by sheila morris
Hillary Clinton is trying to crack the ultimate Glass Ceiling by becoming the most powerful woman on earth as President of the United States.
This afternoon our neighbor across the street was replacing their roof with a new one, and one of the hard-working roofers was a woman.
You go, girls.
Happy Halloween to all our friends in cyberspace – this was a surprise pumpkin left on our front porch by two very creative Hillary and Halloween supporters, Kati and Sheila Go ( as opposed to Sheila Slo). Thanks to them for the fun – our candle will be glowing for our trick-or-treaters tonight!
8 days to Election – what can I say except relief is on the way.
Okay. So raise your small hands (or medium or large ones) if you’ve never even heard of the Al Smith dinner until last night.
Aha. I see those hands, as the Southern Baptist revival preachers used to say from the pulpit during the altar call or “invitation” as we called it back then when we sat on the small wooden pews with the large ceiling fans moving too slowly to stir the air in the Texas summer heat – even in a church as tiny as ours was in the 1950s. The revival preacher would be hotter than a two-dollar pistol when he was preaching about the fire and brimstone hell would bring to all sinners who refused to repent that very night – who knew if you would make it until the next night of the week-long revival…
“Bow your heads. Close your eyes, and pray,” he would say as he grabbed for the white handkerchief in his suit pocket to wipe the sweat dripping from his forehead to the tip of his nose. “Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, just raise your hand if you know you are a sinner bound for hell unless you get right with God tonight. That’s it. Just slip that hand on up right where you are without anyone looking. Yes, I see that hand.”
And so did I.
Because of course, I had to look. My head was bowed, but my eyes were not closed. I confess I wanted to know who was going to hell. I wanted to make sure all the people I loved weren’t raising their hands and I was always particularly focused on one of my uncles who was suspect.
Last night’s Al Smith Catholic Charities dinner also ended with a prayer, but it was a benediction – not an altar call. The Al Smith fundraiser takes place every four years during the political campaign season and gives the two presidential candidates an opportunity to meet on neutral ground breaking bread together and sharing a few jokes to make fun of themselves in front of a thousand people who paid $6 million dollars to hear them. You know, jokes, as in funny hahaha or lol if you prefer.
Unfortunately, this year’s Al Smith dinner was the night after the final presidential debate which was the conclusion of three such meetings that were all notorious for the brutal exchanges between the two candidates. Mean, mean and not a dancing machine between them. But here they were having dinner at a long table with only a Catholic Cardinal between them. I pitied Cardinal Dolan. He tried so hard to divide his conversation evenly between the two of them that his head was actually spinning and his little red cap fell off. Uh, oh. Bad sign.
The candidates both proved they weren’t comedians but did get a few laughs – and a few boos. It’s really difficult to be booed at the Al Smith dinner, but DT didn’t get the memo about the event being just for fun and engaged in inappropriate behavior and mean-spirited attacks against Secretary Clinton that provoked loud boos. Imagine that. Rudy Giuliani didn’t get the memo to smile when he was on camera. Tsk. Tsk. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.
I have a really good friend named Donna who didn’t see the dinner on TV last night but woke up this morning to the clips that showed the jokes that were more insults than funny haha and she texted me that she was so disgusted with the campaign she was going to shut down her Facebook and TV altogether until the election is over…maybe forever.
I totally get that. But here’s the thing. We are now less than three weeks away from November 8th. We are in the home stretch. This will end for almost everyone on election day so don’t throw up your hands whatever size they are now because I will be looking to see if you have stayed focused and voted.
That’s right – even in cyberspace I will keep my eyes open to make you heed the altar call to vote.
P.S. My dog Charly is unaffected by the political turmoil of this campaign season – I hope your weekend is as laid back as hers.
I wonder. If we are truly “family” then we are like many families – highly dysfunctional.
The older I get the less I value the opinions other people have of me including my height and weight, my politics, my white hair, my house with the Tara columns, my old truck and car, my dog that jumps the fence on a regular basis which annoys me so I know it must annoy my neighbors, my sexual orientation, my “falling away” from the church, my obsession with the tennis majors and sports in general…so if you don’t like any of these traits, perceived foibles or inherited genetics well, to quote Rhett Butler, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. At seventy years of age I’m not hopeful for makeovers in any of these areas.
Family, on the other hand, is a core value with me. You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, can you? My family is what I started with, and my family will be what I end up with – if I have anything to say on the subject. So whatever attack you have up your sleeve, please don’t disrespect my family. I know I have cousins who aren’t what we hoped they’d be, but they’re my cousins after all and perhaps I’m not what they hoped I’d be, either. But hey, don’t disrespect my cousins in front of me.
The same feelings go with my country. I don’t know how I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, but I was and am proud of it. Being an American is another core value for me – democracy is a fundamental principle that I cherish and every year or two or four I watch as the election process unfolds and shake my head or nod it at the conclusion of the campaign seasons when the results are announced. That’s that until the next time. Case closed. You win some. You lose some.
Here’s the thing. Don’t disrespect democracy – not in front of me, not now, not ever. Don’t sneer at what makes our country great right this minute – free elections with a smooth transition of power. Is the process absolutely 100% guaranteed to not have any flaws at all? Not a chance. But is the process and outcome a cornerstone of our family values as a free nation? You better believe it.
Some of us were born into the American family, some of us made a conscious choice to join our American family – but ALL of us believe that we wake up every morning in a free country where no one is about to form a military coup to pick our next President, don’t we?
So we are a dysfunctional family these days and this election season has been “nasty.” But make no mistake – our f-a-m-i-l-y is what we honor as Americans – it’s what we will vote to protect, preserve and defend on November 08th.
Seriously.
The most recent polling of my personal state of mind reveals a slight shift from 52% Negative and 48% Positive to 52% Positive and 48% Negative. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek asks what are readily identifiable factors that have led to this impressive 4-point swing? The answer is the Daily Double, or the Daily Doubling Down: I voted. My depression is slightly improved without an increase in my anti-depressant medication.
I feel like a great burden has been lifted from my scrambled brain that has been trying for the past two years to sift facts from fiction at debates in the bruising endless primaries and now bipartisan presidential debates. Is it my imagination or are the debates really longer with just two candidates onstage than they were with a gazillion candidates vying for attention. Whatever. For the most part, the candidates have been unresponsive to the moderators’ questions, and the moderators have been unresponsive to their unresponsiveness. The single most consistent feeling I have after I watch a debate is that I would have been a better moderator. I’m just saying.
But guess what?
What?
I don’t even need to watch the final debate tomorrow because I already voted. Yep. One of the perks of being older than dirt is the right to vote absentee and I jumped all over that yesterday. Me and my 1.5 million early voting friends, that is.
Today’s buzz words for the campaigns according to the political talking heads are Doubling Down. Whatever a candidate advocates that will solidify her/his voter base (those voters who will vote for you regardless of any mention of sex, lies, emails or videotapes), now is the time to pull out all the stops, say whatever motivates your base the most and make sure your peeps vote. For example, comment on the “rigged system” of voting in general. This is Doubling Down – a populist candidate appealing to supporters who already feel like political outsiders – by attempting to suggest the voting process itself is fundamentally flawed. Oops – flawed unless you win, of course.
I pity the Undecideds because they will, no doubt, be watching tomorrow night’s debates with the same “wishy- washyness” they’ve been watching all of the previous ones. They’ll still be hanging onto the sounds and images of every political TV commercial between now and November 08th. hoping and praying for that moment of inspiration, that pearl of wisdom which will finally push them into someone’s camp. But not me. I already voted. I can mute those suckers and the divisiveness they perpetrate.
No really, seriously. I voted.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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