The Bachmann Brand: What's the Dizzle?

Borders Books & Music was a wondrous place in its day, and its day lasted 40 years. It was the perfect antidote to the blues, especially if you weren't in the mood to put on makeup. You could wander the aisles for hours, browsing travel books promising adventure and excitement or skimming diet books promising a new you. The children's section offered picture books and teddy bears, and likely a Lego table or Brio train station open to all ages. Hang out reading magazines or just make a beeline for the cafe for a coffee and a scone, screw the diet. There was no place better at Christmas, with its seemingly endless rows of greeting cards, wrapping paper and calendars. And for severe depression, you could slap on some headphones in the music aisle and hear the latest tunes from your favorite artist.

This is all in the past since Borders has closed, squeezed out by advancing technology. Now you order up that trashy novel on your Kindle and read it on a flat screen with an eerie glow, perhaps while you're huddled over your laptop at Starbucks, answering email and texting on your iPhone at the same time. Oh well, at least I have memories of great times and great days: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Marrakesh Express, Beach Boys, Poco, Jackson Browne's unbelievably sweet fountain of sorrow harmonies. I can always imagine John Lennon, instead of the angry, criminalistic, blingified, out-on-bail rappers proclaiming, "I got a living room full of fine dime brizzles, waiting on the pizzle, the dizzle and the hizzle." (Whatever that means.)

Nowhere is our cultural downward slide more evident than in politics, where anyone can run for office as long as there's a sharp PR firm on the payroll. Today's Wall Street Journal talks about the "Michele Bachmann brand" being honed to a razor's edge by her team of image consultants. It involves kissing babies and signing t-shirts and hugging teenagers and yakking with farm wives. She makes an emotional connection with her audience, so what if she's against abortion and gay marriage? She's down-home! She's warm and fuzzy! People love her! That's great if you're looking to hire a kindergarten teacher and possibly even a president--maybe of the PTA, surely not the USA. Come on, people, what's the dizzle with that?