Disgusted with the accelerating rot of my country, I just couldn’t find the arms of Morpheus. So what did I do? I travelled the world looking for love songs.

Found them. Here are the links.

Africa

Alabama

Australia

Brazil

California

China

Connecticut

Cuba

England

England 2 (because they earned it and it’s also French)

France

Germany

Greece

India

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Mexico

North Carolina

Russia

Scotland

South Africa

Tennessee

Texas

Wales

Wisconsin

World (aka Hoboken, New Jersey)

PLAYOFF. Yeah Adele is unbelievably great. But put this classic against, well, a long dead American. Who seems more alive?

P.S. And then there’s love beyond sex. Something about life itself. No comment. Just this and never mind the German…

Even grizzled Scots lie down to sleep. Eventually. You’ll see.

I’m sure nobody will remember that I wasn’t as scandalized by Mylie Cyrus’s twerking as some others. But I tended to see her as a victim nonetheless. She still may be. But I finally moved my stuffy ass to watch her Wrecking Ball video — because Fox News was using excerpts as a lead-in for a story about how Obama is doing in the younger generation.

Not talking about the news piece. Except it caused me to watch the video, which is underdressed to be sure, but not enough to obscure the fact that — unlike Madonna and Lady Gaga — Mylie Cyrus can actually sing.

Maybe that will be enough to save her career and her life. Maybe not too. So easy to say she’s no Judy Garland, but there are similarities. No beauty but an earthy connection. Volume, tonality, and a precocious sense of piercing (country) phrasing. When she’s soft, you’re drawn in. When she’s soaring, she’s in command of what she’s doing. It’s a strong voice, however frail she seems to be otherwise.

I’m not predicting. Just hoping. She has more talent than her role models and predecessors. God help her. Please.

P.S. No. I’m not lusting for her. She’s a stick. I like breasts and hips. I just think she’s getting a raw deal from the people who are trying to steer her career. I believe that if she settled down she could be another Lorrie Morgan, which isn’t such a bad thing to be. And Mylie has the bigger voice.

Standing tall isn’t easy for everybody.

Conservatives seem buoyed by the new Gates tell-all book. I’m not.

I’m astounded by various claims that it’s unusual for a former administration official to publish such a book while his erstwhile boss is still in office. It happened multiple times in the Bush administration. But that doesn’t make it less scurrilous.

Personally, I think Gates has just proven himself a coward and a sneak. If he believed the president didn’t believe in his own war strategy and that his Afghanistan policies and public pronouncements were strictly designed to secure reelection, he should have resigned on principle, with specification, when it could have made a difference in said reelection campaign.

What is it now? A stab in the back and a further undermining of the confidence any president can have in the people who serve at the pleasure of the president. All public officials are now just best selling writers in waiting, storing up shocking anecdotes when they should be serving the people of the United States.

Nothing his book says is any secret to people who were observing the administration’s behavior. It was obvious to many way outside the beltway that Obama’s only incentive was ending America’s military engagements, regardless of the cost to national security and our troops. But never mind what Obama didn’t believe in. The time to have made an issue of it was when Gates was following orders he didn’t believe in.

The moment is forever lost. Now he’s just a small man, literally and figuratively, who thinks his personal resentments are a ticket to the redemption of his lost integrity and, oh yes, a big payday.

Color me unimpressed. The title says it all. Duty. Really? I no longer think he knows the meaning of the word.

Dorian Gray. The Archetype. Believe me. He has no scruples whatever. He gets what he wants, no matter who has to pay. If you think I’m kidding, read his book. “The Secret Life…” It’s sooooo gay.

It’s getting way too easy to be accused of homophobia. I can save you from all that abuse and the reeducation camps that are certain to come. Face it. You don’t want to be doing calisthenics at dawn to the orders of a drill instructor in short shorts, do you? Give me just two minutes of your time. Memorize the content. It could save your life.

This should be pretty simple. I’ve been watching for a long time and now I know what the rules are. Time you did too.

As they’ve been telling us since Kinsey, 10 percent of men are gay. Doesn’t matter how many women are. The open secret is that gay men find Lesbians the dullest drabs in the universe. Who cares how many there are? Gay men have Leonardo and Michelangelo. Lesbians have Gertrude Stein, who wrote an autobiography of the other drab she lived with. It didn’t work then. It’s useless now. Actual numbers are pretty small. Disappointed, ugly women who probably fell in love with gay guys and never got over it. Gay guys rule. Forget the other bullhorn types.

