I feel your pain, Ted Cruz
Believe it or not, I now have something in common with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz and two more prominent Republicans, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and former EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
No, I don’t collect the fresh tears of Hispanic children separated from their parents and encase them in Pandora charms, although that WAS a good guess.
Give up? OK. A few days ago, I was publicly heckled in a restaurant for my political views. Yes, you never forget your first time. I was sitting in a local dive bar, digging into a buffalo chicken sandwich with crinkle fries (my new friends would call these Freedom Fries) and watching the UNC football game on TV when my very first public heckler approached.
“Hmmmph,” he said, lurching toward me but not quite sitting down. “I know you.”
I usually wave my hand dismissively at this point and say: “No, no. I’m not Meg Ryan circa 1995, but it’s certainly an honest mistake.” Cue laughter. Usually.
But something in his face told me he definitely wasn’t a fan, so I also didn’t pull out my usual chestnut: “I know, I know, I look so much younger in person.”
“You’re just lucky you don’t have a PUBLIC job,” he hissed. “Not everybody can say what they think because they could get fired. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“Ummmkay. My job is to write political humor so, you are right. I probably won’t get fired for doing what I was hired to do. Lucky me.”
He pondered this and then rebounded with a big grin, bless his heart. “OK, let me tell ya a joke.” (I will now condense this “joke” down to its punchline, which was a very long time coming and had something to do with a car that could respond to voice commands.) As my heckler closed in on the punch line, he leaned in close.
“Pelosi and Hillary!!! Get it? See, the man’s in the car and he says, “Have you ever seen anybody any dumber than that, and the car, being a smart car, said “Pelosi and Hillary!!!”
“That’s the punch line?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.
“HE gets it, right?” the heckler said, winking at Duh Hubby, who was quietly enjoying the show. “Uhhhhhh ...”
“See ... the car is so smart it knows the two dumbest people in the world are Pelosi and Hillary.”
“And that’s funny because ... ?” “It’s funny because ... Pelosi ... Hillary ... get it?”
And then he started squawking about entitlements, which, I had a hunch, was going to disintegrate into an “us-and-them” diatribe or worse.
“Dude,” I said. “I’m just trying to eat my sandwich and watch the ballgame. Not here for this.” He wandered off but, being a Southern man, returned 10 minutes later to apologize.
OK, maybe it’s not really the same thing at all. After all, Mitch McConnell has been screamed at by multiple people at multiple restaurants and none came back to apologize.
Then again, HE deserved it.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — We may not have the best team in the world, but we in Raider Nation travel better than any other football fan base.
Even the biggest Raiders Haters in the world — yeah, I’m talking about you, you despicable Bolt Heads — would have to concede that Raiders fans always show up in legions in enemy territory, then conquer the combat zone and all adjacent territories for the battle’s entirety and aftermath.
In Glendale on Sunday, we Raider fans outnumbered the home “faithful” by about a 70-30 ratio. Cardinals’ fans, realizing they were overwhelmed by Silver and Black, surrendered, simply ceding their territory to the invaders.
Despite the reputation of Raider faithful as thuggish, confrontational and inebriated — all of which we take as compliments, actually, — I saw only one near scuffle between an Arizona fan and a Silver and Black supporter, and that ended with nothing more than a lot of posing and gesturing. Generally things were peaceable before, during and after the game. There is no need for conflict when the other side simply gives up.
I was telling my friend/fellow Raider fanatic Ruben, with whom I traveled to Arizona for the game Sunday, that the love we in Raider Nation have is similar to the love soccer fans in Europe and South America have for their clubs. We wear our colors; we have our chants; we travel in big numbers, and we love each other truly and deeply.
At the game in Glendale, I talked to fellow members of Raider Nation from Merced; Bakersfield; Hayward; Castro Valley; Las Cruces, N.M., and even one who had traveled to the game from Butte, Mont. We talk and hug and laugh because we’re brothers and sisters in silver and black, no matter our age, economic status or skin color.
The largely Latino Raider fan base, including many who are first or second generation in this country, disproves the common Trumpian notion that Latinos are not acculturating to this nation fast enough. I would surmise many Arizona fans at the game would have liked it if many Raider fans had assimilated a lot less and were home watching the Chivas on TV … or in Guadalajara, really.
But they weren’t. They were right there in the Phoenix area, knowing the game was going to be a contest between the two worst teams in football — the Raiders came into the game with a record of 1-8, and the Cardinals were 2-7 — likely the battle for the first pick in the next NFL draft, which meant the winner might turn out to be the loser in the long run.
(As I was watching the game between two inept sides, I mulled to myself, “This is like two male dogs humping. There’s some moving around and a bit of grunting and groaning, but not much productive is going to come from all of this.”)
Fans of the Raiders, though, don’t care. We love our team no matter how good it is … and, other than one season a couple years ago, it hasn’t been good for the last decade and a half. It also doesn’t matter where our team is headquartered, whether Oakland, Los Angeles, back in Oakland or, in 2020, in Las Vegas. None of that matters because being a fan of the Raiders is a spiritual thing that transcends all, something “fans” of other teams will never understand.
The Raiders came back from what seemed like certain defeat Sunday to win the game with a last-second field goal. We in Raider Nation were delirious with joy.
But that win was a temporal thing, really.
Being a fan of the Raiders, though, is something that lasts forever.