I’m old enough to remember when Republicans considered themselves the party of classy people.
The GOP was the party of the people who owned and ran businesses, the party of people who belonged to the country club and played golf.
Democrats, of course, were the hoi polloi, the folks who carried lunch buckets to work and punched time cards. They were the people who were far more likely to be found at a bowling alley than on a golf course.
Remember the classic line from John Gielgud to Liza Minnelli in “Arthur:”
“Thank you for a memorable afternoon, usually one must go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your stature.”
All that has changed, largely through a decline in standards. These days you could go to a stock car race and the odds are pretty good you would find more Republicans than Democrats.
After all, it’s NASCAR fans who gave us the amazingly vulgar “Let’s go Brandon.”
It was last October when Brandon Brown won a NASCAR race and was being interviewed on television. In the background, some MAGA types were chanting “Fuck Joe Biden.” Someone asked what they were saying, and the TV guy, thinking fast, said it was “Let’s go, Brandon.”
So of course, the MAGA types picked it up and turned it into a meme.
I was sort of appalled to see a kid of 12 or 13 at the grocery store with his mother the other day. He was wearing a tee shirt with “LET’S GO, BRANDON” across the front, with three letters underneath it.
“FJB”
I suppose you could argue that it’s not vulgar, and maybe you would even be right.
But it is tacky.
Of course, their hero is pretty much the epitome of tackiness, from his gold bathroom fixtures in his Trump Tower apartment to his white-guy dance to “YMCA.”
I have mentioned before a time when even a little vulgarity brought a reaction. In 1971, I was watching an NBA game between Milwaukee and the New York Knicks. It was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (nee Lew Alcindor) against Willis Reed in Kareem’s rookie season and he had a dominant first half.
A quick interview with Reed at halftime had Reed saying, “Well, Lew’s having a hell of a game.”
The announcer, clearly embarrassed, responded with, “A little euphemism there, eh, Willis?”
If hell was a bridge too far, you couldn’t even come close to saying things like asshole, bastard or son of a bitch, let alone the Holy Grail of curse words.
That one was even forbidden in print for a long time. When Normal Mailer wrote his WWII novel “The Naked and the Dead,” the publishers made him use “Fugging” as a substitute. Now pretty much the only place the written word is still forbidden is daily newspapers.
Using the word in a movie used to be an automatic R rating, but now it seems acceptable to appear a couple of times in a PG-13 film, especially if it’s in a non-sexual context.
Usually that means it’s all right as an adjective but not a verb.
It’s of course a verb in the Brandon meme.
What do Republicans even believe in anymore, other than “owning the libs?”
I guess they’re abortion — opposed — and lower taxes for the rich — in favor of.
But the truly hilarious one is how much they love Russia.
That noise you hear from California is Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave.