Today’s post comes from living and loving expert and relationships thought leader B. Marty Barry.

Dear Readers,

I want to assure you that although I’ve never met you, I deeply care about each and every one of you very, very much! This simple act of caring is so powerful and life-changing, I’ve always been surprised it doesn’t get more attention at the highest levels of society – particularly among our governmental leadership.

But now I’m encouraged to see this changing with the latest news out of Washington that some national agencies are collecting data from our phone calls, Facebook posts and Google searches. I see it as a welcome sign that government has finally realized there is something crucial missing from so many lives – an expression of interest!

So many of us simply want to be acknowledged.

Oh, some presidents have said “I feel your pain”. Well, at least one said it. Critics poo-poo that kind of sentiment, trying to minimize the significance as a cheap gesture by saying it’s “just words”. But words are powerful! And it matters when we know someone is paying attention to us! Every day I see heartbroken, invisible people who want their voices to be heard, their posts to be read and their slideshows viewed! They’re desperate for someone to care.

In the coming days, as details continue to leak out about what was information was collected and by whom, I hope we discover that it went beyond the simple stockpiling of metadata and that someone, anyone, in the Intelligence Community or the Justice Department or the White House had the courage to simply reach out and “friend” someone. Or anyone. Or everyone!

In fact, with unemployment still so high, why don’t the NSA and the FBI hire young people to “friend” ordinary overlooked Americans, suspicious gun lovers, rowdy foreign nationals and even suspected terrorists? It needn’t be dangerous, since no one has to ever be in the same room together anymore.

And a simple “Whassup?” can uncover worlds of information.

You can spy on people and learn a few things, but I’ve discovered they will tell you absolutely everything you want to know (and then some) if you simply put an arm around their shoulder and ask!

Your for-always friend,
B. Marty Barry

Would you make a good spy?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I attend a lot of political fundraisers because I love getting some proximity to powerful people. But once I’m there, I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut and I do have a tendency to heckle them a little bit.

Congressmen, Senator, Presidents, First Ladies. I hector them all!

I figure if I pay 500 dollars for a plate of dry chicken, cold green beans and lumpy mashed potatoes, I should get to shout my opinions at someone famous while they’re giving a speech. What they’re saying is totally predictable anyway, and the fact that I contributed an outburst is the one thing most people will remember from what is otherwise a completely packaged event.

I consider my spontaneous eruptions a form of art.

Experienced public people know how to handle it. They make a little joke or they pretend to listen and then offer some kind of First Amendment-y comment to argue that I should shut up and pay attention to them.

I decide on a case-by-case basis how far I will push it. About half the time I get escorted out, and on a good day I’ll get a little bit of ink for my cause.

I decided long ago that it’s a win-win-win proposition to be a loud boor. It’s all in a day’s work.

But at a recent fundraiser I started shouting at a Very Famous Person and she refused to follow the script. She left the podium and got in my face and in front of the whole group she made like it was a choice – the people at the meeting were going to have to listen to her, or to me. And if it turned out to be me, then she was going to leave, which I thought was rude and totally selfish. After all, they all came to the event to hear her in the first place. Unfair advantage!

Dr. Babooner, I was minding my own business simply trying to shout her down when she made the whole thing about me and left me feeling belittled and humiliated. I wound up leaving with my self-esteem badly damaged, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to heckle again.

Sincerely,
Will You Confess Your Sins Or Are You Ready To Admit Your Guilt?

I told W.Y.C.Y.S.O.A.Y.R.T.A.Y.G. it’s certainly a change in the status quo when a principled person can’t hijack a public event to promote their cause without being subjected to the indignity of criticism. Public attitudes in cases like these do seem to be swinging towards support for the event holders rather than the event disrupters. Perhaps the thing to do is stage your own dog-and-pony show and then arrange for someone else to heckle you. If you can plan a stylish response that resonates as well as the one that silenced you, you might be able to get the attention you seek AND some sympathy at the same time.

But that’s just one opinion.
What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden, still not quite graduated from Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hi Mr. C.!

