To Keep Things Fair and Balanced

Just to make sure that readers don't think I'm a Reublican because I've defended Palin as a mother and Cindy McCain as a financially independent spouse, I am printing a column that was written by an old friend who is an accomplished political critic and author of a number of sea-faring books. The opinion expressed below is his opinion, not necessarily mine.

Published 9.16

Trailer Trash or Glasses in High Heels
by Stan Zimmerman

You feel a little down on your luck, so you slip into a bar for a beer. Trouble with the mortgage, trouble with the neighbors, and debt is killing you. The kids aren’t doing well in school, and close relatives are starting to give you the shifty eye because you’re developing a reputation of beating people up. Things are lousy.

You’re midway into beer number two when the door opens. In walks a babe. Honey-colored hair, long legs and glasses like a librarian. She walks over and sits down right next to you.

You feel better already. Suddenly the neighbors and the relatives and the mortgage and the kids aren’t so important any more. She starts to chat, tells you how big and strong you are, how smart you are for liking her. Your head starts swimming. You feel "chosen" somehow. You don’t want to ask why, you just want to bask in the attention.

You know she’s playing with you, she’ll use you. But you don’t care. She’s hot, you’re desperate to forget, and as for tomorrow? That’s tomorrow. Tonight is now!

If you were an adult, you’d thank the lady, pay up and go your way. But she’s no lady, and you’re about to repudiate years of diligence for a pair of glasses in high heels. You’re a sucker, and in your gut you know it. But you’re so besotted, you don’t care. You are about to throw away everything you care about. For a pair of glasses in high heels.

How is Sarah Palin gonna fix your problems pal? She doesn’t understand how mortgages work; she thinks Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae are government agencies. In fact they are private, but a Republican president is about to bail them out with billions in Federal money. Not exactly privatization. More like corporate welfare.

Trouble with the neighbors? Like Venezuela, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Palestine, Sudan and Russia? If she doesn’t know the back-story, it is unlikely she’ll be able to come up with an idea of how to calm them down. Eyeglasses and high heels won’t do it for that crowd. They didn’t climb to the top of the heap being suckers. Nobody snatched them from obscurity because somebody liked their looks.

As for your debt, well it’s our debt too. The current administration started with a surplus in the budget, the current account and the trade balance. But that didn’t stop rock-ribbed-conservative, God-fearing, who-is-minding-the-store, we’re-all-businessmen-here-together Republicans from squandering it all – recording record deficits, throwing the trade balance into the toilet and ruining the domestic economy. I mean RECORD deficits, THIRD-WORLD style deficits, HIGH unemployment, record BANKRUPTCIES. High heels don’t impress the repo man.

Your kid’s in school just like all our kids are in school. Banning books doesn’t sound educational to me; it sounds jihadist, fundamentalist, anti-science and anti-knowledge. Your kid gonna get ahead in the Twenty-First century with anti-knowledge? Imagine if Barack Obama suggested at any time the banning of books from Chicago libraries. Yet eyeglasses atop high heels can waltz away from such fascist activity in Wasilla, untouched by charges of Fahrenheit 451 – the ignition temperature of a book. Book-banners are as anti-American as you can get without blowing something up.

And those close relatives – NATO and Japan and South Korea and Australia – growing increasingly nervous about another war in Iran to save American bacon? The propensity to attack targets in "friendly" countries like Pakistan? The unnecessary war in Iraq is another very bloody shirt waved by discredited politicians to obscure a total failure of vision and understanding. There are terrorists there now, mind you, created by our mindless strategy.

Who’s getting rich today? The very people funding the terrorists killing our kids, that’s who. They are building palaces while you face foreclosure. You pay them every day, at the pump. Every gallon is another bullet in their budget, more gilding in their palaces. Have you seen what they are building with your money? Your V-8 is their cash cow.

If you think so little of your family and your country pal, then cozy up with the eyeglasses and high heels. Have another beer. Take her for a spin. Believe her lies. And she’ll laugh and laugh at what a sucker you are. In December you can figure it out – was the trailer trash you or her?

Ps. I grew up in a trailer. Eight feet wide and fifty feet long. From first grade through high school. I met a lot of nice people in the parks, and I met a lot of lousy people I wouldn’t trust with a snotty handkerchief. Sarah’s one of ‘em. Sober up, pal