Friday, August 06, 2004

London Calling and America The Beautiful

I guess my friends from England have gone back to posting on their own blog (see Legoland California post). Or perhaps, they had another nasty run-in with Johnny Thunder and are no longer able to communicate. I will choose to believe the former, and I wish them the best as they finish their American adventure. I hope their new custom family truckster has served them well. Pardon me homes...

The other day, I saw John Edwards speak at a rally in downtown Memphis, on historic Beale Street. A few reflections:
1) He's good. This guy can speak and work a crowd and make you feel really good about him, yourself, America, etc. Somehow, he also has some sort of anti-sweating super power.
2) It was really hot. The whole crowd was sweating, getting sunburned, fainting, etc. Well, the fainting was mainly just a couple people.
3) I don't know if they fainted because of the heat or Edwards' looks. What a handsome fellow. I've seen a lot of political candidates speak in my time and this guy definitely comes in second, behind only... yep, you guessed it... Walter Mondale. Now there was a looker!
4) Political rallies can get pretty dumb. Before Edwards appeared, a parade of local Democratic muckety-mucks (never typed that before!) spoke briefly. Each tried to get the crowd pumped up in their own "not-quite-as-motiviating-as-a-mediocre-high-school-football-coach" way, and all tried to get the crowd chanting some trite motto, which, even more amazingly, we chanted.

I have some interest in running for public office one day and saying the kind of junk they said without feeling all sorts of shame is going to be a real tough one for me. Perhaps it's time for me to learn. I found out yesterday that the Democratic party is not even providing a challenger to my should-be-unseated freshman Congresswoman. No Democrat has really even come close in the district in years, but come on! Maybe the time has come for the Ziggybackride to take us all the way to D.C.! Well, too late for this year, but in two years?

New representative in Washington! New representative in Washington! New representative in Washington!

Are you chanting yet? Damn! I'll work on that.

No comments: