A Wide Range of Narrowminded Slogans

Busy as I was trying to concoct world-changing new epigrams, raking the beautiful leaves, watching In Treatment, going daily to the gym, and trying to get Mr. Franzen’s Freedom read before its due date so I won’t be fined, and what have you, I was able to ignore the first couple of dozen robocalls I received having to do with forthcoming Tea Party marches, rallies, fashion shows, and what have you, but yesterday afternoon I received one while between neurotic preoccupations, and was struck by the recorded voice. Everything the guy believed might offend me to the core, but the obvious pleasure he derived from believing it was nearly palpable, a word writers like to use a lot because it makes them feel somehow better than those who actually work for a living.

In any event, I was sufficiently intrigued to attend the big Common Sense Conservative Solutions for Problems We Don't Begin to Understand rally at Pete Seeger Park here in Beacon on Wednesday afternoon, this not 18 hours after I saw Mr. Obama on The Daily Show and was made queasy by his Palin-ish g-droppin’ and fervent overuse of the word folks. It’s not bad enough that he’s demonstrated pretty nearly no moral leadership at all? Or that he’s extended and even amplified some of the most appalling of the so-called security policies of George W. Bush? Now we’ve got to endure his referring to “folks doin’ their best” in These Difficult Times?

If he were really the man of the people he pretends to be, he'd have said there best.

A carnival-like atmosphere reigned at the big rally, with vendors selling flag lapel pins and Tea Party baseball caps and T-shirts and what have you, and blasphemous, often racist, depictions of the Obamas, and corndogs and candied apples, and American flags, and placards expressing a wide range of narrowminded slogans and buzzwords. Putting my customary snootiness aside, I had a corndog (nibbling the breading off the outside and then discarding the actual dog because dogs are made from what’s scraped off abattoir floors) and bought myself a placard that proclaimed I Want My Country Back! It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually carried a placard since the 1996 Gay Pride parade in San Francisco, at which, because I have a famously impish sense of humor, I carried a homemade sign reading I Love My Gay Son or Daughter.

In any event, I felt a far greater sense of camaraderie at the rally than at anything similar I’ve been part of since I was a senior in college marching around chanting, “On strike! Shut it down!” for reasons I don’t clearly remember. These weren’t the ogres the lamestream media had led me to expect, but conscientious Americans sick to death of squandering their grandchildren’s college money on bailing out the big socialist banks, and building bridges to nowhere, and kidnapping defenseless old people and holding pillows over their poor wrinkly old faces until they stop breathing so they won’t overburden the Medicare system and what have you.

Oh, maybe they weren’t using words like eschew and palpable and upload, but they were talkin’ a great deal of sense, and were awesome. I hadn’t fully realized that the reason a lot of folks (we must not let the socialists co-opt that word!) are against gay marriage isn’t because they dislike gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered, necessarily, but because letting them marry would inevitably result in huge administrative and staffing costs, and who do you think is going to pay for all that, the Chinese? Hello! We are, you and I, and our grandchildren. Also, it’s disgusting, according to the Bible, which was written by people a whole lot smarter than the ivory tower elitists who say eschew and palpable and know which fork to use for fish.

Where I come from (Playa del Rey, California), we only ever needed the one fork, and there wasn’t rampant unhappiness in those times; think about it!