This column, for those who haven’t figured it out, exists primarily to ask the question, “What’s wrong with people?” This week’s news gets us no closer to an answer—it just provides more opportunities for the question.
In presidential campaign news, it was disclosed last week that John Edwards regularly pays $400 for a haircut. No, excuse me—his campaign committee pays $400 a pop for his haircuts, meaning he has to report the expense to the Federal Election Commission so the whole world can read about it. Which raises a more pointed question: How stupid can a person be and still be permitted to roam in public?
Following Mr. Edwards’s example, I am hereby disclosing that my haircuts cost approximately 13 cents each, based on the amortized cost of a disposable twin-blade razor. Which one of us would you trust with the federal budget?
The report also disclosed that Mr. Edwards’s committee paid $225 for services provided to the candidate at the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, whose website describes the business as “a unique boutique for the mind, body, and face.”
Back up. “The Pink Sapphire.” He actually entered an establishment with that name. Do we need to know anything more?
Moving on—the following curiosity appeared recently in the on-line edition of the Reno Gazette-Journal: “Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will hold a town hall meeting in Reno on Sunday, April 29th. Time and place of the meeting has not been decided yet, said her spokesperson, Hilarie Grey.”
I’m going to give the hapless writer a break here and disregard the grammar malfunction. Today, there are bigger issues.
Specifically, Senator Clinton is holding a “town hall meeting,” but the location of the meeting has not been decided yet. Hmh. Well, here’s a suggestion: if you’re going to have a “town hall meeting,” have it at the freakin’ town hall!
This was not an isolated incident of town hall abuse. In the Concord Monitor last week, I read about Senator Clinton’s comments “at a town hall event in Manchester.”
Ahem. Let me explain something. It is not possible to have a town hall event in Manchester. Manchester does not have a town hall. This is because Manchester is not a town—it is a city. Thus, the event in Manchester must have been a city hall event.
Except it wasn’t. It turns out that the event was held at a high school. If Senator Clinton holds her “town hall events” at the local high school, I wonder where she holds her high school events.
The junior senator from New York, however, is not the only offender. In yesterday’s Monitor, I read about Senator Barack Obama’s appearance at a “New Hampshire town hall meeting.” It was held not at a town hall, but “at a senior center in Nashua,” which, incidentally, is also a city, not a town.
Here’s the thing, people. If you want to have a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, it is really very easy to find an actual town hall. There are 221 of them in the state, along with 13 city halls.
Okay, maybe I’m being picayune. Let’s focus on substance. During his “town hall meeting,” Senator Obama expressed sympathy for a woman whose nephew was being deployed to Iraq. He commented that he could only imagine how she felt, “as a father and as a parent.” So the senator is a father and a parent? I guess that’s reassuring on some level.
These people are running for president.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always had a quaint idea that the president of the United States ought to be at least as smart as I am. I suppose you might wonder how I could cling to such an idea after the events of the last six years. True, it has not inspired confidence to have a president who doesn’t know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland. (If you think that’s just glib hyperbole, try entering the following words in a Google search: Bush Sweden Switzerland Lantos. Read the first few hits, then tell me how safe you feel.) And the Obama goof admittedly is not in the same class as “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” or “I talk to families who die.” The point, however, is that it’s not clear that we’re going to turn the corner in 2008.
Feeling disillusioned with the Democratic candidates, I returned home one day to find a message on my answering machine from “David, with the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign.” David was calling to tell me that Mr. Giuliani was having a town hall meeting—in Henniker! My town! And it actually is a town, with a real town hall. Hope sprang.
Curiously, however, as a Henniker selectmen, I had no memory of any request to use the town hall for such an event. I listened for an explanation, and I got it: “. . . at the Simon Center at New England College.” A stone’s throw from the real town hall, and they still couldn’t find the place. God help us.
I’m waiting for Mr. Edwards’s next trip to New Hampshire. Maybe he’ll book the Pink Sapphire for a town hall meeting.