You can tell that 20 percent of men are gay because 30 percent of characters in TV sitcoms are gay. They wouldn’t do that if it weren’t true, would they?

Therefore, the following behavioral rules apply.

If you think a guy is gay, he IS gay and you must treat him with more than the usual respect and deference. He probably knows more about art and literature and classical music than you could ever learn. And when I say “think” I mean if you have the tiniest suspicion… If he’s even slightly well dressed, if his hair is in place, if he’s good looking, if he’s friendly, if he’s morose and disdainful, if he ever looks at himself in a mirror, if he ever stares moodily into the distance, if he ever throws a jocular arm around your shoulders, if he ignores you completely, he’s gay. These easy guidelines should prevent a lot of unpleasant situations.

All your friendships with men are thwarted gay relationships. You’ve cut yourself off from life. All the gay sociology experts say so. It’s a consensus, which is all science ever needs.

Be alert to the fact that you have always lived outside well developed subcultures that are and have always been exclusively gay. For example, every male in show business is gay. All of them. That’s the easiest one. All jocks are gay. Why do you think they shower every day with one another? All self-described campers, hunters, and outdoorsmen are gay. Why do you think they’re constantly trying to escape into the wild away from their women?

Back to that 40 percent figure. It’s a crock. Way way understated. Truth is, the surest sign you yourself are gay is that you find gayness in some way distasteful. You think you don’t like art or literature or classical music. You think you don’t want to be an actor, a jock, or a hunter. The more you sneer at makeup and hair care products, the greater your state of denial. You’re just kidding yourself. Whenever you watch porn, you’re really looking at the endowments of the men. And then there are those of you who actually think you like art and literature and classical music and women. You’re the saddest of them all. It’s 2014 and time you saw the writing on the wall.

Come on. Admit it. All men know that women are disgusting. What’s with those flabby bumps on their chests? All real men know that wide hips and round, soft, fleshy asses are not what the creator had in mind. He as much as said in Genesis that Eve was a mistake, didn’t he? Why did he give her the Curse?

All I’m saying is, give your native gayness a chance. Regard all your male friends and acquaintances as gay. What could go wrong?

We’re living on the cusp of a new definition of tolerance. Get with the program. Open up. Be free. Be expansive. Be gay.

Nobody’s going to look down on you. This is 2014. Did we mention that? Even the trogs won’t look down on you. Because when all of you are chasing each other, all the women will be forced to like us. Which would be heaven indeed.

Can’t wait for the spreading of the gay gospel, same sex marriage, and all the rest of it. Gay liberation means that there will be on average only two or three of us in every strip club, and our dollar bills will reach all the way to the moon.

Look at that flexibility! In some ways, as the government gets sillier, life gets more fun.

Where was I? Oh. Yes. A plea for more tolerance and none of that homophobia crap. It’s not exactly in our best interest. If you know what I mean.

Really?

Now we know what happens in all the time the president isn’t at fundraising events in Hollywood or playing golf or basketball. He’s watching teevee. A lot of teevee.

An NRO youngster named Matthew Continetti has written about a New York Times weekend culture essay proposing to explain the president’s lofty tastes in television viewing as if we might all be illuminated by it. Matthew is not impressed.

Obama, we learn, “seeks not to escape to the delicious back-stabbing of the ‘Real Housewives,’” nor to “the frivolity of the singing teens on ‘Glee,’” but to “shows like HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” as well as to “the DVD box set of AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad,’” Mad Men, Homeland, The Wire, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and SportsCenter. “Friends say Obama is also awaiting the new season of the Netflix show ‘House of Cards.’”…

The problems with Shear’s exercise in psychoanalysis quickly become apparent. He makes distinctions where none ought to exist. The antics on Modern Family and Parks and Recreation are just as frivolous as “the singing teens on ‘Glee.’” Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and House of Cards are filled with as much “delicious back-stabbing” as any episode of Real Housewives. The dramas the president favors are soap operas with sophisticated vocabularies. Left unmentioned is the difference between the shows Shears pooh-poohs and the shows Obama watches. It is the same difference between a juicer bought at Walmart and one bought at Williams-Sonoma: The latter is a luxury good. It takes cash to afford the cable connections, premium channels, and Netflix subscriptions required to watch all of the titles on the president’s viewing list. It is also necessary to have leisure time, which, disturbingly, the president seems to have a lot of. No wonder he finds out about everything from the newspapers.

