Its All About

I caught a TV blip today with Geraldine Ferraro, who warmly intoned: "I went from a kid who lost her father and growing up in the south Bronx to someone who almost lived in the WH….just shows you what this country is all about."

I hate when people do that. The "ain't we wonderful" song. I could type a list as long as a Sicilian vendetta, of other countries who produced presidents, premiers, vice presidents, prime ministers, heads of state, who began their careers as "simple folk." Just average gals and guys who made the big time. It is not, NOT I repeat, a phenomenon that can only happen in America or define what this country is "all about."

There's Golda Meir.
Benazir Bhutto, PM of Pakistan in 1988.
Violeta Chamorro, newspaper publisher and president of Nicaragua.
Head of State Sühbaataryn Yanjmaa, Mongolia, 1954.
Interim President Lydia Gueiler Tejada, Bolivia, 1980.
President Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland 1996.
President Agatha Barbara, Malta 1987.
Acting Head of State Carmen Pereira, Guinea Bissau, 1984.
President Maria Corazon Aquino, Phillipines, 1992.
Acting President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Haiti, 1991.
Head of State Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, East-Germany, 1990.
President Mary Robinson, Ireland, 1997.
President, 1994, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Sri Lanka, VP 1984-86.
President Mireya Moscoso Rodrígez, Panama, 1999.
President Gloria Arroyo, Phillipines 2001.

So what does Geri mean when she says that's what this country "is all about?" Opportunity to move up to the big house? A chance to make good? Folks, opportunity is everywhere on earth if you know where to look and place yourself in its path. It also takes some education, effort, instinct, and the ability to recognize and use one profitable action to create the next. These are skills, and a little luck helps. People worldwide are born with skills and a little luck. "What this country is all about" is politicking slogans, to pull a warm nationalistic fuzzy from the listener. People around the world have the same tag line. I cringe at slogans designed specifically to work on the simple minds of the boneheaded. As if wealth and success can happen only in America, that only in America can a little orphan girl name Geri almost move into the White House.

Of course it's easier and quicker if a person is born into circumstances that generate prospects and possibilities, which all of the above women had. It didn't hurt Geraldine that daddy was a mob connected nightclub owner who ran a numbers racket in Queens in the 1940s. Nor did it hurt when her cousin Nicholas Ferraro got her a job as assistant DA in Queens. Even her husband, John Zacarro's sleazy business practices have not hampered success, financially at least, but her ethics have been in question since her 1984 VP run with Mondale. As an attorney, politician, and talking head, she is held by some to be an icon of success for women and liberals. Are they serious? Another example of the fantasy served up by America's political henhouse. I'd rather have Evita Peron in my face; at least her orphaned poverty was real and everyone knew who she screwed.