Saturday, June 07, 2008

Reality Check

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," weighing the world in the balance and finding it wanting since Kennedy was assassinated! That's a long time.

Today, as Hilary Clinton was giving her historic speech conceding to Barak Obama and offering her support, I was in Camden, New Jersey with my daughter The Heir.

It is 96 degrees outside. The kind of day when even Decibel the Parrot gets two hose-downs.

The Heir had a face-painting gig at Camden's minor league ballpark. The gig started at 2:00 and the game wasn't scheduled to begin until 5:00, so imagine my surprise to find every parking lot crammed with white people, many waving Rebel flags and all drinking prodigiously.

I had to drop The Heir off at the ballpark and drive around until I could convince an official to let me park in the players' lot just for an hour.

In the course of my driving around Camden (which, at last census, probably reported less than 10 percent Caucasian residents), I saw that every tourist parking lot was similarly packed to the gills with imported people. And every lot sported those flags, the ones with the stars and bars.

Did I say that it's almost 100 degrees here today?

The official at the ballpark told me that the event I was witnessing was a massive tailgate party in anticipation of a big country music concert this evening. As I scurried into the ballpark, I saw one inebriated person relieving himself onto the sidewalk and another barfing on same.

It was 2:00 in the afternoon. A bit on the sultry side.

So I waited while The Heir did her face-painting, which was unrelated to the country music show. And then we got in the car and tried to start home. But there seemed to be many differences of opinion developing between the attendees of the country music show and the mostly minority police force of Camden. It took us awhile to skirt the madness.

The temperature had perhaps climbed to 102 by that time.

I'm trying to picture the people in that parking lot voting for Barak Obama. Or for Hilary Clinton, for that matter.

My camera must be out of film, because I'm just not seeing this segment of society as being one bit happy about an educated brown man, and probably an equally or more educated white woman, running America.

Ready for some more Republican? Four more years.

3 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

i want the heir to paint my face..i can't think of a better reason to go to new jersey...did i tell you that one of my friends daughter named her son camden after camden new jersey?...now don't ask me why czech girl from west, texas would want to name her kid after a city in new jersey...but she did...

Alex Pendragon said...

Why do you think I got the hell out of Mississippi as soon as I was able? I wanted to see what a civilized country looked like.

I haven't been back there since.

Big Tex said...

Wow, sounds like you imported both our weather AND our rednecks for the weekend. :-( Fortunately, the ones who are that stupid are also the ones most likely to stay home and not vote. Personally, I'm more worried about Obama getting shot by one of these yahoos before the election, than I am of him losing the election.