Passion Is The Only Way Out?

Passion is the only way out. For me, the greatest luxury on earth would be to be able to abandon myself to passion.

- Catherine Deneuve, 1969

A couple of nights ago I was talking with my mother about the presidential campaign, and the 1988 campaign of the oft-maligned Michael Dukakis - which I worked on out of college - came up. My mother always disliked Dukakis because he lacked passion and was too low-key. I suggested that maybe someone would want someone like that running the country, rather than have someone who acts with too much passion and not enough reason.

I won't deny that George Walker Bush is a man of passion. He does a lot of things passionately. He passionately ran America into the ground. He passionately pursues a fruitless and unjust war in Iraq. And I despise him.

With a passion.

Passion, as British rock singer Graham Parker once said, is no ordinary word.