The Fantasy Years

WITH FOX NEWS ON THE AIR, all the bombast and intellect of people associated with Rush moved on to the television screen. Now people were no longer restricted to hearing the outrage in the voices of the hosts; now they could see the foreheads crinkle in expressions of dismay; they could see the eyes squint in daggers of accusation towards the liberals, the elites, the wishy-washy secular relativists, for any pencil-necked geek who found themselves under the hot glare of the studio lights.

The outrage was visible.

The spasms of outrage, vexing, refreshing, gripped Rush listeners, who spoiled for a fight, who spoiled for an opportunity to win.

“America was better in the 1940s!” a voice in Nevada claimed.
“Right, except not to the liberals with their relativist history,” agreed another.
“What could liberals hate about us beating the Nazis?
“You’re forgetting the Japanese.”
“We kicked their asses too!”
“No, the Japanese that were put in camps in America.”
“Oh, of course. How could I forget?”
“Right. And that makes America a bad country to liberals.”
“As if liberals back then cared about the Japanese in camps.”
“As if anyone in wartime can care about foreigners put in camps.”
“As if that’s a normal way of thinking.”
“I guess for the liberals it is.”

The liberals contorted in anguish hearing these arguments. They were driven wild by what they heard. But that was simply more proof to the Dittoheads everything they were saying was true. The rise of the conservatives was so consistent, across so many lines – on the radio, online, in ideas formulated and circulated, on Fox news – that the goalposts of reality themselves had shifted. Together the rhetoric and the rightwing media ratcheted the country rightward.

The liberals retreated from the debates, more sure now than ever, that like silly rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and the stars of Fox News could be dismissed. Liberals dismissed the right wing views, under pinned by reams of junk scholarship from right wing think tanks, as symptoms of the Dittoheads bad taste. After all, poor right wingers shopped at Wal-Mart. They were inclined to wear a shirt incorporating stars and stripes. They might put a flag sticker on their bumper, alongside a sticker showing Calvin pissing on a Ford or a Chevy. And the bumper might belong to a car parked at a wrestling match.

Anything of these things were symptoms. Symptoms of that part of American society that needn’t really ever be taken seriously. They were unserious people, living uninformed lives, consuming tasteless items. And so they weren’t to be dignified with a response to their endless accusations.

When that wasn’t enough, liberals could contend that politics didn’t matter anymore. As the liberals retreated and vacated the perennial arguments that make up the American political scene, the Dittoheads advanced.

Besides, the spectacle of TV and its explosion of cable choice made it easier for liberals to tune out all the right wing unpleasantness. The explosion in media had crowded out the space allotted in many Americans’ attention for real politics.
Of course, politics were there if you really wanted them. You could watch almost all of it happening on C-Span. Gavel-to-gavel congressional coverage, speeches, rallies, readings, symposia at think tanks. Everything that made up a political discourse.
But visually, men talking about policy could not compare with car chases and fiery explosions on TV. Men talking about policy could not compare with how the stars were dressing for Oscars Night. People talking about policy couldn’t even compare to the graphic-rich news.

Beside, Americans in 1996 were getting caught up in the possibilities of the economy just emerging then as a topic in and of itself. Jenny, Mike, Dennis, Brandon, Don and most everyone else could taste it. They knew wealth was just around the corner even if it wasn’t within their reach. The economy was heating up. The Internet would create a whole new industry of jobs.

That’s why Ben moved to New York, where he was having a bracer with his co-worker Walt. The economy sure was working for Ben. He’d just been granted 2,000 shares of stock at below market prices from the Internet start up he worked at. After a couple panicky, exhilarating weeks of job searching, New York had been a continual whirlwind party for Ben since he arrived in New York.
Tonight was no different.

He picked up the habit of calling drinks ‘bracers’ from Walt. And a bracer was a good swaggering word that matched Ben’s swaggering tone as he bragged to Walt about how in his last job back in Cleveland, he had given advice to the principal of the investment firm. He helped Mr. Towers understand part of prospectus on a dotcom. He left out the fact that after he told Mr. Towers the sentence made no sense, Mr. Towers invested in the company anyway. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the look of Ben talking confidently in a bar for the chicks to see.
Ben was on his second Glenmorangie and had hit the sublime point in the mind of 25-year old man in New York with his life ahead of him when the whole city, and within the whole city, the whole world felt possible.

The scotch was served in large, polished, bottom-heavy rocks glasses. The glasses rested on a scrubbed copper bar top. He and Walt had come to this place, the Gotham Lounge, after a small Friday afternoon party at Apexonline.com, where they both worked. Apexonline had celebrated it’s 5,000th registered customer, which meant the company was on track for 27 percent growth year over year, which meant…big things. It meant they were on the ground floor of something potentially massive.
Walt had worked at Apex for only a few months longer than Ben but he was from Connecticut so he knew the lay of the land. He knew New York, if for no other reason than his Christmas trips to the city as a child. Walt also knew which bars catered to the “bridges and tunnels” crowd and which didn’t. He was also taller.
These factors together impressed Ben and Ben was grateful to have a mentor with whom he could pursue the eternal quest: meeting chicks.

Ben had wanted to go to another bar tonight – McChesney’s – but Walt had assured him that the kind of people who went to McChesney thought Killians Red was a good beer. “The hicks!” Walt exclaimed. Instead, they came here, which boasted a fine selection of single malts.

And Walt was right. After his second Glenmorangie, Ben felt closer to where he wanted to be in life, in work, everything, although he couldn’t say exactly where he wanted to be. He was just closer. That’s all. If nothing else, he was no longer shut up in a room with a jerk of a co-worker in Cleveland. Now, he had a cool co-worker to hang out with in a cool city, where they went to cool bars. And not the bars where people drank Killian’s Red. This was closer to where Ben wanted to be. This was moving in the right direction.

And there were plenty of chicks at this bar too. Healthy, young, freshly graduated chicks, coming down from Bard, from BU, from Vassar, and all these other colleges that elicited in Ben images of impossibly East Coast, impossibly cardigan-clad and busty.
Another girl sat down next to Walt with her cluster of girlfriends.
“Watch this,” Walt said, positively reeking of confidence.

A girl brought a cigarette to her lips. Walt lit it. She glanced at him with irritation, puffed and said thanks. Then she turned back to her friends. Ben suppressed a laugh. Walt was obviously hoping for a warmed response.

“You get points for trying,” Ben said.
Walt laughed a blustery laugh. “Ah, look at her, ordering a margarita.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What is this? Some kind of South Florida, Jimmy Buffett, college house?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“People are what they consume. And that’s why I go for what’s best for me,” Walt explained. Walt was always explaining something to Ben. “Take this glass of Glenmorangie. The way the Scotch is served says a lot about the kind of place you’re in. And it says a lot about us that we chose to be here.”
“Indubitably,” Ben replied. “It says we like our Scotch served in a good solid highball glass.”
“And that’s the way it’s best enjoyed.”
“I say its best enjoyed in the company of a 3rd year student at Vassar.” Ben asked.
“Better a senior at Smith.”

“Of course, a Baruch graduate goes best with a single malt. Maybe a 12 year Balblair.”
“A Balblair. Of course,” Walt conceded, smiling at Ben’s ironic chitchat. And no men talking about policy anywhere in the world could compare to this entertainment, so pleasing to the senses, so full of possibilities. Walt returned to his faux world-weary talk about how you need to reinvent yourself constantly on the job “Because the online business is constantly reinventing itself.”

“I’m already on my second job there and it’s only been months since I was hired.”

“That’s good. Then they like you. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t let you innovate.”
“Glad they like me.”
“’Cause you gotta figure, none of us know where we’ll be in a few years time. Not even Jerry.” Jerry was the start up’s CEO.

A gorgeous young woman, tanned and voluptuous, with hair like combed gold, passed by, “I’d have her with Glenturret,” Walt said. “On the rocks, of course.”

Ben felt a bump on his side. He turned and saw the girl who had stepped up to the bar, facing stock forward. She was about his height. She blinked as Ben glanced at her.

Ben glanced back at Walt made a frantic ‘have at her’ gesture. Ben turned to her and said.

“So my friend and I were saying that every woman corresponds to a kind of single malt scotch. What do you think?”
She turned to him and smiled. “What?”

Tony Bennett’s brassy voice blasted from the sound system.

“My friend and I…Oh, never mind. What do you do?”
Her face lit up with her lipstick smile. The bartender took her order. And she asked again, amid the barking happy hour clamor, “I didn’t hear you. Can you say it again?”
“What do you do?”
“Student.”
“From here?”
“Boston.”
“Oh, yeah. Go to college there?”
“Sarah Lawrence.”
“Nice to meet you, Sarah.”
She burst out laughing. “I go to Sarah Lawrence College. My name is Megan.” And she looked as Irish-blooded, tan and as all-American and as healthy as they came.
“Sorry, it so loud in here.”
She peeled a ten out of her little wallet when the bartender put her gimlet down before her. Ben raised a hand to the bartender, pointing to her drink, “On my tab, please.”
Ben loved saying those words.
“Thanks,” she said, turning to Ben and raising the glass to her mouth to suck through the stirrer. “What’s your name?”

JENNY GRABBED HER LUNCH from the fridge—salad with tomatoes, carrot sticks, and one small bag of Fritos. Not Doritos like real fatsos eat. She started her car. She had to be at work at nine these mornings because with the boys in school, she was freed up to work eight hours a day. She and Rick needed the money.
The voice on the radio at this hour wasn’t Rush. It was someone else. He wasn’t as funny as Rush. But he talked a lot about Clinton and liberals, too.

Bill Clinton— She couldn’t shake that nasty thought of him.
Of giving him what he wanted. She couldn’t help but see him sidling up to her, reaching over to touch her, taking her arm. Maybe brush “something” from her face and using that as an excuse to kiss her.

Or maybe he’d have his secret service agents block her from leaving wherever it was that Clinton encountered her. She saw herself fleeing him, as if in a nightmare, and in every hallway stood a muscular man with an electronic ear piece. Without a single word.

Down the hallway, another secret service agent. In front of the elevator, another secret agent. Out in the parking lot, more secret service agents. Secret service agents everywhere, blocking every exit except one: the hotel room where Clinton waited. There the door hung open. Jenny could feel herself sliding toward that room, toward that man, towards his crotch, against her own will. As if on the deck of a tilting ship, she leaned against the direction she was being pulled but was pulled anyway. It was as if she was leaning against gravity. She could fight it, but Clinton was just waiting for her with the smile on his face. That kind of boyish smile that let him charm the American people. There he sat in the room, his coat thrown over the back of a chair.

“C’mon on Jenny. You know I won’t bite.”
She woke up, shuddering.
“What?” Rick whispered.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing. Just a bad dream.”

Ben hurried through the halls of Tower Investments wondering what birch forest had been hacked down to make it and how many more trees would have to fall before Mr. Towers’ pile of money was big enough? And then, as if coming to answer the question, Ben saw Mr. Towers. He swallowed dry air. Mr. Towers came toward Ben from down the hall.

Ben feigned ignorance of Mr. Towers as Mr. Towers did him. Ben pretended he didn’t notice him until they were abreast of each other. Ben knew how this worked. Like the eye game the snobs played in high school. They would only respect you if you snubbed them back. Mr. Tower’s footfalls thudded triumphantly forward, his attention absorbed in the Wall Street Journal held before him.

