Saturday, September 15, 2007

That thing that's not a suicide pact

Years ago, Gov. Bill Richardson was my sister's college graduation speaker. Because Ari Fleischer was the alum always in the news at the time, and I was getting tired of the stodgy vibes around the campus during graduation weekend, I felt compelled to laugh loudly and longer than necessary at Richardson's jokes. (I laughed alone, and my guffaws echoed in the awkward silences to the point where my other sister kept giving me "Shut up, you're giving us another reason to stand out" looks. )

I don't really care about football scandals (I've only been to two football games in my life, one in high school because I figured I should before I left, and once in college with the incoming international students who wanted to see the great American sport in action.) So I'm a little indifferent. I don't care who taped whom or for what purpose.

But Richardson released this statement yesterday, and again I'm laughing but for entirely different reasons:
"The President has been allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, and our U.S. Senate is letting it continue. You know something is wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush."

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

6 comments:

Torgo said...

Your sister went to Middlebury? My sister went there, too. I hated the atmosphere there.

And that's a great line by Bill Richardson. I'd vote for him.

Ok, I'd vote for any Dem in '08.

Rainster said...

I vaguely remember talking to your sister about that, cuz at your wedding I'd just come from the Midd graduation. (Well not directly, I went back to Boston, surprised Xtina, and then we drove up to Maine.) I think. Unless that was someone else's wedding, but I don't think so. At any rate, somehow it came up at yours with your sister.

Torgo said...

It's odd that in superficial ways, Midd and Colby are the exact same school. Yet I think my sister and I are very different. Oh, wait, but Colby was full of people who would have fit right in at Middlebury. I forget that sometimes.

Rainster said...

The Midd grad sister is the one whose recent wedding caused such a stir. We are very, very different.

I got the feeling Midd was a little more old-money and more conservative in a quieter way, if that makes sense.

Torgo said...

I was talking with a guy yesterday who graduated from Midd in the 90s. He fit the profile -- more of a snob than Colby folks. Lives in SF, probably a Dem, but yeah, conservative in a way.

Rainster said...

Last winter, in one of my shameless free-food following moods, I went to a Seattle NESCAC event, and a few Midd grads kept coming up to me and saying "You went to Midd, right? You look familiar." And I kept saying "No, I went to Colby." I was hungry and easily irritable and part of me wanted to say that not all Guatemalans look alike just to mess with them, and only after they brought out the food and I'd eaten and wasn't irritable did I realize they might've been mistaking me for my sister. So then I ran after the ones I thought might be more liberal and said "You know, it just occurred to me..."

Sometimes I forget she went there...