Yet another post that demonstrates my commitment to both sides of the political spectrum

I want to show my open-mindedness. I want to understand those who are deeply, passionately committed to the current president. And so (with guidance from my neighbor –thanks!) I went to the hometown of our folksy man to read about the support offered to him by the locals.

I was disappointed.

Instead of a yipee-tayay-yey (is that what they shout in a small town in Texas?) in support of their local hero, GWB’s hometown paper has just announced that it is leaving George behind.

Here are excerpts from an editorial appearing in the Lone Star Iconoclast (the newspaper from Crawford, Texas):

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.…

We believed [Bush], just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.Again, he let us down.
…
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country. The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

True, the paper has a weekly circulation of 425 and perhaps it has been infiltrated by communists and pacifists in the last four years. In any case, my search for a better understanding of the GWB’s fan base continues. Crawford, Texas did not deliver.

Twenty-first street pre-election diary*

dark sign, dark thoughts on 21st 

The very first offices of The New Republic were housed in buildings on the far west side of 21st street. Virginia Woolf once wrote for the New Republic (see VW post below; the intricate connections between events, people, circumstances are amazing).

Reading the editorial of TNR today, 21 days before the election, will put you right in the middle of where we, indeed ought to be: Darfur. As the editors points out (here), it is the one place where even a very small dose of “American might” can make a significant difference in stabilization efforts. It is an opportunity that the current administration refuses to take and one that Kerry is willing to consider. In the words of TNR:

[B]y hammering home this message [of a willingness to send stabilizing troops], Kerry would show how absent Bush has been. After all, it is Bush, not Kerry, who is now presiding over 6,000 to 10,000 Darfurian deaths each month. It is up to Bush, as president, to stop the genocide.

Tonight is, of course, the night of the last debate and Darfur will not be on the agenda. And in any case, few of those who are still undecided would consider the Darfur issue as crucial, even though what happens here on November 2nd will determine the fate of thousands in Sudan. It is frightening to give such power to a voter who can’t even point to Sudan on a global map let alone comprehend the importance of providing support to the region.

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)

Tuesday vignettes

Polishness

A friend just told me that she’d met a Polish couple in my neighborhood. Polish? Here? Yes, yes, she said – she spent time with them at the Polish Film Festival last year. I asked her how she liked the films. She hesitated, then admitted that they were kind of weird. A lot of animation, crazy stuff, squiggly lines – it made her dizzy so that she had to leave. And the Polish couple? Well – she answered – they were really into it. But they said you had to be Polish to understand it. Polish people have a certain way of looking at themselves that is really different. Most people can’t understand it; they kept saying – you had to be Polish to get it. I get it.

Cuban cigars

Another friend offered me a Cuban cigar. Did you smoke it? You hate smoking, smokers, smoke. You smoked it, didn’t you? Vices in small doses, if they hurt no one, can be very satisfying. Was it satisfying? No. And I can’t get the damn taste out of my mouth. I should have known better. I hate smoke, smoking, smoke-related anything, with the exception, perhaps, of smoked salmon. Never again.

Chinese tea, e-mail and Virginia Woolf

In a more virtuous vein, my walking buddy (I hereby gratefully acknowledge all three of you –K,K and S- for your indulgence of my walking addiction) brewed for me a pot of tea. She has recently traveled to China and she has with her a supply of tea leaves that I’m sure rivals in size the raked pile of fallen leaves outside my window. We sipped tea and talked about banes and vices. What’s yours, she asks. Email, I say without hesitation. I am a compulsive email-answerer. You send it, I answer. In fact, I’ll answer before you even send it. Colleagues will send a Q and bingo! There‘s a reply. You’d think that this would be regarded favorably? Oh no, it places the ball in their park again so instead of feeling deep satisfaction at having crossed off an item from their list, the item is right back on there. My friend kindly suggested that the compulsion is driven by a writer’s temperament. The medium is an odd weapon for people who feel compelled to formulate sentences and stories every waking hour of the day. Imagine the odd behaviors, she said, that would follow, if you placed email in the hands of Virginia Woolf.

I suppose I agree. And how much worse it would be to receive brilliance in your Inbox rather than the trite stuff I place there! Consider this exert from a Woolf essay where she contemplates writing (though in truth, we are in the dark what meaning lies behind these words, because Woolf can be painfully difficult to comprehend; here, you can almost believe that she is writing about email!) and imagine the strain of finding such words in your Inbox were she your acquaintance (emphases are my own):

Is it not possible that the accent falls a little differently, that the moment of importance came before or after, that, if one were free and could set down what one chose, there would be no plot, little probability, and a vague general confusion in which the clear-cut features of the tragic, the comic, the passionate and the lyrical were dissolved beyond the possibility of separate recognition? The mind, exposed to the ordinary course of life, receives upon its surface a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms, composing in their sum what we might venture to call life itself; and to figure further as the semi-transparent envelope, or luminous halo, surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.