My dear sister Rose and her husband Hank are like a lot of other middle-class folks these days, running as fast as they can so they can stay in the same place, shoveling sand against the tide, and treading water like Olympians just to keep from going under. Regular readers of this Web log know what I’m talking about, and I’m sure they would agree with me that the least I can do is take them out to dinner and a show once in a while.
And I’m likewise sure that many of my regular readers would also agree that since Rose and Hank are staunch Republicans, sharing a house with Hank’s brother and his wife because of the subprime mortgage meltdown, contending with at least one of the four wage-earning adults in that house being out of work at any given time, despite their mutual, formidable professional qualifications, including, I would hasten to point out, no less than six postgraduate degrees among them; caring for their blended and extensive Catholic broods, all crammed together like their Catholic ancestors in steerage, with bunk beds stacked like shipping pallets loaded with cheap tin trays everywhere one looks; and, quite frankly, despite their address in a very respectable section of Fairfax County, Virginia, living, in fact, from hand to mouth like their peasant ancestors, that – yes, by God Almighty, these people are getting exactly what they deserve. And, to tell the truth, I am not entirely disinclined to contest that assessment, either. But blood, as they say, is thicker than water, and consequently, I do show Hank and Rose an occasional kindness, even though I know, all too well, what they, like most members of the GOP these days, really need is a prolonged stewing in their own reeking juice.
Call me a soft-hearted fool, I suppose; call me a liberal, even, but nevertheless, I chose to coddle these two down-and-out, yet stubbornly unreconstructed, or, frankly, even marginally penitent proponents of unfettered commerce, or better yet, corporate socialism masquerading as free markets; these strangely mesmerized followers of the callous individualism espoused by Rand, Forbes and Buckley, now living precisely one and one-half paychecks from the real and horribly frightening prospect of being, like those presumed lazy, profligate ne’r-do-wells at whom they formerly clucked their tongues over the dinner table, actually homeless, really on the street, with their obscenely huge litters of dewy-eyed progeny gazing at them in shock and resentment; these resolute followers of faith-based politics – two believers, who, despite decades of empirical evidence to the contrary, still mindlessly cling to the pathetic, inchoate ravings of an evil, demented monster: Ronald Wilson Reagan’s churlish, ridiculous and absurd fairy tale of the Shining City on a Hill. And call me enamored of long, complex sentences while you are at it, but hell and damnation, the woman’s my sister, and I love her – in a completely proper and totally filial interpretation of the word, of course, and I forgive her for beating the living crap out of me all the time when we were kids, too, and I’m not being the least bit facetious about it, either.
I will be the first to admit that there aren’t many decent plays running in Washington DC during any given month of August, and this August is no different. For our these little outings, I always leave the choice of entertainment and restaurant to Rose and Hank, so we didn’t have to go to a play – and, as it turned out, we didn’t – we went to see the six o’clock performance of “Shear Madness” at the Kennedy Center instead. Hank loved it, couldn’t get enough of it, and wanted to come back, soon, to see it again. Rose told him once is enough for stuff like that as far as she is concerned, to which Hank replied that he was sure Hank Jr. would enjoy it, too, and why not take him there for his birthday or something?
Rose just rolled her eyes at the suggestion as we sipped cocktails and perused our menus at 1789. Rose selected the restaurant, and her logic was simple – if Hank had insisted on the theatrical equivalent of a box of Mallomars, then, by golly, afterward, she had a right to experience something approximating a gustatory equivalent to “The Coast of Utopia;” an argument made all the more convincing to Hank by the fact that the whole shebang, Kennedy Center and tony French bistro, were her brother’s treat, anyway.
When I put down my menu, they both blurted out, in almost perfect synchronization, “What are you having, Tom?”
“Huh?”
“Every time we go to a place like this,” Rose explained, “no matter what I order, by the time the meal is over, I realize that what you ordered was better.”
“Me, too,” Hank sighed dejectedly.