And then, just then, Mr. Tower’s gray eyes darted above the page. Ben moved to raise his head in a tense nod but before he could bring his head down Mr. Towers had already ducked back to the paper, then he swept past Ben to enter the suite of offices behind him.

WITH FREEDOM UNLEASHED, the Dittoheads could read whatever news source they liked and take every breathless word of it as gospel, whether it had anything to do with reality or not. They could take everything they were told at face value as long as they knew it wasn’t liberal. And they could dismiss every bit of news from the liberal media because it wasn’t told to them by Rush Limbaugh. And if the facts conflicted with their worldview, well, there was a term for that, too. The facts were “political correct.” And the Dittoheads weren’t buying them. Any of them:

“Rush is right about one thing: liberals get furious if you don’t agree with them” said a voice in Dallas.

“You should have seen my wife’s friend when I told her feminism was just a plot to allow ugly women access to mainstream society,” said another.

“You should have seen my nephew in college when I told him that Clinton killed someone.”

“Or my wife’s feminist friend when I told her abortion should be outlawed!”
“Or that Hillary is a dyke.”
“And that abortion should be illegal especially in cases of rape and incest!”
“And that Chelsea is ugly!” said a voice in Colorado.
“And Janet Reno is another lesbo!” from a voice in Maine.
“And Vince Foster did not die by his own hand!” a voice in Virginia exclaimed.
“But Clinton uses Secret Service agents like roadies!” said a voice in Georgia.
“And yet those liberals get mad when you tell them!”
“They can’t bear the truth!”

This was proof! The liberals’ response to these ideas was proof the liberals were wrong. And what did Rush fans get out of the liberals being wrong? What did they get out of digesting and regurgitating Rush’s all over anyone willing to listen? Fun.

They got to have fun because it was fun having opinions. It was fun for people to be experts about politics from information they got on the radio. It was particularly fun to know something, to believe something in a life that had gone pointless, in a wide open country that had grown fat and directionless, a country that had become unmoored and enemy-less.

“Welfare pays people to stay poor.”

“No it doesn’t!” the liberal voice in upstate, New York said.

“Welfare pays people to say poor. If it doesn’t then why are there still poor people?”

“What?”

“If liberals created welfare to supposedly help poor people because liberals are all-so-morally superior how come the poor never got richer?”

The liberal was stumped – silent with vexation — and the Dittohead smiled triumphantly. The fact that they had no comeback was proof that he was wrong.

So was the conversation in Center City, Philadelphia,
“Hate to break it to you, Clinton has no moral authority.”
“Not to you.”
“Here’s a man who had state troopers round up women he wanted to have sex with.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s in the press. Everyone knows it. But that’s how it is with your liberals: Everything is permissible.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. Liberals don’t believe in the rule of law.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Not these days. Not according to my sources. Liberals want to do whatever feels good. Hate to break it to you, that’s how liberals are.”

And the liberal, steaming with anger could only deny it. And denying it only proved to the Dittohead that what he believed of liberals was true because if it weren’t true, why would the liberal be so upset?

Liberals tore their hair out after these conversations. They beat their fists into their hands as they walked away. They gritted their teeth.

They shook their heads in vigorous disapproval but when they did, they were only talking to themselves because liberals had no mass form of entertainment to unify them with the same message. So their retorts came as dismissive waves and bitter hisses between individuals, in their own words, in the privacy of small groups.

Liking Rush Limbaugh was some kind of social disorder, they’d conclude, like people who wore camouflage in their daily life, or domestic abuse, or how hate crimes surged in times of high unemployment.

Like that Because beyond disparaging the Dittoheads in their totality, it was no fun for liberals to dwell on how the Dittoheads always had a readymade comeback for anything a liberal could say.

“People who listen to Rush Limbaugh don’t know what they’re saying… They’re angry, ill informed people…”

“You can’t have a serious political discussion with them,” and so they didn’t have to be taken seriously. Because they weren’t well enough informed to know what they were talking about. And so they weren’t to be dignified by being taken seriously.

Liberals, however, failed to note one detail of the Dittoheads in their hurry to dismiss them: Dittoheads voted. In high numbers.

Don certainly didn’t trust white liberals. He didn’t trust white moderates, either. He didn’t trust white moderate presidents, either. Oh, no. He didn’t trust the white senators or the white congressmen.

He didn’t trust the white Supreme Court judges or Clarence Thomas either. But then again, Don didn’t trust white bailiffs and white law school deans. He certainly didn’t trust policemen whether they were white or black. He didn’t trust the way they looked at him. He didn’t even trust the way they dressed these days.

Cops had always been threatening but they used to dress like they belonged on city streets, in parks, in the civilian world.

Don noticed that more and more cops dressed for combat. If cops were going to dress for confrontation, their most likely victims of excessive force, police brutality, wrongful arrest and misidentification should dress for the confrontation too.

Like the Black Panthers did.

Don’s Uncle Ken had been in the Black Panthers. He had a picture of his Uncle Ken when he was a Panther. That’s how the family story went. Uncle Ken had been a Black Panther back in the Sixties out in California, where he lived.

Don had seen the picture. Just the way they dressed struck fear into the hearts of white people. Stuck fear, like how those cops dressed for combat did today.

And what did white people fear in the Black Panthers? Probably that they wanted just what anyone else wanted in this racist society. They wanted to live. And they wanted their own dignity.

ANOTHER IDEA PROMOTED, ALTHOUGH NOT CREATED, by think tanks and talk radio bullies was that everything ever reported by the media was slanted. It was liberal. It was suspect. And tainted. And if the so-called news was only the opinion of a bunch of East Coast elites, then everything in the news was just their damn opinion, anyway. And if it’s just a matter of opinion, then Rush’s opinion, and people who liked Rush’s opinion, had just as good opinions as anyone in the liberal news.

