The Review

You’ve probably heard about the review, yeah that one. Front page. Bold, brash, and thought by many to be out-of-character. For the NY Times is his biggest fan we thought.

I actually have not listened to much “talk radio” these past few days, so I don’t know how the pundits are spinning the story. Working with my teen-age boys brings about the compromise of alternative music on the radio, no talking heads.

But I finally read the review this morning in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They carried the Sunday review on page one of the VARIETY section in Tuesday’s paper. To quote from NY Times’ Michiko Kakutani:
The Bill Clinton book, My Life which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull -- the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history. In many ways, the book is a mirror of Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration.

What jumped out at me and what stuck with me throughout the day was the phrase “self-indulgent.” This label seems to get applied a fair amount to those of us baby-boomers. And I don’t deny that we deserve it more often than not. Because of the natural spot light placed on the president, this tendency, or any other for that matter, gets magnified and is easily seen.

I know that we boomers, who have lived well off the fat of the land, tend to navel gaze to a degree that is not healthy for others or us. We tend to be a very self-centered lot. And in some senses Clinton is our guide. I don’t mean to rail against number 42 (or whatever number prez he is,) it’s just that I feel uncomfortable about myself sometimes when I look at him. Am I like that? (How’s that for self-absorbed narcissism.)

Even as I blog on daily, I sometimes feel uncomfortable with the high number of first-person references. The person writing knows that a blog by its very nature is journal-like personal reflection, but must that person continue on with a spotlight so inwardly focused? Is said person so much a product of his environment (or should he say generation) that even the current sentence places him at the center?

God rescue us (ME) from our (MY) continual absorption in ourselves. (Cause that would make us really happy. Just kidding, God.) And forgive me for that last snide remark.

It’s getting late, and said blogger needs to get horizontal before he writes something he would regret. And thank you Bill for helping make things clear.