I love Phil Gramm. He’s from that generation that calls a spade a spade. Today, if someone calls a spade a spade, he needs to apologize to those who might prefer shovels, give a token nod of the head to the other garden tools, and follow that immediately with an emphatic clarification that the spade in question is a hand tool and not a derogatory term, and a further explanation that the speaker in no way is referring to a card suit and has never been a proponent of gambling. I don’t agree with Gramm. I think things are pretty seriously out of whack at the moment. I’m reminded of an old saying, it sounds like it might be from Will Rogers, but I’m not sure, that went “When your neighbor loses his job, it is a recession, and when you lose yours, it is a depression.” In Grammland, everything is obviously just fine.
Senator Gramm was an economics professor at one time, so I’m sure he knows of what he speaks. Or in the very least, he has the credentials to voice an opinion. I don’t see why he needs to apologize for or “clarify” his remarks. And I certainly don’t see why he needs to resign from the McCain campaign. What is everyone so afraid of? Does Gramm calling us a nation of whiners make us whiners or diminish us in some way? Are we so fragile that we cannot look at ourselves and possibly admit, yes, maybe we do whine a little bit now and again. Even if McCain said we were whiners, which I hasten to clarify, he did not, so what? If my mother called me a whiner. I'd still love her. I would probably still vote for her if she was running for something and I was going to vote for her before she called me a whiner, and I’m fairly confident that I came away from that experience relatively un-scarred. I do not point to that moment as the source of my personal shortcomings.
Did anyone call in to work the day after Gramm’s original remarks and beg to take a sick day because of the trauma inflicted by Gramm’s opinion? Did thousands of people fall prostrate from the verbal lashing? Hundreds? Tens,even? No, I don’t get the whole tumult. Much ado about nothing, in my mind. I wouldn’t even care if Obama’s minister called me a whiner. In fact, I don’t think I would care if McCain called me personally on the telephone and said that I and I alone was a whiner. Though if that were the case, I’d probably whine about it in a blog.
By Myron Gushlak
