Dreamin'

I dreamt about the US Senate last night. It wasn't a pretty sight.

From a distance, things looked as they do on television. Important people bustling around. Portly Senators disappearing into the cloistered confines of the Senator's Dining Room, home of the famous Bean Soup, or going into Executive Session behind closed doors, or being interviewed for their thoughts by CNN and NBC.

Up close, not quite so impressive. The dining room was mostly empty, with yellowing Urgent Call memos tacked to a cork board, threadbare tablecloths, and thin soup. The Executive Sessions were actually a gym, but the sounds of hustling activity -- the furious bouncing of the basketball, the screech of sudden stops on the hardwood floor -- were a sham, a recording. Instead, the players were old white men, deferring slowly, gravely to each other, spending most of their time on the bench, peering blearily at the court. And the interviews were pabulum, college kids wearing the well-known logos, asking mild questions, getting responses that would never make it onto the actual airwaves.

It was all a show, but it was all that they had.