We Are the Champions, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

July 23, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 1 Comment

So I watched most of the Republican Convention in Cleveland this week.  I felt it was my responsibility.  I dreaded it, but also hoped I would see something I hadn’t anticipated, something that would allow me to understand and respect the people, if not the party.  I thought I might be exposed to new ideas, new ways of thinking, that would improve my appreciation of life, or at least my understanding of other people’s lives.

That didn’t happen.

It wasn’t as bad as the 1996 convention, where there was so much denouncing of sexual deviants and liberals and secularism that I think even Bob Dole was embarrassed.  Still, there were far too many speeches — by Trump and those supporting him — denouncing people who have reason to be afraid of the police, or people who might worship the divine in a different (i.e. non-Christian) form, or people who looking for a safe haven from the violence in their lives.

Many speakers denounced “elitists,” presumably on the other side, a theme that I’ve heard a lot from conservatives (and some progressives, too).  Both Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump insisted that their father was not an elitist and, in fact, was most comfortable with the regular people who hung sheetrock or did electrical work on his buildings.  Donald Jr. further bore witness to the fact that his father set up those workers to be his son’s mentors, rather than people with Ivy League degrees.

As you may recall, I have some appreciation for the kind of industry in which Trump works.  My father worked in it, too, albeit in a smaller way in a different part of the country.

At the same time, I get called an elitist a lot.  Which is understandable, in a way.  I live in Manhattan.  I attended a prestigious college.  Hell, I went to boarding school.  That tuition was paid with the first real money my father made.

Like the Trump kids, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the construction crews who built the buildings my father’s company developed.  Unlike them, however, I didn’t have to wait to meet them until I worked in his office.  They were my father’s friends, who came to dinner parties and Sunday barbecues.  We went to birthday parties and other family events in their homes, just as they did for us.  I was probably in my late teens before I realized my dad’s company paid them.

It’s likely the Trump kids didn’t experience this, but then again, their father so rarely pays the people who work for him.  And, despite Ivanka’s insistence that her father respects women in the work force, his actions show exactly the opposite.

Elitism is a difficult charge to refute, because it can mean so many different things, depending on the speaker.  I am an elitist in certain ways.  No, I don’t believe in an upper class.  I don’t think a person needs a college degree to be intelligent.  My father never graduated college.  Neither did my husband. Still, I wonder how many people who deride elitism would hire a plumber with no training, or see a doctor with no license.

Admiring intelligence and competence isn’t elitism.

Neither is an insistence on facts.  I saw precious little of that at the RNC this time.  I’m not talking about the kinds of verbal slips that happen to us all when we get swept up in an argument.  I’m talking about scripted speeches where one would assume the speaker had time to do some research.

A lot of the RNC was devoted to denouncing Hillary Clinton.  That’s not unusual.  Political conventions are, by definition, partisan events.  What was surprising was the degree of vitriol, the personal animosity that transcended a difference of opinion and crossed the line to death threats.

It’s always surprised me how much people hate Hillary.  She isn’t my favorite candidate, and I disagree with her a lot.  She plays it way too safe most of the time.  I wish she hadn’t made those speeches at Goldman-Sachs.  Still, I don’t think she’s the shrill power-mad harpy described at the RNC.  She’s certainly less shrill and power-mad than the person they nominated.

This article suggests that people judge Clinton by a different standard than they judge male politicians, or even more stereotypical “feminine” female politicians.  Unlike Sarah Palin, for example, she never competed in beauty contests.

The elitist in me enjoys discussions like this, because my major in college included the kind of linguistic analysis cited in the link.  If you, too, enjoy them, check this out.  Deborah Tannen is the Nazz.

Next week, I probably won’t pay such rapt attention to the Democratic National Convention.  When I do, I’ll probably get angry that the Democratic platform doesn’t go far enough to address the issues important to me.  I’ll console myself that some progress is better than none, but I won’t be happy.

With any luck, there will be something more entertaining to talk about.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, may watch more convention than she plans because there is supposed to be a heat dome over the East Coast, and it will be too hot and humid to go outside.