Have you ever heard such a thing as a "curdled chuckle"? I did yesterday.
I live, love, and work in the sweet, sunny south. I was born and raised here in the southeast, most of it in beautiful North Carolina. I am 42, atheist, lesbian, progressive and I sport a beard (it's totally naural and Im not transgendered). I'm "out" about all these things, always have been. I work at a major hospital here, so I'm a professional too.
When I first started working here, I was a temp and had a very bottom rung clerical job. My first day on the job, the manager of the department was talking to me about patient privacy and the things we're required to do to protect that privacy. This was shortly before the passage of HIPPA. This manager, I'll call him......Sandy Day, in case any one who works at my hospital happens to read this. Not really to "protect the innocent" more like.....plausible deniability. Which is probably unplausible now that I've said that! Anyway, in the course of describing patient privacy, Sandy gave me a weird example. He said (paraphrasing here, it was 8 years ago), "suppose a woman comes here and has an abortion. Then her husband calls here wanting to know about that. Well, even if you know he really has the right to know, we can't tell him anything." That made it obvious to me I was dealing with a Republican (at least).
OK, now here's the interesting thing. Over the years, Sandy and I have been able to have many, many interesting political discussions. He knew where I was coming from and I knew where he was coming from, or so I thought. He always treated me with respect and listened to my point of view, our conversations were always very interesting and very friendly. I think at first we were both sort of amazed that two people on the very opposite ends of the political spectrum could have such great conversations about such a hot topic as politics!
Starting in Janurary of this year he started saying to me "Obama is gonna win." "Obama is gonna win by a landslide." "I wont vote for him, but that Obama is gonna be our next president." I was deeply suprised by that to say the least and at the time, I wasnt even slightly interested in Obama. (No, I'm not a Hillary girl, I was for Kucinich!) Sometime in the early spring I got a copy of that book "Kingdom coming" about the Christian Dominionist movement. That book made me sick in my heart and deeply sad for my country.
I mention that book because recently, I guess about a month ago I asked Sandy if he knew about Dominionists thinking I would probably find yet MORE shared ground between Sandy and me. I mean, I thought he would be against such a thing. See, even though we're opposite politically, I believed Sandy and I were BOTH patriots. I was wrong. Sandy IS a Dominionist, and to me, Dominionists are traitors. I was so deeply shocked when he let me know that. And sad! So sad about that!
Last week, after Obama gave that brilliant, moving, amazing acceptance speach, I ran into Sandy here at work. I asked him if he had watched it, he said he had watched football instead.....but I saw something in Sandy's eyes I hadn't seen before. I saw that he had lied to me. Of course this was last Friday and I had to leave early to take my partner to an appointment. Interestingly I ran into Sandy again as I was leaving. He was crowing about McShame's pick for VP but like most everyone else I had never heard of Chickipoo Palin. My partner pulled up to pick me up and I told Sandy "well, here's my future wife" and he said "I dont care about that, I care about my money" and I asked him if he was makinig between $250,000 and $5,000,000 and if he was (as a middle manager no less!) I was going to knock him out and take his job! He told me no, he was not making that much (which I already knew).
Although Monday was a holiday, I worked. Tuesday rolled around, I dint see Sandy, then yesterday I saw him. I was busy, in a rush, couldnt stop and chew the fat with him, but I wanted to make it clear to him that NOW I knew who this Palin was so I looked Sandy in the face and chuckled! He chuckled right back.
It was not a mirthful chuckle. Not a playful chuckle. there was no fun or lightness in that chuckle. It was curdled, bitter, and laced with intense anger. All that in one little chuckle. I think Sandy sees thru McPander, sees though Palin, understands that McShame expects Sandy and everyone like Sandy to just smile and swallow this pile of sh!t and Sandy is not happy about that. Sandy is certainly smarter than that and I think he thinks he (and his party) deserve better. I agree, not because I'm secretly a Repuglican, no I agree because I love my country and what the GOP are doing right now is so utterly anti-American I could cry....actually, I have cried about it.
Barak Obama described, in his acceptance speach an America that has room FOR ME. An America that wants me, that trusts me, that respects me. Barak Obama showed me that for the FIRST TIME, there IS an America that loves me as much as I love her. Call if "cult of personality" f you must, but the America Barak Obama described and his passion for creating that America is why I'm voting FOR Obama. That right there is pretty amazing, actually voting for someone instead of against someone else. Incredible.
I feel sorry for folks like Sandy. Smart, passionate folks being given the choice of voting for a flim-flam man and his floozy or voting against a true American patriot. No wonder his chuckle was curdled.