@ Home in the World

Sigh

I figured I'd better tell this story before it's no longer relevant.

The Clintons used to love Boston. When Bill Clinton was president he stayed several times at the hotel adjacent to the office I worked in. That hotel frequently hosted Democratic events; I once narrowly avoided a collision with John Kerry one night on my way home. He was deep in conversation with someone nearly as tall as he is, and I simply wasn't watching where I was going. I looked up at the last minute and moved, and he didn't even see me.

The street was frequently blocked off when Bill Clinton came to town. I woud occasionally join my co-workers out by the crowd control fences to see if I could get a glimpse of the President leaving. One day did catch sight of him waving to the waiting crowd from his limo.

Flash forward several years. The Clinton presidency has ended, 9/11 has happened, and Bush is steadily beating the drum for attacking Iraq. I am at a different company, in a different part of Boston, meeting in a corner conference room with several of our co-workers.

One of us catches sight of a limo pulling up to what is essentially a delivery entrance for the hotel next door. The six of us stop our meeting and go to the windows, since clearly, someone special is  going to get out of that car. It's former President Bill Clinton with a few bodyguards. He steps out, looks our way briefly, says a few words to the maintenence men in the alcove and walks with his party to the interior of the hotel's loading garage.

As he disappears from view, the six people in my conference room let out a collective and audible sigh.

______________

My interpretation of that sigh, was that it was not so much about the man himself, as the times he represented. A time before 9/11, before we were harangued with the phrase "honor and dignity in the White House," a time before real honor and dignity got drowned out in "Yee-Hah!" 

My support for Hillary as a candidate, was based at first, on wanting to see a complete repudiation of what has happened to this country in the last seven years. As I've said, I've admired Hillary for standing up to the Republican mean machine while First Lady and I've admired her for going after something she wanted. All of us women should be that brave.

So now that the primary is essentially over, I'm struggling to warm up to Barack. I marvel at his supporters who seem so head over heels in love with the guy whom I see as just as arrogant and displaying the same sense of entitlement to power as people accused Hillary of.

Not that I'm going to vote for McCain. I admired him once, before the GOP decided that a failed oilman would make a better leader than a war hero. Today, John McCain looks like a bumbling old man either sabre-rattling or yelling "hey you kids, get off my lawn!" It's sad really.

When the running mate thing gets sorted out (and I'm not sure Hillary as VP would be the best thing for the party, the country, or for her), I'll write a bit more about this.

I'm hoping to maybe catch some of that Obama fever, but it hasn't happened yet, and since I try to be a rather clear-eyed political observer, it may not happen at all.

The myth, the legend (sigh), the man.

I'm mentally exhausted.

When the Supreme Court essentially handed the Presidency to George Bush after the 2000 election I knew two things for certain:

1. We would be at war before the end of Bush's first term.

2. I needed to take a long, mental, break from politics.

Of course we all know what happened with the former, and the latter lasted less than I thought before I was more involved in a local way than ever before.

But I'm starting to feel that way again.

As if the Clinton/Obama neverendingstory wasn't neverending enough, we now have the Icarian demise of Elliot Spitzer to be bombarded with and completely depressed about.  I admired this guy and to say that I'm disppointed comes nowhere close to covering it. Ugh, Elliot, how could you? At least the scandal is generating an enormous number of humorous headlines and blog titles - Spitz Takes, Spitzer Swallows, Elliot Mess, Number 9, Number 9, and of course, HO-NO!. But man, the whole thing is just disturbing.

Another thing that's getting to me is the sheer number of women who are angry at Silda Spitzer for "standing by her man." Geez, wasn't it just last week that I was talking about this with regard to Hillary and the fact that no one really knows what's in another couple's marriage. And Dr. Laura? Shut up!

If I could shut off the news until about September, I'd be really happy, but that's not going to happen. I have agreed to manage The Soccer Mom Vote at least until the November election. We are currently looking for additional contributors and guest bloggers, so if you have something to say about an issue or the election in general, give me a shout at latelierdelisse at yahoo dot com (apparently writing it out that way repels spam).

All right, I need to start thinking about something else. Like maybe the fact that Top Chef starts again tonight.

"B*tches get things done!"

