The RP: Our Politics-Free Week

If there’s anything that unites Americans more during this summer of our discontent, it is that we all hate politics. Politics have moved beyond simple ugly sport; politics almost brought our country to its economic knees.

That’s why starting today, and going through this Friday, we are challenging the rest of the country to join us in a Politics-Free Week. For seven full days during the doldrums of August, we’ll take on the latest controversies in sports, film, fashion, parenting — anything but politics.

I explain why we need a Politics-Free Week in my latest column for The Huffington Post. Here’s an excerpt:

If you needed yet another reason to hate politics…

A political firestorm erupted in the tiny rural hamlet of Fancy Farm, Kentucky, last weekend when a scandalous speech delivered by Governor Steve Beshear received universal approbation from political insiders and the capital press corps.

One wag opined that the governor “may have stepped onto a political land mine.”

Another mocked Beshear’s “bizarre choice of oratory on the state’s biggest political stage.”

One of the governor’s opponents termed it “the worst darn speech I ever heard anybody give…. I’m highly offended by it.”

What in the world would provoke such hostility?

An avowal to raise taxes? An endorsement of Casey Anthony’s innocence? A shout out for the despised Duke Blue Devils basketball team?

To find out the Governor’s scandalous message, and to read my full column, click here.

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Maybe this brief of hiatus will recharge us for an ugly fall filled with supercommittees and presidential campaign bickering. Maybe it will provide us a slight window of sanity to remember what is truly important.

Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll be like George Costanza, in that episode of Seinfeld in which he takes a temporary vow of abstinence, and his previously sex-obsessed brain opens up to deep social, cultural and scientific awareness.

Check in often during this week of political abstinence. See how your politically-obsessed mind can open up to new possibilities. While we can’t promise a Costanza-like transformation, at least you’ll get some temporary relief. And maybe you won’t hate politics so much when Labor Day rolls around.

Oh, and consistent with this theme, our Weekly Web Gems will not focus on “The Politics of…” the various subject matter categories.  Instead, with a salute to my cousin, Steve (or should I say Maurice?), we will concentrate on the much more important subject of “The Pompatus of…” love and other subjects.

Don’t know what I’m talking about?  Watch here: