Roger Cohen Has Had it with Just About Everything

Roger Cohen takes a look at Brazil, where the minister of tourism recommends sex at airports, and likes what he sees. Then he looks at everything else, and channels Dennis Miller:

So I’ve resolved to adopt Brazilian karma for 2008 and forget all the little irritants that plague American lives: microwaved croissants, high-five contagion, globalized brunch, death by PowerPoint, shops calling themselves “shoppes,” the inconsistency of belt-and shoe-removal rules at airports, Apple addicts vaunting the latest gadgets and people who convey agitation or anger by writing in ALL CAPS.

I’m not even going to be irked by automatically flushing toilets that flush before you’re done, “hot towels” that are just wet, automatically activated faucets that never activate, congealed risotto, the prodigious capacity for getting tangled of cords for iPods and computers and cellphones, backpacks with wheels, rolling backpacks being rolled by adults, voice-mail hell or the middle-aged trying to sound hip about the Web.

Nope, I’m done with irritation. Give me expiring hotel key cards, yet more on Princess Diana and Dodi, TV correspondents waiting for hurricanes, headache-inducing prosecco, Web sites I’ll only visit once that require a password, conspiracy theorists, people afflicted with the control-freak-martyr syndrome (“I do so much I never have time for myself”), tape dispensers that don’t work, sommeliers who decant indifferent wine, even Christmas starting the day after Halloween — I won’t raise an eyebrow.

Test me with flickering video images on planes, the noun-verb frenzy as in “you disrespected me,” the insidious beat from others’ iPods, people who say “waiting on” rather than “waiting for,” the systematic relegation of Saddam Hussein’s crimes to a subordinate clause, offshore wind turbines, the unerring instinct of hotel minibar replenishment people for arriving at the wrong moment, equally ill-timed calls from mothers-in-law and the decorative use of indigestible red peppers. You’ll find me happily tuned to bossa nova.

I refuse to be troubled in ’08 by sensible “orthotic” shoes, kids staring at computer screens, kids saying “wait” at the start of sentences, surreptitious below-the-table BlackBerry use (the technological equivalent of picking one’s nose, as my colleague Jill Abramson noted), undercooked arctic char, cinnamon or chocolate on cappuccino, insistent greetings on my TV screen in hotel rooms, overfilled wine glasses in restaurants, organic everything or people on the train saying “Hi, Honey! I’m on the train” into cellphones. Nope, this is my Candomblé season.

You can throw it all at me: overheated rooms, pop-ups, bank clerks who ask: “Have I exceeded your expectations?” and rob you with the fine print, Brian Williams’s bristling chest, theft-dissuasive hotel hangers that can only be suspended on rings with keylike slots, super-sized sushi, “adventures” in Africa for the rich, fear-mongering from banks about identity theft, Starbucks baristas operating in slow motion, Chicago’s ban on foie gras, and, as my daughter Jessica pointed out, all those people who respond to a compliment by telling you how much they paid (“I got it at Banana Republic for 75 percent off”). I’ll be viewing the world through the surfer’s prism.

Bonus footnote: Of the presidential campaign, Cohen remarks, "We’ve got a woman, a black, a Mormon, a creationist and perhaps a Jew in the race.

Say again, perhaps a Jew? Huckabee? Alan Keyes? Oh, Michael Bloomberg, certainly a Jew but perhaps a candidate. Apparently New Yorkers are paying attention.

Thanks, Larry, who gets up earlier than I do, but hey, he is on Eastern Standard Time.