Count me among the few people on the planet who have never watched Saturday Night Live. Not even back when it was consistently funny (I was in high school then and my mother felt it was "inappropriate"). Well yeah, I've seen a rerun or retrospective now and then, but I was well out of college before I saw that "wild and crazy guys" skit that a high school friend constantly made a fool out of himself imitating. Yes, I live under a rock. These days it's on purpose for the most part.

Speaking of rocks, I've never seen 30 Rock either. Tina Fey got my attention on that American Express ad which I'm starting to suspect she wrote most of. Have you ever seen someone from across a room and just known you wanted to be friends with that person? Call it "like at first sight." That was how I felt about Tina Fey.

OK, I'm not some creepy stalker. I'm not even going to be sending her fan mail. But after last Monday morning, I'm officially a fan.

Now, I didn't see the original Weekend Update skit on SNL. I heard it Monday morning on NPR. Because that's the kind of geek I am. Needless to say, I was blown away.

For months I've been saying that what I like and admire in Hillary Clinton is what everyone else hates. I think it's been that way from the very beginning when she made that "stay home and bake cookies" remark. People who cried foul on that conveniently seemed to forget that it was she who was being attacked for wanting to use her skills in some major-impact way while her husband potentially held the highest office in the land. Why is that a problem?

Never mind that she was positively prophetic on the problem healthcare has become in this country. No, let's talk about her marriage. I once had a conversation with a woman who told me that she would have a lot more respect for Hillary if she had left Bill. Hmm. Let's see. You have just suffered the ultimate marital humiliation in front of the entire world. Do you:

A) Divorce him, become Washington poison (all these years and still nobody likes a divorcee), return to Little Rock, or Chicago, or even New York and quietly practice law, maybe teach a class or two and write a tacky tell-all?

B) Stay with a dynamic and powerful guy, continue to travel the world, continue to have influence, support your family through personal and political crisis, get encouraged to run for Senator, run and actually win, run for President?

They still say living well is the best revenge, don't they?

But that's just my theory of the situation. Nobody ever really knows what's in another couple's marriage.

I'm trying to decide if people's dislike of Hillary is really related to her stint as First Lady, as I posited at Soccer Mom; her failure to leave her husband after the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, or if people are uncomfortable with her blatant desire to be in charge for power.

It's the 21st century, and women are not supposed to want power? Apparently, it's OK if they have power, ala Madeline Albright, or Condoleeza Rice, but they must not be seen as angling for it.

I'm not sure there's any neat way to wrap this up. I have known, and been put off by, women Hillary's age who gained their professional stripes in a time when they were told the had to "act like men" to get ahead. I've known women who were not "nice," but whom I nontheless respected because they were successful and didn't let anyone stop them.

I could understand if it was mostly guys (guys who firmly approve of the current President's smirking swagger and blatant power grab) who were put off by Hillary, but it's not. It's women, lots of them. Now I am not suggesting that all women should want to vote for Hillary because she's a woman, I'm just floored by the number of women who won't vote for her because they don't like her. This makes no sense to me. Just as the average Joe will never sit down to have a beer with President Bush, the average Joan will not be sitting down to tea (or a glass of wine) with the next President. These are not qualifications.

The primary season could be over in a few days. If Hillary Clinton's name is not at the top of the Democratic ticket, I still think that she will have done an amazing thing to advance women in our society. She has made it possible for other women to run for President and be taken more seriously than they would have been in the past. This election has exposed a lot of ugliness about our society that was easy to ignore until we had a woman running for office, things we still need to address.

I once heard Senator Clinton say that if she did not win, she would go back to being the Senator from New York and she will continue to be effective in that role. In spite of the disappointment that would entail, I believe she will.

It's so undignified, I know.

Pardon me while I do the happy-dog bread dance over Mitt Romney dropping out of the race.

I'm feeling better now.

I woke up this morning to find nothing really decided on the Democratic side. I'm okay with that. I am back to thinking this race is damned exciting. ve seen the Democrats get into so much trouble when they've simply annointed the candidate whose turn it was.

Are we in danger of doing that again? Maybe, but so are the Republicans. I'm still astounded at the numbers of conservatives who might stay home if McCain gets the nomination. Will a Clinton candidacy change their minds? What about a McCain/Huckabee ticket? Oh cripes, are we really going to have a Vice-cleric? That weirds me out.

What strikes me as I put on my political observer hat back on, is that the Democrats are still deciding between a woman and an African American. The Republican nomination has pretty much been sewn up by an old, white, man.

