Replaying Taco Day

There's gaffes and there's pandering insults.

It turns out that we really had Taco Tuesday at our house the other night, but it was nowhere near as bad as the Taco Monday Jill Biden had. (Actually, ours were quite good, as usual.)

In front of a Latino crowd, our First Lady said this, according to CNN - which actually sanitized Jill’s remarks:

"Raul helped build this organization with the understanding that the diversity of this community -- as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio -- is your strength," Biden said, while mispronouncing the word "bodega."

"The first lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community," Michael LaRosa, the first lady's spokesman, said.

The mispronunciation was “bogida,” which means she’s taking lessons from her husband.

It goes without saying that the Bidens are easy to pick on as experts in malapropism, but my point today is more about the pandering that Biden did.

I’m not a politician, and I also know what else I’m not - in this case, I’m not Hispanic. So I don’t go too far in trying to ingratiate myself into that culture, just as most of them probably wouldn’t try to go all German or Polish on me. We don’t mind borrowing from time to time, particularly when it comes to food, but we’re not pandering to the subset of people - particularly those who look different than us - to gain their approval.

And that’s what got me going on the subject this evening. I don’t know about you, but I would imagine you have a particular set of problems: maybe the car needs repairs or the fridge is on the fritz, or you have that crazy niece that’s in and out of the clink - whatever the issue, it’s generally something that affects you whether you’re Republican, Democrat, independent, white, black, brown, or yellow, straight or gay; it doesn’t matter.

Politicians (or others) who try to ingratiate themselves with a particular person or group by pretending to be sensitive to their needs come off to me as completely phony.

So I have a little story about how phony politicians can be.

Back in the mid-90’s I finally decided - with a little prodding from the system that was eliminating the grandfather clause I qualified by - to get my architectural registation after a half-dozen years working in the field. At that time, those who wanted to be registered architects in Ohio had to spend four days taking the Architectual Registration Exam in a big warehouse in Columbus. It was a nine-part exam given only twice a year, and you had to wait several weeks with bated breath for the results.

After I took the exam the first time, I knew I would have to take round two because I couldn’t finish the final day’s portion in time. (It was basically twelve hours to design and draw a complex project, with my problem being I was out of practice on hand-drawing - by that point I was working with AutoCAD.) However, I was still awaiting the results of the first three days, hoping I passed those eight sections that were based more on “fill in the circle” standardized testing so I could get those behind me and not have to go back down there on two separate days.

So one warm late-summer Saturday I was out getting the mail when I saw the manila envelope from the State of Ohio in my mailbox. It didn’t even get into the house before it was opened, and once I saw I had passed the first eight parts I let off a big “yeeeaaaahhh!” That got my wife at the time out the door.

And I swear this guy, who was across the street and two houses over, also beat it double-time to see what the fuss was about. His name: Carty Finkbeiner.

Carty was well-known around Toledo as an opportunistic politician who never met a party he didn’t like - depending on the situation, he ran for office as a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat. In this case, he was out doing door-to-door in my neighborhood running for mayor. So we told him and he was just effusive in congratuations. It was just weird how he broke his routine to do this and glom onto our moment, and something just seemed phony enough about the whole thing that the memory has stuck with me ever since. (And no, he didn’t get my vote.)

Having done what I have done, I’ve met a lot of political people - and, alas, many of them are like Carty Finkbeiner. There are few who are genuine. But this latest example shows the Biden family takes phoniness to a new frontier.