RumourNation

Daddy, Paul and the Krispy Kremes.

Well, we're in the middle of what is proving to be a tumultuous week for everyone -- a week that actually started some time last week, or maybe even 20 years ago.  My personal starting point for the tumult was last Friday, on the eve of the Presidential candidates' debate, and it all goes back to the Krispy Kremes.

You see, I'm lucky enough to work in an office that celebrates each Friday by bringing in a stash of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  Several boxes, enough for everyone, in sufficient variety so no one has to fight over the chocolate-glazeds.  Heaven with a hole in the middle.

Now, I'm delighted that Californians have adopted Krispy Kremes, but even after years of consuming them, I've not met a single Left-Coaster who truly gets the tao of KK, who understands what it means to run to the store when the red light is on, to devour the soft, doughy goodness sitting at the white linoleum counter with a little glass of milk, souvenir paper cap clutched firmly in hand. 

You see, that's where I spent Sunday mornings with my dad, and every time I eat a Krispy Kreme, I'm thrust right back into those childhood days. 

I lost my dad to cancer when he was 58.  So those trips down memory lane are both precious, and painful:  little pinpricks of conscience bugging me about whether I properly said goodbye, whether I've really explained my father to the granddaughter he never knew, whether I'll ever have the chance, or the courage, to sort through my conflicted feelings about our relationship.  All the stuff you feel when you lose a parent, at any age.

The funny thing about my father:  when he was younger, people would meet him and say "You know, your dad kinda looks like Paul Newman."  So, after those damned Krispy Kremes stirred the pot on Friday morning -- and with McCain really winding things up later in the day -- we then lost Mr. Newman on Saturday, and I've been confronted with my dad's doppelganger all week, staring out at me with the same steely blue eyes from every form of media I touch.   

"Look, Mom," said my daughter, "The guy on the cookie box died."  (Yes, we eat Fig Newmans at our house.)   I spent Saturday in a funk, not only over the loss of an amazing, supremely gifted and preternaturally gracious man, but also over the state of our country; sad that at a time when I feel alone and unmoored, there's no father for me to call, to hear him rail about no-nothing and meddlesome Yankees in government, to ask me why I continue living with those California crazies, and to talk about nuclear power as a solution for our energy woes. 

In many ways, Mr. Newman was a powerful father figure for many of us:  who doesn't want a devastatingly handsome movie-star dad, who's also an adventurer, a philanthropist, and wise, to boot?  For all his faults, my dad was a pretty good father figure himself.  He pulled himself up from a hardscrabble existence, earned an education (including an MS in engineering, for pete's sake), and gave me both the courage of my convictions, as well as the will to get things done -- even if he sometimes got there by declining to do things for me.  He never really understood me:  despite having three sisters, and being married, women remained a mystery to him, to be tolerated from afar.  And, given that I inherited my mother's facility with words and music--unlike my brothers, who got the math gene--I was often a truly alien presence to my dad, someone who spoke a language he didn't really understand.  Nonetheless, he taught me as best as he could, in the language he did know:  How to rewire lamps, how to figure out rocket trajectories, how to diagnose what was wrong with my car (which I can still do, to the amazement of my Swedish mechanics). 

I'm sorry, but neither McCain nor Obama cut the mustard when it comes to father figures.  McCain is too jumpy, and whiny (and yes, too short -- my dad was tall!), while Obama is too young, although there may be hope for him (pun intended).  It would be nice if we had a national father figure, if Paul Newman could have hung around for a while and chatted with us about how to solve our problems, how to live with graciousness and hope.

We'll muddle through, somehow.  And I'll learn to look forward to the next batch of Krispy Kremes, hoping that someday I'll be able to cherish those childhood memories, remembering a time when the world felt safe, and warm, and my dad was there to put his arms around me, and drive me home with a big box of doughnuts.   

The Knee-Jerk Express

So, it's been nearly a month since John McCain's surprise announcement regarding his running mate.  Like a bolt out of the blue, Sarah Palin arrived on the scene:  underqualified, under-informed, and under-vetted.  The last item became pretty clear when the McCain campaign refused to admit that they knew nothing about Palin's pregnant daughter, or to release any information regarding the VP-vetting process in general.  ("Are you secretly gay? Do you have an affinity for airport bathrooms?  No?  Great, you're in.") And, now that Palin's dead-cat bounce is fading, and the Walmart moms are getting to the bottom of things with her -- and finding her a little lacking -- McCain brings out another whopper:  He's going to suspend his campaign, step into a phone booth, and re-emerge in Washington as the Superman of credit crises.  Yes, Mr. McCain is going to Washington to solve all our problems.  And Obama, he says, should be following in his footsteps. Oh, BTW, can we call off Friday's debate, while we're at it? 

