ARE WE LIVING IN BIZARRO WORLD?

 I was sitting out on the terrace of the haunted jazz club, Meilori's, when the ghost of Gore Vidal sat down beside me.

When living, he had been the intellectual spearhead of the Democratic Party and author of numerous historical bestsellers.

"My boy, have we somehow stumbled into Bizarro World?  

Though he recently threatened to nuke America, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is now the proud recipient of a PEACE prize."

Gore made a face and took a sip from my ice tea and made a worse face, 

"Roland, why do you not take up at least one bad habit -- namely alcohol -- so that I might adequately wash from my mouth the bad taste of our nation's headlines."

"You could buy your own drinks," I said, glowering at my nearly empty glass.

"Where would be the fun in that?"

Gore pounded a forefinger on the front page of my newspaper on the table.  

"And now Kim is instituting a new time zone to break free of Imperialism of Japan, blithely ignoring his own brand of it in his country."

He squeezed the bridge of his nose.  "Things worsen, Roland.  I watched the debates last night."

Gore sighed, 

"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin."

He gestured to the unusual peace and quiet of the normally raucous terrace.  

"I can see why you no longer engage in the political world.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not only virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."

Gore drummed his fingers on the huge photo on my paper's front page. 

 "Politics provide the essential continual reminder that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all."

He bled out a long sigh. 

" This, then, is the new democratic playbook, selfies with celebrities? 

They play to the people in America that are so uninformed that one fears that they might actually vote."

 Gore stroked his chin.  

"I wonder what your computer friends think of all this?"