Parrots live forever. Politicians serve forever. Parrots outlive their original owners and present big problems for the family since heirs don’t necessarily want the noisy foul things. Politicians outlive their capacity to serve and remain in office. Many run for an office when they should be retiring(see Hillary). Both are expensive to keep. Both are noisy. Both learn a specific number of words they can use and repeat themselves incessantly. Both are always preening. Both molt. Shed their feathers and show a new look. See Biden’s hair transplants and Hillary’s $300 haircuts.
It’s said that a measure of one’s faith that they are living a good life is to give the talking parrot to the gossipy neighbor. Or, the old joke about the parrot that lived in the town brothel and learned all the foul language and no one wanted the bird when the brothel closed. A local woman, an animal lover, agreed to adopt the bird. She had to find a way to sell the idea to her husband, Tom. When Tom got home that night she took him in the room where the bird was covered in the cage and said Tom, I brought this home today and you are going to love him. When she pulled the cloth off the cage the bird began a string of expletives looked up and said, “hi, Tom”.
Enough of the humor, now to the serious stuff. As I listen to the growing number of politicians running for our highest office, I can’t help but think of a program I attended called “Super Voice”. I t was a week-long raining program intended to teach executives who might have to go before the cameras or microphones and represent the company in a matter of public interest. It was conducted by actual media personalities. We had an exercise where there was a gasoline leak on a corner in a fictional town. There were four retail gasoline outlets on the corner. The leak was coming from one, but no one was sure which one. One of them was ours. Every hour new information was disseminated. You had to no before the media and answer questions. There was only one principle to learn. Stay on script. I had done numerous depositions for the law department and was the designated deposition person for the marketing group by the law department since they had also trained me. It was the same, “answer the question and volunteer nothing.” Same deal.
So, I’m jaded when I hear the candidates speak. Hence, the parrot analogy. I believe Barack Obama was training to be a politician for his entire life. He was taught a litany of phrases he could say. He was given Teleprompter training. He as taught to stay on script. Only Joe the Plumber tripped him up in the first campaign. As I watch this new batch of parrots parade before the cameras I see the same with one exception.
Trump. He’s no parrot. He has no training in politics and it shows. He just says it straight and that’s why he looks so different. That’s why he’s leading the polls. The king of the parrots is Hillary. They can’t let her utter one un-scripted word. Jeb Bush looks so rehearsed he seems plastic.
Guess we have to decide whether to elect another parrot who can’t do a thing and requires a lot of seed and cage cleaning or an arrogant jerk who has proven he can do a lot of things well but shoots from the hip. Tough choices.
