ME SO HORNY FOR CSPAN GIRL

By Polar Levine, April 1, 2010
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During the 2008 presidential campaign Rich Lowry swooned over Sarah Palin in the conservative National Review ("Hey, I think she just winked at me."). The guy came off like a masturbatory teenager. Not because it's impossible for a politician to have prurient appeal to an adult intellectual. It was the stuff that got him off -- that standard issue babe come-on. Such conservative fantasies. But I get the general premise.
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I experienced my own current events hard-on while watching Charlie Rose a few weeks ago. My wife and I have been Charlie fans for years. We love watching him in the throes of verbal paralysis whenever he's interviewing artist types, so intense is his sense of wonder about the "creative process." And his oddly huggable attempts to bathe in the glow of a guest's deftly delivered punch line by repeating the joke minus the funny stuff. He's an astoundingly decent guy who attracts the best and brightest. I especially love the Marathon of Jews aspect of his shows -- so few us left on Earth but so many worthy of a seat at Charlie's table: authors, scientists, medical researchers, musicians, architects, political pundits and Noted Authorities of every kind. And that provides me the opportunity many nights each week to pause the digi-cable box, turn to my shiksa wife and bellow, "You see!!! And look at what your people did to the Jews!!!" But when Charlie had Elizabeth Warren on I got my own current events hard-on.
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I testify to you, dear readers -- the moment was delicious. As the Charlie lite-jazz-funk theme faded out she appeared: a casually tidy blonde, bespectacled, perky Boomerette -- a shiksa no less -- who looks every bit the inhabitant of her career path -- Obama Administration bureaucrat, academic, and bankruptcy lawyer. And, yet... pretty in a bureaucratic kind of way. She's currently overseeing the TARP bailout of Wall Street. Finally somebody is providing oversight about something. That in itself can engorge some American genitalia.
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I've found her regularly to be loveable (platonically) in mini-interviews with John Stewart, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, etc. But Charlie gave her lots of time to ooze into something more comfortable -- her Liz-ness. She initiated the foreplay by outlining the current Great Recession -- how we got there, how everything is being done (and not done) to make sure we stay there and go back there again and again, and the cast of characters who made and continue to make it all happen. She was stunningly accurate. But this was not the equally accurate but burpy repartee of a Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz. Liz croons it like Julie London (look it up) -- she's pure sex. Her lips seem to ripen. Her voice is warm and sweet, but also frankly straight to the point. With amazing clarity she tells you exactly what she wants and why and where. Her explication of complex and ethereal financial exotica is so right and also witty, so personally and palpably felt that it feels like she's talking dirty to me. When she speaks of how real people are affected by the gluttony on Wall Street, K Street and in the halls of Congress you can see real passion in her eyes. Her body opens and relaxes as she leans forward toward me -- well... toward Charlie... but she knows it's actually me. Clearly she knows I'm a sucker for a pretty female (and subtle prettiness is the most seditious kind) who is funny, smart and passionate about useful things.
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But when I cool off and return to Earth, I'm a happily married family man and I sort of accidentally noticed that the TARP overseer had a wedding band on. OK. I can't have Penelope Cruz either. But please -- if I can't have Elizabeth Warren slowly removing her Overseer uniform as she tickles my ear hairs with gentle cooing about the need for a stand-alone consumer regulatory board -- at least get rid of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and make her Treasury Secretary. I swear the world will be a more prosperous and sexy place.
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by Polar Levine for polarity1.com April 1, 2010
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