The Supreme Court Nominee and I

So it turns out that John G. Roberts is a Hoosier. Furthermore, it turns out he's a Northwest Indiana Hoosier, hailing from the outskirts of the Region. While it's impossible to call him a Region Rat since he's really from Michigan City/LaPorte, we still share basically the same cultural upbringing...namely, steel mills and Catholic school. It's funny to think that had he grown up a few miles east of where he did, he probably would have graduated from my high school. We're talking same-diocese close. Which begs the question...Why have I never heard of La Lumiere, the Catholic boarding/day school which he attended? Is it because it's near LaPorte? Because it probably doesn't have competitive sports on the same level? Because it's a frickin' boarding/day school? I don't know, but it's all very strange. I always thought there were only three Catholic high schools in the diocese, and now there's this phantom school? Very strange indeed, but it does seem a little east coast for the Region...uniforms with ties and jackets, dorms, etc. Still, this is very weird for me.

As you can see, I'm kind of developing a soft-spot for the guy. Yesterday, of course, I was less than enthused. I was actually, downright ecstatic, hailing the end of America. My mantra for about an hour and a half was "America is over. O-V-E-R over." (Don't you think an "America Is Over" t-shirt would be great? I just don't want to get my ass kicked by hilljacks in pickup trucks which is exactly what would happen if I donned it outside the Harvard bubble, although even here we're sometimes not safe.) In the time since passed, it's hard to say exactly where he stands, but I have been advising my friends to use condoms because otherwise they're gonna have babies popping out left and right. (Yes, as you can tell, I have very high opinions of my friends.) It's comforting to know that if anyone is going to spell the end of American progress, it's a nice gentleman from my neck of the woods. Good Rust Belt stock, and not some bitchy East Coast aristocrat, Western cowboy, or southern Bible thumper. Don't you just love how I write off all of America except my neck of the woods, lumping them all together in one big pot? I'm sure you all love that. Seriously, though, I love the East Coast, my road trip to the South was perhaps my favorite vacation of all time, and I don't really know the west except LA, but I'm sure I'd love the big sky and open range.

Plus, how conservative can this guy really be? He worked in a steel mill through college! His dad also worked in a steel mill! He's got union blood running thick through his veins. If he does flip America back to the 1950s, at least he'll be betraying not just his country, but also his roots. Oh wait, he's Catholic. Shit, we're fucked.

I was in another one of my pissy, sick-of-America moods because of this, swearing my expatriation to beautiful, forward-thinking Spain, when I settled into my bed (ok, futon pad on the floor) to read some Sarah Vowell. I ripped through a hundred pages starting at around 12:30pm and felt immediately better. Few things make me prouder to be American than the curmudgeonly patriotism of Ms. Vowell. I'm all geared up to read Winesburg, Ohio and American Pastoral, but I have a millstone called Moby Dick around my neck. I'm already halfway done, so I have to finish it, but I swear to god, every time the thing gets off plot and digresses into info on whaling (i.e. every fucking chapter), I find myself wanting to gouge my eyes out with Schnocone's plastic forks so that I won't have any choice but to not finish it.

PS--I'm obsessed with the Supreme Court, and no one else really seems to care to talk about it. Schnocone had no idea what was up when I walked into the room, and the Beckster and I were the only ones watching the tv for the announcement. Bighead showed a reasonable amount of interest, but lacked the passion I had. (maybe because he's not quite the defeatist that I am when it comes to America. I've pretty much given up all hope and joined in this macabre death march to the repressed past with bells on. I've seriously lost almost all hope. Hopefully the midterm elections will perk things up, but as it is, I'm riding this thing until the wheels fall off, then doing an awkward butt-scoot until we ride it clear off the cliff. I really think it's fun to embrace defeat and the end times. Look at all the fundamentalists and all the mileage they get out of the Rapture, Apocalypse, whatever. Don't tell me they don't get sick pleasure from talking about end times and fire licking the loins of heathens like me. mmm, fire loins. that's some good condemnation right there. Ok, maybe I'm losing my brain, drunk on the idea of the end of America, which I think could be a thesis topic--the end of America at the end of the century...negative images of the USA in post-modern society. Because let's face it, both the leftist idealists and the right wing hystericals regard America as some kind of warped, twisted place in need of correction. They just look at this state in different ways. Is the jaded view of the noirists that different from the sincere view of the apocalypse-fetishists? They both see the terminus of the American Dream as a pretty black, dark place. Where's a professor when I need one.