With factual history broken down into a contest of who could yell the loudest, anything was rhetorically possible. Now, any fact could point to any conclusion. Republicans could believe the sky was green and no one could stop them. And once the foundations of a shared reality were swept away, those with the loudest voices got to have their way with history, too.

And a voice in Wisconsin, echoed the indignation: “Just like a liberal to complain about the fifties.”
“Oh, but those liberals sure loved the Sixties, didn’t they?”
“Everyone knows that the Sixties are when the company – I mean country — went bad.”
“Everyone but the liberals.”
“In their post-modernist, PC world, the Sixties are when things turned good.”
“For them, race riots are a positive thing.”
“For liberals, hippies swarming the Pentagon were good for America.”
“For liberals, children conceived in the mud of Woodstock are the ultimate concert souvenir.”
“Yes, to liberals, tripping your balls off on tabs of brown acid while sliding naked down mud paths in the rain is what we should do every weekend.”

THE VOICES RAGED! Egged on by the shrill boom of Rush Limbaugh’s righteousness, he and his imitators dominated the AM radio dial. His listeners, filled with his words, with his arguments, spoiled for a fight. And Maria, whose family had owned the local pizza for years, said to Ben: “Clinton goes around the country demanding blow-jobs from unsuspecting women.”

“Oh, come on!” Ben said, clutching his pizza box. He was no Clinton-defender. He wasn’t even “into” politics. But the idea Clinton went around the country demanding blowjobs was ridiculous.

“That’s what I heard,” Maria said. “Clinton goes around demanding blow jobs from women. He uses the Secret Service like a bunch of bouncers at a heavy metal concert.”

“Where did you hear this?”
“I have my sources.”
“Rush Limbaugh, huh?”
“Listen to how condescending you are.”
“Right wing radio hosts make stuff up, Maria.”

“So does the liberal media!” she said, vengeance blazing in her eyes. “The only difference is people like Rush and me don’t have fancy Ivy League degrees.”

“I don’t either.”
“So you’ll just have to forgive us regular people for not having the elite education.”

“I don’t have an Ivy League background, either.”
“You went to college.”
“Yeah but I—“

“Even if I don’t have a fancy college degree like you, I still have the right to free speech.”

“I’m not saying you don’t.”

“Oh, I hear you loud and clear. You’re saying toe the liberal media’s line or keep my mouth shut.”

“No, I’m not.” Ben said. Or am I? He wondered, stumbling slightly as he stepped out of the pizzashop’s door.

Sure, Ben reasoned, he’d been a liberal in college. Oh sure, Ben supposed in his heart of hearts he believed in what liberals supposedly believed in.

Justice, equality, freedom and all that stuff. But he’d just wanted to purchase his pizza in peace without being accused of being an elitist, especially because he’d just spent 8 hours in the company of the real elitists.

He turned the corner and headed back up to his apartment.

“Context”, Dennis decided. That was the word. “Context.” Dennis mumbled it and liked the impression it made on his ears. It made him sound, well, as if his readings in American military made him more intellectual. As if they weren’t just rehashings of Khe Sahn, and the Tet Offensive and Operation Linebacker II.

So it was context: that was what was missing between him and Huong. Context could bridge the impossible divide between his 290 lbs of angst and the mystery in Huong’s smile and her rich almond eyes.

People had nothing in common anymore.

They used to.

There was a time in America when a youngish man and a youngish woman would have been able to come together effortlessly at a dance. A time when a guy courted a girl and the conventions were understood. A time when a guy could show a girl his interest through manners.

Through chivalry. There were would have been a functioning society between them. Diverse and wholesome activities to engage in rather than going to country and western pick up bars, or worse, karaoke.

There would have been dances sponsored by clubs and churches. There would be county fairs. Many, many places to encounter each other. Naturally. Without strain. There was context; something we could agree on. Something we could all participate in. There would have been courting.

Whatever happened to an America where regular Americans like Dennis belonged? An America where if a guy liked a girl, he had a place and way to show her without making a fool of himself? It was the Sixties, he decided.

That’s when being cool became the decisive factor. There were cool types. And there were uncool types like himself. And who can you thank for the Sixties? Dennis thought.

The hippies. The fucking hippies and their shiftless offspring: the liberals. Those people broke American culture. There was a time when the country fit together like a big jigsaw puzzle. When everything made a kind of sense.

Now, nothing made a sense. And there wasn’t even one American culture anymore. Just a bunch of multi-cultural PC liberals and everyone else who’d been alienated by them. The PC liberals didn’t break the country into two. They broke it into a hundred different pieces.

Dennis had no idea what kind of life Huong lived. He couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t offend her with his assumptions. And if he couldn’t even take that chance what chance did he have with her?

Huong probably had a boyfriend already, anyway.

Yes, this country was really falling apart.

When a regular good-hearted guy like Dennis doesn’t approach a perfectly attractive and approachable girl like Huong for fear of being alienated for not being culturally PC, then the country really was on the skids, he decided.

Even if Dennis was fat, he meant well and would treat Huong like the princess she was. He knew he would. But he and she were locked in a world where they’d never get the chance for this to happen. They were locked in a PC, multi-cultural world where they never shared enough in common for their relationship to happen.

Thanks a lot liberals, Dennis thought. Thanks a lot, hippies for creating a world where people today can’t even relate to each other.

THE VOICES CATERWAULED AND WAILED across the American night because their listeners knew they were right. They knew they were right and winning was fun. And with a whoosht! Dennis said to Will:

“As if a white liberal should feel guilty about enjoying the Fifties!”
“Just because the South was segregated!” Will said.
“But liberals make a big show of their guilt!”
“They do it for effect!”
“They do it for votes!”
“They do it because it wouldn’t be PC not to!”
“They do it but it’s fake!”
“Because what kind of white people really feel guilty about how things were in the good old days?”

