Personally, I think things started going to Hell when folks were seriously asked, “Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?” Because, to be honest, there just aren’t all that many of my former drinking codkpaniopns I’d like to see in any positions of authority.
Zoom ahead a few years and we have supposedly sane men and women going ga-ga over a candidate because he or she talks just like them.
To quote an eloquent turn of phrase from the 1980s: gag me with a spoon.
The standard for “talking like us” sometimes seems to imply that a candidates’s authenticity in such a regard is all too often sounding like a crazy old man outside a general store on a Saturday night.
The reverse side of that coin is that if you sound too smart, well, you don’t sound like one of us, a real American, a Regular Joe, a man or woman who tells it like it is, damn it, and damn the consequences!
This indicates an ad hoc assumption that real Americans only sound like those who work with their hands. Well, real Americans sound like machinists, surgeons, poets, factory workers, farmers, songwriters, bricklayers, architects and even, on the rare occasion, bloggers.
Each man and woman has their own distinctive voice, and the same is true for those in public life.
Politicians who dumb down their language in an effort to reach what consultants tell them real Americans sound like are guilty of the worst kind of political condescension. It is as immoral an act as stealing from the public purse, because they are treating voters like fools, rubes ripe for the picking.
I despise such creatures as much as I despise those – of any political persuasion – who toss out cliches and slogans instead of actual ideas.
A pox on both their houses.
And I know that all too many voters fall for this, which is why we have some of the turkeys (sorry, I slipped back to the 70s there) in office today.
We have to expect more from our candidates. But maybe one thing we might do well to expect less of is a desire to have a candidate who talks just like us.
Because there is a whole lot of us, and like snowflakes, at the core we all sound different.
******
Today’s Soundtrack
I’m spending a morning listening to “An Evening with Don Williams,” and whether writing or not, he’s a good man to start the day with.
Yes, I’m typing on Tulsa Time today.
*****
Now on YouTube – Liz Garriss: You give me Fever
Some songs performed by Ms. Liz Garriss some years ago in the studio. You might be amused by my attempt to give the set a sort of night club feel.
Well, I think it looks good, and more importantly, the songs are great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqhT7uRGcs
****
Quote of the Day
Hearts live by being wounded. – Oscar Wilde
rsdrake@cox.net