Homecoming Royalty
I was pretty much an outcast in high school. Good grades, very few and ragged clothes and just a small cadre of misfits as friends. Whenever some election would come up, the popular kids would suddenly know you. They usually didn't bother keeping up the facade of friendship for more than a couple days pre-election.
I was reminded of this when I listened to the Democrats debate on the radio yesterday. The "love for the poor" that poured out of that bunch was almost competitive - the frontrunners brought up the few things they did for the poor when they were very young and just out of school. Give me a break - they are all rich with some super rich corporate friends with offshore accounts and factories in China. One thing I have to give the Republicans, they don't even pretend the poor exist. Of course they get the poor white trash vote by mentioning gay marriage and Christian family values.
I was reminded of this when I listened to the Democrats debate on the radio yesterday. The "love for the poor" that poured out of that bunch was almost competitive - the frontrunners brought up the few things they did for the poor when they were very young and just out of school. Give me a break - they are all rich with some super rich corporate friends with offshore accounts and factories in China. One thing I have to give the Republicans, they don't even pretend the poor exist. Of course they get the poor white trash vote by mentioning gay marriage and Christian family values.
posted by Flimsy Sanity @ 6:12 AM
3 Comments:
At 2:19 AM,
michael greenwell said…
"I was pretty much an outcast in high school. Good grades, very few and ragged clothes and just a small cadre of misfits as friends."
that sums up my experience too.
in my school it was however of more benefit to pretend you didnt know the answer even when you did.
At 2:26 PM,
ryk said…
One party panders to the poor, the other panders to the poor and stupid. Sigh.
At 11:46 AM,
Foxessa said…
It seems to me that Edwards is sincere in caring about the poor. He even goes to people who are homeless and shelters. There are no voters there, since they don't have addresses. He knew what it was like, I think.
Like I do.
To me it's telling also, that both Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte support Edwards, and neither support Obama nor Billary.
A small aside -- I have actually hung out with both Glover and Belafonte in the last five - seven years several times. Who would ever have thought that would be the case back when I first stumbled upon Belafonte's Caribbean Christmas album at age 17and played it over and over and over, marveling at this glimpse into hitherto unsuspected worlds and cultures -- what in heck was the Caribbean, anyway? And how would I have dreamed that I would end up spending vast chunks of my life involved with these places, these cultures, and just, sometimes, living there? I didn't dream much of going places at all while growing up. I didn't dare. People like me didn't, I was told over and over by everyone, particularly my parents. It was only a stubborn insistance that I WOULD go and live in New York City, about which I knew nearly as little as I did of the Caribbean, and Afro-Latin cultures, that I hung on to. And I've lived in NYC almost all my adult life now.
Whew.
Now how did your post provoke all that? I'm sorry!
Love, C.
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