on the bong, dude” way,) but in a way that actually speaks to their own frustration with the electoral gambit which seems to have failed the SPD at home, but has done them no favors within Europe or beyond their borders.

Among other fine folks who joined us was none other than townhall.com’s Mary Katherine Ham. In addition to having enough of a sense of humor to show up is an editor and opinion writer for townhall.com, edits townhall’s c-log. She also rocks. Her positive way and her wit gave the event the pique of a color-man calling a boxing match. Noting on one of DC’s local gentry who paid us a visit:

«I got there a little late, but Joe said they didn't encounter a lot of anger from passers-by, unlike David’s Medienkritik's protest during Bush's visit to Mainz, during which Ray was surrounded by "200 angry Communists who want to whip you."

We were only surrounded by one spacy-looking, plaid-skirted girl with a Starbucks cup, standing next to us shrilling about "the dolphins! They killed the dolphins and then those same politicians cut down the Redwoods and there are no more trees. World health not war!"

She went on and on and on, even when the group had dispersed and we were just four people standing around talking about German media bias and blogs. It was odd. It was just as if she had been walking by and decided by the looks of us that we needed her dolphins and Redwoods lecture, which was addressed to no one in particular, but managed to make several of my conversations challenging.»

In fact our new fan was so amusing that we tried to record some of that wisdom and remix it for sale outside the Democrats’ next convention. All in needed was a hated drum machine set on “bassonova” and a goober with a Casio. Da-da-da, peeps! We could pepper it up with a host of soundbites with their predictions about "eroding America's gravitas" abroad, and breaking Europe's "chain of trust".

The floor-show notwithstanding what had we accomplished? We communicated directly to German government officials, press, and let them know that one could just as well say that they shouldn’t continue burning up American patience and good-will to make symbolic and distracting publicity points at home. That feeding the tiny embers of German anti-Americanism into a volcano wasn’t just imprudent, but dishonest and cheap.

We found them to be as frustrated with the beast of their creation as much as many Americans have been, and that it certainly didn't look it came in very handy right now.