"Relax, there are dick jokes on the way."
- Bill Hicks
Well, it looks as if Kerry is gaining steam and Dean is sinking yet lower.
But thank Buddha we don't have to look at Lieberman
anymore. And
Edwards won one for the resume. Yeah, buddy.
But Kucinich is still the one.
He caught my eye with his "Prayer For America"
speech in California during
the dark days after 9-11 when American flags
sprouted miraculously from
every '78 Dodge in town. What courage it took
to speak out at such a time.
I put out a little sign on our fire hydrant on
our corner each morning as I began
my paper route and the sign got torn down every
time. I know from whence I speak.
There are lots of folks like him who shouted out
against Bush and country
music and idiots in general, and to them we owe
quite a bit. There were
about three black women in Congress, whose names
I don't know, who were
among the most brave, and websites like Bartcop
and Lori Price at CLG
and truthout.com, Michael Moore and a host of
other writers, local activists and
the lot. You know who they are. They know who
they are. Nobody else has
knows them from the dentist.
And yup, we had them caucuses here in Iowa. You
remember Iowa, right?
I didn't go. I had to work.
And besides, I'm really from Nebraska. We don't much give a shit in Nebraska.
My wife went. She has a real job during the day,
so she went by her ownself
and was the Kucinich faction in the English room
at the high school.
She had met Kucinich a few months ago in Sioux
City at a meeting at the library.
He walked right up to her as if he was there
just to see her.
She liked that. Me, too.
Actually, there is a rule somewhere that I invented,
or maybe I saw it on
"Survivor", that says if you run for Congress
as a Democrat in northwest
Iowa you never-ever have to ever have anything
to do again with politics or
stupid people or the Democratic Party. Unless
you want to. Some day. So
I have immunity as long as I care to use it.
Ruth and I have both carried Kucinich bumper stickers
on our cars since back
in the summer. That's not much, but it's something,
especially in northwest Iowa,
one of the most arid conservative deserts on
the face of the Earth.
The Dutch culture has a strangle-hold on the region:
bushel baskets of
Reformed churches with American flags circling
the altar and city blocks
filled with tulips. The tulips actually are pretty
cool.
Howard Dean is also good and would suffice. I
was so focused on Kucinich
that I didn't pay attention to Dean until I heard
him speaking from New Hampshire
on C-span. I told Ruth that I had never heard
such truth come from the mouths of
Democrats as I was hearing then. "I wish they
would have had something here,"
I said. She rolled her eyes.
Kucinich is Jesus kicking up dust on the road,
walking nine miles to speak to six
or eight people, eating locusts dipped in vegetarian
lasagna along the way. With
Tom Brokaw saying those eight loaves are not
enough to make him a serious
candidate, while never actually having read the
Sermon in California.
But Kerry is a fich ruck who looks like maybe
he just wants to get along, a
la Clinton, and might likely end up disappointing
many hillsides of multitudes
who deserve much better.
Dean speaks like a real person, strong, brave.
He would be a great president.
Kerry is an insurance salesman. You could hear
him talk for four days and never
know what he is really thinking. That's on purpose.
Kerry looks like a giant, liberal, afghan hound.
He chooses his words and his
steps carefully. I would rather have someone
who wasn't afraid to stumble.
And this "band of brothers" b.s. is already wearing
thin. "Patriotism is defined
as never forgetting those who wore the uniform."
That's what Kerry said.
Well, I'll tell ya. I went to prison for my public
service and I never-ever hear
my band of convicts called patriots ... by anybody.
Where's our freaking booze
hall and annual speaking engagement at the high
school, huh?
If I have to listen to that for four years, I'm
not sure it's worth walking across the
street to the middle school to kick George Bush's
ass, if on the way back home
we're going to have to start fighting Kerry.
Patriotism is going to Vietnam to kill the yellow
man? No, it's not. And it's not
going to Iraq, or Panama, or any of those other
Republican business junkets on the books.
It's just not.
Patriotism is fighting for the good, for the right,
especially under tight circumstances,
such as Kucinich telling the truth during the
dark days, when Kerry was nowhere in sight.
Vote for a general? Right.
Anybody But Bush. That's what the Democratic Leadership
Central Committee
Circle Council or whatever it's called is chanting.
Well, okay, Bush is bad and anyone would be better,
even a giant Boston
afghan hound, but why not have a real car this
time, Dad? A new one. One you
won't have to fix right away; instead of always
buying a used one, because
it's all we could afford?
Why just settle? Why not get the real deal? The genuine.
Kucinich is the one.
He's right and he's strong and he would offer such a contrast to Bush that people would vote.
Even me.
- Mike Palecek
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Mike Palecek lives in northwest Iowa with his
family. He is an author.
You can see his work at www.iowapeace.com.