Word: baldwinism
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Alas, the Baldwin of Baldwins has since backtracked, apparently alarmed by the news that they speak French in France. But his despair over the prospect of a Republican president seems to be shared by many of my Harvard acquaintances, most of whom are prone to declare, with exaggerated horror, that if Bush wins in November I'm going to move to Canada...
...opinion, Mr. Baldwin's destination of choice is a much classier place--although the Canadians do have that neat new territory just below the Arctic Circle, Nunavut, where the license plates are shaped like polar bears and the capital city has about 66 inhabitants. But whether they are bound for the Champs-Elysees or the Great White North, liberal Harvardians and the Baldwin of Baldwins seem to have one thing in common: they are, deep in their progressive little souls, terrified of Republicans...
...good to which a society can aspire. If Progress is Good, it follows that those who stand in the way of said Progress must be Bad, Wicked, and a dozen other capitalized synonyms for Absolute Evil. And while most of my fellow Harvardians would doubtless shy away from Alec Baldwin's scheme for the stoning of prominent conservatives, they sympathize with the spirit that animated his remarks, which was summed up admirably when one of my roommates suggested humorously that "Dick Cheney is Satan...
...favorite books is the children's classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, while Al Gore opts for The Red and the Black, a 19th century page-turner by the French author Henri Stendhal. But let's be honest here--who reads Stendhal, really? (Aside from the Paris-bound Alec Baldwin, perhaps.) The fact is, people of average intelligence often make excellent presidents (Truman, Reagan, even FDR) while brilliant chief executives like Hoover, Nixon, Carter and Clinton tend to trip over their own feet. Intellectual snobbery is all well and good, but it shouldn't be carried into the voting booth...
Well, maybe not. Frankly, I don't think there is anything I could say or do that would convince Harvard's population of Baldwin clones that a George Bush presidency wouldn't be a nightmare of epic proportions. And maybe I don't need to--after all, it's quite possible that Gore will eke out a victory, and all their sleepless nights and travel reservations to Winnipeg and Brussels will have been for naught...