Coming Out of the Closet

After all these years, I'm finally ready to come out of the closet and admit that I didn't vote for Ronald Reagan the first time around in 1980. I voted for John Anderson.

I know - who? He had silver hair; he wasn't as dangerous as Reagan, or as insipid as Carter in my then quite liberal opinion.

I fear that I must go even deeper into my youthful past and freely admit that I voted for George McGovern too! Hair down to my shoulders, self-assured and as pretentious as any liberal has ever felt.

Why Anderson? The peanut from Georgia gave us one good thing: his brother Billy, who in turn begot "Billy Beer". It was even brewed by FX Matt's in Utica, so upstate New York made a few bucks and generated hangovers nationwide. That hangover coalesced into the Iran hostage crisis, where the whining from the White House was matched only by it's ability to make most of the country depressed. The hangover actually began with Nixon - the main reason I was a liberal - Carter only made it worse, and then made us look like helpless, hapless neophytes to those who even then were starting their war of terror.

Of course he brought Begin and Sadat together, which didn't work out all that well for Sadat, and come to think of it, hasn't worked out all that well for the Middle East either - but that doesn't keep the old fart from still meddling in the nation's affairs.

You can say one thing for Jimmy though - he only lusted in his heart, unlike Bubba.

Where was I ... oh, I didn't vote for Reagan in 1980 because I was convinced that Ronnie Rayguns was a danger not only to the USA, but to the world as well. After all, he was a conservative, and the only one of those I had ever heard of before was named Goldwater and the TV commercial showed that atomic blast, so there was no doubt in my mind that conservatives were warmongering lunatics.

And for that, I can only blame Uncle Walter.

He was America's undisputed newsman, anchorman, war correspondent who'd been all around the world and told you every night: "...and that's the way it is, month/date/year. For CBS News, this is Walter Cronkite. Good night."

He was undisputed because we only got one stinking channel with that rotating monstrosity perched atop our roof: WWNY Channel 7 in Watertown - and that meant Uncle Walter and Uncle Walter only. The local paper was, and still is, published once per week and national news is not their forte. There were no conservative views expressed, or if they were, I never recognized them as such because Grandpa Bailey said voting a straight Republican ticket was the only way to go. He and Grandma Bailey raised 12 kids during the depression and the one time someone from social services tried to give something to the family, the reply was not even politically correct by 1930's standards, and rumor has it there was something about placing cheese where the sun don't shine, but I can't swear to that.

So with a little help from my friends, Uncle Walter, and the innate animation of a blooming contrarian (not to mention the usual teenage angst), I lived the liberal lemming life of love, lucidly listening to Lucy in the Sky. Who said alliteration is a dying art?

And then the darndest thing happened. Instead of listening to what CBS and the NY Times were telling me Reagan was doing, I started to really listen to what he had to say. I finally started to remember what it was like to proud to be an American. I started to realize that less government is better government. I started to bring God back into my life and realize that as a nation, we were founded on Judeo-Christian principles. That means that although we will not acknowledge any religion as the official religion of the country, we should not have to pull the Ten Commandments from the front lawn of the Court House.

To make a long story short, I'm like a reformed smoker (I did quit smoking on 10-2-97, but banning smoking in bars without giving the bar owner the power to make his own decision is just another example of that old TV show from the 1950's: Government Knows Best).

So now you know my sordid past, and I do feel relief at having burst forth from the wardrobe at long last.

May Ron forgive me.