I Don't Care [View All]

[NanceGreggs]

By Nancy Greggs

I don’t care who put whose wienie in whose hoo-hoo* as long as the wienie in question is ready to vote for getting our troops out of Iraq. (* the words wienie and hoo-hoo were used so as not to offend allegedly mature adults who think penis and vagina are part of the Devil’s vocabulary.)

I don’t care about benchmarks, report cards, interim assessments, and almost-but-not-quite -there-yet give-it-time-what's-your-hurry-it's-only been-four-Goddamned-years signs of progress. I care about how many are dead, how many are wounded, and how many more it will take before somebody with a modicum of common sense yells, “Enough!”

I don’t care who whispered what to who – who mighta said, who coulda said, who in all likelihood said, when nobody really knows what was said and why. I just care about who’s prepared to do what, and how soon they’re prepared to do it.

I don’t care how much got spent on somebody’s haircut, somebody’s house, somebody’s TV ads, somebody’s campaign headquarters’ pizza tab. I just care about tax payers’ dollars being spent on rebuilding a nation (ours) instead of destroying someone else’s.

I don’t care who might be too black to appeal to whites, who might be too rich to appeal to the poor, who might be too much of a woman to succeed in a man’s world, or who might have ears too outsized to fit on a big-screen TV. I care about what someone can do for my country, and not what they can do to blend seamlessly into the utterly useless political wallpaper.

I don’t care about how many times the phrase Support the Troops can be repeated on a Sunday appearance on Meet the Press This Week in Washington Hullabaloo A Go Go. I care about who actually supports each and every military man and woman, and what they are willing to do to improve their lives, deliver them from harm, and reward them for their service.

I don’t care how many crimes this Administration has committed, or whether it was Cheney in the library with the candlestick, or Gonzales in the conservatory with the -- well, he can't remember what it was. In any event, I only care that someone has the balls to yell, "Game over!" and makes these criminals pay for what they've done. Whether they hang for one act of treason or a thousand, it’s all the same to me.

I don’t care what Mr. or Ms. Wolf-Crawley-Zahn-Anderson-Limbaugh-O’Reilly-Toobin- Greenfield-Schneider have to say about anything. I care about what my fellow Americans have to say – which is usually something totally different.

I don’t care who is touted for having good political sense. I care about who has good, old fashioned American common sense.

I don’t care who has the biggest war chest. I care who has a plan to end a war.

I don’t care who’s the best equipped to lead in the latest polls, surveys, American Idol text-messages, or box-office receipts. I care about who’s best equipped to lead a nation out of the darkness and back into the light.

I don’t care about the in-fighting, the rumour mill, the horserace, the rat race, the he said/she said, the slogging, the blogging, the accusations, the recriminations, the recognition factor, the fear factor, the brand name, the product placement, the season-ender, the cliff-hanger, the pie-in-the-sky, the doom-and-gloom, the spin, the fix-is-in, the love, the hate, or the televised-for-your-convenience debate.

I don’t care about a pseudo-president who can parrot a bunch of focus-grouped words. I care about a man whose word can be trusted. I don’t care about hearing the tarted-up, easily pallatable semi-truth; I care about hearing the real truth. I don’t care about the photo-op; I care about the reality behind the camera – and my access to it.

I just care about my country, where it has been, where it is going, and who will step up to the plate and return it to what it once was – and then some.

There was a time when that wasn’t too much to ask. There was a time when we didn’t ask, but demanded. There was a time when true leadership was not hoped for, but expected.

Now is the time to go back to what we once were, a people who cared about right and wrong rather than left and right, a nation who elected a president based on his commitment to uphold the Constitution rather than his ability to circumvent it, a country that prided itself on choosing the right man for the job, and not the best-packaged product that came the closest to looking the part.

Just give me what I really care about, and I promise not to bitch about the rest.

Well, for a while, anyway.