I seem to have entered the world of blogging, almost by accident, and now I’m hooked. I’m not sure how this enterprise will evolve, but my sense is that a blogger is just supposed to jump in and see what happens. So I’ll start with the three brief op-ed “postcards” that I was asked to contribute to The New York Times, describing how the presidential election was progressing in my swing state, Michigan.
As some of you know, I can barely write my name in the 600 words I was allotted for each postcard. Each time, I thought, Well, this is so interesting, I’m sure they’ll find the space for 1200 words! And each time, the editor nicely explained that he was going to have to chop my piece in half.
For my first postcard, I described a trip I had made with my faithful sidekick Marian to the town of Howell, northwest of Ann Arbor, to see how the residents of that area, which until the 1990s had tolerated a significant KKK presence, were responding to the candidacy of an African American named Barack Hussein Obama. In the original version of the article, I tried to convey that Howell had changed and gone upscale. Imagine, Obama signs in Howell! But Marian and I also saw a large number of Ron Paul signs … and when we asked the farmers at the farmers’ market how they felt about the election, we got blasted by their fury at both political parties.
It struck me that my friends and I in Ann Arbor were furious with the government, at least as it had been run by the past eight years by George W. Bush, and the farmers at the market were furious at the government, but that each groups was furious at the government for completely opposite reasons. I tried to convey this in my essay, but most of the explanations got cut. As a result, I got a lot of angry mail from residents of Howell who felt that I had unfairly tarnished their city’s good name. And I do think that in condensing the original essay, I left the impression that more people in Howell supported Ron Paul than was in fact the case. (I also unfairly linked everyone in the Thumb to Timothy McVeigh.) But I stand by the basic thrust of both pieces. The day after my visit, the Obama office in Livingston County (where Howell is located) received ugly threats against the candidate. (To be fair, even in Ann Arbor, an Obama sign got spray painted with swastikas.) I’ve done a lot of research on the Michigan Militia, and even though I was pleasantly surprised by how many people in traditionally conservative sections of the state (Howell included) did vote for Barack Obama, I worry that an Obama presidency is going to lead to a resurgence of right wing militias, in Michigan and elsewhere.
Here’s a link to the version of the essay that ran in The Times:
President Ron Paul of Michigan
And here’s the essay as I wrote it:
Game day, the Wolverines vs. Miami of Ohio. A few maples have already burst out red, the first kernels of popcorn exploding in the bag. The university is adding skyboxes to the stadium, which rises ever higher. Biplanes circle overhead, and the announcer’s voice hovers above my house like God mumbling some new commandments.
I don’t have much use for college football – too many of my students have been too badly hurt – but even a transplanted New York Jew like me feels comfortable in Ann Arbor. The OBAMA (and IMPEACH BUSH) signs have been up so long they’re faded. When my friends and I walk around our neighborhood, we burn off extra calories by yelling at the occasional McCain sign. “Never mind the surge, the war was a mistake to start with!” “Palin wants to teach creationism in the schools!” One friend, a librarian, wants the government to make sure our meat is safe but not tell her what books she can put on the shelves. The mother of a former army pilot, she takes McCain to task for repeatedly voting against equipping the troops properly or providing his fellow vets with better health care.
But a liberal judging the political climate in Michigan by walking around Ann Arbor is like a polar bear judging global warming by staring straight down at the ice cube beneath her feet. Except for the Upper Peninsula and a few isolated towns, the western and northern regions of the state are overwhelmingly Christian and Republican. And so, the morning after the game, I drive forty miles northwest to Howell, a town that is still trying to live down its reputation as the home of a KKK grand dragon.
In the past ten years, many of the cities along our ride have become bedroom communities for Ann Arbor, but none of my black or Jewish friends would dream of moving to Howell. On the one hand, I firmly believe that most rural Michiganders would donate an organ to save my life. On the other hand, the last time I drove to Howell – to pick up my son from a school trip to see the raptors and coyotes at the wildlife center – I passed two teenagers along the road with swastikas on their backpacks.
At first glance, Howell has gone upscale. Except for a notice offering deals on foreclosed homes, I see little evidence of the dismal Michigan economy. A few storefronts stand empty, but the Uptown Coffeehouse is bustling. Most of the customers are out-of-towners (a young woman from Brighton, a few miles south, complains that her neighbors there tend to rail at her, unbidden, about people who aren’t white), but ten years ago, you wouldn’t have found a coffeehouse in Howell … or seen a mixed-race family crossing the street to the farmers’ market.
How deep have the changes filtered? I stop at a table arrayed with shining round beets like the heads of ruddy cherubs, peppers in every hue, and scallions so beautiful they seem like works of art. The kindly woman behind the stand tells me that her husband grew these vegetables on their farm near Bad Axe, “in the Thumb,” which I know to be the section of the state where Timothy McVeigh’s compatriot, Terry Nichols, had his farm. She lives part of the week in Howell and drives to her job at U of M, then telecommutes another day a week from Bad Axe, a web of connection that used to be unthinkable. When I ask her about the election, she says that until recently she wasn’t sure whom to vote for, but she is excited about Sarah Palin, who is “focused,” “a real firecracker,” with the experience in foreign affairs to team with McCain to “unify all the nations and bring peace to the world.” Asked about the economy, worry clouds her face. The pain the rest of the country is feeling now hit Michigan first, she says. But as farmers, she and her husband have always figured “we need to do it ourselves, no one else is accountable.”
At another table, when I ask about the election, what bursts out isn’t just confusion but anger. “Both sides stink!” the woman says. Her friends aren’t going to vote for anyone, but she tells them if they don’t vote, they can’t complain. “They’ve taken away all my other rights,” she says, “but I still have my right to vote!”
The man beside her – he wears an identical orange T-shirt, but they seem to share a booth only to cut their costs – bursts out that “John McCain is a war hero and the only candidate who’s fit to be president!” But when I ask if he’ll be voting for McCain, his rage could boil his vegetables. “No! I’m not voting for any of them!” He says he resents paying taxes on all three of his properties, then mutters that “something went wrong in this country” and “what gives them the right, I’d like to know.”
Thinking my sample might be skewed because the McCain supporters are still in church, I drive around Howell to see who’s supporting whom. Every second or third house flies an American flag, but I find only one lawn with a (crumpled) McCain sign. Miraculously, the owners of one car and one house proclaim their support for Obama, and one bumper sticker still says “Hillary.”
The person who’s really racking up the votes here is Ron Paul. The residents of Howell sport RON PAUL signs on their lawns; they’ve painted RON PAUL in big letters on their cars; they’ve hung RON PAUL signs in the windows of their businesses (including Mama Gaia’s, which specializes in “Living, Parenting and Healing Naturally”).
The farmers I met at the market in Howell not only distrust the Democrats; they feel betrayed by the Republicans for whom they voted in the past two elections. They want the government to leave them alone, except when they don’t. Which, come to think of it, is what my friends in Ann Arbor want. Except that our ideas about when the government should butt in or butt out are opposite to the farmers’. McCain and Obama can talk about unifying the country, but there still are two Americas, and no matter who wins this election, one America is going to be very angry at the other.
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