(Governor Martin O’Mally, (D-MD), in one of his hotter moments. Photo ShowBiz Ireland.)
I have not met the Governor, not personally, anyway, but I did have an encounter with his shock troops yesterday, and that is one of the reasons I am headed south into Red Virginia this morning, early bright.
Well hell, it is not bright. It is gun-metal gray outside and still spritzing rain. Were it not for A Taste of Culpeper today, I might just curl up in a ball and let the week just roll over me. There was so much that was distasteful in the book I opened electronically yesterday in the parking lot at College Park, Maryland.
I was in Maryland to attend the UVA v. Terrapins football game. There was another one going on that afternoon that I actually cared about, but watching the Terps is a annual event and the company is fantastic. The tailgating, it goes without saying, is likewise superb.
So it may occur to you to ask why I was reading Mark Leibovich’s book “This Town” instead of watching the second half of a pretty exciting football game.
I have an ambivalent relationship with the Free State- actually, it is one that many of the western counties of the long panhandle share, since they think Annapolis is crazy, non-representative and authoritarian. Maybe “rural” versus “urban” is a better way to sum it up.
My differences are more practical: Maryland drivers specialize in the unexpected; they do not, as a rule, consider the use of turn signals to be optional, and will not get out of the passing lane unless they can think of a way to be more inconvenient to the motoring public.
That and I have to think about what is in my car when I traverse Governor O’Mally’s jurisdiction. What size magazines do I have in the Go Bag? What useful social legislation has been passed in Annapolis since I was last there? A new tax structure?
Anyway, those are just a couple reasons I try to avoid Maryland when I can. But when there is a great opportunity to attend a rousing tailgate and drink shots of whiskey with the Man Up gang in the parking lot, well, exceptions have to be made.
But that is how I came to have an encounter with a couple foot soldiers of Governor O’Mally’s shock troops at half time.
Now, the reason I was in the parking lot and not watching the second half of the Maryland-UVA game was that the game was close and everyone had their blood pumping pretty hard. I ducked up at the half to smoke a cigarette and perhaps purchase a soft drink. I went to the penalty box where the smokers are exiled and lit up, looking at the gray skies outside that periodically spritzed moisture.
I was about two puffs into my nicotine replacement when two earnest young men came up to me and informed me that smoking was prohibited in the stadium.
“Since when?” I asked.
“This year, new policy.”
“Where does it say that?”
“There are signs.”
“I don’t see any. I have been smoking in this place for a decade.”
“New policy.”
“OK- so we can go outside and smoke?”
“Well, no, there are only four places that are designated for smoking on campus.”
“The whole campus? That is more than 1,200 acres. That is absurd.”
“Well, that is the way it is, and we have a no re-admittance policy. If you leave, you cannot come back in.”
“Does it say that on the ticket?” I said, producing the fancy strip of cardboard. I peered at the fine print on the back and did not see any words that said that.
“Well, no, but that is the Governor’s policy.”
“So, what is the alternative to your arbitrary restriction on a legal activity? Are you going to call out DHS? Are you going to produce some uniformed thugs with guns and shoot me like that woman down at the White House?”
They looked a little perplexed, but I could see clearly where this was going. I stomped on the cigarette and walked away, knowing that tangling even with amateur authority would lead to real trouble with the cops.
I walked back to the Section 7 ramp and down to where my pals were sitting. I told them I had just gotten into it with Governor O’Malley and asked for the key to the Outback so I could get one of the folding chairs out of the back and wait out the second half and read and smoke in peace.
Before you cluck and say, “Well, you shouldn’t smoke anyway,” I agree. I don’t smoke in the apartment, and have cut down considerably with the use of the new eCigs, and do not consider that to be the point of the encounter. The point, as I saw it, was the unilateral imposition of rules for social conduct that I had no ability to debate, comment upon, or otherwise influence.
It seems to me that there is a lot of that going around these days.
So that is how I came to be reading Mark Leibovich’s illuminating account of How Washington Works, and saw myself in the electronic pages. Not quite so naked in ambition and hypocracy, perhaps, but “This Town” is written by an insider who casts a spotlight on the pundits and sycophants who form the nation’s collective opinion, and cheer-lead for idiotic policies.
Like journalist Andrea Mitchell and her delusional husband Alan Greenspan, which cherry-picks just one of dozens of conflict of interest cases in point.
The chaos of the government shut-down had diverted my reading program, and sitting in the growing twilight, listening to the muted roar of the crowd from the stadium, I was grateful I had purchased the book and had it on the smart phone.
(The late Tim Russert, Mayor of Washington’s power-brokers. Photo AP).
Two funerals frame the account: Tim Russert’s funeral, the “Mayor of Washington” who hosted Meet The Press, and former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke a device by which he skewers what passes for representative government in this nation.
(Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on one of his better days. US Government photo).
I toggled periodically over to the Michigan-Penn State score at Beaver Stadium, which was teetering back and forth, and checked out the reviews of the book.
The New York Times put it this way: “if you already hate Washington, you’re going to hate it a whole lot more after reading Mark Leibovich’s takedown of the creatures who infest our nation’s capital and rule our destinies. And in case you are deluded enough as to think they care, you’ll learn that they already hate you. He quotes his former Washington Post colleague Henry Allen: “Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.”
So, with a muted roar the second half came to an end, and I did not miss much, since the tent next to us had a generator and a big-screen television and some people who partied right through without the inconvenience of actually going to the stadium. The gang returned and we partied on for a while and motored back to Virginia without issue.
The Terps won, by a point, over Virginia. According to the polls, that corrupt idiot Terry McAuliff will win the gubernatorial election in a few weeks and move into the Governor’s mansion in Richmond. His campaign is all about starting the same crap that his pal Martin O’Malley has done to Maryland right here in Virginia.
I wonder if the turn-signals will be the first things to go?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303