House of Eratosthenes

This has got to be the saddest thing I’ve ever read, by far (hat tip to Boortz). And yes, I’m including the closing pages of Of Mice And Men in that.

It’s about a woman who thinks highly of herself because she’s “always a fighter” and campaigned tirelessly for Barack Obama…for reasons that, if she can explain them at all, she doesn’t bother. Things aren’t working out too well for her or for anybody else in her town, which is dying. She pulls in seven hundred bucks a month or so, blows it on everybody else’s bills — for reasons that, likewise, are left unexplained — and then lies her ass off to her poor husband, explaining to him that their savings account is diminishing because she’s buying herself new outfits.

[A]s Obama nears the 100-day milestone of his presidency, [Edith] Childs suffers from constant exhaustion. In a conservative Southern state that bolstered Obama’s candidacy by supporting him early in the Democratic primaries, she awakens at 2:30 a.m. with stress headaches and remains awake mulling all that’s befallen Greenwood since Obama’s swearing-in.

On Day 4 of his presidency, the Solutia textile plant laid off 101 workers. On Day 23, the food bank set a record for meals served. On Day 50, the hospital fired 200 employees and warned of further job cuts. On Day 71, the school superintendent called a staff meeting and told his principals: “We’re losing 10 percent of our budget. That means some of us won’t have jobs next year, and the rest should expect job changes and pay cuts.” On Day 78, the town’s newly elected Democratic mayor, whose campaign was inspired partly by his admiration for Obama, summarized Greenwood’s accelerating fragility. “This is crippling us, and there’s no sign of it turning around,” Welborn Adams said.

On Day 88, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that South Carolina had set a record for its highest unemployment rate in state history, at 11.4 percent. Greenwood’s unemployment is 13 percent — more than twice what it was when Childs first started chanting.

“We have a lot of people who live in cold houses, with no jobs and no food,” Childs says.
:
A message near the end causes Childs to wince. It is from Evon Hackett, her younger cousin, who has always reminded Childs a little of herself. Hackett has “never wasted a lazy hour in her life,” Childs says. But now she is desperate and unemployed, and her voice barely registers above a whisper as it plays on Childs’s machine.

“Hey Edith. How ya been? Just calling again to see if you heard from anybody who was hiring. . . . You know me. I’ll do anything. It doesn’t really matter what the work is.”
:
Just before 1 p.m., she pulls into Greenwood’s normally deserted downtown for a few more errands and notices a large crowd gathered in front of the courthouse. More than 200 people are dressed in red, white and blue and are waving miniature American flags. Childs asks a friend for details and learns that it is a “tea party” to protest Obama’s economic policies, one of about 1,000 similar events coordinated on Tax Day across the country.

“Of course it’s going to be a lot of white Republicans, and mostly men,” Childs says as she walks through the crowd and finds a spot alone at the rear of the plaza. “I want to see this, but I’m keeping my distance.”

In a state that voted 54 percent for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Childs has heard plenty of anti-Obama rhetoric. “Most people around here know where I stand and let me be,” she says. “People are too polite to be nasty.” So she shakes her head in disbelief as she reads the angry messages scrawled on the poster boards in front of her.

“Say NO to Obama and Socialism!”

“OBAMA’NATION.”

“Who cares what Obama says? America IS a Christian nation.”

Childs puckers her lips and listens as Greenwood residents take turns stepping to the podium and shouting through a megaphone. Their speeches revolve around the same themes Childs hears in her phone messages, except what she identified as the solution to Greenwood’s problems is what these speakers now disparage as the cause.

“We all know this president is the major problem,” David O. Davis III says. “I’ve got friends with families who are losing their jobs, getting laid off.”

“We’re struggling to pay our bills and get by,” Cathy Heitzenrater says. “We’re feeling disenfranchised from our own country and disappointed about who’s running it.”

“Vote the bum out,” R.J. Fife says.

After each speaker finishes, Childs retreats a few steps farther from the crowd. A part of her would like to go grab the bullhorn and tell these people to “keep their mouths shut and give Obama a little time,” she says. But she woke up at 3 a.m. again this morning, and she can’t go home for a nap until she pays $100 on a constituent’s bill at the water company and stops by a city office to inquire about possible job openings for Hackett.

“Let them have their tea party,” Childs says. “They’re just looking for somebody to blame. My ears are full.”

She walks away from the courthouse as the crowd joins into chorus to sing the national anthem.
:
Later that night, inside the house on Old Ninety-Six Highway, Childs sinks into the armless chair in her living room. “Don’t bother me, Charles,” she tells her husband. She picks up the cordless phone, where 17 new messages are waiting. One is from Hackett.

“Hi, it’s me,” she says. “Hope you had a good day…No luck over here yet. I’m just wondering if you’ve heard about anything.”

I have a lot more sympathy for that poor cousin than I do for the nurse, the horrible wife, the liar, the thief, the racist. Yeah, I said racist. She’s allowed her disappointments and her exhaustion and her disparaging comments about others, but whoever disagrees with her about who should be President — an issue on which, plainly, she hasn’t bothered to gather any factual information at all, or very little — has to pipe down and shut up because of the color of their skin.

That poor husband. Other than sleeping with someone else, which she more-than-likely is, in what ways can a wife possibly blow it, in which she isn’t already blowing it?

It’s the same old crap from the die-hard radical Obama fan community. I’m a “worker” and a “fighter” because I believe this might-as-well-be-fictional guy is going to solve all my problems. And every week that goes by, wherein real life teaches me this isn’t the right way to go — it’s just all the more justification for my self-righteousness. A little bit of extra license to steal money from my husband and distribute the loot to “poor” people I barely even know.

Meanwhile, the hopey-changey goodness isn’t working out. So when does the time come to admit to a mistake? If the answer is “never”…then who in their right mind wants this kind of person to make a decision about anything?

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Don’t Bother Me, CharlesMonday, April 27th, 2009

Don’t Bother Me, Charles
Monday, April 27th, 2009