Loungin’ with Mitt: just sayin’! (Red Emma)

RED EMMA

Dog on roof

     Good day today. Woke up rested, if too early. Still, four a.m. offers its muted charms: the sound of the irrigation going off, purr of the fridge, the comforting glow of the security light. Drank coffee. Played with the new cat, Boo Radley. He’s ferocious. He thinks. Graded a set of student papers. Read a chapter of the new biography of Madame Modjeska. She was a superstar once. The olive trees planted by her husband surround our home in this canyon. Reviewed notes for a difficult grievance at the salt mine. Baked donuts for the sleepers downstairs. Made coffee, etc., again, this time for wife and small child, both pretty darn happy about the donuts when I roused them, warm and sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. Drove lovely boy and his friend to school, saw Santa Catalina Island across the channel. Some day I will fly over there. Not today.
     Then, the best part: heard Mitt Romney say on KPFK that he doesn’t much like President Obama and “his friends in the faculty lounge.” Only 8:30 a.m. and this puts Red Emma in a very good place indeed, adding to the layer-cake of emotion, now with chocolate frosting on top: helping students, reading history, fighting for labor justice, baking, appreciating So Cal beauty and listening to community radio. But the quote does, indeed, take the you-know-what. My day is made. I have my theme. The brass ring is already in the bag. My superPAC has sent a check.
     No, you don’t need to be political linguist George Lakoff to get, enjoy and keep enjoying this one. Subtle it ain’t. “Friends” is bad (good) enough, as Obama and his ilk couldn’t have real, genuine friends. But “lounge.” Perfect!
     You can see them, those so-called teachers, sitting in the lounge when they should be working with students, those bums. There they are in the lounge, doing aerobics to Jane Fonda videos, rereading Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, listening to old Reverend Jeremiah Wright sermons, praying to the graven images of Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Albert Einstein, Samuel Gompers and César Chávez. Thinking of yet more ways to make our children homosexuals.

Thinking of yet more ways to make our children homosexuals.

     Just one word, really. “Lounge.” Yup, the old Mittster could have said “classroom” instead but that of course would have made the entire rhetorical exercise red meat-free and honest and, well, substantive and therefore pointless.
     Funny, sure. The Right never picks on the weaknesses of its opponents. They always go for our strengths. That teachers have a lounge, a place to go and collaborate on pedagogy, drink coffee, grade papers, call parents, get a break from the classroom for fifteen minutes and drink more coffee is a good thing. So are food stamps and unemployment insurance and work safety laws.
     Mitt doesn’t want a teachers’ lounge? He doesn’t like teachers? He doesn’t want to be our friends? Nope.
     I am confident that somebody who works for media other than Pacifica will get right on this. The odious Juan Williams, a tragic figure of American journalism if ever there was one, at least had the nerve to ask Newt Gingrich about his totally racist South Carolina pandering. Who at the networks will call Mitt on lazy teachers?
     Will look for the story tomorrow morning, early.