Friday, January 13, 2012

In This Corner!

Ok, let me take the gloves off. The kid gloves that is...

Let me tell you what irks me about Willard Romney.

He is an oblivious man of privilege.

Full disclosure: I guess, to some extent, I am one too.

He is a rich man's son. So am I. Even though we had very little money growing up, my father came from money which was all lost in the Great Depression. But my father sacrificed to give me that life.

Romney went to prep school and so did I.

Romney spent time in France and speaks French. Both true for me.

I suppose this gives me some "cred" to talk about it. Much like a reformed alcoholic or junkie. "Been there, done that" sort of thing.

It is the agregation of his pedigree and cultural background that makes him unfit for the presidency.

David Brooks writes a wonderfully insightful piece in today's New York Times about the relative qualifications for being a successful president.

Romney possesses none of them, with exception of his aristocratic lineage. He claims to have been a successful businessman. But it seems as though he made his money by destroying the lives of many, many people.

By that measure, he is more of the class of historical figures we have come to loathe. They don't need to be named. We know who they are.

I went to school with men like Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, for that matter.

These were little boys who had everything but could do nothing. When they got into trouble their fathers swooped in and "fixed" the situation. Sometimes with only a phone call but sometimes by endowing a building or giving an outsized donation.

I will never forget auditioning for the school rock band in 1965. The band's drummer had a full set of brand new, gray pearl Ludwigs, the best at the time, just like Ringo's and the envy of every drummer at school.

The problem was that he couldn't play his way out of a paper bag. He was terrible.
A nice guy but a truly rotten drummer.

I, on the other hand, could play. I only had a used snare drum and a hub cab for a cymbal but I had a natural talent. And it didn't hurt that I could play the complicated (at that time...simple by today's standards) rythyms of Dino Danelli, the incredible drummer for The Rascals. I could play "Good Lovin'" just like the record. OMG!!

So an audition was arranged, in secret, and I was to use the other kid's drums. I aced the session and they summarily fired the kid and hired me.

I had to go out and get some drums and in a hurry. My father took me to Goldie's Music Store on Chapel Street in New Haven and I bought, with a loan, a gold sparkle bass drum, a ride cymbal, a bass mounted tom-tom and a red Ludwig, starter, bass drum pedal.

I was so cool now that I thought I'd burst from the excitement. The guys in the band traded some gear to get me a high-hat and a blue pearl floor tom and I was set.

Rock and roll! It took me about 10 years to repay my father the $183.00 I had borrowed. But he didn't care. I was his son and I was happy playing my drums. He was a wonderful man and I still, and always will, miss him.

Anyway...the point of this digression, however poignant, was to illustrate the fact that boys of money become men of money and a lack of intrinsic talent accompanies them for their entire lives.

And they can't possibly relate to the "common" man. It's just not something they can do.

Neither George W. Bush nor Willard Mitt Romney can ever know what it's like to be poor or disadvantaged or to only have a hub cap for a cymbal.

They make speeches about "The American People" but are not of that order. They are citizens of a different world populated by wealth and blond, blue eyed women and yachts and summer homes and prep school and expensive drum kits.

And in the case of "W", they send other people's children to die in far away wars just to preserve the "American Way of Life." (please don't irritate me with the Texas Air National Guard crap...we know what the truth is there even if Dan Rather had to lose his career over it...)

But not to preserve the average American's lifestyle. No. Not "The Average Joe's Way of Life."

It is to preserve capitalism at it's Bain/Enron/Goldman best.

Mark Knopfler had it right.

"Money for nothin'..."

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