Out of total boredom I listened to a political pundit on the radio. It really doesn’t matter what his name was or which side of the political argument he was on but in regard to truth in advertising, he was a conservative. I live in South Carolina; what else would he have been? What struck me was his sureness…as in his COCKSURENESS. “As sure as a cock!” Isn’t that what the word means? As arrogant and self-confident as a strutting barnyard COCK! For some reason I mentally saw a parading peacock, his feather’s all preened and fanned out as he metaphorically pranced his mating dance to attract his peafowl of a “listening audience.”

I have never been cocksure of anything…until after the fact, and sometimes even then I am not sure. Three marriages will make you less than cocksure. As soon as I wake up in the morning I am cocksure I am alive…well after I have resuscitated myself with my first cup of coffee. You can’t be dead if you ache as badly as I do can you? I am also “cock-of-the-walk sure” if I don’t hurry to the bathroom upon arising there is going to be a flood of “biblical proportions” because it has happened before. If it is snowing outside I am cocksure it is PROBABLY cold or if I zip up too quickly I might have a painful experience. It doesn’t stop me from zipping up the old beany weeny anyway or walking outside to make cocksure THE WEATHER IS COLD!

What I am REALLY not cocksure about is politics, which is a similar experience to zipping up the old beany weeny in my pants as far as I am concerned. My pundit seemed NOT to have my problem. He knew exactly what to do in order to correct all of our country’s ills from transgender bathroom rights to world peace. I got the idea his problem solving involved only our Second Amendment rights and nuclear weapons. He was cocksure about how stupid the present administration was and how it was responsible for everything negative from my colonoscopy this morning to a bird mysteriously dying in the Altiplano.

When I looked up synonyms for cocksure in the Oxford Online Dictionary I was rewarded with arrogant, conceited, overweening, overconfident, cocky, proud, vain, self-important, egotistical, presumptuous, smug, patronizing, pompous, high and mighty and finally, puffed up. I admit I had to look up overweening which means showing excessive confidence or pride. I believe all of the pundits, mine in particular, have some or all of these traits and more. My pundit understands that hatred sells only slightly less well than sex but much better than the truth. Why did the Oxford Dictionary leave out narcissistic?

I decided to give my pundit the benefit of the doubt and looked up his qualifications to be a pundit. Let’s see, a degree in Poly Sci? Economics? Basket Weaving? Now I know why he views all of academia to be “liberal, left-wing, Commie hippy freaks.” He spent very little time in institutions of higher learning except for a football game or two. My pundit has had a long career in radio and TV which I am sure is as much like the real world as is any social media political post. My “peacock” is no more “educated” than I am, except that he knows what sells on television and radio. I thought the word pundit was a Hindu word meaning “an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public.” Well mine certainly has the opinion part of the definition down. Don’t get me wrong, college educated is not the end all but I would like my pundits to be able to do something more than turn on a microphone and sell advertising. Can you receive a Bachelor of Science in BS? Get it? A BS in BS. Quit laughing it wasn’t that funny.

I mentally see my grandmother approaching the chicken coop next to our old barn, slowly reaching through the chicken wire door and snatching up a young rooster. As she grabbed the cockerel there was an explosion of feathers from wing flapping but to no avail. A short stroke of her ax, followed by an erratic, headless run, and all was quiet. Something the political pundit might want to think about, “You’re only a short stroke of an ax from the metaphorical and silent cooking pot.”

More nonfiction by Don Miller is available at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM