posted on Sep, 11 2010 @ 06:27 AM
Okay, here goes an attempt at explaining what was going on in that speech. I can't make sense of it, but I can explain it. The key here is that the
guy grew up in Ohio.
I moved from Boston to Cincinnati 8 years ago, and there's a real interesting culture here in Ohio. The boys (not the poor ones, but the
middle-class suburban and small town ones) are raised to be respectful, deferential, polite, and to not make a scene. I was a nightclub entertainer
for 30 years and I've performed all over the East Coast (from Boston to Savanna GA) and you get to knowing what to expect from regional audiences
after a while - since it helps you gauge your effectiveness as your set progresses (which is necessary if you want to be successful).
When I got to Ohio, I found audiences where the women were immediately open and engaging, but the guys were incredibly closed off and seemingly
incapable of even acknowledging that anything was occurring in front of them. I learned from my wife (a local girl) that the guys "try to be cool"
in situations where they feel that they might be judged as being less cool than someone else (like in a bar where "their women" are being impressed
by a male outsider - and that would've been me at the time, trying to just do a decent show). What my wife didn't realize (being a local girl her
whole life) was that the Ohioan's version of cool is stone-dead cold, and that's because their nature is to not be cool and, therefore, they have no
idea what true cool looks like. It's like a psychopath's attempts to be friendly and naturally connecting with other people. It comes across as
over-friendly (unless the psychopath has really trained himself on how to mimic authentic friendly human connection). They over-cool when they try to
be cool. It's due to not really being cool, but inaccurately mimicking cool.
That guy in the video clip is one of those Ohioans who was obviously raised to not make a scene, and to be polite and deferential, but he was told by
someone he respects to show passion if he wanted to be part of the big GOP Tea Party wave this fall. Traditional party Republicans have been getting
pasted in the primaries this year, and the excitable Tea Party Republicans have been winning. This poor guy was just doing his best imitation of a
wound up Tea Party GOP conservative, and like the cool guys in the Ohio bars, he had no idea where to draw the line between passionate and insane.
I can just hear him now "I was passionate. You told me to be passionate, so I was. What the heck do you people want from me. All I wanted was
to be the County Treasurer. You're the ones who told me that I needed to show political passion. Good grief. Wasn't that passionate enough for
you?"
I felt bad for him. He reminded me of the over-cool guys in the bars and nightclubs, who really wish that it would be alright for them to smile and
have fun when their favorite band kicks their asses without having to worry about being exposed as being easily impressed greenhorns.