Monday, July 28, 2003
The very impressive public relations' machine whose daunting job it is to make the president look good and sound articulate really missed out on a beautiful photo-op yesterday.
To start, there was the almost perfect east coast sunset – the kind that frustrates the hell out of writers because they realize with awe that they will never in a million years be able to describe in words the magnificence of all of those burnished pinky streaks they are witnessing. What Bush's PR folks probably would have liked about this particular sunset was the fact that it served as a breathtaking backdrop to all kinds of symbolic stuff that makes America look maddeningly desirable to the target audiences we are trying to make want to buy into the whole America-the-Best-and-Blessed concept i.e. lots of world-class sailboats leaning into a clear blue wind, lots of sun-lined sailors in Dockers busy unhitching their expensive boats from shiny big trucks, lots of tow-headed kids dressed in tennis white playing tag on verdant, dandelion-free lawns, and lots of pretty “blonde” wives with varicose-free legs herding their tow-headed cherubs toward the yacht club pool.
Welcome to my town where one of the summer’s biggest sailing regattas in the U.S. is hosted each July. This year, everything really was picture perfect – as if nature had decided that these lucky upper 5% of America’s wealthiest deserved a perfect four days of weather in addition to the lopsided tax break Bush has so benevolently bestowed upon them. They got a beautiful sunset to boot along with lots of American flags fluttering Viagra-stiff in the direction of their beautiful boats.
Wow, I sound jealous don’t I? I do have to admit that during race week, when I pass the yacht club along my four-mile daily dog walk, it is hard not to be slightly covetous of the laughter and chatter wafting down from the spacious deck that overlooks the postcard-pretty harbor -- everyone colored a beautiful bronze, hair highlighted flaxen from the sun, and all seemingly engrossed in lively conversations flecked with sailing terminology as foreign to me as Greek.
I think I am not so much jealous as I am fascinated. I am fascinated that running parallel right alongside my own life is this one – one so utterly different from my own reality that in turn is just a few miles from the reality of the struggling constituents I represent at work. You gain a fresh appreciation for the fact that we all get along as well as we do given the gaping divide of our perspectives.
Mind you for every curious glance I cast at the sun-drenched deck of sailing’s elite, I too get my share of stares back. What they see in me I have no idea but suffice to say that I and my un-golden retriever dog are the antithesis of the pre-requisite yacht club look; I’m lanky, dark-haired, and so sun-tanned that people often at first mistake me for the “diversity” the town’s logo purportedly celebrates (all 0.5% of it).
I actually know one of the sailors who races in this event – a guy I used to work with for a few years at the software company I spoke of. I don’t ever see him anymore but I think of him when my dog and I power walk past the boats. It’s funny that I would be acquainted with him of all the sailors who either live in or descend upon this little town each year. Leave it to me to know an anomaly of a sailor: he isn’t rich, isn’t blonde, isn’t from any long line of Brahmin upper crust New England stock, doesn’t belong to the yacht club and therefore not the sailor with whom I could try to nurture a friendship on the off chance of getting me and my family invited out for a weekend sail occasionally. Or to the club to watch a sunset and drink a long gin and tonic. What am I saying? This sailor doesn’t even drink!
The more I think about it, the more I am sure this wouldn’t have been such a good photo-op for the president after all. From the look of things, Bush’s PR guys are scouting for prime time footage of action heroes engaged in saving us from the world’s sinister forces. Somehow privileged recreational sailors vying to position themselves to catch the most opportune breeze as if their life depended on it just isn’t the right message to be sending out right now I don’t think.
It was all very picturesque though and I really do give sailors a lot of brownie points for their aesthetic contributions to the world – I mean what is more lovely than looking out at little white triangles set against a blue horizon? Or colorful spinnakers puffing out in unison as they make their way toward the windward mark? The world would simply not be as beautiful a place were it not for sailboats. So I’ll cut them a little slack for the fact that they seem to need those mammoth, gas-gulping trucks to haul their boats around (I guess in all fairness, a mini-cooper would be hard-pressed to tow a J-24).
There had to have been a few hundred of my inanimate adversaries parked along the road leading to the yacht club -- one more obscenly huge as the next. By the time I reached the top of the hill to where the evergreen bush shaped like a spouting whale resides, I was in a cold and seething sweat. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure the black Dodge Durango flinched when I paused next to it to catch my breath. I growled at it that it was lucky I wasn’t equipped with my enviro-terrorist bumper stickers that day – on this one's back bumper I would have slapped: “My better half is sailing...”
