Wet Towel

It’s disgraceful, the press corps’ fawning and obsessive treatment of the Obama family dog. How brown, the newsroom noses . . .

Little surprise the dog comes from Ted Kennedy, last giant of America’s imperial clan of yesteryear, still the object of spellbound foot-licking and wide-eyed myth-weaving.

I despise the aristocratic dazzle surrounding certain political families. (I like to think this sentiment emerges from a Jeffersonian’s sturdy republicanism rather than a populist’s knee-jerk contempt of excellence.)

Either way, the animal’s ecstatic reception reveals a lonely nation yearning for the ritual, the passion, the majesty and mystery of royalism.

What has become of our ancient democratic sensibility? Why have we sacrificed the proud heritage of the Cincinnati to grovel before media-manufactured princes?

To take a step back and calmly survey our culture is to realize that we’re sliding deep into servility. We have long lost the ability to distinguish servant from master, a skill crucial to preserving a government -- a society! -- of, for, and by the people.

We are swooning ourselves into serfdom.