Mugger: THE ROMNEY CURSE
Once the Republican convention has adjourned in early September, after the obligatory if rarely sincere clasping of hands of all the primary candidates, Mitt Romney will fast become a political footnote. Its unlikely hell campaign vigorously for John McCain in the fall, given the animosity between the two men, and if the Arizona senator defies the odds in this Democratic year and wins the presidency there will be no room for Romney in his administration. Yes, its possible that the 60-year-old former governor could deplete more of his family fortune in another race four years hence against a President Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but thats probably not in the cards.
I never much cared for Romney to begin withalthough one can always be thankful he gave Teddy Kennedy a brief scare in his 1994 Massachusetts senate bidmostly because he shamelessly pandered to social conservatives, reversing many of the moderate positions he previously articulated in public life. When he ran against Kennedy, Romney was a centrist, pro-choice Republican: During the last couple of years in preparation for his presidential campaign, he explained his new anti-abortion stance by saying that his views had evolved. Please. One can accept and understand a younger person evolving on such a gut-level issue, but absent a religious conversion, for which Romney had no need, its inconceivable that a middle-aged, intelligent man would reach an opposite conclusion on something so basic as abortion.
Nevertheless, theres one aspect of Romneys personal makeupand on this hes apparently never swervedthat I found refreshing: the man never swears. This certainly isnt a moral judgment, since my own vocabulary and speech is fully stocked with the usual words that arent allowed in a family newspaper (but are in the post-William Shawn New Yorker). Its simply a curiosity, probably because politicians are often among the most foul-mouthed public figures, whether its George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, John McCain, John Kerry, Dick Cheney, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson or Harry Trumanin relatively modern timeswho are caught off-guard by revelations of expletive-enhanced opinions.
Its unusual today to find many Americans whose speech is uncompromised by the lazy use of words such as fuck, shit, asshole or bitch when the same meaning could be conveyed without them. I grew up in a (not especially religious) household where swearing was unheard of, at least in family banter. The only time I ever heard my mother breach that linguistic threshold was during the last year of her life when, tuckered out and in pain from chemotherapy, she admitted that she felt like shit.
As for my father, perhaps it was his puritanical New England upbringing, but he never crossed the line, employing Romney-like euphemisms such as nuts, gosh, darn it and holy mackerel to express the same thought. One time, as a second-grader, I said, God, I hope it snows tomorrow so theres no school, and I was met with a stern rebuke from my parents, who scolded me for taking the Lords name in vain. That was a bit confusing, since they didnt go to churchmy father worked on Sundays and my mother didnt want to miss Meet the Pressbut I toed the line.
In fact, I clearly remember the first time a curse passed my lips. I was a sophomore in high school, and while walking home from a Huntington High School dance, I tentatively used the word motherfucker in a conversation with my buddy Howie, who thought nothing of it. In retrospect, this was a little weird, since Id been smoking pot and cigarettes for more than a year, had tried mescaline and LSD, yet hadnt made the less-risky leap to swearing.
My four brothers split into two camps on the obscenity issue, with the two oldest, born in 42 and 44, adhering to the stance of my parents. The other two (47 and 50) always made liberal use of the words that Howard Stern is free to say on Sirius. I dont swear in front of my oldest brother since he simply doesnt care for that sort of language, which isnt all that surprising for an avid reader who nonetheless eschews all novels written after 1900. The second oldest is another case: While he wont indulge in salty speech, hell let out a loud guffaw if one of us makes a particularly appropriate characterization of an event or person.
And, to prove that this isnt simply a generational divide, my 13-year-old son frowns upon all nasty words, and upbraids his older brother who, for better or worse, has taken after his old man. (Which doesnt bother me, as long as he doesnt swear in front of his mother or other women, a debatably chauvinisticto revive a word from the 70sadmonition on my part.) In fact, Bookers so fastidious about this matter that when hes particularly irritated hell give someone the fingerthe index finger.
But back to the presidential race. Obscenity, of course, is matter of interpretation. And The New York Times, on a daily basis, prints drivel thats far more offensive, at least to me, than the lyrics that Nas bleats out on his recordings. A Times editorial last week, the day after the slew of primaries and caucuses, decried the partisan division among both the Republicans and Democrats, a state of politics the writer insists Americans are fed up with. The editorial upbraided Michelle Obama for having the temerity to suggest on Good Morning America that should her husband lose the nomination, Id have to think about supporting Hillary Clinton. The editorial goes on to say that after The Times endorsed Clinton, the paper received a number of emails saying theyd sit out the election if Obama werent the nominee. That is not the way democracy is supposed to work, the writer declared, and then reminded readers that wack-job Ann Coulter made a similar pronouncement, saying that shed vote for Clinton over McCain.
Please explain: Why is choosing, out of disappointment or anger, not to vote in an electionat least the presidential contestundemocratic?