Thursday, June 25, 2009

Oh, You Take the High Road

And I’ll take the low road. I am sure everyone has read all sorts of juicy bits about Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor and proponent of “moral legitimacy,” as his life unravels before our very eyes. I know all the good easy jokes have already been made, but that won’t stop me from attempting to fling a little mud at this fine state’s most upright citizen. Let’s recap, shall we?

Last week, someone noticed our governor was missing and decided to ask a few questions. It’s nice to know the governor of a state can go missing for five days before anyone even realizes it or cares, but then again, this is not an election year, nor is this his first term, so no one was really paying that much attention. They checked with his wife, who claimed to not know his whereabouts. Over Father’s Day weekend. His lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, no stranger himself to bad publicity courtesy of his enjoyment of fast cars (if not fast women) and crashing airplanes, had no idea where he was. His staff thought he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail and unable to be reached by cell phone. No one was a hundred percent sure where he was, exactly, until all of a sudden, the mystery snowballed into the usual media farce. The next thing we know, a state car is found at the Atlanta airport, and novice CNN reporters are peeping in the windows to tell us Sanford left a pair of sneakers on the front seat.

Well, it turns out he wasn’t “hiking” after all, unless that is a new code word. He was in Argentina, trying to end an extramarital affair that his wife has known about for months. He wasn’t home for Father’s Day for a good reason; Jenny Sanford kicked him out (and she knew where he was, which I suppose makes her a liar too). Poor Mark comes home to a face full of microphones, and he is forced to do the morally legitimate thing to do when someone is caught making a very personal and private mistake: he stages a press conference. (I have to admit I didn’t see the whole thing, but I did see enough to bounce up and down on the sofa cushion and clap my hands delightedly.) He stands before his state, his peers, and God, and confesses how he spent five days “crying” in Argentina with his “dear, dear friend” cum lover, with whom he has met on and off and shared a rather sappy email relationship. He cried some more for the cameras, so we all know he meant it when he said he cried, because, see, he is still crying. Anyone feel sorry for him yet? He then went on to do more of the right thing, since he is so moral and all, and resigned as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association, which leaves room for some other pillar of the community to step forward until he too will have to step down amid a tawdry scandal.

So now we wait, like spiders, to see how much further he will fall. He has yet to step down, and the legislature has yet to impale his head on a spike, but it’s coming, as it should. Because, really, his marital transgressions are not the issue here. Sure, it’s great to see a man who fought so hard for Bill Clinton’s impeachment on the grounds of lying about a blow job get caught not being a very good liar himself. Freaking great! And as long as he didn’t use the money of the good taxpaying citizens of this state to fund his little affair, then really, it’s between him and his wife, what does or does not take place in the bedroom. But to be the highest office of the state and not tell anyone where you are for a week, not place anyone in charge in your absence, and to lie to your own staff about your whereabouts, well, that’s just plain irresponsible. If we can’t trust him to do the right thing when it comes to doing the wrong thing, when can we trust him? Jesus, any moron can watch a few episodes of “Cheaters” on the CW channel and learn what not to do. I thought he was smarter than that, and I think he’s an idiot. And you always leave the babysitter a note, because you never know.

Keep in mind this is South Carolina. Even the democrats run as republicans here. We like to debate things like the confederate flag and whether having a Christian license plate is constitutional. And oh yeah, guess who is a big fan of that idea? We pride ourselves on being more judgmental than other states, with that whole free lovin’, if nobody gets hurt attitude. Who better to judge Mark Sanford than his own constituency? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Fuck that! Mark Sanford was the first one without sin, up until yesterday’s press conference. I say: start stockpiling your rocks now, folks! Why should we stand by our man? He has fought long and hard to sabotage the federal stimulus money as South Carolina (State motto: we’re not Mississippi!) prepared to lay off more teachers and cut more education programs while faced with some of the country’s highest drop- out and illiteracy rates. He grandstanded (or is it grand stood?) against unemployment benefit assistance because he didn’t like the dudes running the Employment Security Commission, right before Christmas during a recession, no less, while millions of the state’s unemployed worried about how to pay their rent, let alone a gift or two at Wal-Mart. He was too busy worrying about his position in the next presidential election to concern himself with the office to which he was most recently elected, and turned his fiscally conservative back on the very people who voted for him.

That must have been some fine Argentinean pussy. I hope it was worth it.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Map Quest with Local Flavor

Driving home from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is much like driving home from anywhere; it’s more about the getting home, and a lot less about the drive. In my mind, I divide the drive into thirds, which might not be entirely accurate, but it works for me to break the monotony. There is the first third, from the beach to the Florence area, the middle third, which is Florence to Columbia, and the last third, Columbia to Greenville. The middle and last parts are typical interstate roadways, complete with heavy truck traffic and the occasional slow down due to an overzealous local sheriff or a Buick going the speed limit in the passing lane. That first leg, though, is where the action is. It consists of four lane highways through small towns, the names of which don’t register until you see it painted on a cop car or incorporated in the name of the local high school. They are all numbered roads, but I have been driving it for so many years, I don't even know the numbers anymore, which isn't so great when I have to actually tell one of my friends how to get to the beach. Still, it is the leg of the drive I prefer to do, because the possibilities are endless.