Who took McWalnuts off his meds?  Are we really looking for a President who, in every pressure-filled situation, has this kind of a knee-jerk reaction?  I admit a certain level of admiration for his political advisors, who know how to stir the pot, but over the long haul, the outcomes are not good.  Every situation seems to be assessed in terms of short-term gains (meaning:  What will give me a leg up in the battleground states?), rather than longer-term positives (meaning: I really am putting my Country First™). 

Everyone I have polled in my admittedly-small and definitely Obama-leaning circle of cronies has had the same reaction to McCain's announcement:  He's afraid of the debate.   And whether or not this is true, we're all amazed that a man who last week announced that the economy is fine, and who has wrapped himself in a couple of financial debacles in the past, now deems himself necessary in a negotiating process that started, and has proceeded, without him. 

I watched Obama's town hall today, and he echoed what I've been feeling for over a year:  This crisis has been affecting the middle class for quite some time.  Inflationary pressure, declining home values, a deteriorating job market-- it's folks like my nephew, who couldn't even find a job at McDonald's when he came home from college for the summer -- who've been pummeled already.   All they're saying to Wall Street is this:  "Welcome to the party, y'all.  And BTW, we're not interested in funding your golden parachutes in return for all the trouble you've caused us." 

So much for our 30+ years of trickle-down economics (yes, we got a bit of a respite with Clinton, but Dubya trashed those achievements, didn't he?).   We've trickled ourselves right into a New New Deal.  We might as well put a guy with the political DNA to manage it into office.  FDR Version 2.0, if you will.  I don't think that's McCain.  He seems to put about 30 seconds of time into the planning process: rather than decision-making capability, he seems to have some kind of cartoonishly-large hero complex that causes him to leap before he looks.  Great for the headlines, murder on the bottom line. 

Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm voting for the guy who calls Paul Volcker for advice, not the one who calls Carly Fiorina, who got bounced out of her own job for knee-jerk reactions.  Birds of a feather ...  If you buy McCain's story today, I got a Bridge to Nowhere and some AIG stock to sell you. 

(Art adapted from a cartoon by Olle, with my apologies.  Here's a link to the original: politicalhumor.about.com/.../Superman-McCain.htm)

The Britney Spears Candidate

I almost hate to give Sarah Palin more press, since the furor seems to be dying down, but what-the-hell, my 20 blog readers aren't going to make that much difference, anyway.   So, here's the thing:  every educated woman I know between the ages of 25 and 60 is furious about McCain's choice.   Every single one of us has the same reaction when we look at Palin and her dog-racin' First Dude, her pregnant teenage daughter, the baby she keeps toting around like a sack of flour:  Trailer Trash. 

Now, given that I was raised in the South, I know a thing or two about Trailer Trash.  I also know that I, and my family, have worked hard to avoid that label.  To make sure the kids stayed in school, to keep the drag racing to a minimum, to avoid trotting out crazy aunts and differently-abled kids as a kind of circus sideshow.  Even though it almost killed my mother to do so, she talked to us about sex (and according to her teenage grandchildren, she still talks incessantly to them about sex -- and the importance of birth control).  My mother, God bless her soul, even got a midnight paper route to help keep me in my top-notch private university -- which I happily attended for four years straight, earning my degree before trotting off to another college for an MBA.   Despite a familiarity with, and perhaps an affinity for, humble things, Trailer Trash we were not.

But there's sexiness in being Trailer Trash these days, I suppose.  After all, Britney Spears has made a career of it.  But Cheetos, cut-offs and bare feet in gas station bathrooms are not the stuff of thoughtful folks.  And I can imagine Ms. Palin, for all her lipstick and her carefully-coiffed hair, wandering into the truck stop loo, moose gun and cigarette in hand.

I, for one, can't help noting the irony that McWalnuts, after lambasting Obama as an empty-headed celebrity by comparing him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, picked the political version of Britney Spears as his running mate.  Way to go, John.  You proved pretty definitively that publicity, not policy, drives the Straight Talk express.  Even Paris showed you up with a humorous -- and intelligent --riposte.  Who's the empty-headed celebrity now?

