She’s a peach.
I haven’t commented on Jane Smiley’s last few pieces at The Huffington Post because they’ve been unremarkable; a couple have even appeared to flirt with reason. But that’s over. Here’s how she begins her latest post:
Back in 2004, when Bush seemed to win the Presidential election for the first time, I made a vow. It was that in future years, if I happened to see an elderly homeless person holding out his hat, I would lean down and ask him who he voted for in 2004. If he said “Bush”, I planned to step over him and walk on.
You can just see her doing it, too. Jane doesn’t say whether she’ll unbelt any shekels if the destitute old soul says he didn’t vote–because of course he didn’t; being homeless means among other things being precinctless–or that he voted for Wendell Willkie or Otto von Bismarck.
It’s vintage Jane, by which I mean you can agree with her conclusion–the article, occasioned by last week’s clash in a Senate committee hearing between Al Gore and Oklahoma’s spluttering, buffoonish Senator James Inhofe, is about global warming–and still despise the crude, us-them bigotry that gets her there. She’s a gorgon. Read the whole post here.
