The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar

Now that he is preaching from the back of pickup trucks, telling anyone who will listen that his wife is a victim of a cover-up, Bill Clinton seems to have settled on a new role: the crazy old uncle who's off his meds. Sure, I thought dignified diplomat, emissary of peace and understanding with a mistress in every port, would be a nice gig for his second or third act. But ranting that Hillary is winning the general election and saying things like, "In case you haven't noticed, most of the media aren't for her," puts him in another class entirely. One that wears tin foil hats.

Hillary has a new, equally scary role for herself: She is the madwoman at the wedding, the one who was scorned and pounces when the preacher says, "Does anyone know of any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined together? Speak now or forever hold your peace."

"Well, I can think of a couple," she yells from a pew in the back. "He has no experience, his whole career is based on one speech and a lot of decent hardworking Americans who just happen to be white don't like him." There is some polite coughing, eye-rolling, one or two strained whispers -- "God, not her again" -- though nothing like the avalanche of admonition her husband envisions. Most people are just hoping that the bride and groom were go ahead with their vows ("I always wanted to be married in the Mile High City!") and move on -- even if she clearly isn't ready to.

Campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary made a point of visiting Mount Rushmore, I guess so she could be photographed with some of our other exes. Her face appeared in the news, alongside the granite profiles of Jefferson and Roosevelt, and maybe she was just hoping we would take the hint. Sorry, lady. I'm sure you would make a perfectly good, er, husband (trying to stay with my analogy here, nothing wrong with pantsuits). But we, the ever-hopeful and often disappointed bride that is the loyal Democratic base, have fallen for someone else. Hard. And complaining about him just makes her look petty.

I guess it's possible that she and crazy Bill are doing this just so they'll look good when they stop ranting and join the party. Then we'll smile politely when we see them at the reception and keep our distance. By the time the honeymoon is over and we've moved into the big white house we'll have forgotten about the whole thing -- though we'll still want to put their portraits in the basement, if not the dumpster out back.

posted by Sean Elder @ 6:17 PM  0 comments

The American in me

We just got back from a Memorial Day parade in Salisbury, CT, near which we had rented a house, as simple and touching a celebration as you can imagine. It was like one of those old Morning in America commercials, without the Reagan. Though there may have been a few Reaganites in our midst.

The parade started at ten am at the library, led by the local school marching band, followed by several carloads of military veterans. Locals are encouraged to follow them on the short march to the graveyard, and many of the kids had little flags to wave. In the graveyard the vets gathered in their dress uniforms and colors (one old Green Beret looked like he might have been the prototype for Special Forces soldiers everywhere), exchanging happy looks and banter. Hey, look! We're still alive! Then a Boy Scout read The Gettysburg Address, the vets fired their rifles into the air before taps was played.

One of the local preachers read the 23rd Psalm and went out of his way to mention not just the (mostly) men and women who had fought and died but the innocents who died in the wars as well. One vet got up to make a speech but said he couldn't and just wanted to pay tribute to those who served. The names of veterans from CT (none from Salisbury, it seemed) killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were also read and I was struck by the number of Latino names rising to replace the ranks of the Irish, English and Italians that had come before.

Everyone left after the last taps was played and then they were giving out free ice cream down the street. Our dog, who had been so terrified by the blanks fired earlier, got a lot of attention. I got the impression it was the kind of town where you could argue with your neighbor about this war, or any war, and still say hello to each other on the street. I felt free of the rancor and despair I sometimes feel on our most patriotic holidays and I wonder if I was getting a glimpse of a small town America I thought was lost. It made me feel optimistic for the days to come. Or maybe it was just the weather.

posted by Sean Elder @ 7:49 PM  0 comments

Death Wish 2008

Probably the worst thing about Hillary Clinton invoking RFK's assassination as a justification for staying in the race has been the "who-me?" aftermath of it, the various explanations offered by her camp and her. Speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, SD, Clinton defended sticking around beyond her use-by date saying, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

Meaning: anything can happen, right? You never know in this crazy, mixed-up, gun-clinging country of ours. It ain't over 'til it's over etc. As news of her comments spread (June is coming right up, folks) and Obama's camp showed admirable restraint even as the candidate himself was reportedly outraged, one of her spokespeople tried to turn the tables, like the fellow who shows you a pornographic picture and says what a dirty mind you have. "She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historic examples of the nominating process going well into the summer. Any reading into beyond that would be inaccurate and outrageous," said Mo Eleithee, keeping a straight face the whole time.

When that didn't play, Clinton tried a more straightforward apology, telling reporters in a supermarket, "The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator [Edward] Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I'm honored to hold Senator [Robert] Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family."

So it is about her, after all! You see, she holds the same seat RFK did, and she went sailing with Ted when Obama was still working the streets in Chicago, and hey, we all make mistakes. Looking at the the video of her remarks she certainly doesn't look like she's at the top of her game and there she does have my sympathies. I would hate to have people filming me first thing in the morning, trying to sound smart before the coffee kicked in.

