"Guitar Face" For Liberals (PDS)

"Guitar Face" is generally considered to be that unfortunate look that self-important rock and rollers get when they are earnestly getting down for the audience. We have all seen it: Spinal Tap made great sport of it, MTV built an audience around it, and the phenomonal Joe Queenan has taken the scalpel to it.

In one of the unheralded stories of the past 2-3 years, I can now report that liberals too have a form of Guitar Face. I call this unfortunate look the Chill Wind Blowing ("CWB") look. On the eve of the war in Iraq, Tim Robbins inadvertantly invented the CWB as he speechified to a world wide audience, at the National Press Club no less, about how his free speech rights were being trampled and eliminated. (Chill wind, my ass--the chill wind sure didn't make it up his pant leg that day). You can find an early example Brother Tim's CWB look here, and if you still are unsure of what a CWB looks like, google up the following two words: "Estrich" or "Krugman". You will find that the CWB has caught on like a wild fire.

Beware of the CWB, however, for it is a harbinger that you are about to hear something dramatic about The Patriot Act, a "stolen" election in Florida, or how the fellas in orange jumpsuits at Gitmo have been deprived of Miranda warnings. Other topics that tend to generate a CWB include hybrid cars, capital punishment, and John Ashcroft. The intensity of the CWB tends to be inversely proportional to the number of facts supporting the subsequent argument, and therein lies the secret attraction of the CWB: it is handy a substitute for facts.

If you ever are in close contact with somebody who is sporting some Guitar Face and a CWB, do take my advice: see if Mr. Springsteen would be kind enough to autograph your T-shirt.