This year I passed through the veil. I can no longer truthfully describe my age as "early forties." Yes, there is no question that I am a middle-aged woman. Even worse, all the demographic markers attached to me just scream that I am a bland middle-aged woman. I have 2 kids and have been married for more than 20 years to someone I met in 3rd grade. We are not only white but extremely pale. When I get around to buying make-up the shade is "near albino." The number of Sundays in a given year the entire family is not in the pew of a mainstream Protestant church could be counted on one hand. One grandmother's grandparents arrived on these shores in the 1860s. Other than that the last time anyone in my family was an immigrant this country was still a colony. When asked to bring an ethnic food to a gathering the best I can manage is an apple tart or oatmeal cookies. Maybe a bologna sandwich on white bread. No one seems particularly interested in haggis or cornpone.
As a middle-aged woman I am used to being invisible. Clothing stores generally proclaim "We don't want your money, you droopy old bat." I can't find the aptly named Sag Harbor corner of Strawbridges anymore and Talbots is too rich for my budget so I guess the next stop is the rack at Sears with the elastic waist pants. The clerks in the record store snicker when I ask if they carry anything by the Traveling Wilburys. Most new movies and television shows (to say nothing of the commercials) are clearly designed to baffle and repel me. Barnes & Noble is full of literary novels about clever young women sleeping their way to fame and fortune, and diet books loaded with ingredients I've never heard of. Even telemarketers don't want to talk with me. Just last week, after asking my age range, the young woman on the phone said "we have our quota of people in your range," and hung up on me.
But I have politics, right? After all, a vote is a vote. The amounts I donate are too small to impress much of anyone but a reliable Democratic vote has got to be worth something, surely! Alas, no. Howard Dean seems to be kicking me out of the only party I've been invited to in many many years. Howard has gone on record as saying the Republican Party is the "white, Christian party."
Ummm, Howard, .......... you've just described me.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
What Gives, Howard?
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5 comments:
He certainly did describe you. He also described me. I'm not always the most reliable Democratic voter, but I am a registered Democrat and I usually vote that way unless I have a good reason to do otherwise.
By the way, I just want you to know that I love and appreciate cornpone. I might be the only person reading this who knows what it is, but I grew up on the stuff in York, PA.
"Dean noted that he, too, is a white Christian"
All this time, he's just been a Repug operative!
Thanks for comments! Melissa, if the area bloggers ever have a potluck I'll bring some cornpone just for you. ;)
Albert, you bring up an interesting conspiracy scenario -- if the GOP were saddled with an unpopular president and bad economic figures, what could they do to keep the Democrats from capitalizing on it? Isn't it interesting that these latest "foot in mouth" gafs from Dean come so soon after Santorum's Democrats = Nazis comment? But, wait, the GOP would have a shrewdly keen mastermind operative to come up with something this clever. Too bad that Rove guy isn't still around.....
well, Dean isn't known for his temperance, but folks elsewhere have cited statistics that 85% of the GOP is both white + Christian, which doesn't quite reflect the nation, even if it reflects most or all of us chatting here. the right makes great hay with quotes taken out of context, and facts made to look like polemics. don't give in.
As it happens, there is a 2003 Statistical Abstract of the United States here in the building. Getting out my trusty calculator to figure percentages, I get these numbers.
In 2002, 80.67% of US population was considered, or considered themselves, to be white.
In 2001, 76.69% of the US population classified themselves as a Christian of some kind.
There is some wiggle room on the figures (for instance, if you limited the population figures to only those old enough to vote, but then I think the percentage white would be greater). A number of studies have shown that church people vote more regularly than non-church people.
Regardless of how you slice it, I don't anyone of any party is going to get elected without the support of a lot of white Christians.
Dean is not helping anyone with these whacky comments.
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