How To Have A More Civil Argument With A Democratic Nominee For President

Dear Senator Obama,

Heya!

How’s it going?

All well on the campaign trail these days? You getting enough sleep? Staying hydrated and not pigging-out on too many TastyKakes here in Pennsylvania? You don’t want to end up looking like Ed Rendell. Philadelphia food can do that to a person.

Anyway, I hear you were visiting just down the road from me tonight, speaking at Messiah College. I would have liked to have attended The Compassion Forum to hear you and Senator Clinton speak, but some of us had to work.

Oh gosh, I mean…not that what you’re doing isn’t work, don’t get me wrong! I didn’t mean it that way!

Ah drat, I’m so sorry…I’m such a goofus. I’m always doing that open mouth, insert foot thing.

Oh, I know you knew what I meant.

And I know that you knew that I knew that you knew what I meant.

And I know that you knew that I…well…you know….

But it still has to be said…you know?

Anyway, I think you know what I'm saying.

It's like with that bitter Pennsylvanian thing. Whew! What was all that hub-bub about, huh? There you were, giving a 40-minute speech on the current economic crisis and laying out your thoughts on how we can meet the challenges ahead of us and so on and so forth. And yet, just a few days later, people were quoting the speech and jumping up and down about some mention of bitter guns and religion. And then, I had to look up “xenophobe” because suddenly every blogger out there was mentioning xenophobes, and I had to make sure it wasn’t the next cool Internet word appropriation, like “widget” or “gadget”. I just wanted to make sure we were really talking about fear of strangers, you know?

Okay, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me first say this by way of introduction:

I grew up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. Now, I’m not going to recount the entire story of my coal-mining grandparents and the mines closing down and the Wal-Marts moving in and the only entertainment being riding around on Friday nights counting dead deer on the side of the road. (Notice I did not make a cow-tipping joke.) First of all, the story is not so unique nor the details so important that we need to rehash it all right here and now. Second, I’m saving that story for my tell-all memoir that will net me millions and win me a Pulitzer. Suffice to say that if you’ve listened to even one Bruce Springsteen album, then you’ve gotten the gist of how my "growing up in a small town" played out (minus the verse about a girl wrapping her legs round my velvet rims.)

And I know that even that paragraph right there can come across as a touch bitter, but really, I’m not. I’m actually bitter about very little in my life - not being asked to my senior prom, a perm in eight grade, sure - but other than that, I’d say that life in Pennsylvania has more so evoked sustained feelings ranging from blithe amusement to heartbroken sadness with plenty of joy, elation, and drunkenness in-between (Yuengling beer being an important emotion in Pennsylvania.)

But bitter?

Bitter just sounds so pathetic and defeated. Bitter sounds like small town Pennsylvanians are sitting in their rooms with the walls painted black and chewing on their bottom lip while poking pins into effigies of Essex, Connecticut.

You didn’t really mean “bitter”, right?

It was sort of like that unfortunate Whole Foods thing. You really meant to say "A&P".

Or like with the daughter being "punished" with a baby hooplah? Yeah, in spite of the fact that the hour leading up to nap time can sometimes seem like a circle of hell, maybe “punished” wasn’t the best choice, you know, to say out loud…unless you’re speaking to a room filled exclusively with sleep-deprived mothers of colicky infants, of course.

In regard to all the economic ills and woes of Pennsylvania, I’d rather think that we’re not so much bitter, but instead “righteously angry”. Or, how about, “justifiably ticked-off"? Maybe, if you're from the coal region, you could say that you’ve got your “gotchies in a twist, da f*ck!” But seriously, I’m just not sure about “bitter“. “Bitter” just doesn’t capture how pissed off most people are. Or how motivated many are to work to rise to the challenges, etc., etc. You know... all that other great "Yes We Can" stuff and "We are the change we are waiting for" that motivates the other 49 states so well?

We're like that, too, in Pennsylvania!

Don't think of us as bitter.

We're righteously angry!

We're all angry and "Yes We Can, Dammit!"

So, you know, I think a $3.95 thesaurus would have solved that one small word choice problem, done and done. But really, no harm, no foul.

Now, about the hunting and religion thing...you said:

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Here, it’s not so much an issue of word choice, but instead, perhaps, punctuation. I do only take the tiniest amount of issue with the lack of semi-colon or at least additional commas and conjunctions in some attempt to separate Pennsylvania’s deer hunters and nuns from the immigrant haters. Or is it "haters of immigrants"?

If I can use an analogy, lumping us all together like that is like saying “And it's not surprising that starving people will eat lard or tofu or feces or raw heroin or poodles." I mean, okay, there’s an argument some people will make against eating lard, but in reality, you just haven’t tasted a French fry until you’ve tasted one fried in lard. And with tofu, again, while admitting that you actually eat tofu and enjoy it can seem ridiculously cultish, and trying to convince yourself that it tastes like something other than congealed cardboard is more an act of faith then based in any reality- aside from that, there are still real health benefits and positive consequences to eating tofu that cannot be denied, whether one chooses to eat tofu to maintain good health, or whether it is only in illness that one begins to cling the hope offered by those more scientifically unproven yet miraculous claims of solidified-soy-curd converts.

But c’mon, tastes aside, eating either lard or tofu is much different than putting poo in your mouth. Or poodles.

Does that make sense? Do you see where maybe a comma or semi-colon or two could have easily straightened out that string of run-on cling-ons?

Although, to be honest, you probably could have safely left out the gun and god mention altogether. The fact is, some of us here in the hinterlands do like to hunt and pray - often at the same time - but frankly, we'd do it whether the mines were opened or closed.

Sure, we might hunt more often when chicken breasts cost $6.99 a pound or when we‘re out of work, because hey! Free hunting day! And can you blame us for clinging to religion, especially in the middle of a cold February and what with the church hall being heated on Tuesday nights for Bingo and the coverall jackpot being $1200? $1200 will pay for a lot of buckshot. And c’mon, Senator Obama, you really going to tell me that it didn’t ever cross your mind even once to bury a statue of St. Joseph in your backyard when you were trying to sell a house? That spiritual hocus pocus works. Just ask Oprah and Eckhart Tolle.

Anyway, I know that you know that not all of us fed-up small town Pennsylvanians are consequentially bitter, gun-toting, rosary-wielding hicks who won’t sit next to a Burkinabe immigrant in the lunchroom and who refuse to buy Italian shoes because they just seem too hoity-toity. Or vice versa, for that matter.

And I know that you know that I know that you know. And I know that you know that I know that…well, you know.

But you know how it is.

You said the thing about the stuff, and I heard the thing about the stuff, and I live in Pennsylvania and grew up in a small town and maybe I'm supposed to say something, I dunno. Most of all, though, I’m a just a real pill when it comes to semi-colons and word connotation…or is it denotation?…well, whatever, I'm just like that.

You've got a friend in Pennsylvania who is picky about being lumped-in with poodle eaters without the protection of a comma is all I'm saying.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line saying, yeah, I know.

And now you can write me a long letter telling me how much work it is to run a Presidential campaign, especially one where every ninny with a keyboard is parsing every word out of your mouth.

And then I can write you a letter saying, “I know you didn’t mean to say ‘ninny’, but….”

And you’ll say, “I know you know.”

And I’ll say, “I know, you know, you know.”

And we'll all just...know from now on.

You know?

Glad we got that cleared up.

You and Hillary are both doing an awesome job. Don't eat too many Tastykakes. And don't either of you get tempted into any cow-tipping jokes.

So. Not. Funny.


Signed,

Righteously Drunk Angry in Pennsylvania

I'm so much more than bitter.