rlfj: Blog

Carl is beginning to get political. If you don’t like that, fine, but you should stop reading. Just remember that this story was written in 2011-2012. The Republican Party and American politics are vastly different now.

I heard from the Tea Party about Carl. Carl isn’t a fiscal conservative. He is apparently a socialist, communist, liberal, or Democrat (take your pick). First things first – in 1987 there was no Tea Party! If somebody had said ‘tea party’ to Carl, it would have been one of his daughters inviting him to an imaginary tea party with their dolls and stuffed animals. Carl would certainly have joined that tea party!

In many ways I found the Tea Party an interesting, if strange, result of a number of separate things. First and foremost, of course, was the really desperate and screwed up financial situation the country was in. We owed trillions of dollars to China and other places, money we had no hope of ever repaying, and had deficits planned as far as the eye can see. This really fucked over the middle class. Their jobs and money went overseas, and there was a lot of pain left. Believe me, I felt that pain, too!

Second, we had a liberal president. Obama beat McCain not because of the strength of his arguments, but because Bush 43 was so incredibly unpopular and could be blamed for the economy and a couple of bad wars. Unfortunately, he radically misread his mandate. He thought people wanted a liberal, when they really wanted anybody but a Republican. Combine that with being black, an incredible number of people didn’t want him. Find yourself a Tea Partier who is white and only has a high school diploma (from what I can see, the vast majority of them, but that’s a separate topic) and get a few drinks in him; the racism comes out! ‘We have to get the nigger out of the White House!’ – unquote.

Carl is a fiscal conservative. He is an old school business Republican, the type of guy who is on the Chamber of Commerce, hates regulation, and isn’t real thrilled with his taxes, but likes a fair bit of what government provides, like cops and roads and bridges, etc. He isn’t all that socially conservative and is willing to work with others. He is smart enough to know that to get things done you will probably need to compromise – which is how you do things in business. This is one of the reasons the Tea Party and conservative base of the Republican Party don’t like him.

Carl is the kind of Republican that can’t understand the Tea Party and can’t figure out how to get them to do anything constructive. Look at John Boehner in Congress and you saw this type of business Republican. He couldn’t control his own party and didn’t understand them. Like a lot of us, he saw them complaining about Obama’s government-run health system and then complaining ‘Leave my Medicare alone!’ – and can only scratch his head at the reasoning.

I received a huge response to recent chapters, about half for the story and about half for the blog. That was about what I expected. Some really interesting responses. Some agreed with me, some disagreed (violently in a few cases), some were in the middle. One really good email (actually quite thoughtful) referred to the Tea Party as Morlocks (nice image there, bonus points for everybody who gets it!)

I did get a warning to stop any discussion of politics, since it will turn my readers off. I also got lots of emails from people who want Carl to go into politics. Anybody want to tell me how to write such a thing without discussing politics or getting political? We have, as Carl the mathematician would say, a mutually exclusive binary set.

I received lots of emails about crab cakes. Since my wife isn’t from Maryland and doesn’t like anything crab related, I can’t make crab cakes at home. Emails about the wonders of crab cakes are cruel and unusual punishment!

Despite Carl’s hatred of publicity, he seems to be becoming more prominent and well known. We’ll have to see how that plays out.

Just a few side notes on this chapter. Not all state colleges are party schools. The University of Maryland – Baltimore County is actually a pretty good school. It’s very good in the engineering and science fields, as is the main campus in College Park. Towson is quite good, as is Morgan State, which used to be the ‘black’ state school. Some of the other state schools are party schools, but you get that everywhere. Catonsville Community College really is known as USC or UCLA to a lot of the locals; a lot of Towson High’s graduates went there.

On a separate note, crab cakes are an excellent way to tell how good a Maryland restaurant is. They need to be fried or broiled, be firm and a little crisp, definitely not soggy, hold together well, and have plenty of Old Bay spice in them. Maybe I’m parochial, but the best are made on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Yum-yum! The real Marilyn hates them, but I just don’t pay attention to her!

There have been a lot of comments on Marilyn lately. A few readers can’t stand her and a few more love her and want her to do more. As to why she doesn’t do more, let’s face it, she has a pair of 2-year-olds at home and no pressing need to get a job.

Chapter 87 is just absolutely normal stuff going on in people’s lives. Family and friends and kids and dog - normal stuff. Not much else to say. Some people will find it boring, but most of life is. More exciting stuff is in the offing.

Several people wanted me to somehow have Carl stop the Challenger Shuttle disaster. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the idea that Carl can change these events is actually quite naïve. In most cases, the various disasters that occurred were quite well known and predicted at the time. The problem wasn’t in the knowledge of what could happen, but in the administrative response. The engineers knew full well that the Shuttle could blow but were ordered to launch anyway. The bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon was not a surprise; the Marines knew the bad guys were coming for them, but the State Department ordered them to be non-threatening and ignore Marine standard safety precautions. We routinely see these sorts of things happening. If Carl finds a pay phone and calls it in, nobody will believe him or care.

On the other hand, Carl should have foreseen that he couldn’t be anonymous forever. Fame is coming!

Several people wanted to know why the Tusks invited Carl’s parents to the christening. The answer is that in many churches baptisms are not held as separate ceremonies unless specifically requested. Often they are a part of the regular liturgy, though you have to ask the priest or preacher ahead of time so he can prepare. The entire congregation is invited to watch and welcome the new child to the parish. All three of my kids were christened this way, and that was in several different churches. In effect, you simply insert the baptism into the middle of the program, usually before the communion and sermon.

Several people gave me some more charities Carl should donate to or know about. Two of the obvious ones were the USO and the 82nd Airborne’s College Fund. The absolute truth is that I have them already written into future chapters, along with several others.

That brings me to a different topic. Every once in a while I get a note saying, “How could you forget…” and listing something from the time period. There are two answers to that. First, maybe they just weren’t important to Carl and Marilyn at the time. Second, and more likely, I forgot them! That’s the problem with writing historical fiction. Something might be important at the time to the characters, but 28 years later I forgot about it.

A final note on the drinking while pregnant controversy, such that it is. I got an interesting email from a reader: “Heh! I have actually met several pregnant OB/GYNs who regularly drank a glass of wine with dinner during late pregnancy and would wholeheartedly recommend it to their stressed out patients to unwind so long as they could be trusted not to get carried away. When asked about the apparent medical hypocrisy they just explained that the threshold for fetal harm was definitely greater than the occasional drink but no sane doctor was going to risk the potentially astronomic liability of stating on the record that X drinks were "safe", plus it might actually vary from person to person.” Probably the best explanation I have heard! Thanks!