And up high, in a small room on the 16th floor of a high-rise over Cleveland the cheery, outraged voice boomed in miniature from Randy’s small radio. Ben recognized Rush’s voice. How could he not? That bright bluster of incredulity. He’d recognize the voice anywhere.

“What’s an investment firm, anyway?” Ben asked aloud.
“Huh?” Randy said.
“What’s an investment firm? I’ve worked here for months and I don’t even know what an investment firm actually does.”
“It’s a big pile of money,” Randy said, shrugging.
“A big pile of money.”
“Yeah, a big pile of money that people invest in. Mr. Towers and his partners take that money and invest it in companies.”
“Why don’t investors just invest in the companies themselves?”
“I dunno. Because they don’t know what Mr. Towers knows. He’s about to launch a venture capital fund.”
“Really?” Ben didn’t know what a capital venture fund was either.
“Mr. Towers and his partners must be doing something right. This is one of the best investment firms in the country.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“One of the top five.”
“So is this something I can put a couple hundred dollars in?”
Randy smiled. “This isn’t for a couple hundred dollars.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s for a couple millions dollars. Tower Investments owns whole companies.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. This isn’t a small time operation.”
“I guess not.”
“Look at an annual report.”

Ben stood up and lifted up his monitor, while Randy pulled one of the annual reports off the stack elevating Ben’s monitor. “Here.”

Ben took it and sat back down. As Rush ranted and railed through the Thursday afternoon, Ben inspected Tower Investment Partners LLP’s 1995 annual report.

He learned Mr. Towers and two other board members had gone to Yale. He learned the firm had invested over three million dollars in website companies alone, taking positions in what they envisioned to be “cornerstone players” in industries. There was the insurance company in Illinois. Regent Insurance. There was the 64 percent of a semiconductor chip company in Thailand.

After a few minutes of careful study, Ben learned he really didn’t care for this kind of thing.

“You see what kind of operation this is,” said Randy. “Mr. Towers even knows Warren Buffett.”

“Who’s that?”
“Only one of the richest men in the world.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So you can see why when they call they expect you to come running?”

“I guess so.” Ben flipped the pages. Randy was right about it not being a small time operation. $7.2 million for a company. $21.0 million for another. The firm was worth $6 billion in total? The numbers didn’t even seem real. Especially not compared to the $590 he paid in rent every month.

And because the numbers seemed unreal, they somehow didn’t impress him. The amounts belonged to another world. Ben couldn’t imagine what these guys talked about every day sitting on their pile of money.

He supposed they decided what to buy and what to sell and the rest of the day was just reading reports and watching interest add up. It was as if there was Tower Investments; the people who cared about what Tower Investments did; and then there was Ben.

Not only did Ben not care for the firm’s work, he didn’t even care for people who cared for it.

Everything was so battened down and hush-hushed and done behind closed doors, there was nothing to look at. Nothing to see.

“So you see how big these guys are?” Randy asked.

Ben nodded, feigning reverence. Really, he’d just concluded there was nothing for him at Tower Investments in the long run. Ben knew that his job here could never be anything more than the absence of unemployment to him. Randy watched Ben, apparently waiting for his exclamation of wonder.

Then the phone chirped.

Ben looked: it was Mr. Towers.

“I.T.” Ben said, “I.T!” once he’d gotten the phone to his mouth.
“Can you come over here right way, please?”
“Right away, Mr. Towers.”
Ben turned to leave.
“Take a mint,” Randy said.
“Why?”
“Mr. Towers hates to smell anyone’s breath.”

Don wasn’t sure who was worse: Rush Limbaugh or his callers. They were the same people who thought blacks should have stayed in their place. That’s what those callers had in common. He didn’t trust the white businesses that advertised on his program. They enabled guys like Limbaugh; they condoned him.

The owners of Gold Bond Medicated Itch Cream could forget ever winning Don Attwood’s business.

FANS OF RUSH LIMBAUGH knew their world. They knew what was going on. They had only to remind themselves how much better grounded they were, how much more realistic their understanding of things were. From the gritty details of a debate; to its lofty, abstract heights of principle:

“Oh, you haven’t heard about postmodernism?” asked a voice. “It’s what the liberals are teaching our kids today at college. Postmodernism is like relativism.”
“And relativism says there are no absolutes.”
“Postmodernism says meanings change depending on how you look at things,” came a voice in Nevada.
“It’s like political correctness on crack.”
“Except instead of renaming things they’re re-interpreting things.”
“And instead of re-interpreting, they’re reinventing.”
“And instead of reinventing, they use it to justify anything.”

And on the radio, the voices commiserated in bombastic exaggeration:

“And now these liberals want to rewrite American history and say the fifties weren’t happy days just because of segregation.”
“What is it with these revisionists? The fifties were happy days even if there was segregation.”
“The fifties were the Good Old Days!” said a voice in New Jersey.
“If you ask anyone who lived then, they’ll tell you the fifties were the Good Old Days,” said another voice Arkansas.
“But not Hilary,” said another.
“Oh, no. Not the liberals.”
“Of course not. Hilary said the Fifties weren’t the good old days in her book.”
“Even if she did enjoy them!”
“Of course she enjoyed the Fifties! She just can’t admit it.”
“As if any of the white liberals didn’t enjoy the Fifties,” said a voice in Kansas.
“They all did. But white liberals can’t admit it. It wouldn’t be PC,” said another.
“They want us all to feel bad.”
“Because America went to sock hops!”
“And America had just saved the free world!”
“And drive-ins were popular!”
“And Elvis was big!”
“But to the liberals, this was somehow bad.”