“So,” I speculated, “you have been experiencing restaurant patron’s remorse – the feeling, at the end of your meal, that you should have ordered something else?”
“Yeah,” Hank admitted sheepishly, “that’s it.”
“But,” Rose interjected, “I wouldn’t say, ‘something else,’ at least not in my case. I’d say ‘what I saw Tom Collins order.’”
“That’s right,” Hank affirmed, “we always go home wondering what the food Tom ordered tasted like, and feel like we made the wrong choices. And if there’s any feeling we want like hell to avoid tonight, it’s that one.”
“Really?” I took a contemplative taste of my Balvenie 17 Oak Sherry Wood – the last glass in the house, by the way, and not what Rose or Hank had ordered. “How come?”
Rose blushed rose red, and not from the usually suspected causes either – as her little brother, if there’s one thing I have learned to recognize, it’s when Rose gets angry.
“That… that gibbering moron… that raving idiot… that half-witted jackanapes… that narcissistic, amoral, degenerate, depraved, asinine fool… that simpering, drooling, imbecile…”
“Hey,” I interrupted in a consoling tone, “hang in there. George W. Bush will be gone in January!”
“That’s not who I’m talking about!”
The gentle clatter of fine silver on exquisite china abruptly ceased. Scores of eyes fell on Rose, now, by virtue of her complexion, a truly eponymous American Beauty if there ever was one. The customary five seconds of silence ensued, after which, no paparazzi having appeared, the low and delicious din of fine dining resumed.
“Oh, [expletive]!” Rose slammed her grasshopper down in perfect feminine vexation. “I’m sorry Tom – you can dress me up, but you can’t take me out.”
“Oh, come on, Sith,” I declared jocularly, using the pet name for her I adopted from “Star Wars” while just a tyke, “If I’ve ever known anything at all, I’ve known that for a while. But who in blue blazes were you talking about, then – Pervez Musharraf?”
“No.”
“Vladimir Putin?”
“No.”
“Robert Mugabe?”
“No.”
“Muammar Gaddafi?”
“No.”
“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?”
“No.”
“Ehud Olmert?”
“No.”
“Than Shwe?”
“No.”
“Radovan Karadzic?”
“No.”
“Osama bin Laden?”
“No.”
“Silvio Berlusconi?”
“No.”
“Islom Karimov?”
“No.”
“Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir?”
“No.”
“Raúl Castro?”
“No.”
“Kim Jong-il?”
“No.”
“Rose – surely not Hugo Chavez?”
“No, of course not.”
“Um, so, well, you mean, the person whom you were referring to…”
“Is [expletive] John McCain,” Rose hissed.
“Yeah,” Hank sadly nodded. “About six months ago, I started thinking, maybe this McCain guy is, I donno, loosing it, you know… bubbles in the think tank…”
“Sand in the gears?” I inquired, raising my eyebrows slightly.
“Toys in the attic,” Rose nodded as she sipped her grasshopper.
“Bats in the belfry?”
“I guess that’s how you’d put it. But Rose, she’s like ‘no, no, McCain’s sane, the rest of them are crazy;’ and, you know how smart Rose is, Tom, there was just no way to argue with her about it.”
“A person can be wrong sometimes without being evil,” Rose stated defensively. “Besides, how could I possibly have anticipated that McCain would lose touch with reality with absolutely no warning whatsoever?”
“You’re referring,” I surmised, “to the choice of vice-presidential running mate he announced yesterday?”
Hank and Rose sadly nodded affirmation as our waiter approached. His hand flew to his order pad as I turned to look up at him.
“We’ll begin with the foie gras Torchón, followed by the Maine scallops with blue foot mushrooms. For our entrees, we’ll have the rack of lamb pierogi with fontina val d’aosta, pancetta and cipollini onions, and for dessert, we’ll have the caramel peach tart with Marcona almonds.”
