Living in Literalville.

When I first heard that term from radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, I instantly affirmed that I was a proud citizen of Literalville.

Not just in things political - in many other areas as well. Years ago I was in a gallery of some sort and saw a painting that depicted a farmer working with a single horse and a walk-behind cultivator. It seemed like the work of a gifted artist, but when I took a close look, I laughed out loud. When a horse is pulling any farm implement, it is fitted with a padded collar that fits snugly against the animals chest and shoulders. Tough leather straps, called traces, are attached to this collar and to the implement to be pulled.

To help the farmer control the animal, it is also fitted with a bridle, equipped with a steel bit which fits in the horse's mouth. Attached to the ends of the bit are light weight leather straps called reins. With a gentle pull on either strap, the farmer can guide the horse to move to the left or to the right. In the aforementioned painting, it was the reins, not the traces attached to the implement. No horse would ever be called upon to pull a cultivator with its tender mouth! Obviously, that artist was not from Literalville.

Now it is TV commercials that drive me nuts. In a commercial for Pictsweet vegetables, the spokesman deplores the fact that so few know of the company. Behind him, a man passes on a tractor, down rows of plants that stand at least three feet high. The spokesman refers to the man on the tractor as Bob, their marketing manager, and says Bob has some ideas to change all that as soon as he finishes "plowing". To anyone who has ever been anywhere near a farm, which is just about everyone west of the Hudson River, it was clear the man was cultivating well established crops, not plowing!

In a commercial for Lipitor, a man standing on a foot bridge talks about the folly of his youth when he skated on "that" ice. The camera pulls back to reveal thin ice on the stream beneath the bridge. That stream appears to be, on average, about six inches deep and littered with impediments to ice skating.

Both commercials are instant turnoffs to folks from Literalville.

Living in Literalville sometimes has disadvantages... if it prevents you from enjoying an otherwise fine painting; or blocks the message intended in a TV commercial. But when a politician espouses a policy that is instantly recognized as pure baloney, it is a gift shared by all my neighbors in Literalville.