Bring out the moose-hunter huntin' gun, Obama.  Those of us who have abandoned the cutoffs, the Marlboro's and the First Dudes in favor of careers, families and lives of respectability are behind you 100%.  Even Britney's cleaning up her act.  Maybe we should give her an "Obama" sticker for her truck, and put her on the Dem ticket in a few years:  "Britney in 2012.  If you liked Palin, you'll LOVE her!"   

Defying Conventions

So, those of us who care about the Presidential election (hopefully that's most of us) were obviously shocked when John McCain announced his choice for Vice President. It took the shine off of Obama's hopeful and moving speech, delivered on the anniversary of MLK's legendary "I Have a Dream" oration.  McCain was either inspired or insane, and I spent a few days trying to make up my mind.  I dutifully watched Palin introduce herself -- complete with infant, pregnant teen and baby daddy -- on national television; I dutifully sat through Foghorn Leghorn and Droopy Dog, and I tried to convince myself that this all made sense. But all I could think about what this:  the Republican Convention looks like the America I came from, but it doesn't look like the America I live in now.

The Republican audience was suspiciously bereft of color.  Most of the women were blonde.  (I'm blonde, at the moment, but now I'm thinking that Palin's rocking the brunette with glasses thing, which was my look!  Maybe I should go back, and run for national office.)  There was the occasional black or brown face, lovingly caressed by television cameras looking for anything -- anything -- to break the monotony.

Contrast that with the color of the Democratic Convention, which virtually shone like a rainbow.  And the color of my neighborhood, which happens to be old, well-established and affluent.  Diversity is not the bailiwick of the poor in Ell-Lay!  We border Koreatown, where we often shop bakeries for yummy French-Korean goodies and occasionally hit a galbi restaurant.    Being of that age, my daughter just attended her current best friend's Bat Mitzvah.  The girls arranged in the front rows came from all ethnic backgrounds - Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino.   Another close friend, adopted from China, will celebrate her own Bat Mitzvah next year.  And they're just a sampling from one mid-size all-girls Catholic school in the city. 

When we order out for dinner, we are just as likely to choose an Indian restaurant (there are several nearby) as we are to choose sushi, Thai or Italian.  While my daughter was on a vegetarian kick, we used to lunch at the local vegan joint.  I've been lucky enough to have a series of well-educated, gracious au pairs help me raise my child (none of them sporting infants or baby-daddies).  The languages spoken in our household have included German, Italian, Czech, French and Spanish.  The streets in my neighborhood are quieter on Saturdays, because when you're an Orthodox Jew, you leave your car in the driveway and walk.   

No, I don't pretend for a moment that we are typical, at least not generally.  But when I was watching the Democratic Convention on television, I didn't feel atypical -- I felt grateful.  (And I'm not even a Democrat.)  Grateful that, for once, I could find my own tribe in the crowd, that despite the fact that I'm blonde (sort of) and white, I don't have to believe in a world where everyone looks, thinks and talks like me. 

Where does the current Republican worldview come from?  Is it fear?  I don't find the emphasis on stopping the tide of progress--creationism, abridging medical research, ignoring global warming--to be congruent with our country's reputation for ingenuity, determination and leadership.  It is totally at odds with those "Country First" placards they kept waving around, fanning their blonde headpieces.  It makes us look backwards, and stupid.   

Nor do I understand why they would reject the waves of diversity that have always powered these United States.   My family actually showed up here around 1653 (and proceeded to steal a lot of land from the previous inhabitants, BTW). If anything, I should be shooing out the blonde helmet-heads, asking them what they're doing here.  As a matter of fact, I might just do that, and replace them with far more interesting folks, who are willing to work hard at crappy jobs, pay taxes, and are not worried whether my lover shares my gender and what god or God I worship. 

I know the conventions are designed to be love-fests, to showcase a candidate's pandering to the party base, and I clearly saw that in St. Paul.   Pandering to the point of delusion.  Stand up, you Americans, and demand the truth.  Don't sit their with your little blonde hairdon'ts and smile when you hear the lies.  You're better than that.  We're better than that.  Go back out on the street, and take a look at what your country really looks like.  It might break your heart, but there's nothing to fear.  Brown and black folks have infants, pregnant teenagers and baby-daddies, too.  It doesn't make them qualified to be Vice President, but it does make them qualified to be your neighbors, friends and fellow countrymen.  Quit shutting the doors on them:  you might just discover a little extra happiness, and some peace, in your own Christian-God-creationism-believing-immigration-reforming souls.