Our waiter smiled broadly as he beamed at Hank and Rose, then at me. “An excellent selection, sir. Would you like to order wine with any of those courses?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “With the foie gras and scallops, we’ll have a bottle of the Chassagne-Montrachet, Fernand et Laurent Pillot 2001; with the lamb, a bottle of Château Lafon-Rochet, Grand Cru Classé, Saint-Estèphé 1996; and, with the dessert, a bottle of Château d’Yquem, Lur-Saluces Sauterne.”
At that, our waiter’s eyes lit up like the candle altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral before the final game of the World Series – no doubt he was recalling from my previous encounters with him that I tip twenty percent.
“Yes, sir. Very astute wine selections,” he effused as he scurried away.
“I’m so bummed out,” Hank confessed, “that I was going to order a second cocktail, but after I heard you order the wine, I realized that I’m not going to need it.”
“Well,” I averred, “if the thought of having Sarah Palin running on the Republican ticket with John McCain hasn’t completely vanished from your mind by the time we finish the sauterne, we can always sample their cognac. But tell me, why are you two so upset about Palin, anyway? She’s certainly no Beltway insider – I mean, really, you can’t get much farther away from Washington, DC than Alaska, can you? And how about her stands on those key issues that you Republicans always obsess over? She’s pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war and wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, and after the oil’s gone, she wants it opened for hunting so they can get rid of all those stupid animals and build casinos. Are you telling me that isn’t music to your ears?”
“Governor’s mansions across America,” Rose proclaimed ruefully, “not to mention both houses of Congress, are chock full of Republican politicians who believe those things.”
“But, obviously, none of them,” I observed, “wanted to leave their current jobs to campaign for the position of Vice President.”
“Maybe,” Hank allowed, shaking his head slowly, “but why couldn’t McCain pick somebody who had successfully completed at least one term in their current job?”
“Well,” I pointed out, “Ms. Palin did serve two complete terms as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town over twelve square miles in area, with a population of nearly ten thousand people. And she has served twenty months as governor of a state with a population of nearly seven hundred thousand. What more experience could a person possibly need in order to effectively perform the duties of US Vice President?”
“The office of Vice President,” Rose lamented, “isn’t what we’re worried about.”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed, “there is that nagging problem of McCain being the oldest person elected to a first term as President – should he win, of course.”
“Exactly,” Hank fumed. “What if McCain keels over face-first into his Cheerios three weeks into his term?”
“In that case,” I pointed out, “he would break the record of thirty days, twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes for shortest term as President, which is currently held by William Henry Harrison.”
“True,” Rose grumbled sarcastically through clenched teeth, “but I think the fact that Sarah Palin would be President afterward is slightly more significant.”
“Oh, come on,” I chided, “She’s run Alaska for nearly two years. Combine that with her background as a city council member and mayor in Wasilla and ask yourself – what more experience would a person need in order to be the chief executive of the United States of America, if, God forbid, an admittedly hypothetical, but nonetheless plausible President John McCain were, because of his advanced age, to shuffle off this mortal coil, pass into the Great Beyond, go to meet his Maker, voyage forth to trod the Elysian Fields, hove to the bosom of Abraham, join the Choir Immortal, cross the Great Divide, take to the arms of Morpheus and rest forever in the big sleep,…”
“Tom!”
“… kick the bucket, bite the dust, give up the ghost…”
“Tom!”
“…cash in his chips, buy the farm, start pushing up daisies…”
“Tom!”
“… in short, not to put too fine a point on it, become the dearly departed deceased President of the United States?”
“Right,” Rose concurred, glaring at me the way she used to those times I displeased her when our parents weren’t home, “and no, I don’t think she’s the least bit qualified to be President. Then again,” she commented morosely, “I doubt we’ll have to deal with that contingency, anyway. As far as we can tell, McCain has totally… completely… entirely…”
“Screwed the pooch?”
“Correct.”
“Balled up the bullfight?”
“Right.”
“Muffed the high fly?”
“Yeah.”
