In search of a Why for my heartbroken disappointment at finding the fifth installment of George R.R. Martin’s excellent Song of Ice and Fire series absent from the bookstore shelves although long expected, I found my way to this post on the author’s blog:

Doing Good Is Its Own Reward…
… but when you can Do Good and add some nifty autographed books to your collection at the same time, well, that’s even better.
So here’s your chance to end the war, defend the constitution, and help take back this country from the corrupt plutocrats who have given us this latest financial crisis. And get some great swag at the same time.
I’m talking about Books for Barack.

Shortly thereafter, I came across the following blurb on the cover of the Providence Journal’s Lifebeat section:

Rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel are teaming up for their first joint concert to benefit Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Obama plans to attend the concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Oct. 16, the day after Obama’s final debate with Republican John McCain at Hofstra University, located several miles outside the city in Hempstead, N.Y.
Seeing the two superstars together won’t come cheap. Tickets start at $500 and range up to $10,000.

What’s painful — from this talented writer, my fellow Jersey boy made it big, and one of the principal comforters of my churning adolescence — is how little imagination they display. Their advocacy, their message, and their promises and expectations are all according to script and serve to reinforce the laughable trope that liberals are anti-establishment rebels fighting for all that’s good and true. Think of that the next time some left-wing conformist strikes the Brave One pose.
And think of it the next time the Obama campaign pushes an agenda of silence and, in Andy McCarthy’s words, “severing of our body politic from the moorings that make us America.”