Month: September 2010

This week the staff of a Democrat, incumbent Congressman Tom Perriello of Virginia, called his Republican opponent a carpetbagger. So the Republican National Campaign Committee got the home addresses of several staffers working for Democrat Perriello.

Republicans were hot to demonstrate that the Democrat was disloyal to his district, hiring workers who lived in other areas. Sometimes any campaign issue will do, and turnabout being fair play, Republicans published the names of half a dozen workers, all living outside the district. One of them was Perriello’s chief of staff. Republicans said the he should fire them all.

It all reminded me of a small town I once did some business in. I made a few friends, but there was a reserve that bordered on iciness from some others. One new friend explained it with a story of local parochialism. He had once voiced a mild disagreement on some minor matter during a group discussion. It was not a sharp rebuke, rather an on-the-other-hand sort of comment. “Oh, that’s right,” said a woman in the group. “You’re not from around here.” He had lived in the community all his life, but she was using her “you” in the plural. She meant that his family had not been multi-generational residents.

So last week, Republicans published the names of those half a dozen staff members. They. Added. Their. Exact. Home. Addresses. As in HOME.

This is not the first experience this Congressman has had with home addresses. Last year, some enterprising Republican published the Congressman’s home address and urged conservatives to “drop by” and pay their respects. Well, it was almost his address. Seems there was a mistake and the address was wrong. It was actually that of the Congressman’s brother. One person who dropped by the brother’s home in the dead of night did not ring the bell, but rather cut the gas line leading to the house.

This sort of address publishing thing has become a pattern. Remember Congressman Mark Foley, who hit the headlines in 2006, after making suggestive advances on young Congressional pages? Conservative bloggers were outraged, but not all of them were angry at the Congressman. One published the names and home addresses of the minors who were the objects of the Congressman’s desires. Seems they were guilty of tattling. Major conservative sites then linked to the article containing the addresses.

The following year a couple of small children in Maryland became living examples of what government assisted health care could do. The little kids had been in a serious car accident. One of them would almost certainly have died of brain injuries had not medical care been available under a government program. Conservatives got angry. They not only published the address of the kids, but included driving directions to their door.

This new approach may seem harsh. But the well being of staff members, the privacy of the young objects of Congressional urges, and the safety of injured little kids must not stand in the way of conservative principles.

It must have been a fearful journey. It was a time in which women were commonly viewed as property, to be given over from father to husband. The young Marie, my grandmother, had been promised in marriage to a man she did not love. So she fled her native Ukraine and came to America. I do not know whether she entered by way of Ellis Island. It was a common port of entry. It seems likely that she would have been among those processed by overworked officials of varying degrees of sympathy for newcomers.

The social networking that went on in those days is unclear to me. She somehow got word that the man to whom she had been promised was on his way to find her, claim her, and take her back to the Ukraine. One story my momma told me illustrates the terror a new land must hold for new immigrants. After being in her new land for a few months, Marie became lost in New York City. She spoke no English. In the country she had fled, authorities were always to be feared, and she did not know what reaction there would be in America to a woman fleeing the man who owned her. She avoided the police. She confronted the confusion of the streets alone.

Her stay in New York was one of watchful waiting, looking for some sign of the man who was searching for his escaped bride. Eventually, she packed up and continued her odyssey, journeying up the Hudson River and then westward, finally settling between Syracuse and Rochester. She met a man, fell in love, and married.

I never knew my grandfather. He died when my mother was a young child, I have the impression her memories of him were vague. He served in the Polish army at some point. My mother was the youngest of several sisters born of that marriage. It was an insular existence. My mother did not speak English until she was old enough to go to school. My grandmother never knew any language than that of her own upbringing. My mother translated.

The arguments for English-only policies would have applied to my grandmother, although people of her origin are not the targets. Anti-immigrant sentiment of today would not have been aimed at her either. Those who argue against citizenship for children born here do not have my mother in mind. But my grandmother’s ethnicity, and that of my mother, was very much an issue in their community when my parents were married. My momma was eventually accepted by his family, but the thin residue of ethnic separateness was always present.

Eastern Europeans, with their strange language, their strange names, and their stranger Catholic religion, were not an easy fit in the community of my birth. Nativism has a long tradition in this country, although the targets shift over time. Today, bigotry is directed against those of Latin descent. It is most distinctive, for me, among those who hate illegal immigration because the undocumented cut ahead, not following the rules. When those same enforcers of immigration etiquette also push to restrict legal immigration, I suspect the niceties of waiting in line are not their real concern.

Michael Medved was once a movie critic with a reputation for stretching pretty far to preach conservative political commentary in his reviews. I saw Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood, on cable. It was a bit of a downer, I thought. I later came across a Michael Medved review that I had missed. It should have contained a spoiler alert. He didn’t like what he saw as a right-to-life violation in the movie, so he gave away the ending. He later explained, “there are competing moral demands that come into the job of a movie critic. We have a moral and fairness obligation to not spoil movies. On the other hand, our primary moral obligation is to tell the truth.”

It’s hard to find Medved’s review on line anymore, so I’m going by memory here. I recall his summary of the theme as having the title character, Hilary Swank, needing to prove her self-worth by boxing. It supported Medved’s attack, though not his giving away the ending. But there was another problem. It lacked the virtue of truth. I remember trying to recall anything in the movie that would suggest such a thing.

And that is a serious drawback to political passion. The temptation to veer away from truth is a powerful one. Lately, Medved has been a frequent victim. Driving to the office a few weeks ago, I listened to an interview with Medved concerning the Islamic Cultural non-Mosque in Manhattan.

The point of the Cultural Center was, in part, to put a thumb in the eye of terrorists. This show of American unity was to be a rebuke to the bigotry of Islamic extremists, a demonstration that American Muslims not only pointed an accusing finger at bin Laden, but were supported by mainstream America. Conservatives and liberals joined in supporting them, until American bigots parroted al Qaeda bigots. Medved chuckled at the controversy. It would be so simple to solve, he said. Just move the center a few more blocks away than the 12 block distance now planned. Opposition would vanish.

Then Medved had another chuckle at the self-contradiction of President Obama, who questioned the wisdom of the planners, but who had originally said, according to Medved, “Opponents of the mosque (sic) want to take away religious freedom.” Medved added “No we don’t.” Strangely, Obama neither questioned the wisdom of planners of the center, nor characterized opponents in any way. Medved was simply not telling the truth.

Medved is sincere in his conservative beliefs. He argues that those who see American slavery as historical evil exaggerate. His reasoning is that slavery was unfortunate, but not that bad. More recently, he says if God voted, the ballot would be for Republicans only. His reasoning there is that conservative evangelists have invested more study in God’s word, so they should know best. They tend to support Republicans, so there you have it. Liberals sympathize with the poor while biblical law supports equal treatment of both.

Biblical scholars, friends as they are of Michael Medved, may forever debate the unusual ethic that conservative politics demands. The Ten Commandments are important and people should hold to them. Except the one about false witness. It’s always okay to lie in service to the Lord.