Poizner & Pot-lucks

Two old bits, one from This American Life, one from Prairie Home Companion. On TAL a couple of weeks ago they had a story about Steve Poizner, a candidate for governor of California, who wrote a book about a teaching gig he did in a supposed inner city high school in San Jose. The kicker is the school wasn't rough and wasn't in a rough part of town. They clearly showed this by interviewing kids and teachers there, and gave Poizner the opportunity to hedge his words a little, but he held firm. I'm doing a TERRIBLE job of explaining this, but the show was great. I was reminded about him cause he had a debate with the other Republican candidate yesterday, and the California Report reviewed it this morning. From the TAL bit and the coverage of the debate he would appear to be a pretty good example of a two-faced politican.... I mean, the democrat, Jerry Brown, will win anyway, but man Republicans are scary....

Towards the end of the News from Lake Wobegon on Prairie Home (~1:33 into the show) there was a funny bit about food/cooking/potlucks that really struck a chord in me. He talked about a church potluck, and how everyone was complaining about the number of store-bought dishes:

The world is changing, and the old regime is passing away, the old ladies sat there looking at this store bought stuff... they looked at it, they were like the last survivors of Versailles... here they were, the last survivors, and nobody remembered the day when everything was made from scratch, and it wasn't snobbery, it was a sense of pride, that you would not pay an extravagant amount of money for something that was inferior when you could make it yourself and do much better, they had pride, the people of the Depression.

Preaching to the choir.... Amen.