I KNOW WHAT AMERICA'S THINKING, THE GARDENER TELLS ME :

Slouching Toward Populism (MAUREEN DOWD, July 10, 2002, NY Times)

And they are hounded by the same old question they have designed their lives to avoid: Can a Bush--born on third base but thinking he hit a triple--ever really understand the problems of the guys in the bleachers?

There are few more enjoyable spectacles than that of a middle-aged, single, childless, New York Times columnist lecturing a politician--who on his worst day got 49% of the nation's vote and is currently at 70% in the polls--on how he can't understand peoples' problems. There's a revealing passage in Frank Bruni's fine campaign memoir, Ambling Into History, where he talks about how out-of-it George W. is culturally because he'd never heard of Sex in the City, let alone seen it; because he thinks that Billy Bass singing fish is hilarious; and because the only Broadway show he likes is Cats. Likewise, Mr. Bruni and other press mavens find it odd that W. likes to go to his ranch and cut brush, much as Ronald Reagan used to do.

You see, at the Times, populism means getting together for group Sex in the City viewing parties and talking to all the real folks who drive your cabs or cut your lawn in the Hamptons and having a French impressionist ballet poster on your wall, just like all your friends have. But out here in America we watch NASCAR, wrestling, Baywatch, and baseball. We cut our own lawns. We drink canned beer, not wine. We have spouses and kids. We like soccer because even the girls and the spastic boys can participate, but we find the notion of grown men playing it to be troublesome. We think Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were guilty. We think the blacklist was too short. We rooted for the Guard at Kent State and for the Chicago cops at the 1968 Democrat convention. We think Jerry Lee Lewis was a rambunctious genius and Woody Allen is nothing more than an unfunny incestuous pedophile. We think O.J. did it. We think Ted Kennedy did it. We think Clinton is a criminal. We like Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft, but Barney Frank and Janet Reno scare us. We don't think our moms are descended from monkeys. We think drugs should be illegal. We're glad Columbus found America. We'd bomb Hiroshima all over again if we had to. We think JFK lost the Missile Crisis worse than the Bay of Pigs. We think Vietnam was a noble cause and that we should have stayed to finish what the liberals started. We think Reagan won the Cold War and Gorbachev lost. We think SUVs should be bigger. We own guns. We think Maxwell House is gourmet coffee and you should drink it black. We like Marty Stewart, not Martha Stewart. We think Seinfeld was stupid. We've never even seen Friends. And the network that carries Ellen is parental-locked on our TVs. We salt our melons, butter our steaks, and drink whole milk (out of the jug, if the wife isn't watching). We think a son of a president, who's himself run a business, owned a baseball team, been governor of Texas, and been elected President (or close enough) probably understands Americans a little better than someone who writes a snarky column for that elitist piece of Manhattan fishwrap. And, yes, we think singing fish are a hoot.

We actually sit in the bleachers and stands for games in April, like W. did when he ran the Rangers, not in corporate boxes (and only at playoff time) where waiters serve shrimp and Chablis.

And if, by some chance, our wives manage to batter us into submission and we end up having to visit that godforsaken den of iniquity y'all live in, what we really want is to hit a few ballgames and maybe, albeit grudgingly, allow the old lady to drag us to Radio City to see the Rockettes. (We used to could at least go to the Lone Star, but now even that's closed). But, should we fold, and get hornswoggled into going to a Broadway show, we don't want to watch four hours of that leftist nitwit Kevin Spacey mouthing Eugene O'Neill's life-denying nonsense. We want to go to the show where smokin' hot chorus girls are dressed up like Julie Newmar, crawling around stage on all fours--we want tickets to Cats. That, my Pulitzer-Prize winning friends, is populism. Welcome to the Red State world.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 10, 2002 10:56 AM