Blue Velvet: The Swamp Thing, Democracy and Masochism

     Out-of-town readers will probably not grasp the local politics in this one, which I wrote as a Radio-Free Robin, or political column; and local readers, presumably, can wait and read it in the Sentinel.  So why do I bother?  I guess because I haven't posted anything here in so long!  As this column points out, I've been tied up covering the election in Dade, including the highly charged sheriff's race mentioned here.  In the course of that I got attacked by supporters of both candidates; but my friend Mary assured me I was equally poisonous to both, and was seriously screwed whoever won.  How fortunate that I plan on committing no crimes ...

Blue Velvet:  The Swamp Thing Pontificates about Democracy and Masochism

By Robin Ford Wallace

 “Heet me.”

That’s a line I half-remember from a movie called Blue Velvet I sort of saw in the 1980s. 

In Atlanta back then there were establishments called cinema drafthouses where for a buck or two you could drink beer and watch second-run films.  It was cheap entertainment, but the big negative was that during the workweek, when a girl got up early, one beer and a darkened room would send her off to Dreamland before the credits had faded.

So from Das Boot all I remember is a handsome blond U-boat captain with blue eyes and a black sweater looking through a periscope and saying, “Goot, goot.”  Then the next time I opened my eyes there was water pouring in and it emerged I had slept through World War II. 

All I retain from Out of Africa is Meryl Streep Accent No. 432 – “I hod a farm in Offrica.”  My date told me that later on Meryl makes a few wisecracks while gnawing on a carrot, then dives down a rabbit hole.  But then, this was the same guy who told me all Japanese were issued cameras at birth, which, incidentally, I believed for two years.  (Reader, I married him, and you still couldn’t beat it out of him with a stick.)

Blue Velvet was a detective movie – I think – and as I recall the Italian torch singer who says, “Heet me,” is suffering from survivor guilt, her husband and child having been kidnapped as part of a convoluted film noir plot.  That’s all I can tell you because I would only wake up when somebody screamed. 

Anyway, the reason I’m saying “Heet me” myself is that I’ve concluded only masochism can account for my devotion to the democratic process.  What an election year! 

Regular readers may remember with what reportorial verve this newshound lunged into local politics in January –  “White House, Shmite House!  Practically every elected office in Dade is up for grabs!” 

Now, post-election, what you see lying whipped and beaten before you, with its tongue hanging out, is more hangdog than newshound, though it does manage the occasional feeble tail wag, because – 

IT’S OVER!

There comes a point when it doesn’t matter who wins, just that the hurting stops.  I can see myself dancing around in prewar Germany, singing, “We just elected Hitler, tra-la-la.”

Reader, I caught as much grief as the candidates!  One week I’d be attacked for bias toward one hopeful and the next for my slant toward his opponent.  There was a man who said I did drugs and a pleasant middle-aged matron I thought was going to break my nose.  One week I got denounced publicly three times.

It made me remember wistfully how I once wrote in a Bob’s Little Acre about witchcraft that peasants with pitchforks and torches would make me feel pretty and popular.  Wrong!  My idea was that negative attention was still attention, but the reality is that I’m feeling less homecoming queen and more Swamp Thing than ever, thank you very much.

Still, since I can’t possibly get less popular, here’s some stuff I can now get off my swampy little chest:  I did not, either, lean toward either sheriff candidate.  I had issues with both.  What we had was one guy going around saying the president planned to impose martial law in Dade and another guy who had done it himself.

So what I had against the candidate who wanted a second crack at sheriffing was:  the first crack.  Maybe some people enjoyed driving from roadblock to roadblock meekly showing their papers.  I can’t say it did much for me.  And there may be perfectly good reasons for law officers to beat up harmless citizens who had broken no laws; but I’m not bright enough to think of any.

What I had against the other candidate was:  fundamental concepts of honesty and truth.  How can you trust a guy to testify in capital cases when he spends his campaign promising to defend Dade from a federal invasion aimed at stripping citizens of their right to bear arms?

I think there’s a class of things grownups believe in only halfway, not because they’re feasible but because they enjoy believing in them, like the Loch Ness Monster and that somewhere there’s a pair of jeans that won’t make their thighs look fat.  I think the federal invasion falls into that class.

A candidate in another race said that people vote their pocketbooks.  Ha!  I think it’s more likely they vote the messages they receive through their fillings from outer space.  If they voted their pocketbooks, poor people wouldn’t vote for rich people who despise them, and candidates who go bankrupt because of crushing medical bills would support a president who is trying to reform health care, not go around telling people he is fixin’ to steal their Bible and shoot their dog.   

There’s lots more:  Why, if candidates believe in equal rights for all citizens under the law, do they say “gay marriage” the same way they say, “The dog had diarrhea in the living room?”  And how can serially married candidates say, “Put your God first and your wife second?”  Shouldn’t it be, “Put your God first and your third wife second?”

But we’re out of room, so let me just end by paraphrasing Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government, except for those others that have been tried; and add from my own observation that if it works at all, it works here at the local level.

 Anyway, it’s heady stuff, and if life ever offers to deal me in for another hand of it, I expect I’ll wince a little but I’ll still say:

“Heet me.”

 

END