Shear clearly had a thesis in mind when he sat down to write. His article is an argument in search of evidence. He seems to think Obama’s taste in television reveals a tragic sense of life, a Niebuhrian realism that informs the administration’s domestic and international agenda. Shows that undermine this idea, such as sports and comedies, are downplayed. Dramas with antiheroes, violence, conspiracies, and sex are emphasized.

“It may be ‘Homeland’ that offers the most interesting insight into Obama’s downtime preferences,” Shear says. Homeland is a Showtime series about an insane CIA agent pursuing an Islamic sleeper cell. The show is just as violent and ridiculous as 24, but lacks the “let’s roll” ethos that imbued the background of the earlier series. For Shear, however, this increasingly absurd program stands for much more. “‘Homeland,’” he writes in a wonderful example of cliché, “reveals the hidden dangers in a complicated world.” It is also “subtle, presenting choices that are rarely easy and never cost-free.” Complicated, subtle, rarely easy, never cost-free — do these adjectives call to mind the reputation of a certain head of state? “It is not unlike the phrase Obama often uses with his advisers: ‘Hard things are hard.’” And dumb things are dumb…

About the president’s habits and tastes there can be no question: They are utterly typical of the American educated class.

Homeland, Game of Thrones, House of Cards — these are the latest distractions of the well-schooled echelon of society that toils in high positions in finance, academia, media, and the bureaucracy, that binge-watches fashionable shows with determination and marathon-runner stamina, that discusses over dinner recent articles in the New York Times Magazine or The New Yorker, that laments rising inequality during vacations in tropical locales. To watch such programs is not a sign of critical acumen but of social status…

Actually, it’s a sign of much more than that if you happen to be president of the United States. Take a moment. Think of what you would regard as entertaining diversion if you were the president (I won’t say leader of the free world, because he is clearly no longer that.) Wouldn’t you want anything BUT the shows he professes to watch?

After all, he’s not just a member in good standing of the educated class that takes all its cues from the New York Times and WAPO crowd. He’s a guy who is confronted daily by the power politics of the most ruthless dictators and terrorists in the world, statistics of drive-by shootings, the machinations of drug cartels, the cynical deal making of lobbyists from Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the demolition derby that is the legislative process, the ruthless behaviors of cabinet officers, agency heads, lawyers, lawyers, and lawyers in the executive branch, and the constant disinformation promulgated by the double and triple agendas of the intelligence community.

So how do you take a break from it all in the few hours a week (say 30, given we’re speaking of Obama) when you just want to be entertained? The unceasing political treachery conducted by knives, swords, and poison in Game of Thrones? The constant, pervasive evil of the characters in Breaking Bad? The cynical narcissism without end of Mad Men? The naked self-eating malice of House of Cards, which repels even members of congress as a grotesque parody of their lives? The malevolent violence of Boardwalk Empire — rides into the reeds that end in gunshots muffled by the surf. Is this fun for a person who has real power? How?

Not fun. It could only be, well, absorbing if you need to keep reaffirming some life narrative that justifies your own daggers, swords, and poisons.

Otherwise, you’d probably be seeking different subjects altogether. A series about a rural veterinarian, filled with love and laughs. A movie about a girl who learns how to win a spelling bee by tapping the rhythm of words on her leg. A movie about a girl who leads geese on their migration. A whole bunch of sports movies that bring tears to the eyes while demonstrating that hard work and good character on all sides can win the day. Or a movie about a kid born poor who rose to the heights of one of the most accomplished professions in the world, one that involved saving lives rather than ruling them. You know, a kid who wasn’t born with a white professor mother who wanted him to transform the world with daggers, swords, and poisons.

But maybe you need to keep yourself amped up to white hot anger with The Wire and surfeited with contempt via Parks and Recreation for the inept unaccountable bureaucracy you perpetuate so relentlessly. Your excuse for ruling by edict on the rare occasions when you pay any attention whatever to what your beloved government is doing.

Or maybe you don’t make any connection at all. You’re tired from schmoozing with movie stars and 18 holes of golf, and the best thing that goes with your late night choom is Breaking Bad. Maybe you know all about that.

Which would be a good sign. Because we sure do. Understand about the late night slouch with his choom. We get it.

Makes sense now.

Kathy Griffin wants to show us her breasts. Whoopee! (Of course I’d look. All men who’d tell you otherwise are lying. Men. Love. Breasts. Even the breasts of Greta van Susteren, who’s whining now.)

