Republicunts

Last week, the NYT had a brief article headlined, “Young, Republican, and Inspired By Palin.”

While I legitimately find myself hard pressed to imagine anything more excruciatingly dull than being at once young and republican (riding a stationary bike in total silence inside a basement that has only one cloudy, postcard-sized window?  Stiffly seated in a molded metal folding chair while surrounded by nebbish activists who love consensus and raise their hands to speak?), like, whatever, I guess it happens.  Not that I understand why exactly.  But the best part of the article is how it offers zero analysis, how it unfolds itself so delicately it becomes like a poem about populism.  Oh, and disappointing intellect.  And a few heartbreakingly temperate sartorial choices.

The beauty of “objective” journalism is that necessary selective editing creates all these pockets of silence within a text.  Sometimes, they end up speaking louder than the actual words themselves (and that is poetry, no?).  When Jennifer Huddleston, co-president of the Wellesley Republicans, relays that she “screamed so loud in August when she heard that Senator John McCain had tapped Ms. Palin that her parents, University of North Alabama professors whom she called liberals, pulled off the road to see what was wrong,” it at first only pulls my mouth into a mild sneer.  Of course, then the inevitable truth materializes before this little celebratory climax of hers can even finish playing in the theatre of my mind, which is that nobody actually knew who the fuck Sarah Palin was prior to that fateful day back in August.  No, not you either, Jenny.

Isn’t it ironic, then, that one of the most boring talking points through the election was that whole charge of “reverse racism” neo-cromags were all spitting mad about.  Even though the black vote historically has hardly strayed from around 85% to the Democrats since Jim Crow laws were wrestled away from the clutches of, oh guess who, republicans.  And we all know what a stunning job they’ve done in the past 80 years representing the interests of anyone who was not a virile male WASP with a fat wallet.

The United States Census reported that 58 % of African Americans were voting in the presidential election of 1964. African Americans were voting Democratic 82% of the time. This number would swell to 92 % by 1968. With the exception of the 1972, 1984, and the 1992 elections Blacks would continue to give at least 80% of their collective votes to the Democratic presidential candidate says Minion K.C. Morris in African Americans and Political Participation.

Right, right.

But yes, she’s a senior at Wellesley getting blurbed in the NY Times, while I’m writing letters to admissions officers for the second year in a row that go something like, “Baby please, I was too wild of a stallion to be caged by those university gates back then, but I’m older now, wiser.  Can you find it in your heart to forgive my hideously vulgar academic record?  I ain’t never gonna do you wrong again, cross my heart and hope to die.  Here’s a check for $85 to show you I’m not fooling.”

Ah, the consequences of our choices.  Whatever, I had more fun.

Some days I feel like I really understand conservative broads (today not so much).  I teeter on the border of obsession with them, always with the writing or the silent brooding on theories in their defense; these mythical little pearl-necklaced sprites, of whom I know not one personally, nor do imagine I could ever really stand to.  In truth, it’s a sort of narcissism I am guilty of, the same sin our friend Jenny commits when she scares the shit out of her parents with those mindlessly ecstatic moans from the back seat.  She and I both recognize parts of ourselves in these political martyrs of pop culture, something we secretly feel might be one of our best virtues that always seems to go unsung.

For me, they hook me with the total irreverence.  But real talk: could anything be more silly than a neocon feminist?  No, nothing.  In the whole world.  Not even a bunch of fat chicks in party hats, or a bear on a bicycle.  I take the comedic mind of Ray Romano more seriously.  I mean, really.