Well, I didn’t get that actuary job I’d been hoping for.

There was never actually an actual actuary job available, but I was hoping someone would find out I was interested by reading your blog and then they’d contact me. I guess your dumb blog isn’t as popular as I thought, or it has the wrong type of readers. Jobless ones, like me.

Either that, or people don’t want good employees very much these days.

The funny thing is, there seem to be more jobs around this summer than there were in the past few years. A bunch of the kids I know from school are working at fast food places and movie theaters and as babysitters and stuff like that. And that’s fine but I was really counting on having something cool to do.

Like being a wrangler on a Llama Ranch.

I think wrangling llamas would give me a chance to run across an open field and get a flying headlock on wayward livestock in a way that would be really fun. They have lots of neck footage, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a place to grab on. Then it’s just a matter of pointing their faces in the direction you want them to go.

That’s what I imagine, anyway.

It would be awesome, though I hear they spit. But that’s OK. I can spit too! It would be extremely cool to start next year by telling the kids in my homeroom that I spent the summer llama wrangling and spit dueling.

So, are there any overworked Llama Ranchers with some extra money in your audience? And if not, what sort of work do they do? I’m starting to wonder if me networking with you is ever going to pay off.

Your pal,
Bubby

P.S. – I don’t want to have anything to do with actual baboons. I’d rather babysit human children, if it came to that.

Ever spend the summer around livestock?

Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th district – all the water surface area in the state.

Greetings, Constituents!

A lot of people say politics is an art, but I happen to think there’s a bunch of science mixed in.

I regularly get together with a group of friends in our “bipartisan politics lab,” and we look at everything that happened in the past few days through an unforgiving microscope. There are all sorts of linkages and influences to measure.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised yesterday when Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann announced she would not run for a fifth term in her conservative Minnesota district. In a cold, hard scientific light, the numbers were not in her favor. Neither were the letters, once intimidating ones like F.B.I., F.E.C. and O.C.E.started showing up.

I have long admired Representative Bachmann for her many abilities, not the least of which is the power to set an anything-can-happen tone, and another is simply the ability to draw attention. In political science, that quality alone is as good as gold.

People think if you’re in Congress you have already hit the heights of fame and influence, but I can tell you from personal experience it can feel very lonely and quite invisible to be a member of the House of Representatives.

Especially if, like me, the institution doesn’t recognize you as a legitimate member.

Getting even a fraction of the attention Representative Bachmann received would have made me feel like a real success – like I had finally arrived. Unfortunately, I would have to serve 100 terms to come near the level of fame she collected in her soon-to-be far-too-short eight years.

In this way, Representative Bachmann gave us a yardstick to measure ourselves and our constituents!

Just like a scientific compound that gets a reaction out of other metals, exposure to even a little bit of pure Bachmann would trigger a profound change in every element that came near. I don’t have to tell you that! And her powerful influence made it possible to “read” individuals quite quickly.

That’s a valuable tool in the fast-paced world of politics.

For example, we discovered a clear and direct one-to-one ratio links any individual voter’s Bachmann Allegiance Tendencies (B.A.T.) and that same person’s Conspiratorial Reasoning Acceptance Profile (C.R.A.P.)

Meaning the more an individual donor liked Congresswoman Bachmann, the more likely they were to believe that the government had covered up the truth about the President’s birthplace, or downplayed data about Islamist infiltration in the State Department. Or believed that there are flying saucers and mummified aliens in the New Mexico desert!

So if you knew someone’s BAT, you instantly had their CRAP, and vice-versa. We had Congresswoman Bachmann to thank for that! And We were able to measure it more easily whenever she made a widely distributed public statement, meaning every time the Congresswoman opened her mouth on TV, we were hip deep in BAT/CRAP back at the lab.

Those were golden days. The days when an ordinary person would walk a mile out of his way to tell you a joke, even if wasn’t very funny or didn’t make sense. Old fashioned? Yes! And I think we live in a very different America today!

Your Servant,
The Hon. Congressman Loomis Beechly, Esq.

I have nothing to add.

How do you measure your influence?