ON THE DISTURBING MATTER OF ANGER

The auto show in town helps remind us that what's going on right now with car owners is not simply anger, it's love. Anger is always a secondary emotion which, in this case, is being triggered by unrequited love...!

In America, the car took the place of our beloved horse. Men (many women too) lived and died with their one, true horse. To steal a man's horse was to steal a part of him, and the lynch mobs drove home that point time and time again. Even when the car replaced the horse, we still couldn't quite get over our love affair, and so we continue to talk about our cars in terms of horsepower.

Now, however, with all the shrieking headlines about failed Detroit and flawed Toyota, it's like a lover turning their back on us. And so the anger. An anger that can change only once we feel our cars are starting to love us back again...!

AND TALKING ABOUT ANGER

Right now America is in one of its periodic snits. Oh, we may call it a great populist uprising, but really, today's Tea Party conventions and parades are really just one more blip on the screen which records the way Americans have been bitching ever since the Constitution.

Within months of the new Constitution, President Washington had a whiskey rebellion on his hands, requiring federal troops. Our bawdy outbursts have continued by the scores from then right through the rebellion of the Confederacy, through the 20th C Progressives, through FDR's problems with Huey Long, through Ross Perot in 1992, right up to Barracuda Sarah today.

Perhaps the only thing different this time, is Sarah is sexier than General Lee and certainly Ross Perot. Dumber but sexier. Now what to do...?

Well, we can never (nor should we) ignore such anger from the streets. Who will ride the tail of this tiger and to were is open to debate. As always, time will tell us. One frightening thing to watch for would be the serindipitous possibility that President Obama -- elected to change and raise the course of our history -- might ironically become history's setup guy for the proverbial Man on the White Horse.

That terrifying thought stops me right here in mid-sentence ----