I Am “Mr. Important”

For a while I was taking a number of “old-fart” classes, better known as adult education classes. No matter what the topic, the scenario in the class always turned out basically the same. Early on, someone, usually a male, sitting in the front row near the middle of the room, would ask a question. In actuality the question was usually just a way for this person to subsequently demonstrate to the rest of us how smart he was. Initially it was always perplexing to me as to why someone would take a class, for instance, on the Mideast, when he already “knew everything” about the Mideast. I say, initially, because after a while, it became apparent that what was important was for that person to put himself at the center of attention. Sure we all remember that type in high school and college, but by senior citizen time, I would have thought that this “I need to be the center of attention” individual would have gotten over it. Not so!
In politics we have that same type of individual(s), who seems to crave the spotlight. They do not seem to realize how amazingly self-centered they appear. Of course just as with Mr. “I am the only one that matters” in that senior’s class, one politician in particular appears to be attempting to appeal to that group of children who, seemingly, are content to follow the Pied Piper of Burbank wherever he decides to take them. Little Adam needs to be the center of attention. “I need to write the Democratic memo, since I am the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, and everyone wants to hear what I think! I purposely made my memo four pages longer than the Republican memo, because what I have to say is more important.”
Guaranteed that after his memo is eventually released, he will be complaining about something. After the Republican memo was released, he complained “that Devin Nunes had altered the memo without consulting him” (it is suspected that a comma was taken out). He charged that Nunes had worked with the White House on edits (unsubstantiated bluster). He brazenly predicted that “the release could lead to an Oklahoma City style bombing, because people will have lost trust in the FBI” . . . of course the logical thing to do from his perspective is to issue another memo to draw even more attention to the situation!?
Last week I learned a new word, “atychiphobia” which means fear of failure.
This week’s new word is “schiffophobia” which means a fear of not being in the spotlight in front of the TV cameras.

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