‘Missouri Loves Company,’ or, ‘The Yeah-Right-Show-Me State,’ or, ‘In The Midnight Hour, They Cried MO, MO, MO,’
and/or various other obvious and available puns: A Drama in Four Quotations:
A Pitch reporter volunteers for the McCain campaign
By Peter Rugg
Published on October 28, 2008 at 1:37pmThe first McCain volunteer I met was Mary, 74, a Republican precinct captain from Blue Springs. When I walked into the campaign headquarters at 3600 Noland Road in Independence, she said she was surprised to see me because I was young, and young people go for Obama.
“I don’t always agree with people my age,” I told her.
It was early afternoon on a Monday in late September, and we were the only two people at the phone bank. Damaged tables of prefabricated wood stood end to end around the drab office space. On the tables were phones and miniature white laptops.
[…]
At the end of my first day, a friend of Mary’s joined us. Her name was Carolyn.
“Have you seen this?” she asked. In her hand was a printed e-mail. “It’s about Obama being with the Muslims.”
The papers listed passages supposedly taken from Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father. There was a stack of the printouts in the office.
I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race, read one of the quotes. I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction…. This sort of thing went on for three pages.
(Later I checked the excerpts. Some were total fabrications; others were quoted out of context to appear more radical.)
Mary gasped. “You know, I hate to say anyone’s a Muslim no matter what party they’re in, especially without proof. But, him, I just don’t know … ”
Carolyn nodded solemnly.
The next time I went to the office, the windows had been smashed out with a rock half the size of a football.
McCain was in town that morning for a campaign appearance with 200 invited guests. The women at the campaign headquarters hadn’t been invited.
Over the next hour, I realized that most of the volunteers came in with specific ideas about what was and was not a waste of their time, and most had decided that they could best help the Republicans by lounging in the office and drinking diet soda.
“I’m a little worried. The week that woman’s had,” one volunteer said of Sarah Palin. The vice-presidential debate was that night. “If they asked Katie Couric any of those questions, she wouldn’t know. Nobody knows that stuff.”
The window-repair truck arrived — with an Obama sticker on its bumper. The women were certain that this was evidence of a conspiracy. One woman, in a white blouse (with an elephant on the front over her heart and a bald eagle on the back, both outlined in glitter), wanted to take a picture of the truck. The other volunteers stopped her, afraid of starting any trouble. This led to a debate about the cultlike reverence of Obama’s supporters for Obama.
“I’ll vote for him, and the world will be just a paradise, and all my problems will be solved,” one mocked.
“Sure,” Glitter Blouse said. “If you want to vote for an Arab Muslim.”
That night, I went to a debate-watch party in the basement of a Pentecostal church on Red Bridge Road. A few retirees stood around a snack table, talking about the economy crashing while sitcoms played without sound on a 50-inch flat-screen TV.
[…]
