Reuters: “‘We all said Ronald Reagan has passed away — what should we do?’ said Gene Taft, director of publicity at publisher PublicAffairs. ‘Maybe we should take some orders.'”

Here in the City, there’s a big brouhaha going down because of a Biotech conference happening at the Moscone. In one corner, there’s Mayor Gavin Newsom and the business sector heaping dinero on glitzy gilded booths, using every technique at their disposal (including well-practiced sycophantism) to woo industrialists. Because unless you’re living off a trust fund, it’s still a perrenial juggling act if you want to live in this town and do your own thing. So what better way to upgrade the overall standard of living and spark up the sulfur of plentiful jobs and affordable apartments then to pivot your head like an aspiring socialite at any ol’ big boy looking to get inside your pants? (And in this case, the fact that the big boy’s all “biotech” pounds the crude and distasteful metaphor in further, along with all subsequent explanation of same.)

In the other corner, we have protestors! From what I’ve been able to conclude from my morning commutes, most of the protestors are pockmarked teenagers whose working definition of instilling change involves dumping rotten fruit into intersections, rather than having civil discussions with the right people or the citizens about the issues. (You know, those trivial bystanders who might be responsible for exercising conscious consumer choices? Well, like many protestors in this cartoonish town, the protests in question are about aggravating these bystanders, rather than informing them. And what better way to vex than to block intersections at rush hour, thus causing regular working Joes and Janes to explain to bosses why they are late for work, and subsequently throwing a small monkey wrench into their job security during one of the worst economic periods in the last twenty years? Way to go, team!)

The protestors have declared the Biotech conference to be a bad thing because the biotech sector is responsible for genetically modified food. Never mind that the Frankenfood industry can be put out of commission if enough people were to consciously reject it (i.e., read labels before sliding credit cards). Never mind that, well, economic circumstances being what they are, the pickens are slim on the job front.

Do I come across as cynical? On the contrary. I actually sympathize with both camps here. But where I have the problem is that neither the Newsom camp nor the protestors are mature enough to address or understand each other’s points. What we have here is the potential for a fantastic debate over a major issue. Where do we draw the line in the sand? How do we balance shaky economics with moral principles? It’s an important question that deserves serious consideration as our unemployed road warriors put the pedal to the metal to pick over the small morsels dropping from the wilderbeast’s maw, at least until the economy picks up. But like all political skirmishes, neither side wishes to compromise. Unilateralism, that wonderful political principle still in vogue thanks to the cowboy on Pennsylvania Avenue, has become so indoctrinated through almost every sliver of the political spectrum that it is now virtually de rigueur for politicans and protestors to do likewise.

Is this democracy at work? We all remember how effective those Five Year Plans and Great Leaps Forward were, right? What makes the current political atmosphere in this country any less different from that of the Soviet Union? Rather than world leaders deciding for us the policies and dicta we should believe in, perhaps in response to the current frustrating atmosphere, we’ve now deferred this duty to ham-handed small-time politicos and the barker-like protesters who follow them. The overall contentment by anyone to believe so fundamentally in their own points without listening or considering the other side is perhaps the worst aspect of political discourse that this nation has seen in the past twenty-five years. Sure, I could blame television or the Limbaughs and Moores. But consider the following statistic:

In a global study comparing voter turnout in a parliamentary election over the past several years, the United States scored 93rd out of 100.

You could blame the people for this appalling placement. Me? I blame the early advent of unilateralism, which has transformed politicans and protestors alike into living cartoons. The folks at the top of the food chain are rolling in their oversized sties, but my guess is they’d be scared shitless if we actually started listening to each other.

Bay Area improv gets a big cover story in this week’s Bay Area Guardian, with the usual suspects cited (including True Fiction Magazine and Diane Rachel, whom I was fortunate enough to take classes with last year), just in time for the San Francisco Improv Festival, now playing through June 26. If you’re looking to take a plunge into improv, I highly recommend taking classes at BATS or experiencing some of these fantastic groups live.

Right after Ronald Reagan died, I began reading Joseph J. Ellis’s fascinating biography American Sphinx, which attempts to log the duplicities and conflicting character of Thomas Jefferson. I had long been interested in the book, but when I saw the endless column-inches painting Reagan as a grand hero, as a man no less holier than the Messiah himself, I grew despondent over how the role of the President has remained decidedly unpresidential in recent years. I became ired over two ideas: (1) that the current editorial clime remains so fundamentally immature and dishonest that it cannot offer a portrayal that shows Reagan’s strengths and weaknesses (if only Lytton Strachey or H.L. Mencken were around to weigh in) and (2) that we now have a President as comparatively active on the culture front as a rotting rowboat tied to a quay leading up to some marvelous museum. As if in answer to these issues, Ellis’s bio fit the bill. American Sphinx profiles a man who was, without a doubt, presidential material, but it has (so far) done so in a way that has allowed me to keep my hero worship in check while presenting additional mysteries.

I won’t offer yet another tired dirge that either celebrates or condemns Reagan. There’s enough of that floating around on the blogosphere and elsewhere. I’ll only say that for as long as I can remember, I’ve admired Thomas Jefferson. When I was a boy first learning about this lanky Virginian, the fact that the two of us shared a dark reddish head of hair was always a plus. The fact that he was an intense reader and a man of many interests also attracted me. And when I heard that this was the guy responsible for the swivel chair, which I had always thought was one of the handiest pieces of furniture ever created, I knew that this was the horse I should bet on.

And when I learned as a teenager that this slaveowner had simultaneously written against slavery while keeping the issue on the q.t. during his political career, I was more intrigued than ever.

But I think Ellis pointed me closer to the answer when he recalled Jefferson’s infamous 1786 relationship with Maria Cosway. Jefferson was in Paris at the time and Cosway was married. Jefferson had promised his wife Martha at her deathbed that he would never marry another woman. (He didn’t.) But that didn’t stop him from becoming completely smitten with Cosway. During their six weeks together, Jefferson injured his wrist — for what reasons, we do not know. To this very day, on the romping front, scholars have been unable to determine precisely why, how, or if it happened. (Jefferson was very scrupulous with his private affairs, which makes Ellis’s job considerably tougher.) But what we do know is that from that affair, Jefferson wrote what had to be the most passionate letter of his career. For a brief moment, the assiduous Jefferson let down his guard and authored a 4,000 word letter in which he carried on a dialogue with his Head and his Heart.

Read (or reread) it. This, and not the ability to woo over everybody on television (a mere parlor trick), is the stuff of great men. And in light of the November race, it seems a pity to me that this year, we have two candidates who, like the last race four years ago, who can’t come nearly as close.

It’s also worth noting that Jefferson was a lousy orator.