The SoCal Byte

First of all, since we last gathered, many metaphors have entered the campaign — “Pork barrel,” “sacrificial lamb,” “witch hunt,” “blank check.” No doubt, we are entering the critical season of political metaphor where expressions like these and others — “straw man” and “sacred cow” — take on added weight. Rather than simply shorthand expressions for you, as politicians, to avoid answering a question with any specificity, these metaphors can, at this time in the political calendar, help shape a campaign.

Let others quarrel about street food licenses, health permits and the accuracy of the word “gourmet” in gourmet food truck, I’ve looked into the glaring headlights of free range capitalism and they’re blinding. If I’m desperate enough to buy it, the market will supply it. Forget about how my desires effect and reflect on the real world. As long as I have a Vietnamese slider, life (in the economy) is good. The future rolls out from there.

From Point Conception to the Mexican border, the coast shears in. Named after the Mission of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the Point’s early residents — the Chumash — thought of their home as the "Western Gate," where the souls of the dead found passage to paradise. We live south of paradise, below the Cape of California. In the bight.

To better understand America’s culture war, a full consideration of Bert the Turtle is essential. Bert, by the way, starred in the 1951 United States Civil Defense film, Duck and Cover — a black and white animated American pop culture respond to the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb test in August of 1949.

Gift giving is a talent and a gift, in and of itself. But that talent may be waning in our world. Today, on the fringes there’s a marked increase in a segment of faux gifting. It’s called Gift Donations In Your Name.

A exit speech for the next war modeled on US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s remarks on leaving Iraq. May God bless our troops, may God bless America, and may God bless those who cashed in.

When I was a child, afternoons at the Callahan house were filled with the unfortunately televised presence of soap operas. The bad acting, the poor production and the sadass storylines were depressing reminders that my family was middle brow and middle class. I was condemned to a world that looked to someone else’s misery as a form of entertainment… on TV. Post-soap opera, afternoons at the Callahan house have turned to court TV for their Schadenfreude.

Last week a bronze statue of Ronald Reagan at Bonita Canyon Sports Park in Newport Beach, California was remixed — painstakingly rendered, bent over, pulled down — in the same manner and position that Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down by Marines in Baghdad after our country’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some thought it was thievery. Some thought it was vandalism. We know it was art.

The military has reached PR honor overload. Simply put, they’re receiving too many slices of the honor pie and in the process the public is getting a tummy ache. What’s the solution? Spreading the honor around.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that reading “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to a child increases that child’s likelihood of lying.