Atrios and Matt Yglesias get another one profoundly right. About talking to “dictator” madmen.
I was in Phoenix for the FBR Open, the Super Bowl, and mostly to hang out with two of my oldest, best friends. On Saturday night, after the golf tournament, there is this sick-and-wrong party on the course at “The Bird’s Nest,” which is just a giant tent with a bunch of people who came to the tournament and 3 very good bands, covering about 6 hours. And literally thousands of women who braved 50-degree weather in cocktail dresses and heels, on very steep hills, to be there. You get the idea. It’s more of a party than a golf tournament, especially with the Super Bowl in town the same weekend. There were 168,000 (an American record, so far as I know) at the tournament on the day I was there. No less than 50,000 were there for not golf. You get the idea.
That very night, a jealous husband picked a fight with me. The details are a little hazy, but I talked to his wife at some point, among dozens of other lovely women, no doubt told her she was lovely since she was, and the next thing I know, her near 20 year senior husband is telling me he is forced by some odd honor code that he has to beat the shit out of me. He was much larger than I am, but the same age. His wife wasn’t close to either of our ages.
Being sort of a combative sort, though highly physically cowardly like Dick Cheney, I spent a good half hour engaging the man. It didn’t take long to figure out that he was just another overserved jealous guy. Long story short: No fight, and dignity intact. I recited him a favorite line from a book without giving credit to the author, very early on in the kerfluffle: “While you’re getting dinner, I’ll get a sandwich.” He said my friends were pussies for not “having my back,” even though I pointed out I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I got sent to jail, along with him, for fighting, thus ruining the night and costing someone money, even though it would’ve been my money in the end. I pointed out that fighting our age (49) was rather juvenile and unseemly. And embarrassing for both of us. And the friend thing actively pissed me off, so I got to bluster about them, too, and tell him his definition of “friend” was moronic. I was actually getting in his physical space in a confrontational way from time to time during the course of our surreal discussion.
I kind of liked him after a while. He was just stupidly defending his wife’s honor, or so he thought, like I was going to take her back to my pal’s house with my pal’s wife and two young boys or something. There were 1000+ women to laugh with in the house. As is often the case, he was completely irrational. A guy’s guy. I understand those. I’ve known them all my life.
As is also often the case, rationality won the evening. I’m pretty sure on some level he agreed that it would be a fairly large-scale hassle to hit me first. (There is no question in my mind, but perhaps not his, that there were security cameras filming the whole deal. I sure wasn’t going to start anything, Your Honor.)
At one point, his wife and a friend of hers were just standing a respectful distance away watching us, and I had a chance to catch both their eyes with a “WTF?” grin on my face, and I could tell they understood. I was pretty sure this guy had pulled his macho-man stuff before.
The point is, nothing bad ever comes from talking sanely. Obama is right about this one. As Matt and Duncan point out, Bush talks to unspeakably nasty leaders all the time, first of all, and he can actually claim some success from having done it, as in N. Korea and when he or his surrogates talk the Saudis out of stoning and imprisoning Saudi women for having the fortunate experience of being raped.
The President of the United States is one messed up dude. He reminds me of the guy who wanted to punch me.
Update: Apologies to Ezra. Upon further review he apparently got the discussion started.
