Common

I couldn’t help it. I found myself drawn to the clips of Sarah Palin’s Fox ‘debut’ just like I can’t stop myself from looking at a car accident. Something so incredulous, I forget for a few seconds the awfulness.

Whatever. Sarah Palin is obviously not my flavor. I don’t understand WHY she ever became anything, much less lasted. But here I am talking about her. Blech. But… that’s not my thought today. It was something she said. Something she always says. That what the liberal elite says does not reflect the common man. She does.

So, what? I’m not common? Well, mostly I strive to avoid that adjective subscribed to my person. But not so that it makes me a separate species of human.

My grandfather worked in a steel mill. Actually, both of them did. One was the son of Swedish immigrants (whom I joke with my Dad were the riff raff of Worcester a half century ago), the other was the son of a divorced mother and a lothario. Both went to church every Sunday and had a house full of children. They weren’t liberal elites. But, okay, that was three generations past. I must have mutated or something. Right? Well, I was raised in a small town. Very small. My sixth grade class had 15 kids in it, only 4 were girls. We had lots of cows and trees. We had a library, a post office, a country store, and a liquor store. Not much else. But I moved to the city… and yeah… got educated. Is that what changed me?

My politics are different from a good part of the country. Maybe we can blame residence in England for that. I actually found their health care to be all right, not to mention the transportation and theater. Hey, socialism has its bennies. But that sympathy makes me… different? It blinds me to the truth that Fox News and Sarah Palin are giving us out of the goodness of their hearts? Yeah, no. I don’t think so.

I know a lot of stuff. I do. I know enough to know that what I know isn’t enough to understand ANYthing. I like to learn about history mostly. And for a long time, I liked to learn about the elites. You know? Queens and kings and their triumphs. Really fascinating stuff. But then… I spent over a decade working in museums where I learned all this history. Where I got paid crap to be treated like the hired help. And then I started to wonder about the help… the common people, with whom I felt an increasing affinity.

I am drawn to their stories. All the time. In the every day. Not the common Joe the Plumber who thinks he’s like everyone else because he complains about government taking his taxes to pay for his roads, his police protection, his national security, his kids’ schools. No, the common man who never gets a voice. Not on Fox News. Not on ABC. Sometimes there is a documentary on one of those snooty public television stations. But mostly, we don’t really think about it. Not the immigrants who blasted under the ground to make our subways. Not the poor inner city kids who got shipped off to Verdun or Iwo Jima or Saigon in a cry to preserve Democracy. Not the women who did the laundry over boiling kettles of lye. Not the families who trekked across the country and died to make a journey we can make in a day. Not the workers who make our WalMart purchases so cheap. Not the people who cut our perfect green lawns. Not the people who still don’t have a home in New Orleans. Five years later. When we moan and groan about how the liberals just don’t get it… what am I not getting? Really. What do I not see about hardship, work for little pay, and the commonality? What about voting for Obama is supposed to draw the blinds on my awareness of others and sever me from the fact that just like all those people, I breathe. I love. I cry. I hurt. I want more money. I want a better world. I get angry. I feel stupid. I learn. I… care. I really do.