What Are You?

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    When the realization hit that we seem to be a country that’s willing to spend $252 million for a shortstop and yet we won’t cough up a few bucks to get some decent voting machines, I began to wonder what we really believed in, and what’s really important in this country.

    Like most of you, I’m trying to make some sense out of this battle between Democrats and Republicans, and why all this should be so personal to me. After all, whoever gets chosen to wear the crown probably won’t profoundly affect most of our lives very much. I don’t know Al Gore nor do most of you know George W. Bush. What little contact we have with them is listening to their exciting, scintillating personalities on TV. And yet, I find myself obsessed and my gut churning with each new development. I can’t quite figure out why.

    Then it came to me. It was actually while I was watching Jim Baker explain to the TV world why you couldn’t trust the Florida Supreme Court to make a fair decision. It was obvious to him. It was because they were all Democrats. That was it.

    What Baker was saying is, the entire country is now like a traveling road company of “West Side Story.” It simply boils down to a simple question — “Are you a Shark, or are you a Jet?”

    For those of you who think this is far-fetched, stop for a moment and consider the similarities to a gang. Like all gangs, we both have our colors. Our gangs generally live in the same neighborhoods, and we’ve all sworn blood loyalty to our own.

    Who could forget the election-eve map of all of the Red States, which are yours, obviously Jet states, and all of the Blue Shark states, which are ours.

    You might surmise from my language that I’m a Shark, and perhaps you are wondering why. I’ll explain that later.

    You also might well wonder how this rivalry got so intense. After all, when you look at the Sharks and the Jets in this country, they really don’t look that different. The Jets are probably a little whiter than the Sharks, but not much. Maybe the Jets are a little richer than the Sharks, but again, not much. The Jets tend to hang around more in the suburbs and the Sharks in cities, but not much. They pretty much watch the same movies, tune in to the same TV shows and buy the same CDs. Their children even frequently marry each other. So, how come today, they can hardly be in the same room together?

    To answer that question you have to ask yourself how you became a Shark or a Jet. In my case, it was probably, principally, geography. I was raised in Brooklyn. Now, it wasn’t actually against the law to be a Republican in Brooklyn, but in my neighborhood, it was certainly considered a little odd and a bit pretentious. Our religion was Democrat, our Patron Saint, FDR. If I had come home one day and said I’ve decided to become a Republican, it would have been roughly equivalent to saying I’ve decided to become a Protestant. I knew that Republicans were old, fat, bald, and rich. At the time, I was none of those. In the intervening years I’ve become considerably more tolerant of older, fatter, balder and richer, but, nevertheless, the old loyalties continue to stick and appear to burn just as hot. I still wonder why.

    Karen’s theory is that we’re a bunch of primordial territorial animals and we like it that way. I think we just need to belong to something — it must fill some deep primitive need in man.

    So let’s just enjoy it. After all, there are wonderful things about the rivalry.

    For one thing, it really gets your blood boiling, which for many of us is about as much exercise as we ever get. It’s very democratic. There are no entrance requirements. If you want to join a political party and become a zealot, you’re not going to have to go through any membership committee. You just show up with your spear and you’re in. You immediately have new friends, and, even better, you have an entire set of enemies.

    Some lady called me anonymously to bitch about some nasty things I said about Tom DeLay. I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell her what pleasure it gives me to be able to grouse about Tom DeLay. I’m forever in his debt.

    I know that some people actually switch parties, but that’s just not for me. To me that would be the equivalent of squealing and going into the witness protection program. I’ll just stick to the old loyalties, even if it’s sometimes hard to remember why, and take pleasure in the little things, like being able to open the paper in the morning to cheer the good guys and hiss the bad guys.

    It’s really the cheapest entertainment we’ve got.