It seems to me that daily, sometimes more frequently, I see something on the news, a website, or wherever it pops up on my phone, that is so deeply convoluted and disturbing that I have to take pause and process it all.
Yesterday I heard a song about Trump like he’s someone’s savior. “He’s not perfect, but he was chosen by God…” a fricken country song, and from what I understand there are many more! When did we start writing and singing songs about politicians?
This is not a post for or against any political candidate or party. It’s a post about what has happened to us. There was a time when we saw politicians and political leaders as men and women who we generally agreed with or disagreed with, but that was it. We didn’t worship them. We didn’t idolize them. My dad liked Ike; he wore an “I Like Ike” button on his hat. That was it, he liked Ike, he didn’t bow down to him. When Ike did something that pissed my dad off, in that moment he didn’t like Ike.
My grandma, Cora, man, she loved her some Jesus and she loved her some FDR. Down there in the living room of that broken old house on the hill, three good strong breezes away from being condemned, on top of her piano, that I don’t think had been tuned since the boys came home on VE Day, sat photos of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the left-hand side, and the son of God himself on the right. I’m pretty sure Jesus got top billing, but you couldn’t tell by the order on top of that dusty old piano.
Cora was an interesting; scratch that; a fascinating woman. Dirt floor poor for most of her life, and she wore that poverty like a badge of honor. Her poverty was hers and it defined her. Even when her children were grown and doing well, Cora insisted on maintaining her poverty.
True story: my Uncle Rick, who managed a Grand Union grocery store not far from that collapsing shack on the hill, would buy cans of food and dent them gently with a hammer, not enough to break the seal, just enough so they were “dented” and couldn’t be sold, and take them to his mother every week.
Uncle Rick presented Cora with a great moral conundrum. She would not, and could not, take charity, and the cans of food were clearly charity, but at the same time she could not reject the box of canned beans and corn and peas, because as my uncle told her, either you take it, or it gets thrown out. Wasting food, even in dented cans, was a bigger sin than taking charity.
Even steeped so deeply in her respect of for President Roosevelt, she knew that a lot of things were done in his twelve years in office that were horrific, like Japanese internment camps and the great amount of evidence that he knew the attack on Pearl Harbor (one of her son’s was stationed there during the attack) was imminent and he failed to act. She’d say, “The reason we are sitting here today is President Roosevelt.” Even in her never waste a scrap of Christmas paper or aluminum foil, great depression poor, she felt she owed that President, her President a debt to gratitude. But that was it. The picture on the piano and a deep respect. Not worship, not idolatry.
On the religion side, Cora loved her some church. That’s a whole different story, but Cora, she’d watch Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts and Tammy Faye and Jim Baker every week… well, that is until Jimmy did the deed with a hooker in some no-tell motel, and it got out in the news.
Pissed? You never saw a hive of wasps hit with garden hose spray half as pissed as Cora when she heard that news. It was her practice to weekly; I’m not making this up, send Jimmy and Oral and the rest of them what she could spare that week, a quarter, a dime, even a nickel, she’d sit down at her desk, and write out the envelope and lick a stamp and send them her tithe. I read the letter she wrote to Jimmy after the hooker incident. I wish I had a copy.
I remember her words to me… "Billy, that man is no damn good…” Damn was about the hardest word I ever heard the woman say, so I knew Jimmy wasn’t getting any more dimes!
I wish we’d all step back and take a look around and see all these people for what they are. They are politicians, failed men, not saviors. Some are better than others and some are much worse than we can imagine, but when we see them and we know they are no damn good, don’t make excuses or look the other way. If you have to take down your flags or even the picture over the piano, do it. When you see them for what they are, be like Grandma and say, “That man, he’s no damn good!”
Cora was all that!
Your grandma had the right of it.