Having spent a decade hosting America's Funniest Home Videos, I think I've come to a deeper understanding of the budget stalemate in Washington.
I know. The first part of that sentence doesn't seem connected to the last part. Bear with me. This will all make sense in a minute.
Then again, (who am I kidding?) it probably won't. And therein lies the rub. Or, in the case of most AFV clips, the ice pack. In the thousands of videos I've introduced over the past ten years, I've seen the mirror image of the C-SPANtastic budget "debate" played out countless times with thought-challenged bravado leading to wince inducing pratfalls.
Everybody looks good at first. Supreme confidence rules the day. "I can defy gravity!" each poor bastard seems to believe as they prepare to jump their skateboard onto the metal railing or ski off the snow-covered roof. But, all too predictably, the clip usually ends with someone rolling on the ground clutching his junk.
Bombast doesn't trump common sense. Never has. Never will.
For that matter, neither does timidity. For every few videos of someone boldly going into a mailbox on a pogo stick, there's the slapstick guarantee that too much hesitancy will also slam your ass into the pavement, telephone pole or body of water (refer to countless hesitant hang-glider clips).
When I watched the president announce his budget I thought of the video of the kid inching forward ever so slowly on the diving board. He'll get to the water eventually, if the whole pool doesn't evaporate first. Witnessing the parade of freshman congressmen turn John Boehner's Dancing With the Stars-worthy tan a whiter shade of pale, I was reminded of the drunken wedding reception videos where liquor and emotion battle lucidity and gravity.
Guess which side always wins?
Trust me, I'd prefer not to think of the current budget cutting histrionics as a stylistic twin to a video clip show owing its success more to the Three Stooges than the Founding Fathers. But there you have it. The grownups seem to have left town and our children's future, not to mention all of our present, is in the hands of Uncle Shemp.
There's an elephant in the room. And a donkey. And they're both acting like a horse's ass. We sure could use a video featuring some mature leadership right now.