What's so Super about it?

Yesterday my six-year old proudly showed me the classroom in his school that had been converted into a polling place for today's vote. I was so pleased that even though the school is not our regular polling place, he knew exactly what would be going on in there. I've taken him with me to the voting booth in previous years and showed him how I indicated my choices on the ballot. He's watched the paper ballot get hand cranked into the old wooden box with the counter on the front. We've talked about the jobs those elected will be doing. He gets it in a six-year old sort of way.

Sadly, I won't be taking him or his brother with me tonight. I will just barely be squeezing my vote in between coming home from work and heading to a meeting at the school. It's just as well, because no matter whick box I ultimately check, I may actually cry.

Not to be overly dramatic, but I can't remember ever being this frustrated over my own vote.  For the first time in my life, I'm afraid of what I'll do when I get in that booth. For the first time ever, my role as a person with strong convictions about the candidate who will make the best president is clashing with my experience as a political observer who clearly sees that the other candidate has the best shot of winning the general election.

I hate this.

It's the 21st century and we are still bickering over race and gender. People are still falling into the trap of calling Hillary Clinton "divisive" when the real divisiveness is coming from the scandal-mongering Clinton haters on the right. We have dunderheads fearmongering about Barak Obama's middle name, and the likely GOP nominee is still saying things like "The Democrats want us to surrender" and nobody's really looking critically at that statement. I'm also truly confused by the legions of conservatives who are claiming that McCain isn't conservative enough. To me, McCain seems to ne toeing the Bush line quite well, what's the difference here? Is is that he's not "born again?"

Whatever happens tonight, it's clear that this election is history in the making. I just not confident about what it will say about us.

Cowboy Up?

The title comes from an expression former Red Sox first baseman Kevin Millar (apparently a native Texan) used in reference to getting the team into the World Series toward the end of the season. They did not, for the record, make it that year. It's okay, we still love Kevin, even if he's with the Orioles now.

This is reportedly one of George Bush's favorite works of art.

This article explains why Bush is so inspired by it, gives some background on the origins of the image and some, er, more professional interpretations. Even if you are not all that into art, it's worth the read.

The term cowboy is now used around the world to describe Americans with derision. I'm thinking there's nothing inherently wrong with the cowboy image, but as with all macho professions; if you are not careful, if you rush into things without thinking them through, if don't keep your wits about you; you'll probably hurt yourself, or at the very least, look mighty foolish.

Yippee-ki-yay!

We should be more enlightened than this, but we're not.

Mitt Romney has gotten to the point in his campaign where he feels the need to do a "Mormonism is not from Mars" speech. I guess this was inevitable and I find myself really disappointed that it was so inevitable. I'm not a fan of Mitt Romney, there are dozens of reasons he should not be President, but his religion is not one of them. I don't know much about Mormonism, I know exactly two people who were raised in the Mormon Church, and they are both gay, so they are not exactly practicing.

My point is that unless it involves human sacrifice, I don't care what a person's religion is. I might be personally curious (because I'm like that) but it's really not going to affect how I vote. It's been 47 years since John F. Kennedy had to give a similar speech explaining that the Pope was not going to be in charge of America if a Catholic got elected. We don't seem to have progressed much beyond that.

I'm embarrassed frankly, that in the so-called "land of the free and the home of the brave," we are apparently so damn xenophobic that we are even afraid of a successful white guy with a different religion.

I suspect though, that these are the same kind of people who want us to be afraid of Barak Obama, not because he is Black, but because his middle name is Hussein.

We're probably the most diverse country in the world, and the most sucessful. Shouldn't we be more enlightened than this?

More of what I have to say about Mitt Romney, can be found here. But I'm still not going to vote for him.

It's Niki!

Niki Tsongas, widow of Senator Paul Tsongas has won a special election to fill what was once her husband's congressional seat. The seat was vacated recently by Marty Meehan who resigned to lead UMASS Lowell.

Though I never lived in his district, Paul Tsongas was someone I deeply respected, and I wrote a little celebration of Niki's win at The Soccer Mom Vote.

To Paraphrase Billy Joel...

Am-nes-ty is such a dirty word

But mostly what I need from you...

Ok yeah that was really bad, but that was what was going through my head when I was writing my latest post for the Soccer Mom Vote on the (now dead) immigration bill.