(T) Virginians

A news report about N. Gingrich's failure to come up with enough signatures to get on the primary ballot in Virginia referred to this being his home state. At first I was aghast. I thought it was deliberately meant as a slur against Virginia, or that it was one of the mistakes, most of them grammatical, that one sees newswriters making all the time these days. I had always thought Gingrich was instead a product of one of those more hapless states in the Union, like Georgia. But they were merely referring to the fact that McLean, a posh suburb in Northern Virginia, is his current place of residence, and Georgia is indeed still the state that regurgitated him up against perenially victimized and ostracized D.C.

He was one of those many in all the states who are drawn to the opportunities in D.C., all furnished by the Government, and when their dreams come true and their purses and their paunches become sufficiently fattened, they invariably deteriorate into becoming Republicans, at which point they then support every effort that anyone might want to make to castrate and cripple that same institution that made it possible for them to live so high up on the hog. So now R. Paul has risen higher in the effort to become the Repub candidate for President than R. Perry, because Paul promises to chop off five (5!) departments from the body of the Government, compared to the three spoken of by Perry, when he can remember them all.

Then I also realized that just a few days ago, in another post mentioning Gingrich, I had referred to myself as being a Virginian, with nothing added to explain that I am in no respect a product of Virginia. I am instead and will always be a Washingtonian.

I say that, though, not out of any deep infatuation with the place, for otherwise I would never have left there, right? And if I'm not still a Washingtonian down to my innermost fiber, then why are at least half the dreams in my slumbertimes always set somewhere in D.C., usually on some street or avenue there, on which I am desperately trying to get back home without being hassled or hijacked or some such, though the dream never lasts long enough to reveal what home that might be. It's just the hard , cold fact that, to its credit or to its discredit -- you take your pick -- I am purely a product of the Rainbow -- same-o same-o "black" -- community of Washington, D.C., though not the one that is there now. That community of which I'm speaking has most likely long since largely disappeared from the planet, by the usual methods of attrition, mainly by "passing away," as the kinder, gentler term puts it.

From now on I will have to remember to add something to the "Virginian" bit whenever I speak of myself that way, to denote that I am and will always be just a tranplant here, and the title of this post is my first shot at doing that, though I'm not sure of how successful that will be, or whether there should even be a reason for that to matter.