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Hispanic Link News Service
HOUSTON—Anabel, a friend and life-long Republican, contacted me to report her increasing alarm over a trend that’s testing her party loyalty.
Anabel is part of that fortunate class that isn’t hurting from this recession. She lives from investments and trust funds. Her social set is old money, but they are quite liberal and let in the nouveau riche. Advancing age frees them to think about what kind of world they want to leave behind.
Did I say she is Republican?
Near the end of a lunch with a handsome widower, Anabel heard bells go off, then an alarm, on the date that had otherwise been pleasant enough. She had just told him about having contributed to the McCain campaign but became disenchanted after Sarah Palin was selected as his VP candidate. The widower ripped into Anabel over last November’s election with a diatribe about race.
She told me, “I wish I had paid for my own lunch.”
Now you must know that Anabel is hardly the confrontational type. She’s from that swell ethic and civility that forces you to avoid letting it all hang out or telling someone off. They just take it. That’s what was churning at her. She was about to burst.
This past summer one of her lady companions made Anabel come unglued with a rant about “the Obama conspiracy,” Anabel told me. We had a good laugh about how otherwise-very-smart people were falling for the Manchurian Candidate idea that “birthers” propagated.
About that time, President Obama made light of it himself with a group of us reporters at the White House. When immigration reform came up, Obama said, “Some people think even I’m an illegal immigrant.”
This humor may be lost on sourpusses who want to reengineer the truth to get another outcome, as happened with the notorious health care town-hall meetings. That, I decided, is what was bothering Anabel. She sees contortions, as viral as unbalanced-brain syndrome, are infecting her social circle.
It happened that way with a lifelong friend who lives next door to her
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