In his latest column, North introduces his newborn granddaughter Sarah Jane to the reality of modern politics. On the surface it sounds quite sweet. Grandpa Ollie is educating his little granddaughter about the world six years before she’ll be able to read and 20 years before she gives a shit about politics, if she cares about politics ever. He’s optimistic about his granddaughter’s future, and so he wants to lay it all out so she knows how to carry on the honorable North name long into the future.
Like any good teacher of tomorrow’s leaders, North dumbs down the message a bit – which also happens to be consistent with the Republican Party’s overall style in communicating with even the adult population of the American public.
He begins with an on-point criticism of our president (also consistent with the GOP talking points): “Instead of helping defend our country from Mexican cartels engaged in kidnapping, drug smuggling and human trafficking, our president brought a federal lawsuit against the state of Arizona,” North writes. “Though he’s supposed to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, he evidently doesn’t understand the second clause of Article 3, Section 2…”
If this sounds a bit shallow, please remember that North is talking to a newborn; he has to be a bit vague in the details lest he confuse the poor child. Later, when she’s older and wiser and capable of negotiating alliances and financial support deals with the dueling factions of neighborhood bullies, little Sarah Jane will get a more detailed explanation, courtesy of Grandpappy North, on exactly how the president of 2010 was ignorant of the Constitution. This follow-up explanation may or may not include the background information regarding the president’s 12-year stint as a Constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, but it surely will expand upon the generalization made about his decision, in 2010, to challenge an Arizona immigration law. ...
In his informative lecture, North will of course point out that while the president in 2010 was ignorant of the meaning of the Constitution, so was the federal court in Arizona that overturned the Arizona law on the basis that it was unconstitutional. North will describe the bill, which history books in 2025 may or may not refer to by its colloquial name, The Racial Profiling Mandate, as a state law that attempted to transfer federal authority to state law enforcement officers and allow them to check the immigration status of any and all Arizona citizens whom the officers believed might be in the country illegally. North will then explain that states do not have any authority over national sovereignty and therefore have no authority over immigration law and therefore they have no authority to act as federal deportation agents, even if the patriotic white citizens of Arizona thought open discrimination against Hispanics, at the time, was warranted.
In his column, North also discussed the recent healthcare reform bill, telling Sarah Jane that under the new healthcare law he will be too old to get treatment for his cancer. While this sounds like the same old Conservative rhetoric about how the government will act as “the decider” on who is and who isn’t old enough to receive life-saving treatments, it’s really just North being funny, playing the comedian and entertaining his granddaughter in hopes that the newborn will crack a little smile. The whole “Death Panel” scare was refuted just days after it was publicized (on Sarah Palin’s Twitter account … or was it Facebook?), and North knows this. But because little Sarah Jane is so young, he’s again keeping it simple.
Later on, when she’s older, North will clarify his surface-level statements and explain the facts – that the government will not and cannot force Americans to change their healthcare insurance providers or their doctors because of this legislation. Of course, by the time little Sarah Jane is old enough to know what healthcare insurance is, his argument may be irrelevant because she won’t have to worry about healthcare insurance. She’ll already have it.
Eventually, between the time she’s five and 40 – really, any time after her infancy – North will also decide to give her a lesson on the actual history of America, history that he witnessed, history that he participated in, history that may or may not include the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
North will instruct his granddaughter about the world in such a way that will allow her to grow into a responsible, intelligent and truly patriotic citizen. He will explain to her in blunt, specific, adult language how certain parties in Washington are capable of directing the national dialogue with demagoguery and without detail, with politics and without pragmatism, with fallacious fiction and without fact.
In so doing, North will inspire reverence in his granddaughter by showing her that the liberties he risked his life (and political career) to protect were worth his personal sacrifices.
But more importantly, North will show that if he himself is capable of talking to his granddaughter in this way, so too might the Republican Party of her generation be capable of talking to the American people like grownups instead of infants.
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