My wife is mad at me for calling out Brizoni. Maybe she’s right. She thinks it’s unfair of me to reproduce a silly selfie he posted on his Facebook page. I think it’s my responsibility to say come home, prodigal son, all can be forgiven. We’ve agreed to disagree.

So let me talk about Kathy Griffin instead. Desperate for attention is a sad state. She seems to pride herself on being D-List, meaning people know you but don’t care if you die. Why she’s gone to such extremes of late. Simulating oral sex with Anderson Cooper, ripping off her blouse with Anderson Cooper, and most recently promising to go topless with Anderson Cooper on their annual New Year’s CNN gig. Phooey.

It’s understandable that people want attention. Being outrageous is a quick way to achieve that. Thing is, it’s getting harder to be outrageous. People who sport bare boobs, show off silly hair dye, and say “unacceptable” things on Twitter are a dime a dozen. The hard thing is being outrageous by demonstrating thought and intelligence.

I’m betting that Kathy Griffin has nipples. But she refuses to confirm that fact for the many millions who might doubt it. In truth, she lied. She said, in effect, if you want to see my nipples, watch me and Anderson on New Year’s Eve. She didn’t deliver. Hmmm.

Who does that remind us of? It’s a lot like someone who promises to be smart and original and turns out to be dumb and dull dull dull dull dull.

Wife still mad at me, but my conscience is clear.

Brizoni, we hardly knew ye.

He used to look like Leonardo DiCaprio. Now he looks like hell. He had oceans of talent, a great sense of humor, and we jousted for years. Now he’s decided to be a retro grunge rocker. Welcome to the 1990s, boring one. When did tomorrow become impossible? When it conflicted with Rand’s nonsense, or when life got more real than a man alone could survive?

Still a place for you here. Always. All you have to do is write. All writers are screwed up. Pick a post and do it. Everyone will applaud.

The 2014 Mummers Parade

I don’t speak about this enough. Partly because Philadelphia has the same kind of numbskull political leaders that have killed Detroit and are now poised to kill New York City. (The mayor is named Nutter and he is.) Also partly because so much of the anti-Philly propaganda that shapes national attitudes comes from the sports press, which has identified the City of Brotherly Love as one of the easy targets for constant, repetitive, sneering insults. A joke everyone who knows anything is supposed to share without a second thought. A lot like the way they’ve treated Tebow. I haven’t addressed this for a while because I didn’t want to jinx the inspiring season the city is having under a new Eagles coach; it’s like everyone is breathing again after a long bilious spell. If we lose now, it’s still been a glorious Renaissance season.

Why it’s time. There’s good and bad in Philadelphia, and as in so many other instances, much of what is deemed bad is good and vice versa.

Case in point, Eagles fans. Drudge has an item today about the disturbing fact that three out of the four NFL playoff games this weekend are not sold out. Only late and almost by inference is it revealed that Philly IS sold out. Diminished by an earlier statement that Green Bay has the best fans in the NFL. No they don’t.

The sports press is headquartered in New York City, a white collar town that is obsessed with the glitterati soap opera of New York athletes, hideously focused on the diva tantrums of the Jets, Giants, and Yankees. Philly is a blue collar town. Every time the Eagles are on national telecasts, Bob Costas or some other smug MSM elitist rehearses the old old story, always inaccurately, of Eagles fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. Never mind that Santa was a skinny amateur, drunk, careening down the sidelines. That didn’t stop Costas from showing the headline of the newspaper page from what — 30, 40 years ago? — during the prime time season ender in Dallas this year. Eagles fans suck, ha ha ha. Boo birds. Louts. A disgrace to the NFL and sports generally.

Meanwhile, reports of Mets fans throwing batteries at opposing outfielders, shootings and stabbings and fatal beatings of fans wearing opposition gear in San Francisco and other cities don’t show up on the radar of the sports press. No, the bad fans we can all scorn are in Philadelphia.

It’s part of the great new divide between the patricians — The Wall Street/government/media elite — and the plebeians who exist only to be mocked for their parochial passions. Philadelphia’s great bad luck is its geographic proximity to New York and its checkered history of providing fits to New York sports teams, including not one but two “Miracles of the Meadowlands” and a couple of late season takedowns of the Mets by the Phillies. How dare we?

