WHAT EVANSTON & OAK PARK HAVE TO SHOW JOE WILSON
The setting was strictly high-drama Hollywood -- joint session of Congress, embattled young president, then right out of central casting a Joe Wilson screaming out "you lie!"
There will be many takes on this Capraesque moment. Bad taste...Congressional censure... folks muttering "go Joe!"... perhaps a White House secretly pleased the fiery South Carolina Republican illustrated how dissent in Washington has become more maniacal than intellectual.
Permit me my own take. Can't prove it, only feel it. Feel it deep in my bones, because Joe's indecent yelp came from deep in his bones.
Most of us don't know Joe (altho he should be making the talk-circuit any day now), but we do know here's another Joe (like the plumber) whose public actions betray some private rages. Joe Wilson might easily be seen as the face of white, southern, America's state-of-mind. A state which has evolved ever since the Civil War freed the slaves, white Jim Crows tried to replace iron chains with legal chains, and the WASP idea (White Anglo Saxon Protestant supremacy) arrived with the World War II flood of blacks into northern cities.
I don't know how much or how well Joe reads the statistics, but Joe and all the other Joe's know damn well that Sarah Palin's "real America" (small town WASP America) is disappearing. By 2050 it will have totally shifted into another direction (big city non-white majorities). Joe the Plumber and Joe the Southerner don't like that. It's different! scary! rife with black and immigrant people rising up to kill us in our white beds!
I feel sorry for Joe Wilson. Not because his nightmare is demographically approaching, but because Joe Wilson and all the other Joe's out there would seem to be living in a permanent state of angry terror. Rather than meet and work with this statistical reality, they seem capable only of screaming it away.
Doesn't work, Joe! I live in a city which tries this, perhaps to its future peril. I once lived in another city (Oak Park) which long ago decided to replace screaming with planning. Today, Oak Park (and its sister suburb Evanston) are neither WASP nor Ghetto. Somewhere intelligently in between.
Joe -- you ought to come visit sometime to see that the future really can work!
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He was just the highlight of the disrespect that most of the Republicans showed President Obama as they looked down, typed away on their Blackberys, or just made faces as our President attempted to bring this nation together while once again, the party of NO showed their stupidity! Joe was the cherry on the sundae!
ReplyDeleteAmd sad to say you got that right!!!
ReplyDeleteJoe Wilson from South Carolina, is just another good old boy where in the morning these married men preach to you that there should be prayer in our schools and in the evening they are on their cell phones setting up a date with their other women on the side, hypocrisy has been bred in. I am not surprised that he felt compel to yell like he was at some Friday night game. He is a hater not a debater like most of his side of the isle.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes yes! Where we need legitimate DEBATE we get this! It's why Washington no longer works. But ol' Joe proved the point we all know -- his side of the aisle has far more hate than hope.
ReplyDeleteYou all should read John Barry's take on Wilson's outburst on MSN's website. This might temper your own voices.
ReplyDeleteJerry, I realize you see some of this differently...but I'd rather hear it from you than a Wilson or Palin...my sense is that, right or wrong, they let their fears drown out the facts...but then FDR and LBJ experienced the same thing when they pushed Social Security and Medicare...damn, life was a whole lot easier when we were young and playing on Thomas Avenue...
ReplyDeleteThis issue seemed to spark discussions everywhere from the top of the media to this blog...bottom line it was BAD PROTOCOL....period! It doesn't matter if you are R or D, disagree or agree with Obama..he is the President of the United States, and this wasn't a rally out on the streets. Bad move on the part of the Republicans...or THAT Republican
ReplyDeleteKaryn, the thing is, this incident seems the tip of a rather deep and angry iceberg. There is a bitterness and incivility in the land that is terribly unhealthy. This is where democracy gets tested -- can we maintain FREE speech vs CAREFREE speech?
ReplyDelete