I Think This is a Great Column
After watching what Trump had to say in his Wednesday interview with Sean Hannity, I thought I might try the same technique and see if I can get it to work for me. After all, if I can just think what I want to write here and have it done, it will eliminate a whole lot of work – not only the first draft but also the rewriting. In fact, I figured that if I did it correctly, there’s be no need for any rewriting, since my thinking in the first place should be perfect.
My first few attempts at this were only just okay. But in fairness, that was mostly my fault because I got distracted. The first time was because I was watching the Cubs game at the same time as I was thinking the column, and had the sound on low, though I could watch the video. And so, the results were a little jumbled and had more baseball commentary mixed in than I was hoping for. And “Cubs win!! Cubs win!!” in the middle of the piece probably would be confusing to readers.
I did better on my later tries on Wednesday night, though even there my attention was torn between thinking the column and eating a huge bowl of popcorn while celebrating as I watched the news shows reporting on the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The results were pretty good, though, because I’d been watching and reveling in the news all day, and when hearing the same stories for the eighth time, I was able to block most of it out for a few minutes. The problem is that I couldn’t get enough of hearing the news again and again and again, so that’s why I did still get distracted in my thinking. So, while much of the think piece was smart, thoughtful, insightful and impressively nuanced, there was a lot of giddiness and phrases like "You go, girl!!" mixed in, and the final draft seemed a bit off for it.
But I kept working at my thinking, and I…er, think that I finally got it down pat. And not only was I able to think my everything I wanted to say for the column perfectly, but I also now understand how Trump was able to declassify material just by thinking it. The one problem he had -- that I did not have – is that’s still a legal process to go through for declassifying government documents, and while he did the thinking part properly, he never was able to work out the “process” part that involved notifying others. With my column, no such process existed.
I was very pleased with how things turned out, and hopefully you will be, too. I look at it all as sort of like being Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man. As you’ll recall, Prof. Hill is a traveling con man didn’t know one musical note from another, and so came up with what he told the naive, trusting citizens was called ‘The Think System’ for teaching the young boys in River City how to play their musical interests for the town band. All they had to do was think Bach’s Minuet in G. And in the end, when he desperately told them to “Now, think, men…thiiiiiiiiink!” – it worked out pretty well.
As it did for me. I just had to think today’s column. And so, here it is –
It works!!
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