The boroughs of New York City are competing political states, almost constantly at bureaucratic war with one another. In contrast, the neighborhoods of Philadelphia are miraculously still intact. The city has a little regarded Big Five basketball tournament that keeps the rivalries in the family, including teams from the Main Line, Center City, and even the Ben Franklin taproot Penn. Philadelphians still know how to live with one another.

Ironically (or not), Philadelphia remains in many ways more vital and fun than sophisticated New York. More innocent, hopeful, and passionate in some ways too.

Snobs look down on the incredibly persistent tradition of the Mummers Parade, for example. Bunch of drunks stumbling down Broad street on New Years Day. Lower middle class nuts with feathers and banjos. But the Mummers Parade puts New York’s Macy’s Day Parade to shame. Not balloons and corporate juicing but committed clubs of wage earners who work all year for one day to shine. Street theater versus grandiose Disney promotions. Mummers Day is what Mardi Gras could be but isn’t, a celebration of life and spirit. Not a staggering debauch but a fine old party with decent rules and traditions.

Macy’s now owns what was once the greatest department store anywhere ever, Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. Even Macy’s falls back on the Wanamaker name at Christmastime, because so many grew up with the memory of scenes like this.

Wanamaker Christmas

Hollywood reveres New York and San Francisco by constantly destroying their great suspension bridges. The Ben Franklin bridge is equally lovely, between them in age, and not yet savaged by space aliens, because space aliens ignore the inferiors of their targeted human inferiors. Got it?

Come on, aliens!

So the Ben Franklin still stands, along with his university, a mere outline of his house, and a glimpse of the city he lived in, which would be hard to find in all the iron and concrete of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Elfreth’s Alley. Stone’s throw from the Delaware River. Intact and lived in.

I’m tempted to mention the glory of Longwood Gardens, a few miles from Philly, but I won’t.

Anyone can visit. Everyone does. Even the meatheads in Eagles jerseys.

Speaking of meatheads, the real ones live and work in City Hall, which is still more beautiful than they are ugly and corrupt.

Oh, right. The smart ones make fun of William Penn’s profile because the plan was never to get a level view of the sculpture. As always, the founders’ bad.

What Philadelphians at ground level see.

You should behold it in person.

You’re thinking I’ve stressed culture and architecture over fun? Think again. Philadelphians are equally amused by that one awkward angle of William Penn now that they’ve seen it. And unlike certain other cities we could name, their passionate devotion to the Eagles is leavened by a ribald sense of humor. Somebody, anybody, show me another U.S. city that has responded to a prolonged drought of Super Bowls the way Philly has with its annual Wing Bowl (pics not safe for work).

If you can’t celebrate triumph, celebrate life, food, and boobs.

A lesson a lot of the so-called smart ones would be well advised to learn.

Another reason Philadelphians are the best fans of all. They lose, forgive, recover, and fight again. If they boo, they also cheer their hearts out. It’s called being alive.

Contemptible, nasty, worthless little backwater full of scummy Eagles fans. As of yesterday, 2014.

The emperor protected by his Toytarian Guard.

I’d wish you a Happy New Year, but it’s going to be a rough one.

So, instead, I’ll wish you victory over all the ordeals to come.

UPDATE. Molly the greyhound is feeling a bit tentative about 2014 too.

We’re in a snood mood.

President has ordered flags flown at half staff.

The Dallas Cowboys played last night for the NFC East division title, which was their only possible route to the playoffs. Somehow, inexplicably, and as far as ESPN and the NFL Network are concerned, inconsolably, they didn’t win — thereby extending their streak of not getting into or winning a playoff game to 17 years (excluding a fluke victory in 2010 over some team that once threw snowballs at Santa Claus.)

But we Americans are still so committed to America’s Team that the sports press knows the Dallas Cowboys are the only subject we have any interest in hearing about, even when their season is over.

We watched the coverage this morning for several hours while we recovered from yesterday’s family Christmas gathering at our house. We heard dozens of compelling theories about why the Cowboys lost, and even more theories about what it will take for the Cowboys to win again.

Fortunately, ESPN also operates a scoreboard website at which you can learn the results of other games that were played yesterday and who is going to the playoffs.

So, what we’re pretty sure of at the moment is that the marquee game Saturday night will be between the New Orleans Saints and the Not-the-Cowboys squad not located in New York. But who cares? It’s all pretty meaningless now, isn’t it?

Whispering… E. A. G. L. E. S.

We’ll see, I guess.