[ via Relapsed Catholic ] Bernard Chapin blames his dateless status on his being a conservative in the liberal city of Chicago:
For the paraphernalia displaying conservative, unexpected house
guests can make for dangerous situations indeed. I had this hammered
home to me last weekend. Upon our entrance, I wisely spent the first
five minutes frantically cleaning the bathroom for my guest’s approval
but I neglected to realize that the rest of the apartment is heavily
mined with all sorts of visible “buzzkills.” With a heavy aroma of
Clorox perfume I walked into the front room and found my guest pointing
at a portrait of our President smiling from a podium and wearing a
Carhart style coat. It was addressed to me on behalf of the RNC.
“What is this?” she spat.
Now
a man of true principle would have stopped right there and pointed out
George’s merits to his guest but some things are more important than
winning political debates so I opted for the weaselesque, “I have no
idea. I don’t know who that person is. I wonder why he’s hanging on my
wall.” This answer at least produced a smile from the Bush-hater before
me. I considered myself lucky that she missed the framed picture of
Charleton Heston hanging just below George. However, later in the
night, she called me over to the area near the front door and inquired,
“Whose face is this that you wipe your feet on?” This was really bad
news. She had incidentally stumbled across my “Hillary Clinton Doormat”
one the way to the bathroom. In the spirit of Bill’s autobiography I
answered “I have no idea”–although I kicked myself later for not have
said, “I cannot recall.”
Overall, it is wise to adopt
Clintonian standards for discussing politics if you wish to get along
with most Chicagoans and this is particularly true regarding the
shapely and form-fitting women who ornament our city to summer
perfection.
Admittedly, while political leanings can be a factor in romance, I think Chapin was more undone by:
- Having to perform emergency cleaning on the bathroom.
There’s really no way to do this discreetly, and disappearing for a few
minutes when you’ve invited a lady friend over for a nightcap is the
best way to kill any momentum gained during the date.
By the bye, learn this mantra, Mr. Chapin: Chicks dig bathrooms that have been cleaned in advance. It says “grown-up”.
- Going overboard with the political paraphernalia in the house.
The Bush photo alone wouldn’t have been much of a problem. The Charlton
Heston photo alone would’ve been no obstacle. The Hillary Clinton
doormat wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker either; I once had a liberal
girlfriend who couldn’t stand her.
However, the combination of the three is a bit much: it screams political junkie,
and unless you live “inside the beltway”, that’s just damned
unattractive. It just makes one imagine that you haven’t yet gotten
over losing the election for student council president (only in D.C.
could George Will and James Carville be sex symbols).
That’s the great lie of politics: “History is written by winners”. No,
history is written by political junkies, the sort of person who doesn’t embody “winner”, but rather, its opposite.
Pictures of
politicians who’ve lived within the past 25 years are as much a warning
sign as a bookshelf full of nothing but Stephen King and Anne Rice novels, possession of too much cat paraphernalia or
ownership of a LiveJournal.
What do you think?
(The title of this entry is borrowed from a scene from one of my all-time favourite movies, Animal House.)
