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It seems that there are times when the world is bent on
silliness. For instance, not long ago, the purity police at the Community Center
tacked up a sign on the door of the
men’s sauna proclaiming that nudity was prohibited. The sauna, of
course, sits right in the midst of the men’s locker room, where nudity
abounds. In fact, you can look out the sauna door and ogle all kinds of naked
bodies, if such is your wont. But you can’t mix nudity with the chastity of
the sauna. Even sillier is the report in last Wednesday’s Gazette
of a self-styled liberal granddaddy who pilfered the cover off some gay
magazine in our public library. He didn’t think kids should see two guys on
the verge of plastering their lips together. Fine that they look at bodies
being blown to bits in Turkey and Iraq, but the saints preserve them from a
picture of two men kissing. Obviously grandpa needs to go sit in the sauna,
where kissing isn’t forbidden, though nudity is. But perhaps the silliest pronouncement of late flew out
of the mouth of Howard Dean, the wannabe Democratic candidate for president.
According to the Des Moines Register, Dean had the audacity to suggest that,
if the Democrats are to win any southern states, they must appeal to the soft
side of Bubba, that southern white male who flies the Confederate flag on his
pickup truck. The other liberal and not-so-liberal Democratic
candidates immediately devolved into various states of apoplexy and called
Dean everything from a racist to a candidate for the political loony bin. Yet, in the world of realpolitik, is Dean’s suggestion
as loopy as it first sounds? Obviously the Democrats can’t rely solely on
African-American votes to win the South, nor are there enough yellow dog
whites to carry the day for them. Hence, their only recourse is to obviate
and demean the race card that the Republicans have been so successfully
playing and penetrate the shield of the Southern white male middle class
voter. But who exactly is he? Certainly the stereotypical
beer-bellied, racist Bubba is an extreme caricature to whom only the likes of
the equally extreme Jesse Helms might appeal. In fact, most Southern white
males are not unlike my fellow sauna rat, David, who indeed has a Confederate
flag plastered on his car window, along with the pledge of allegiance to that
flag. David, a Virginian by birth, proudly traces his roots
back to colonial Williamsburg. Indeed, one of his ancestors fought with a
Williamsburg regiment in the Revolutionary War. As a result, David knows more
about Virginia history and the Constitution of Virginia than most scholars.
He regularly participates in reenactments of what he calls the War of
Northern Aggression, and he is convinced that the founding fathers had no
intention of allowing the federal government to override the authority of the
states. Questions relative to race, however, present a real
problem for David. Though he claims to have supported the civil rights
movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he has absolutely no truck with slavery,
he cannot understand why his heroes, like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis,
are constantly excoriated and excluded from the Southern pantheon. Why, he
wonders, are two schools on the peninsula under attack for reasons of nomenclature?
If white kids can attend a school named after Martin Luther King, why can’t
black kids go to schools honoring Lee and Davis? In short, David firmly believes that the NAACP, like
some gay organizations, has, as he puts it, become “too pushy.” He refuses to
believe that contemporary African-Americans are “owed anything” on the
grounds of ancestral slavery and hence vigorously opposes programs that smack
of affirmative action. On the other hand, though he voted for President Bush in
the last election, David is adamant that the president should be impeached
for his bungling of the war in Iraq. While this may be good news for Howard Dean or any other
Democrat looking for southern white support, the fact is that David will be a
tough nut to crack. For what drives his Southern psyche is a strong sense of
heritage, of belonging, of ancestry, and yes, of civil war. He firmly
believes in states’ rights, as well as in his right to celebrate and honor
the history of the South, especially the Confederate South. Is Dean silly for trying to get David’s vote? Probably
not. But in order to do so, he will have to bridge a mighty gap between
blacks and whites, between North and South, that Democrats have so far been
unable or unwilling to traverse. The trick, of course, is to develop and promote gut
issues, such as health care, jobs and a sane foreign policy, that transcend
regionalism and race. On the other hand, the battle for David’s soul and
David’s vote will not be won until someone out there realizes that, while he
detests the Ku Klux Klan and thinks that Jesse Helms is a “fruitcake,” he
will not covet the support of anyone who believes that his ancestral
inheritance is swathed in nothing but ignorance, malevolence and malignity. And certainly that’s not as silly an idea as sitting in
a sauna with your clothes on. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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