But she's supposed to be the candidate who's good to go at three am, on Day One, no less. For someone who supposedly has her wits about her at all times, she's coming off as mighty punchy -- or calculating -- these days. Was she giving voice to an unconscious death wish for her opponent? I doubt it. But even if this was only a 1%, a girl-can-dream-can't-she response, why would Obama want a potential Lady Macbeth for a running mate? It would be reasonable to assume someone is out to get him but you don't want to have to bring the food taster with you when you're having lunch with your No. 2.

The alternative explanation --that she just said something stupid and tasteless because she was thinking about the Kennedys, even though she said the same thing to Time back in March -- is almost as bad. "Did I say 'kill Castro'? My bad. I had been thinking about the Castro district in San Francisco, since I'm actually a lesbian. Oops, did it again. I had been in Lisbon, Portugal, recently and..." She's either discombobulated or disingenuous, and I know which one I'm putting my money on.

posted by Sean Elder @ 9:40 AM  0 comments

Trail Blazers

It was too good to be true. Not that I ever thought Hillary was going to go away quietly (what in her career would suggest that course of action?) but I did think she might move aside and let the gentleman do his thing with a little bit of class. But now she is comparing Florida to Zimbabwe, blaming her defeat on sexism and misogyny and saying that Obama can't woo white working class voters.

Well maybe he can't -- in Kentucky and West Virginia. And frankly, I wish he had spent more time in those states trying to convert those crackers before the primaries because he's going to need them before the general election. But the WWCV in Oregon liked him just fine and anyone who thinks there are no rednecks in Oregon haven't spent much time there. Right outside of Ashland, the site of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and one of the best organic restaurants on the west coast are pockets of dogpatch as derelict as any in Alabama. And a lot of those folks voted for Obama.

Maybe Obama's problem is, as Sam Stein suggested in the Huffington Post, more geographic than socioeconomic. West Virginia strikes me as more of a backwash than Oregon; the poorest pockets of the state are like the land time forgot and I have literally been afraid to stop in some towns there lest the locals come out and eat me. Oregon, on the other hand, has that liberty-loving, California-hating gene deep in its DNA -- but its also got Nike and its longtime advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy; it's got Reed College and the legacy of Ken Kesey. It's got a whole weird dimension that I like to think is a lot more like America than, well, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Not that I think Obama could, or should, write those states off, especially the former. But it in my fervent hope that his new jack candidacy speaks to a country that is ready to get outside of the holler, a country tired of being locked in the old sandtraps of the past. America may not look like Oregon, either -- I hate any state that claims to represent the rest of us -- but maybe the dream of this candidacy is best reflected in the promise of the west, all that majestic beauty and natural resources, still mostly unspoiled. Give us mountains to match our man.

posted by Sean Elder @ 10:00 PM  0 comments

Dead Into West Virginia

That's the title of a great song by my old pal Steve Yerkey, about the night Hank Williams died. Legend has it Hank's driver kept going even after the singer had OD'd in the back seat of the limo: he was too scared to stop, even as Hank finally achieved satori:

In a Pure filling station
On a New Year's Day
In a car that needed gasoline
He found the only peace of mind
He would ever enjoy
In a place he'd never ever seen

(The Blasters had their own take on this evening, called "Long White Cadillac". Compare and contrast.) I thought of Steve's song after Hillary's victory in West Virginia the other night. I had been flying across the country, watching the results on CNN, at least with one eye (the other was trained on an old David Lodge novel and the Pistons closing the door on the Magic). Except here Hillary is both dead star and driver, the engine of her own self-deception. She is trying to rally superdelegates in the party, essentially arguing at this point that a lot of working class white voters not only like her better, they're a little bit racist to boot. But the hard-hearted Dems can't seem to rally around a campaign whose motto could well be "White Like You."

And then along comes John Edwards, stealing what little thunder she had from her win by finally endorsing Obama. What took him so long? The guy got seven percent of the vote in WV, just for being on the ballot; do you think Obama would have had quite the shellacking he did if Edwards had endorsed him sooner? If the vote had been a little less lopsided in that state, I guarantee that there would have been less tongue-wagging about his disconnect with white voters.

Not that I think there is anything wrong with Hillary raising the alarm. It's clear that Obama is going to need every arrow in his quiver to defeat McCain, and paying attention to Hillary's base is something he can start doing today. Wear the damn flag pin, shoot some pool, have yourself another hush puppy. While racism is alive and well in the hollows of WV (and south Boston, and Staten Island, and countless other communities across the country), I think the GOP is going to need more than "He's black, and his church is scary!" to steal this election. (It's going to be increasingly difficult to say his church is scary AND he is actually a Muslim; at some point Republicans will have to choose a line of attack and disinformation and stick with it.) The big news yesterday concerned the Dems big win in Mississippi. This was supposed to be the playbook for '08: link candidate to Obama and Rev. Wright then sit back and watch him self-immolate. Except it didn't work. The Democratic candidate, Travis Childers, won among the same kind of rural white voters who turned away from Obama in WV, good old boys (and gals) with one or two sheets in the closet. It was the Republicans' third defeat in a special election this year, and they are now running for cover. But there's no hiding place down here.

posted by Sean Elder @ 9:18 AM  0 comments

Never stop running

According to an article in Newsweek, Oprah Winfrey had been a member of Chicago's Trinity United church until the mid-nineties -- when she stopped attending services there, in part because of the inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "Winfrey was never that comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America's favorite talk-show host," writes Alison Samuels in the May 12 issue, and then quotes an old friend of Winfrey's: "Oprah is a businesswoman first and foremost... She has always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn't be smart."

