A Uranus-Saturn Moment

Dear Friend and Reader,

Just got off the phone with my mother. I left her a message earlier today telling her that if she couldn’t get to the polls for one reason or another, I would drive from New York State to Connecticut to get her to the polling place. While I’m hunched over the mortar and pestle making mustard, she calls me back. First words out of the woman’s mouth:

Vote poster showing a classic art style popular in Soviet Propaganda pieces
Vote poster showing a classic art style popular in Soviet Propaganda pieces.

“I probably didn’t vote for who I was supposed to.”

I ask, “So you voted for McCain?”

“Yeah!” And immediately I could hear the vocal cords in her throat tighten like bow strings ready to fling those famous poison darts of contempt. I said to myself, now…this woman voted for a guy who she didn’t even want to vote for? That she wasn’t supposed to vote for? What exactly does that mean?

The only thing you’re supposed to do during the election is vote for who you want. If your family doesn’t like it, let them not like it and hope they aren’t the majority. It’s that simple. But now I found myself on the phone with a burlap sack of rattlesnakes. Me being the charmer that I am, I asked her, “Why did you vote for McCain?”

“Because if you hang out with a person for 20 years, it means you agree with what they’re saying.”

“Are you talking about Ayers?” I inquired probably not as coyly as I would like to believe. If I bit into a piece of horseradish at that point,В it wouldn’t have been half as hot as I felt right then. Imagine, this woman making her choice based on guilt by association. The first time IВ heard of guilt by association, I was taking a Russian History course and they were talking about Stalin.

“Yes I’m talking about Ayers. And I’m talking about that Reverend Wright. You know he damned our United States of America.”

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