HIATUS HERNIA, by Howard Graubard

I am, above all things, a family man; besides myself (my usual position), there is my wife, a psychotherapist who is married to a crazy person, whose life’s ambition is to sit at home all day and read Proust, and my doppelganger, a miniature schnauzer named Groucho Barx, whose favorite food is challah bread, meaning he avidly participates in every Jewish ritual but fasting.

There’s also my 18-year old son. who does not leave his room, except for meals. COVID has not interfered with his emotional growth. Six foot three, phobic towards haircuts, but enamored of hair dye, last spring he got tired of being called “The Surly Green Giant,” when he wasn’t being called “Krusty,” and changed his unruly mop to a shade of magenta not found in nature. His grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, took this in her usual upbeat manner, saying “for this I spent two years living in an attic?”

It may surprise some to learn that one cannot support such a family on the proceeds one acquires writing, on a monthly basis, endless screeds about forgotten local political lore. This is one area where I find the Democratic Socialists of American completely compelling in their analysis of capitalism’s failings.

Thus, I am forced to labor in more lucrative vineyards, practicing in the arcane field of ballot access law.

For most people, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a bad thing, but since I’ve become an election lawyer, I’ve been able to monetize it, spending the month of March making NYC safe from democracy.

With most incumbents term-limited, and the City offering octuple matching funds, it is almost literally “The Year of the Election Lawyer,” and my colleagues in this small and collegial bar have been busily spending their days lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills while preparing a back-up plan of hari-kari if petitioning is cancelled on account of pandemic.

Preparation for petitioning, reviewing and submitting petitions in proper form, and petition litigation make up most of our income, and we make it all in a very short period. With dozens of local races this year, all of us have had their fill and more, and excess potential clients have been turned away like guests both uninvited and unmasked.

By contrast, in the off-season, one regards even the most impoverished potential client as succulent; “so what if she only pays me the first thousand and then stiffs me. That’s a thousand I don’t have.

Why should she have it instead of me?”

All of which is to say that I am on hiatus from writing actual political columns; my lack of time being overwhelmed only by my multiple conflicts of interest; even if I had the time, my columns would consist mostly of parenthetical disclosures.

Depending upon my potential litigation load, I may or may not be back next month. Just as well; one of the great virtues of the Biden years is that those of you who don’t do it for a living can safely go back to ignoring politics, which is exactly what those of us who do do politics for a living want you to do.

Howard Graubard