SWEET SMOKE: Now is the season of political high dander by which time all hats need to have been “thrown in the ring,” a phrase rooted — not coincidentally — in roughly the same stratum of antiquity as “blowing smoke up one’s ass.” This latter expression, it turns out, refers to the once common medical practice of administering tobacco smoke enemas to near-drowning victims in hopes of clearing their lungs. By the time medical authorities figured out this practice was a nonstarter, they’d already invested significant sums in their smoke enema kits and sought out other purposes to which they could be put.
As the nation shifts its attention from Iowa to New Hampshire, we in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties cast our gaze to the battle currently unfurling for the 24th Congressional District. Of the nine candidates who’ve hurled their headgear, only one — Jeff Oshins — actually wears a hat. Typically, Oshins wears a broad-brimmed straw boater that I associate with riverboat-gambler types. On occasion, he wears a ball cap. Either way, Oshins’s campaign manager — a lanky muscular son of a former Alaskan governor and a longtime family friend — will see to it as a matter of stage craft that Oshins appears hat-free for the duration.
Of the nine candidates, Oshins falls into the unviable category of being not viable, but serious. That means he has something to say but not the funds necessary to be competitive. I’ve known Oshins for a good while; he’s one of those guardian angels who swoops parapetically into my life, unbidden, to fan the smoldering ashes of any literary ambitions not already pulverized by exhaustion, distraction, or my Chronic Lack of Initiative Disorder, otherwise known as CLID. Smart, funny, and thoughtful, Oshins lards his outrage with gobs of absurdity, making him fun and easy company. When we grabbed a cup of coffee last week to discuss his entry into the Congressional race, I figured I’d encounter a gleeful mix of his various alter egos: Kinky Friedman and Colonel J.T. Cornpone, the suspender-snapping, seersuckered Candidate for Congress. Instead I got a mix between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.