Don knew all about the fifties. He knew all about how things used to be by law for people his skin color. And it amazed him how quickly white people went from lynching black people to appropriating their style. Starting with Elvis. No, starting with Chet Baker. No starting with all white jazz players in the 1930s…down to today. So Don didn’t trust white rappers. Don didn’t trust white actors. Don didn’t trust white women who liked to be seen with black men when it suited their public image. He didn’t even particularly like a lot of the white movie stars. Except Kim Basinger. He liked Kim Basinger okay, whatever happened to her.

The thoughts and suspicions uncoiled through Don’s mind as he drove along a highway, heading west out of Missouri, staring out over his steering wheel at the dark promise of the American night.
Don’s job delivering and installing parts for washing and dry-cleaning machines took him further and further from St. Louis. Not just to Illinois but also to Kentucky and Arkansas. He had the parts and toolbox in the back of his car. Like everything else in his life, it just kind of evolved this way.

One day he was running an errand for the owners of Stern Laundry Parts. Months later, he was making appointments with dry cleaning shops to come and fix their equipment.

At least, he got to drive a company car. A Taurus. And he got plenty of time on his own, which he liked. And he made decent money and didn’t have to worry about anything much, expect for possibly being pulled over.

Of course, being a young black man, the cops would probably be extra chickenshit with him. It made Don wonder briefly if he needed a license to cross a state line to do business. Didn’t intrastate commerce fall under the Federal Trade Commission?

Mike sneezed, sniffed, then wiped his nose with a handkerchief, and caught a glance of himself in the glass door before pulling it open handily. Not bad, he thought, then took the first step into the office building that could be the first step to his new life.

His yellow shirt was obviously starched and pressed. His jeans were clean. He wore polished boots and a Parker pen in his breast pocket- not a Bic like the chumps used at work. He glanced at the legend on the wall, with office locations. Pro-Work Solutions Suite 1-120. Mike ambled down the hall until he found the door.

Inside, after introducing himself to the college girl at the front desk, she asked him to fill out the form on the clipboard which she handed to him and to attach his resume to it.

“I don’t have a resume,” he said, fudging.
“That’s okay. Just fill out the forms. And we’ll need to see your driver’s license and your social security card.”

Mike took the clipboard and took a seat among the row of chairs surrounding the empty waiting area. One other person was waiting. A young girl. Pretty too. But she looked like she’d been captured and shoved into a business casual suit. A shame, thought Mike, flashing her the sheepish smile all job-seekers everywhere have.

She smiled and went back to shuffling the resumes in her binder.
Mike was taking the plunge. If he was going to get out of delivery driving all together, he’d have to get his foot in the door somewhere. His father-in-law suggested a temp-to-perm place. Twenty minutes later, after Mike filled out the forms and turned in his ID cards, the door opened and a young woman called for him.

“Hi Mike. I’m Vicky.”

As they passed in to the back of the office, she asked, “Oh, is there a resume with this?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t bring one,” he said and for the next ten minutes as he explained every class of truck he had ever driven all he could think were variations of the thought: resume? oh how could I have forgotten, I can’t believe I forgot one but I never knew to bring one until the interview ended and the woman, Vicky, said she’d keep an eye out for jobs for him and he knew that was a damn lie.

Vicky walked with him to the front office and handed his file back to the receptionist. There was a different receptionist now. More people waited for interviews now. And there was another person behind the receptionists’ desk. A young man. Mike instinctively pitied the guy. He had big, white teeth, red hair and a gawky expression to him. No doubt from college too.

“Can you file Mr. Hurtfield’s application?” Vicky asked the young man.

“Sure,” he said.

Vicky shook hands firmly with Mike, giving him a smile. Then she turned back to go inside. Mike headed toward the door.

“Oh, sir.” The young man said.

Mike stopped and turned around.

“I don’t see your resume here.”

From Iraq War veteran Jon Soltz in the Huffington Post, Sept. 27, 2007

As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are “phony soldiers.” I’d love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell that to me to my face.

Where to begin?

First, in what universe is a guy who never served even close to being qualified to judge those who have worn the uniform? Rush Limbaugh has never worn a uniform in his life — not even one at Mickey D’s — and somehow he’s got the moral standing to pass judgment on the men and women who risked their lives for this nation, and his right to blather smears on the airwaves?

Second, maybe Rush doesn’t much care, but the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq, and those who have returned, do not back the President’s failed policy. If you go to our “Did You Get the Memo” page at VoteVets.org, there’s a good collection of stories, polls, and surveys, which all show American’s troops believe we are on the wrong track, not the right one, in Iraq.

Does Rush believe, then, that the majority of the US Armed Forces are “phony?”

Third, the polls and stories don’t even take into account the former brass who commanded in Iraq, who are incredibly critical of the Bush administration, and it’s steadfast refusal to listen to those commanders on the ground who have sent up warning after warning. Major Generals John Batiste and Paul Eaton left the military and joined VoteVets.org for that very reason.

Does Rush believe that highly decorated Major Generals are “phony soldiers?”

Finally, as Media Matters notes, just recently, members of the 82nd Airborne in Iraq wrote a New York Times op-ed, very critical of the course in Iraq, and suggesting it was time to figure out the exit strategy. Two of them just died. Will Rush call up their grieving parents and tell them that they should stop crying, because they were just “phony soldiers?”

Get the point here, Rush?

You weren’t just flat out wrong, you offended a majority of those of us who actually had the courage to go to Iraq and serve, while you sat back in your nice studio, coming up with crap like this.

My challenge to you, then, is to have me on the show and say all of this again, right to the face of someone who served in Iraq. I’ll come on any day, any time. Not only will I once again explain why your comments were so wrong, but I will completely school you on why your refusal to seek a way out of Iraq is only aiding al Qaeda and crippling American security.

Ball’s in your court.

FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, the more they spoke of freedom, the more they were estranged by it. Every job Mike worked gave him less independence. Instead of leaving one city and arriving in another hauling his load, bringing it in by a deadline set by his company, and choosing his route and managing his time and budgeting his stops and putting some of his own wits into the task, Mike now had to account for gaps between his deliveries to kid almost half his age.

Now, Mike had to return to the warehouse with his manifest, hand it to the dispatcher – always some college kid, almost always with a goatee, it seemed. Never a gray hair in it.

Mike would take a half step backward, shuffle a little while the slick college kid would ask aloud, “An hour between the Red Lobster and the Bennigans on MacArthur?” And Mike would have to look at him and explain himself like a kind of schoolchild: “There was a traffic jam on the access road.”

“Oh, well. Okay. I just wanted to know,” the kid would finally say. For Mike, the issue wasn’t the kid’s doubt; everyone knew Mike was honest in his work. For Mike, it was the fact the kid even asked the question.

Mike just wanted a decent-paying job where he didn’t have to answer to some snot-nosed college educated kid who wants to talk about “delivery efficiencies.” Mike’s dad supported a family of five working in sheet metal for 20 years. But that kind of life was out of Mike’s reach. That kind of life seemed to belong to the time of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Gerald Ford. The kind of easy American life belonged to blurry snapshots of people in bellbottoms and pork chop sideburns.

A term Mike heard on the radio helped him put his employment outlook in context. His job situation, like so many other problems of modern life, was his “own personal responsibility.”

Rush Limbaugh repeated the phrase about personal responsibility constantly.

The think tanks ringing Capitol Hill peppered their reports with it.

The pundits groomed in chairs funded by rightwing foundations repeated it. And who didn’t like “personal responsibility”?

A lack of personal responsibility conjured images of stew bums drinking their way through a perfectly good life until they hit the curb.

A lack of personal responsibility beckoned thoughts of homeless people. A lack of personal responsibility plagued drug addicts and single mothers, people who blamed others for their predicament. For people who wanted handouts.

A lack of personal responsibility was for welfare queens, for hobos, for crackheads, for bra-less prostitutes wandering sun-baked oil-stained parking lots dotted with trash. A lack of personal responsibility was for the defiant knuckle heads handcuffed and spitting at the camera from the backseats of a police car on the TV show Cops. A lack of personal responsibility was for liberal economists who thought the state should pay everyone just to be a citizen.

And so the phrase “personal responsibility” helped the American people understand their place in society, in the world. The notion of “personal responsibility” helped Jenny wake in the morning to face the nearly insurmountable difficulties of working full time, while raising two boys and managing her family’s volatile finances.

Jakob and Joshua were five now.

Each blonder of hair, lankier of leg, louder of mouth.

The awesome responsibility for their care became clearer the bigger they grew. Jenny returned to work full time now that Jakob and Joshua could go to preschool.

It was a sense of personal responsibility that spurred Jenny to take the initiative and manage her 401(k), a task with which she was empowered with “choice.” So at the end of the day, Jenny opened up the handful of literature, the prospectuses 60 pages long of 4 point type printed on onion skin paper. And she did her best.

And it was frustrating. But Jenny made her under informed choices in the market just as any fund manager in Wall Street made decisions about stocks to invest in. Just as any asset manager made decisions. The only difference being that Jenny tried to fit in the task in a few hours every six months or a year, had no pervious experience in the matter and confessed she didn’t really know what she was doing.

The asset manager on the other hand acquired more market information on his forty minute train ride from Glenmont to Grand Central than Jenny ever would. He knew the nature of investments in nuanced and granular detail. He was a sponge for market data, absorbing data that could help him enjoy strong profits yearly.

And there was a term describing this system too: “the free market.”

And who, in America didn’t like freedom? The talk radio hosts wanted to know. Who? And so as with “personal responsibility” it was with “freedom.” And in Scottsboro, Alabama, one tow truck driver to another:

“I’m not too politically correct to say it. Welfare encourages poverty.”
“Welfare is a threat to freedom.”
“Welfare creates poverty.”
“And the Democrats need poverty to stay in power.”
“But we’re going to change that.”
“We’re going to fix welfare once and for all.”

Rush huffed. Rush puffed. His audience squealed. They frolicked at the feet of his awesome rhetorical power, lobbing softballs questions via call-ins. How shall we think of today’s topic? They asked. How shall we approach the events in the news today? Calls were screened for dissenters and Rush never had to face a true ideological foe who could stump him. Rush, instead, armed his listeners with the arguments to use in their discussions in their own lives. Rush only had to get up in front of the mike and riff for three hours, and the Dittoheads would put his genius to use on their own. And so, in Garden City, New Jersey.

“I’m not too PC to say it. Welfare keeps minorities down.”
“Nonsense.”
“It pays the poor to have children.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sure it does. LBJ signed it into law.”
“So?”
“LBJ was racist. I heard tapes of him on the radio.”
“How?”
“He used the n-word constantly. Who uses the n-word without being a racist?”
“But…”
“JFK didn’t use the n-word.”
“So?”
“So LBJ was a racist and welfare was his racist plan to keep poor minorities down so they’ll vote Democrat. Only a PC liberal like you can’t see it.”

Rush crooned. He raged. But surely just the fact that Rush crooned and raged to his listeners didn’t mean his listeners parroted everything he said. Surely, there had to be something in it for them. There had to be something in it for the sheet metal worker in Sheboygan who winced in disgust, threw up his hands and said to a buddy: “The PC thought-police are ruining the country! Just look at OJ!”

“Look at him!” his buddy said.
“Here’s a guy who murders his ex-wife and people are talking like he should get off!”
“Because he’s black.”
“Because it wouldn’t be PC for him to be found guilty—which he is.”
“This is how the PC culture is ruining our society. A murderer going free!”
“Oh, but you forget: to liberals it’s not guilt, it’s just being ‘justice-challenged.’”