Leaving the beach means going first through Conway, a sleepy town with what I hear is a beautiful downtown area. But the road bypasses downtown, so instead it is the usual assortment of fast food places and run down strip malls. I have to be careful on this stretch, because it is the bottle neck of the drive, with all the RV’s and motor boats going in the same direction before the small roads split into even smaller ones as vacationers head off for different paths, up through North Carolina or continuing west to the interstate.

Next is Aynor, which is the perfect name for a redneck town. Just say it out loud and you will see what I mean. Aynor is nothing to write home about, except perhaps to ask Mom or Dad for money to cover the speeding ticket you most likely will receive there. The road goes from 60 miles to 45 to 35 in the span of one city block, and they mean 35, by golly. My husband got a ticket there once, back when we were in college, from a Boss Hogg type of cop who actually said to him, “How old ARE you, son?”

After Aynor, towns are less clearly defined by name. But there are definite landmarks along the way. I pass Galivant’s Ferry, which from the road looks to be more of a trading post and less of a community, with its lone church, gas station, and barn colored general store. It looks like the kind of place where you could pick up some calico cloth, a sack of coffee or flour, and maybe a couple of slaves rather than a Slim Jim. Off the main road, you can see the oak lined drives to the plantation houses of years gone by. The properties must somehow back up to the river, and I get the feeling if I look over the bridge I will see more than one Tom and Huck like pair poling down the waterway. It doesn’t look like there has been much gallivanting around these parts in well over a hundred years.

Along the way, I pass Sparky’s, one of those neon signed stops which keeps growing larger and more obnoxious by the years. I have never stopped there, but I am fascinated by the items they advertise outside their establishment. Minnetonka moccasins, fireworks, pecan logs. Sounds like a hot night at the trailer park to me. And it must be, because the parking lot is always packed.

I try to determine the road kill on the next stretch of road, until we approach one of my favorite bits of local color. At a fork in the road is the BoBo Spa, an Oriental European spa, housed in a nondescript white building no bigger than a small house. There are no triple XXX’s or posters about to tantalize. The sign speaks for itself; relaxing oriental European massage is all you need to know. What I like about it is in the opposite direction, not less than a mile away is the charred remains of the WaWa Spa, which burned down a number of years ago. It, in its heyday, was a more prosperous Oriental European spa, with a main house and smaller cabin sized outbuildings. I like to think it was arson from its rival gang facility, as those oriental European masseuses are a tough bunch.

Before I get to the main turnoff towards the interstate, I pass the empty remains of a couple of textile plants, their parking lots and grounds overrun with weeds behind the chain link fences that surround them. These plants make me sad, much in the same way that passing fields of crops other than tobaccy make me sad. They are the death of that town, those plants, no longer manufacturing anything. Up the road from them is a state of the art pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, all cool glass and modern design. It is a strange juxtaposition, especially when you consider that the people who worked at the defunct textile plants are probably not even qualified to sweep the floors at the new place.

A couple more Wendy’s, a gas station or two, and I hit I-95. The first leg is done. I drive on a bit further until it is time for my husband to take over, so I can slump in the passenger seat and snooze. All the good bits are done, and the rest is just road.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Hey, You Impolite Lady!

Spelling is a lost art. A simple switching of two letters, or adding one where it shouldn’t be, can make all the difference in the meaning of the word. Here’s a little story to illustrate the point:

My daughter E wrote a report in class last week about Marco Polo. She had to describe how he dressed, and so she wrote about how he wore furs and, oh, I don’t know, puffy shirts and knickers or something. I am not up on the fashion scene of the 1200’s. Anyway, instead of writing “wore” to say he wore puffy shirts and knickers, she wrote “whore.” An innocent enough mistake at the age of nine, especially for a kid who is very fond of H’s.

Her teacher brought back the report to her after she finished reviewing it so my daughter could make corrections. And she told E that the word she wrote, “whore,” was a bad word and she needed to change the spelling. E, who, courtesy of another kid in her class, is well versed in George Carlin’s list of dirty words, but whore was a new one to her. So she asked her teacher what it meant. (Really, the story could end there if you knew the teacher. I’ll give you the brief version. She is a spinster woman from the northern part of Sri Lanka, and she is about my daughter’s height. And she blinks a lot.) Her teacher thought for a moment and said, “It is not a nice word. It is an impolite lady.”

E told me about her wore/whore mistake over dinner, and I snorted over the impolite lady bit.

“Well, it means a bit more than an impolite lady,” I said to E.
“What does it mean, then?” she asked me.
“You remember when we talked about sex?” I asked her. Yes, we have had that conversation, and it is a story for another day.
“Yes.” E looked at me with the big eyes.
“Well, sometimes, when a man isn’t married, he might still want to have sex. And a whore, she is a woman who, um, the man pays her money to have sex with her.” E thought about that for a moment. “It’s not a very nice thing to call someone,” I told her, “And there are a couple of other words for the same thing. One of them is prostitute. Or a slut. Have you ever heard those words?”
“Nope, but I have now,” E answered.

It was a banner day. Not only did she learn she was a lousy speller from her teacher, but then she came home and learned a couple more swear words from me. I am so glad I am arming her for the day when she uses them against me. Why worry about what bad words she will learn at school when I can teach them to her myself? I gave homeschooling a whole new meaning.