“Botched the boat ballast?”
“Yes!”
“Fumbled the punt?”
“Tom!”
“Generally taken what might have been a slim, but nevertheless credible chance of winning and utterly blown it with a pathetic mental, conceptual, and political SNAFU?”
“Precisely,” Rose muttered while staring down into her grasshopper.
“Well,” I speculated, “it’s certainly possible that she may not want to wait around for your theoretical President McCain to die. Look how she behaved after she won her very first election, to the Wasilla City Council. The first thing she did was go after her mentor, the incumbent mayor. Then, in 2002, when Rudy Reudrich, the Alaska Republican state party chairman, attempted to reward her for a failed but valiant run at the Lieutenant Governor spot by giving her a seat on the state Oil and Gas Commission, she went after him, and got him fired and fined $12,000 for conducting Republican Party business on state time. So, considering a track record like that, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if she started out Year Two of a McCain Administration with a move to impeach the President so she could have his job.”
“Isn’t that, a bit, what do you call it,” Hank floundered, thinking, which has never been his strong suit, “far… ah, farfetched?”
“Ha!” Rose threw her head back disdainfully. “That’s your opinion! They don’t call Palin “Sarah Barracuda” for nothing! I’d say it’s one hell of a lot more likely than Nouri al-Maliki putting together a viable government in Iraq.”
“A lot of people,” I offered, in an attempt to change the subject, however slightly, “think she will be a good draw on the two key constituencies McCain has had trouble reaching – fundamentalist Christians and women. She’s a creationist, a regular churchgoer, and very strong on the moral basis that religion provides for government.”
Rose looked me dead in the eye. “What’s her position on The Rapture?”
“Uh, I… I don’t know,” I responded, unsure as to what Rose was getting at.
“You don’t know? What’s this? Even the legendary Tom Collins can’t tell us whether Sarah Palin is expecting to disappear into heaven – with her entire family, of course – some time in the very near future. For Christ’s sake, Tom, if Hank and I wanted a Bible-thumping backwoods yokel like Palin in the White House – or even anywhere near it – we would have supported Mike Huckabee!”
“Understood,” I shot back, “but you have to admit, she’s a woman, no doubt about it, and a beauty pageant queen at that.”
“Men!” Rose set the word flying like a petty profanity, then let it hang in the air a moment before continuing. “Let me tell you two guys something about women: there’s no way that being a former Miss Alaska…”
“Um, Rose?”
“Yes?”
“She was a runner up. For Miss Alaska, that is.”
“So what? Look, Tom, I’m telling you, when women find out she was a beauty pageant contestant and got to the state finals, I guarantee that ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent of them are going to hate her [expletive] guts!”
Hank’s face became a tapestry of bewilderment. “How come?”
“Because, dear,” Rose explained, “they know, quite well, that they, themselves, would never, ever, in a million years, have the slightest chance of winning a beauty pageant!”
“Oh.” Hank took a long pull off his Stoli and Red Bull highball, killing it.
“It’s said that she’s very popular with her constituents,” I mentioned, somewhat tentatively.
“Getting hammered on cheap beer, cheating at snow-mobile racing, cashing fat annual oil revenue checks from the state and then calling themselves conservatives,” Rose reminded me, “are also very popular with her constituents.”
Just then, the foie gras arrived, and, as the sommelier uncorked the perfectly chilled white Burgundy, conversation stopped and did not resume until several minutes later, when Rose and Hank began telling me amusing stories about their children. The atmosphere remained, I am please to say, similarly light and convivial right through dessert and three big snifters of Remy Martin Louis XIII. As I saw them off at their SUV, that mood continued, and, as I walked away, I heard Rose’s melodious voice.
“Who cares if the Democrats win, anyway? Kiss me!”
So, let’s hear it for the fine food, beverages and dedicated staff at Restaurant 1789 which, together, once again proved to its troubled patrons that there are, have been, and always will be certain things in life more important than politics.