living in kerry country

I live in Washington, D.C. and I love it. Even though I'm surrounded on every side by people with political views quite different from my own.

I’m also in the media, which means that everyone I work with, everyone I hang around with, everyone I know, really, is a liberal Democrat who thinks George Bush is, at the very least, a moron, and at the very worst, a shrewd and calculating right-wing zealot who wants to force religion down our throats while he and his corporate cronies steal all the oil in the world.

As far as I can determine, these assumptions are taken as an article of faith. The belief that George Bush is a bad man surrounded by bad people with bad ideas is never even questioned – possibly because my friends don’t actually know anyone who might question it. At every gathering of four or more people, someone will start to rant on about Bush, and the mess in Iraq, and how John Ashcroft is plotting to take away their freedoms. And everyone listening will nod wisely.

In the group mind, clearly, Republicans are more dangerous to America and Americans than anything Al Qaida can throw at us.

And for me, there’s always the question at these moments: Do I open my fat mouth or just stand there biting my tongue? I know I won’t change any minds, but the urge to startle is always strong in me. (So is the urge to instruct.) As someone who reads a lot of blogs and listens to talk radio a couple of hours a day, I want to say something they’ve never heard before. I want to tell them that there are important issues at stake here, and that very serious men are sitting at their desks as we speak, just a few blocks from here, running the country, trying to figure out how to save all of our sorry asses from being incinerated by some kook with a nuke. And one of those guys trying to save our asses is George W. Bush, our President – the man you just called a “protofascist,” whatever that is.

That’s my dilemma at those moments.

Sometimes I manage to keep my mouth shut, because I know that nothing I can say will change the mind of the guy wearing the tee shirt that says “Eat the Rich.” So I’ll say something breezy and friendly, like, “Hey, you ought to check out the political feelings of your audience before comparing Bush to Hitler. There might be a Republican in the room.”

The first reaction to a comment like this is amusement – the Bush basher will look around, chuckle, and say, “Right.”

A Republican? Here? Surely not.

Once they’re sure that no one wearing a Wal-Mart suit and sprouting hairs on his forehead is in the vicinity, they’ll natter on mindlessly about current events, trotting out opinions that would be an embarrassment to college sophomores, misstating facts (at a recent party a woman who had lost all her hair because of “plastics” – I have no idea how plastics did this – told a group of young men and woman that “some new fighter plane Bush wants to build costs $11 billion per aircraft!”) that they think they’ve heard on NPR, or read in the Washington Post or saw on the Jim Lehrer show. And I realize that Bernard Goldberg is exactly right: this is how they get their news – all of it!!!

Think about it: in the course of their everyday lives, these people in the media elite in the capital of the United States never come across anyone or anything that disagrees with them. How would they? They don't know any Republicans. They wouldn’t be caught dead reading the Washington Times or listening to talk radio (at least on the AM part of the dial) or watching Fox News. They know who Rush Limbaugh is (a bad guy) though they’ve never actually listened to him. It never crosses their mind for an instant that honest, caring, intelligent people wouldn’t share their core beliefs, which as far as I can see might be summed up as:

War is bad, peace is good.

People who wage war are bad, people who make peace are good.

Corporations are bad, the environment is good.

People who make money from corporations are bad, people who make money from the environment are good. 

There is no such thing as bad and good. 

So, sometimes, just for the sheer pleasure of being the turd in the punchbowl, I’ll pipe up during someone’s harangue and say, “I’m voting for George Bush.” There’s always this little moment of silence, as if I’d just announced that I ate human flesh. Maybe they’re waiting for me to assure them I’m joking.

But I’m not joking. I really am going to vote for George Bush.

And, for those of you who care about such things, I consider myself a bellwether for the country as a whole… having voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1960.

If Bush wins, I think civilization has a fighting chance to survive another couple of decades.

If he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be dicey.

Me & Adlai

When I was ten years old, I gave Adlai Stevenson a ride in an elevator at the Majestic Hotel in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. My parents had told me he was in town, and staying at the same hotel where my family was camping out until the embassy came up with a house for us to move into. They assured me Stevenson was a Great Man, which was why he got his picture on the cover of LIFE magazine.

This was exciting stuff, and there wasn’t a whole lot else to do in Belgrade, so I decided to meet him – ambush him, really – and hopefully astonish him by speaking to him in his own language. And just to make sure he knew I was an American, just like him, I chose to outfit myself in jeans, cowboy boots and hat, and a pair of six-shooters.

For most of a day I hung around the hotel lobby, waiting for him to make an appearance. Finally, in the late afternoon, he pushed through the magnificent front door and headed straight for the elevator, just as I had anticipated. It was one of those old-fashioned elevators where you have to push a lever to make it move and stop at the right floor, and I could drive it flawlessly. I bounded into the cage ahead of him, and said, “What floor please, sir.”

And Adlai Stevenson said, “Three.”

Then he stared straight ahead.

It wasn’t quite what I’d expected. I guess I’d thought he’d be surprised – and even pleased – to find a little American cowboy in a hotel in Belgrade. Certainly I’d anticipated he’d ask me a question – my name, maybe, or what I was doing in Yugoslavia instead of cleaning up the streets of Tombstone. I was even prepared to mention that he should have been elected President, if the subject came up.

But it didn’t.

I started driving the elevator. To erase any doubt that I was American, I said, in what I imagined was a drawl, “What is your name, sir?”

And he said, “Adlai Stevenson.”

And that was the extent of our dialogue.

We got to the third floor. I slowed the elevator smoothly, stopped it precisely, and pulled back the metal screen like I’d been doing it all my life. Adlai Stevenson, hero of my parents and friend of the common man, walked out without another word or a backward glance and disappeared down the hall.

It was my first experience of being disappointed by Democrats.