It's interesting that long before Barack Obama knew he would be running for national office, Oprah already knew she was running for whatever weird sister-confessor role she has held for decades -- and she knew she could never stop running. I still think Obama and his people were naive not to think that Wright would come back to haunt the candidate but his victory in North Carolina and near victory in Indiana would seem to indicate that this isn't the controversy that's going to sink him. Even Newt Gingrich warned Republicans that they were going to need something better than the scary pastor in the closet to beat the Democratic candidate in November. Willie Horton won't spook no more.

I guess I should say presumptive Democratic nominee, since Hillary is now engaged on the last, and possibly strangest, phase of her campaign: the dance macabre. It reminds me of a Randy Newman song: she's dead but she don't know it. Or maybe she does, since every pundit and pollster pretty much pronounced her such after she failed to deal a mortal blow to Obama. But after weeks of having meat tenderizer poured on him because of his relationship to Wright, she is the one with the fork being put in her. Watch for her surrogates and winged monkeys to continue to talk up her historic candidacy and the importance of every vote but did you catch Bill's expression while she was delivering her victory speech in Indiana? When he wasn't smiling and clapping with the crowd he appeared to be hearing a song of his own, over the hill and very far away...

It must be hard to live your whole life as if you are running for something when you're not sure what it is; Oprah wanted to be queen of America and damned if she isn't. Hillary wanted to be president but it's unlikely she's going to get another shot. And after that, every other job title just sounds kind of weak. Maybe she can take up preaching.

posted by Sean Elder @ 11:10 PM  0 comments

Endgame

We put our house -- well, one floor of it -- on the Fort Greene House tour this year to show off some of the progress we've slowly been making remodeling the old brownstone, room by room. It's a great excuse to do some spring cleaning and buy some new geegaws that we otherwise might not have. (After all, we've been talking about replacing the lighting fixture over the front door for almost nine years. Now we finally did it.) It's also a great excuse to get out of the house, unless your idea of a good time is talking to strangers about marble countertops.

Fortunately, it was beautiful afternoon -- the wisteria was in full bloom, the birds were on the wing -- so I went into a darkened theater to see a new production of Beckett's Endgame at BAM, conveniently located a few blocks from our house. John Turturro plays the part of Hamm, the old man in the wheelchair who is cared for by his servant and surrogate son, Clov (Max Casella). Hamm's father figure, Nagg (Alvin Epstein) -- whom he addresses as "progenitor" and "fornicator" at various times -- and mother manque, Nell (Elaine Stritch) live near at hand, in separate garbage cans. (Was this the inspiration for Oscar the Grouch?)

I probably read Endgame the first time in high school, and have seen several productions of it since then. It's one of those plays that makes more sense, and gets funnier, as I get older -- which could be said of Beckett in general. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness," Nell says, "I'll grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more."

I also needed to get away from the presidential primaries for the day. Everyone I met as I rambled through other people's homes on the house tour was an Obama supporter (they were responding to my button) which was no surprise: multiracial and regenerative, Fort Greene is Obama country. And they, like me, were experiencing some anxiety about the state of things. HIllary's Terminator-like tenaciousness and the tightening poll-numbers in Indiana and North Carolina are not making us question our faith (read the cover story in this month's Vanity Fair, about RFK's presidential run if you want to be reminded of the power of hope) or doubt the inevitability of his candidacy. But even as he brushes the dirt off his shoulder we want to go on. We still find it funny but we don't laugh anymore.

I saw a bit of Hillary in Hamm: his parents die, his surrogate son abandons him (or tries to, endlessly) and he yammers on, seemingly for his own amusement. "Me to play," are his first words, like those of a child, and the desire to put everyone through their paces -- promising sugar plums that no longer exist --keeps the absurd comedy in motion. "I'm warming up for my last soliloquy," he tells Clov, in hopes of keeping the disillusioned servant in his thrall. But the manchild has packed his bags. "Me to play," he repeats to himself and then, wearily: "Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing."

This is a play whose ends are in its beginnings, as the characters keep reminding us, and Clov's first lines, spoken to the audience, are "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished." I'd like to say it could end on Tuesday but some nightmares it seems you just can't wake up from. "You're on earth," as Hamm likes to say, "there's no cure for that."

posted by Sean Elder @ 5:54 PM  0 comments