Tag: Election

Joe the Plumber Wins American Idol

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

On the campaign trail on Friday, John McCain introduced Joe the Plumber as “an American hero” and “my idol.”  Oh, where do I begin?

First, what has this guy possibly done to warrant “American hero” status?  Perhaps over the course of his life he has rescued a cat from a tree or coached a Little League team or bought Girl Scout cookies.  He might have even done truly brave and heroic things that we don’t know about, though I doubt it; I’m sure the GOP would have dredged up that bit of information and played the soundbite over and over again, ad nauseum, perhaps with Hank Williams, Jr., singing yet another poorly rewritten version of “Family Tradition” as the background music.  Joe the Plumber might just be a decent fellow, but lying about a fake company he’s going to purchase doesn’t exactly qualify him for a Congressional Medal of Honor.  (Oh, how many tangents could I go on here?  The who-ever-thought-putting-Hank-the-Neanderthal-Williams-Jr-on-stage-at-rallies-would-improve-the-Republican-image tangent?  Or perhaps the why-do-so-many-white-men-who-make-$40,000-a-year-vote-like-they’re-CEOs tangent?  But I digress. . . )

The worst part of this particular piece of McCain Campaign hyperbole is that while we have tens of thousands of true American heros risking their lives in a Middle Eastern Vietnam, our great senatorial war hero is giving similar status to an unlicensed plumber.   Mothers of soldiers all over this country should be put off by that.  (Including Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain.)

And “my idol“?  Forgive me, but, are you shitting me?  Now Joe has been elevated above the legions of service men and women, firefighters, police officers, and Good Samaritans.  Apparently, he has joined the ranks of Mother Teresa, Gandhi and, in McCain’s personally acknowledged pantheon, Ronald Reagan.  (Pardon me while I recover from the fact that I just put Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Ronald Reagan in the same group.)   At this rate, Joe needs more than just a publicist and a record deal; he needs disciples.

While Barack Obama campaigns with Bill Clinton and Al Gore and receives the endorsements of Colin Powell and a whole slew of Republican defectors, John McCain is laying the groundwork for Joe the Plumber: American Hero as the next Lifetime movie of the week.  And McCain wants to question Obama’s associations?

I’ll write more later.  Right now I’m late for a meeting with my publicist.

Warm Regards,

Deb the English Teacher

Black to the Future

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

A woman in my evening composition class told this story last night.  After leaving the polls for early voting in Nashville yesterday, she happened upon a man she works with.  He asked an interesting question.

“Did you vote right?”

She looked at him a little puzzled.  “Well, I suppose ‘right’ would depend on which side you’re for.”

“What I mean is,” he said with a knowing southern grin, “did you vote black or white?”

As we are approaching the summit of that mountain top Dr. King saw 45 years ago, it must be noted that some Americans remain stuck in a valley of immense ignorance.  For a long time now, we have lived in the delusion that racism was disappearing.  As Barack Obama edges closer to the Oval Office, our baser elements seem to be crawling out of the ooze.

But don’t think for a minute that I would advocate the impossible (and unnecessary) concept of a colorblind election.  This election IS about the economy and the war and education and health care, etc.  But, this election is also about race, and it should be.

The civil war ended 143 years ago and with it the national sin of slavery.  In those 143 years, we have experienced Reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynchings, Plessy v. Ferguson, segregation, Brown v. The Board of Education, lunch counters, sit-ins, fire hoses, police dogs, and church bombings, not to mention the death of a thousand cuts that shows up as that subtle, systemic, sinister, subconscious bigotry that insinuates itself into everything from jobs to jokes.  To a sociologist studying cultural change, 143 years is nothing.   We absolutely cannot elect a black man to the most powerful office in our nation in 2008 and not recognize how profound that moment would be.

When I cast my vote a few weeks ago for Barack Obama, I did so because I believe in his plan for America.  I agree with his economic vision, his policy of diplomacy first and war last, his devotion to equality for all Americans, and his recognition that our diseased health care system must undergo surgery.  But I also felt a personal thrill and undeniable swelling of patriotism that I lived to see the day I could vote for an African American for president.

He shouldn’t be president because he’s black.  But it still does mean something that he is.  And regardless of whether he accomplishes that task or not, we can’t put this genie back into the bottle.  Our national racism has once again come up for healing.  And our national prayer should be that we eradicate this cancer once and for all.