Greetings from the "Exurbs"

This post-election week has been such a blur. Barbara has been telling me -- fondly, which is strange -- that my strong support of the Republican party and my recent diatribes against Democrats this week have finally reinforced her faith that she made the right decision to marry me. She said that before the election, my doubts about the President (she puts George Bush and Jesus on the same pedestal, like they've got their hands down each others' pants while up on high) were slowly making her hate me. But now she sees that I'm not like a Democrat at all, and she's happy.

I have no idea what she's talking about. All I remember is going to our neighborhood Republican Victory Party, being really depressed but trying to act happy, pounding whiskey like I was dying of thirst, and then waking up naked next to Barbara. That, in itself was odd, because since Barbara had the kids, her body, frankly, repulses me. Anyway, I might have gone to work, mowed the lawn, or ignored the kids since then, but I honestly can't remember what happened this week. I guess time flies when you're bored.

I was reading the New York Times this week (on line, because Barbara doesn't allow that "liberal Jew nonsense" into our home) and was interested to see that David Brooks wrote an editorial and a book about "exurbs," which sound a lot like where I live.



Brooks says: The other problem I had is that I didn't adequately describe the oxymoronic attraction these places have for millions of people. On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That's bourgeois. On the other hand, they are taking a daring leap into the unknown, moving to towns that have barely been built, working often in high-tech office parks doing pioneering work in biotech and nanotechnology. These exurbs are conservative but also utopian - Mayberrys with BlackBerrys.

I think Brooks still has some research to do. What he doesn't mention (or maybe he does so in his book) is that out here in the "exurbs," the main motivating force behind a move to these supposed "utopian" enclaves is FEAR. Fear of crime, blacks, germs, terrorists, and anything you think you can't control. Fear of anything that is difficult or different, that doesn't comport with your idea of how the world is or should be. Brooks, that's the world I live in. You want to know how Bush and Rove got so many votes in my neighborhood? I'll tell you how. They scared the living shit out of us.