Sean Again
I shouldn’t be writing about the negligible Sean Duffy. He is our no-account Secretary of Transportation and the least dangerous of the maniacs in the orbit of the president.
The problem is that he just pisses me off.
The first time it happened was early in the administration. At that time he told us that he wanted us to dress differently. He was apparently irked by seeing people on planes dressed in pajamas (or sweat pants or short-shorts?). Anything, in other words, that offended against propriety. He asked us to think of how people once traveled on planes: dressed to the nines in derbies and dress shoes, going to their destinations in 1950s splendor.
The last time I dressed that way was…never. The first time I flew was when I was five years old for a family wedding in far away Los Angeles. My parents may have put me in a little fake bow tie, but it was too long ago for anyone to remember. The only reason I mention it is that photos from that period show middle-class Americans being served hot meals on planes, children sitting like little princes and princesses, and plenty of room between one seat and the next. When airlines started to treat us like galley slaves or anchovies, we gained the right to dress however we pleased. Sean Duffy is either a masochist or a stooge. Apart from that, he seems to have missed the 1960s, when the country went through a revolution of acceptability. Poor Sean seems to be caught in an anachronistic time warp of gold-rimmed highball glasses and high-waisted dress pants.
Regrettably, Sean is now back in the news. Instead of conducting the people’s business, he piled his family of twenty-seven kids into a van for an entire summer on the road. I don’t know where exactly they’re headed, but I’m on the lookout for one of Clarence Thomas’s tour buses, the ones he scored from the oligarchs who bought him. Why did I forget to get purchased by an oligarch? It would have made my summers so much easier. But in a period when rank-and file Americans can’t afford to drive to work, Sean has put on a new pair of pants (pleated, high-waisted Sans-a-Belts in pearl gray) and is touring the country to promote retro-authoritarian headship. That is apparently what religion means to the Duffys.
Not only that, but Sean has Thoughts. Little Paloma Duffy is about to go to college and she has set her sights on Harvard. Unfortunately, she didn’t reckon with her blabby parents, who have publicly announced their fear for her corruption. That’s what happens when you go to Harvard. Hearing Thoughts other than the ones your parents have implanted leaves you a prisoner of woke progressivism. You could actually start watching Rachel Maddow.
The problem here is the issue of jinxing. When you start talking publicly about your child’s college aspirations, there’s a good chance the Angel of Admissions will be listening. Either Paloma will be accepted as a way of messing with her parents or she will be denied as a way of messing with Paloma. Any which way, it will all be for fun, of the meanest, most retaliatory kind. Like it or not, that’s the way the universe works. I learned everything I know in the Church of Real Life.