Keeper of the Clown Bell

In the pantheon of television male archetypes there are, from season to season, but one or two standouts who personify the contemporary zeitgeist and claim a piece of mental territory that lives on long past the show’s final episode.  These characters which, at their inception, are pure thought contrived by writers and transcribed on parchment take on a living persona when a thespian applies his black arts of transmutation and “becomes” the modern demigod. By way of electricity and the cathode ray gun this model of manhood is projected (shot) into the minds of impressionable humans and form a template which, though impossible to match, serves as a target which aspiring strivers aim to achieve.  James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillion on “Gunsmoke” (20 year run from 1955-1975) is the prototypical example of this modern magic but over the decades there have been a fist full of other larger than life players who live in people’s memory as powerfully as a real-life favorite uncle or ...

Who voted for this guy? It's been ten days since the results of the Maricopa County, Arizona ballot audit were released to the public and presented at a hearing held by the state senate. This exercise in democratic accountability had been going on for months and, if reports are to be believed, was completed well over a  month before the September 24th hearing where   overwhelming proof of an illegitimate election was presented to lawmakers . The audit showed multiple irregularities, fake ballots, duplicate counts, errors, omissions and egregious acts of sabotage and obstinance by the Maricopa County board of supervisors who did everything they could to withhold and destroy evidence of wrongdoing from the citizen sleuths. The misfeasance of Arizona's political leaders was clearly defined, shocking and (for some) beyond belief but somehow these facts were discovered, organized, packaged and suppressed for MONTHS by the Cyber Ninjas who were attempting to "get to the bottom...