"What Color is Your Parachute, Hillary?

I’m thinking a lot about broken promises tonight. So indulge me, while I break a promise to you & talk about the campaign for the Presidency.

Tomorrow is the Pennsylvania Primary. Also known as “Hillary’s last stand” (Until the next stand comes along…Indiana anyone?) I am shocked that this whole thing is still going on. Any other candidate who lost 11? 12? Primaries in a row would have already endorsed their opponent & moved on, but not Hillary. And I think she was right to stay in. Tomorrow evening will be her crowning achievement. Already predicted to win by as little as 5 points & as much as 20, Sen. Clinton knows the people of Pennsylvania & so do I.

I was born in a suburb of Philadelphia called Roslyn. But I have always had delusions of grandeur & so said I was from a neighboring town called, Willow Grove. Largely because it sounded better to me & had more swimming pools! There were even a few “Jews” living there; which I thought the ultimate in exotic glamour. After all, as everyone knew, the “Jews” were in Show Business!! But I digress.

My father said “colored people” til the day he died. He died in 1997. Less polite people than my Dad said “the N word” I remember my Grandmother proudly stating that she was voting for (famously racist) Mayor Frank Rizzo, because he would “keep the blacks in line” I didn’t really appreciate that because I didn’t know any “blacks” And actually wouldn’t go to school with any African Americans until the late 80s when I was in college. And I preferred to focus on the fact that Philadelphia was the HOMETOWN of PRINCESS GRACE!!!

James Carville is famously quoted as saying that
“Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh & Philadelphia with Alabama in between” It’s a famous quote because it’s true. But it’s not just the “tween” part. My little hamlet lays just 20 minutes outside Philadelphia, but it may as well be a world away!

I would like to think that in the last 20 years, things, even in the suburbs of Philly, have changed. I would be wrong to think that. In conversations with my Mother, who to this day thinks “Sadam Hussein & “Osama Bin Ladin” are the same person because “THE PRESIDENT told her that” I know the deal. She says she’s voting for Hillary because she just “doesn’t know who this Obama person is, I mean he came out of nowhere!” Nor is she interested in my instruction to go to Obama’s website or to ask me any question on any position & I’ll explain Sen Obama’s thoughts. Nope her mind is made up. As it has been since 1968!

I wish she was alone. But I know women like her are legion in the state & the country. And they all look distressingly like GERALDINE FERARRO if not Hillary herself. These are women who are now widows because their husbands drank too much & died too young. And by God, are they “bitter” But not at Hillary! They would like to reward Clinton for “putting up with it!” Just like they did.

This is not to say that there are not intelligent, thoughtful people of both sexes who simply feel that Hillary Clinton is the best person for the job. There are still way too many gay people, for my liking, who are rabid fans (I guess they don’t recall “Don’t Ask, don’t tell” or worse yet, The Defense of Marriage Act) I mean
LOOK!!! CHELSEA CLINTON GOES TO GAY BARS!!! I think there is still a little something too “Judy Garlandesque” about folks like me identifying with the Clinton Victimology.

So I can delude myself that PA Has changed. Then I read this in The New York Observer:

Gonna Fly Now! Clinton Runs as Rocky In Philly
Pennsylvania Crowd Says It Doesn’t Trust Obama: ‘President Named Barack?’


PHILADELPHIA—“We need her,” Barbara Vizzini, a 46-year-old equipment operator from Middletown, said before Hillary Clinton took the stage at a rally in Fairless Hills Monday night. “If we don’t get her, we’re going to end up with John McCain.”

What about Barack Obama? Why couldn’t he beat the Republican nominee?
“The race thing,” interjected her colleague Daniel Kirner, 52, from Tullytown.
“I mean, a president named Barack?” agreed Ms. Vizzini.

Oh, it gets worse….

“She’s got this one locked,” said Mary Yates, a 67-year-old retired worker in a chemical factory. “No Muslim is going to be president. No drug addict. If Hillary isn’t the one, everyone I know will vote for John McCain.”

And this:

“I don’t like the superdelegate system,” said Mara Volpe, a 54-year-old aide to special-education students, who watched Mrs. Clinton in Fairless Hills. “Would I be really happy if that’s how she won? No. But I would be able to live with that.”
“It’s like our votes don’t count,” said Ms. Vizzini, the equipment operator. “I’m not for it.”

(When told that the superdelegates constituted Mrs. Clinton’s best chance of becoming the nominee, she amended her statement: “Then I’m for it.”)

OR HOW ABOUT THIS?

And consider this little nugget from Monday’s Washington Post, in a story by Kevin Merida and Jose Antonio Vargas datelined Scranton, Pa.:

“Barack Obama’s campaign opened a downtown office here on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers — white volunteers — were greeted with racial slurs.”

And this, my friends, is the Pennsylvania I know. They can look any fact in the eye & quickly deny it. And though they’re smart enough now to deny it or play coy, there is no way they’re going to vote for “the colored guy”

So, I’m praying that Barack can keep her to within 10 points. And of course I’m praying to ST.JUDE Because he’s the patron of the IMPOSSIBLE.

Either way it doesn’t much matter. Short of stealing this election, its simply too late for her to be the nominee. So I say let her have this little triumph gained by appealing to people’s “baser instincts” This son of the City of Brotherly Love is supporting the “Muslim Drug Addict”