The election is over; pundits are winding down their post mortems; the country is heaving a
sigh of relief if not at the outcome, at least at the fact that it’s over; and our lives are returning
to normal. Much has already been written about what happened on November 6,
from the really
interesting analysis by researchers at University of Michigan describing
how “red” and “blue” break down across the country, to the extraordinary confrontation
between Megyn Kelly and Karl Rove on Fox News shortly after Ohio was called
for President Obama. Historians and
political analysts will spend a generation (at least) pulling apart every
single moment of the 2012 Presidential campaign to try to pinpoint exactly what
happened and why.
Let me make it easy for them. I can tell you EXACTLY when Mitt Romney lost
the election.
Let me first state that I am not a professional
politician, nor do I possess a degree in political science. I think of myself as a student of human
nature as well as a reasonably observant (and very minor) participant in the
political process. Several weeks before
the election, I ran into my friend Gerry, a lobbyist who has a much broader
view of how politics works than I ever will. I asked him how he thought the
election would go. At the time, he was
pretty sure the President would serve just one term.
And then the debates happened.
Most agree that Romney won the first debate (by a lot)
and that both candidates acquitted themselves well during the last two
debates. Maybe Obama won one or both, or
maybe Mitt Romney did. As far as I was
concerned, however, Mitt Romney lost it about halfway through the first debate. I don’t mean he lost the debate (I actually
agree with the prevailing sentiment that Romney won the first debate).
I mean he lost the election.
In response to a question about what he would do to lower
the deficit, Romney took
on Big Bird. He said that among his
first items of business would be to “defund” the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting and fire (my word) the debate moderator, the
especially wounded-looking PBS news host, Jim Lehrer, from his “day job.” And
yes, that would probably take care of Big Bird as well.
To me that was as telling a moment, as big a turning
point, and as colossal a mistake as the Howard Dean scream at the end of the
Iowa Caucus in 2004. The difference,
however, was that Dean’s scream was more the result of a unidirectional
microphone he held himself during a crowd roar and thus an accidental, or
circumstantial mistake that could have happened to anyone. Romney’s mistake was deliberate and therefore
both cruel and unnecessary.
While everyone commented about this gaffe at the end of
the debate, and several articles were written, few pundits took it seriously. Despite the surge of Big Bird’s popularity on
social media of all kinds (I won’t pretend to understand exactly what a meme or
a trend is in this context; all I know is that Big Bird took off like….well, a
VERY big bird on Twitter and Facebook), most traditional reporters and pundits
were treating the comment like what it was—a symbol for the presumed "cold, business-like efficiency" of the Romney
Presidency. What they didn’t understand
was that it wasn’t just a symbol.
It was a SYMBOL, dripping
with kids, and education, and mom ‘n’ pop and apple pie; of afternoons spent playing on the living room floor in front of the teevee, waiting for Mom to come home to fix you a snack, or dinner—pretty much everything,
in short, that makes life for a preschooler in these United States a grand adventure.
Firing Big Bird, dismissing it, in effect, as being an
inconsequential piece of Americana that is not deserving of our collective
support, quite possibly appealed to the ultra-right, tea-party base of the
Republican Party. But it awakened the
sleeping beast inside every man, woman and child under the age of 40 who, I
assume, grew up with Big Bird and his (her?) buddies on Sesame Street. If Romney could so casually fire Big Bird, who or what would be next? And if this is what he is like as a
candidate…how much WORSE will it be if and when he becomes President?
The work of an artist, any artist, is to capture Life’s
meaning in symbolic languages. Whether
articulated in music, sculpture, painting, poetry, prose, dance or film, the
symbolic meaning of art tends to be far more profound than the sum of its
parts. Big Bird is not just a yellow and
orange collection of cloth and feathers.
Big Bird is not just a big, goofy-looking puppet with a kindly voice
providing guidance and comfort to legions of kids who need something
constructive to do after 3 pm and before Mom and Dad come home from work. Big Bird is not just one of several dozen
large puppets that cost several hundred thousand dollars a year to put on
television for a couple of hours a day, every day.
Most people don’t care a lot about candidates’ positions for or against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the
Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or the Institute for Museum
and Library Services. These are the
Federal agencies whose combined $1.5 billion budget, if cut, will drastically
harm the arts and cultural sector across the country, and will save only a tiny tiny
fraction of one percent of the US deficit this year. CPB, NEA, NEH, and IMLS are, in short, just a bunch of
initials to most people.
Big Bird, however, is different. Big Bird is a symbol of how precious life is,
especially the lives of our pre-school aged children who are hungry to learn
their ABCs, to count to 20, and to share.
Big Bird symbolizes the potential that we all have within us to aspire,
to be more, to be better, to live a fulfilling life, and above all, to learn the
basic rules of civic behavior.
Fire Big Bird?!? Take away Big Bird’s funding?!? Not a
chance. Not for my kids. Not for their kids, either. And certainly not if my vote has anything to say about it.
1 comment:
Thank you so much for this, Alex! And, maybe, we should be reminded even more about what the muppets & Big Bird were all about. I really love this You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Em3vVwsm0&feature=related
I will post it on my Facebook page as a gentle reminder about the WORLD. Camilla
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