To start, there was the almost perfect east coast sunset – the kind that frustrates the hell out of writers because they realize with awe that they will never in a million years be able to describe in words the magnificence of all of those burnished pinky streaks they are witnessing. What Bush's PR folks probably would have liked about this particular sunset was the fact that it served as a breathtaking backdrop to all kinds of symbolic stuff that makes America look maddeningly desirable to the target audiences we are trying to make want to buy into the whole America-the-Best-and-Blessed concept i.e. lots of world-class sailboats leaning into a clear blue wind, lots of sun-lined sailors in Dockers busy unhitching their expensive boats from shiny big trucks, lots of tow-headed kids dressed in tennis white playing tag on verdant, dandelion-free lawns, and lots of pretty “blonde” wives with varicose-free legs herding their tow-headed cherubs toward the yacht club pool.
Welcome to my town where one of the summer’s biggest sailing regattas in the U.S. is hosted each July. This year, everything really was picture perfect – as if nature had decided that these lucky upper 5% of America’s wealthiest deserved a perfect four days of weather in addition to the lopsided tax break Bush has so benevolently bestowed upon them. They got a beautiful sunset to boot along with lots of American flags fluttering Viagra-stiff in the direction of their beautiful boats.
Wow, I sound jealous don’t I? I do have to admit that during race week, when I pass the yacht club along my four-mile daily dog walk, it is hard not to be slightly covetous of the laughter and chatter wafting down from the spacious deck that overlooks the postcard-pretty harbor -- everyone colored a beautiful bronze, hair highlighted flaxen from the sun, and all seemingly engrossed in lively conversations flecked with sailing terminology as foreign to me as Greek.
I think I am not so much jealous as I am fascinated. I am fascinated that running parallel right alongside my own life is this one – one so utterly different from my own reality that in turn is just a few miles from the reality of the struggling constituents I represent at work. You gain a fresh appreciation for the fact that we all get along as well as we do given the gaping divide of our perspectives.
Mind you for every curious glance I cast at the sun-drenched deck of sailing’s elite, I too get my share of stares back. What they see in me I have no idea but suffice to say that I and my un-golden retriever dog are the antithesis of the pre-requisite yacht club look; I’m lanky, dark-haired, and so sun-tanned that people often at first mistake me for the “diversity” the town’s logo purportedly celebrates (all 0.5% of it).
I actually know one of the sailors who races in this event – a guy I used to work with for a few years at the software company I spoke of. I don’t ever see him anymore but I think of him when my dog and I power walk past the boats. It’s funny that I would be acquainted with him of all the sailors who either live in or descend upon this little town each year. Leave it to me to know an anomaly of a sailor: he isn’t rich, isn’t blonde, isn’t from any long line of Brahmin upper crust New England stock, doesn’t belong to the yacht club and therefore not the sailor with whom I could try to nurture a friendship on the off chance of getting me and my family invited out for a weekend sail occasionally. Or to the club to watch a sunset and drink a long gin and tonic. What am I saying? This sailor doesn’t even drink!
The more I think about it, the more I am sure this wouldn’t have been such a good photo-op for the president after all. From the look of things, Bush’s PR guys are scouting for prime time footage of action heroes engaged in saving us from the world’s sinister forces. Somehow privileged recreational sailors vying to position themselves to catch the most opportune breeze as if their life depended on it just isn’t the right message to be sending out right now I don’t think.
It was all very picturesque though and I really do give sailors a lot of brownie points for their aesthetic contributions to the world – I mean what is more lovely than looking out at little white triangles set against a blue horizon? Or colorful spinnakers puffing out in unison as they make their way toward the windward mark? The world would simply not be as beautiful a place were it not for sailboats. So I’ll cut them a little slack for the fact that they seem to need those mammoth, gas-gulping trucks to haul their boats around (I guess in all fairness, a mini-cooper would be hard-pressed to tow a J-24).
There had to have been a few hundred of my inanimate adversaries parked along the road leading to the yacht club -- one more obscenly huge as the next. By the time I reached the top of the hill to where the evergreen bush shaped like a spouting whale resides, I was in a cold and seething sweat. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure the black Dodge Durango flinched when I paused next to it to catch my breath. I growled at it that it was lucky I wasn’t equipped with my enviro-terrorist bumper stickers that day – on this one's back bumper I would have slapped: “My better half is sailing...”
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