BRANDON COULDN’T HAVE CARED less about the flustered, jovial voice on the radio at this moment. At this moment, Brandon was going through something much bigger and more real than anything Rush Limbaugh could say. Brandon was just at the point on his drive to work in his new Toyota when he really got going fast. Just at the point when the conversation on the radio seemed to carry him along. He was at the point in his routine of work, school, and his busy life when he felt like its momentum achieved a kind of flight. He turned off his radio to listen to the silence. He wanted to think for a moment about what carried him along.

How quickly he’d escaped the rut that had been his life in high school and afterward. Carolyn helped him. He knew she did. Yet somehow, in his darkest, drunkenest, most lost moments, he always knew there would be a Carolyn. How does life work that way? He wondered. What was that sense inside him? The inward knowledge. Unspeakable. Unknowable. But just there. Waiting.

It wasn’t just a matter of not hanging out with Shane and the other guys. He still hung out with them. He still drank beer on the weekends. Sometimes he missed the laziness of just sitting around, jamming to the music, drinking beer and getting high. He missed it. Yet he knew now why he didn’t live like that.

The life he lived now, the clear life he had lived these past months, had been waiting for him. It was waiting for him all along if only he wanted to reach for it. The whole glittering excellent experience of this moment, of the things he enjoyed so clearly now…It had been waiting for him all along.

Brandon could take joy now in regular living. In the here and now. The feeling of closing up the store at the end of the night: all the cash drawers counted and accounted for. Everything in its place. Weekends with Carolyn strolling around the mall. She’d ask for his opinion of a blouse or pants she bought and just waiting to see her emerge from the changing room drove him crazy with restlessness. He’d be dying to get to the record store. Yet, the look on her face when she bought something she liked. How it pleased her. How it pleased him.

An experience was as simple as that. Just like him driving in his car, feeling like he did now. Looking out past the business parks and the shopping centers on the road to the Blockbuster. Looking out across the land. Seeing the sky up above, shades of white on blue. The sun humming behind the clouds, turning their edges a glowing white. The birds keeping pace with his car only to turn away suddenly for an invisible reason.

What was the feeling? The great sense of connection Brandon hadn’t known since he was so young. What was it? He wondered. Then he turned the corner into the parking lot where the Blockbuster’s back office was and started thinking about the work day ahead of him.

“They say if they don’t acquit O.J. Los Angeles will riot again,” crabbed a voice.
“If they don’t acquit him, black people will be furious,” said another in Iowa.
“That’s like acquitting Charles Manson because his conviction would offend short people,” said someone in Virginia.
“Like acquitting Marion Berry because a conviction would offend drug users,” said a voice in Pennsylvania.
“Like acquitting William Kennedy Smith because his conviction would offend Democrats,” replied another.
“Like acquitting Ted Bundy because it would offend preppies.”
“Like acquitting the Killer Clown because it would offend clowns.”
“You see how far the politically correct, thought-police have gone.”
“They’re undermining our justice.”
“They’re destroying our culture.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s maddening.”

The rising, opening feeling continued for Brandon the next morning. He couldn’t describe the feeling, if asked—the reaching out inside him. The widening, yawning happiness. It wasn’t just life with Carolyn. She was part of it. Definitely. But the feeling exceeded her. The feeling colored everything he saw: the orderly streets of 3-2 ranch-style homes, the jumble of roadside signage, the vast ribbons of highways and on-ramps, blackened by exhaust and still warm at this early morning hour from yesterday’s sun.

Talk radio voices yammered on his newly installed Bose speakers. Yet, Brandon didn’t hear the talk as he drove to class at community college. He thought about the indescribable happiness. The joy. The sense of a glimmering, shimmering life set before him and Carolyn and now the baby she would have.

He turned the volume down. He’d get used to the quiet soon enough, he realized, imagining a baby in a baby seat in his car. Brandon thought of his own father and a bolt of worry stopped his joy: He would be a better father than his dad. He would be a better father, because he wasn’t going to divorce Carolyn. He wasn’t going to be a parttime parent. He’d be a good dad. Brandon wasn’t going to divorce Carolyn because they weren’t married. Yet.

And he wondered if they should be married? Carolyn wanted to be married. She never said it in so many words. But he knew she wanted to be. Brandon didn’t want anyone to be able to call his son a “bastard,” either. Of course they’d get married. Of course they would. He just needed to tell her.

Brandon just didn’t want to make the mistakes his father made. He wouldn’t allow himself to. Outside the car, the morning clouds rolled across the horizon, in billowing empires of pink and peach riding through the rich morning blue. He took a sip of his coffee. There was no where else he’d rather be at this moment. Something eternal braced him, calming his mind, and his heart. But how did he know he’d be a good father?

Another kind of joy lit up the Dittoheads on one November morning.

“You heard the news?” a gleeful voice in Maine asked.
“I heard the news on the radio driving in to work,” said another.
“So you heard the news this morning?” a voice in North Carolina.
“The American people have spoken,” replied another.
“They have spoken.”
“The biggest single mid-term gain for forty years.”
“It’s like Reagan in 1980.”
“Like a modern New Deal.”
“Like a New Deal from the Republicans.”
“Because the New Deal was like socialism.”
“But the Contract with America will be like Freedom”
“Newt Gingrich will be like a FDR.”
“And the Contract with America will be like our answer to the so-called Great Society.”
“Because the Great Society was like Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward.”
“And the Great Leap Forward? That was a big leap backward for China.”
“Just like how Hilary’s book on healthcare is like the Little Red Book. Even its cover was red.”

The joy was real. It was victory. The underdogs had triumphed over the corrupt overlords of Congress. Now a Republican majority, respecting the wishes of the American people, would cut a righteous path for the world to see.