Michael:
My feelings of detachment from America changed when I dropped out of school to become Raphael, the silent and brooding Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. In the early nineties, the Ninja Turtles were the shit. Kids loved them, there were a couple movies out, and some enterprising capitalists thought the time was ripe for a touring stage show, kind of like
Turtles on Ice
without the ice.
For four months, I crisscrossed the country with my friend Ben in a smelly dark-blue Chevy Astro minivan crowded with luggage and two large coffin cases containing Ninja Turtle costumes. And it
was then—on the road, staying at cheap motels, attempting (and failing) to seduce MILFs, and eating more Pizza Hut than a human body should—that I fell in love with America.
Some highlights from that trip: I remember standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon and thinking about how the word “grand” didn’t do it justice: A better word would be “fabulous.” The Fabulous Canyon! I remember being on the Mexican border, dressed as Raphael, standing on top of an ice cream shop performing in front of thousands of kids on the ground below; walking the parade route at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, tears streaming down my eyes, because the entire weight of the head was resting on the bridge of my nose. I remember standing on top of our van in the middle of the woods somewhere with our hands over our hearts singing “The Star Spangled Banner” and meaning it. But mostly I remember all the people we met: all the good-hearted Americans across the country. Everywhere we stopped, the people were kind and gracious and welcoming. On that trip, pretending to be a turtle granted superpowers due to radioactive sewage, I discovered what it means to love my country.
Meghan:
I have had a love affair with the Republican Party and its doctrines that began the first day I stepped foot on my father’s presidential campaign. The majority of my twenties, and I expect the rest of my life, will be spent fighting for the soul of the Republican Party to be more accepting and big-tent oriented. I believe my life’s purpose is to change things within the Republican Party, so that at some point it is not considered so controversial to live the kind of life I live and believe in smaller government at the same time. I have been handed a front-row seat to Republican politics, and as I have grown into the person that I am today, I have always felt a great responsibility to pass on my knowledge about politics, share my experiences, and try to bring a fresh perspective on a political party that, unfortunately, has not always been so warm and welcoming to new ideas. Republican politics is my entire life, and I love it. It is the blood that pumps through my veins. My mother was pregnant
with me at the 1984 Reagan convention. Politics is quite literally the only world I have ever known and the only world I ever want to know. It is what gets me up in the morning and motivates what I do every single day. I continue to be exhilarated by the process and find joy attempting to help inspire a new way of thinking within Republican Party politics.
I love America on a visceral level that is complicated to explain. I have a great passion for America and what it means to be an American. I love every single thing about being an American, the good and the bad, and I would fight until my last breath to defend all the ideals this country stands for. I even love everything about our crazy political process and the people it produces. And yet, one of the more exhausting parts of my political ideology is that because I have never completely toed the Republican party line, many hardcore conservatives accuse me of not being a
real
Republican and have referred to me as a RINO: Republican In Name Only. Somehow this name is given to anyone who thinks gay people should have the right to marry, or diverge on social issues from the extreme right wing of the party. In the subtle subtext of conservative talk radio and right-wing extremists, apparently this makes me less of a “real” American and not “pure enough” to be considered a legitimate member of the Republican Party. As a direct result of my personal experiences with this kind of name calling, I have never been a big fan of labeling people so linearly. Yes, Michael is an East Coast liberal-pacifist-socialist-elitist snob-comedian who has never shot a gun, wants to give away health care, open up the borders, and
loves
Obama—but that doesn’t make him any less of an American than I am. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping I find out during our trip.
Michael:
When Republicans make fun of liberal “elitism,” they are absolutely right to do so. Liberals really
do
think they know better than everybody else. But the reverse is true, too, which is to say, Republicans have developed a kind of winking anti-intellectualism. You know, it’s that whole “good ol’ boy, just me, my dog, and my truck” that scoffs at fancy book learnin’, and relies instead upon
the common-sense homilies of country music singers and Joe the Plumber. It’s just as phony and contrived as Democratic arugula-munching snobbery.
Both political parties are as guilty of perpetuating the stereotypes about themselves as the other guys. But those stereotypes can’t be the whole story, can they? The people we see shouting at each other on television aren’t representative of normal Americans, are they? Are people in real life as mad as the people on TV?
If cable news is to be believed, then our entire country is engaged in a national pissing contest. It’s just one dopey pundit trying to out-pee the next one. Is that really who we are? I hope not. That being said, I’m pretty sure I can pee farther than Meghan. Before the turtle trip, I didn’t really pay too much attention to politics.
I was only nineteen and had not yet voted in a presidential election. I thought of myself as a Democrat because that’s the way I was brought up. People are generally born into their political persuasions, just like their religions. Similar to my Judaism, however, my Democratic leanings were always on the agnostic side. I thought I believed in Democratic principles but wasn’t certain. Honestly, I wasn’t even really sure what they were.
Twenty years later, and after much contemplation, I still don’t have much of an idea. Yet I identify with the Democratic Party. Why? Because I’m pretty sure I understand what the Republicans stand for, and I’m not down with them.
To quote the patron saint of the modern Republican Party, Ronald Reagan: “Government is not the solution to our problems. Government
is
the problem.” To wit: government should stay out of people’s lives except when a woman accidentally gets pregnant. Or when banks or oil companies need money. Republicans believe in free speech unless the language being spoken is Spanish. Also, I think they want to give guns to fetuses. If my understanding of the Republican Party is incomplete, then so be it. But that’s exactly why I’m doing this road trip; my job, as I see it, is to confirm all the worst stereotypes about Republicans I hold so dear.
Meghan:
The Republican Party has a long history of being for the “little guy”; it’s just in the fast pace of the modern news cycle, hungry for red meat, that the message has been twisted and exaggerated to the point where the most extreme voices get the most attention. A lot of negative repercussions have occurred as a result of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. I think the biggest problem is that for anyone to get any real attention it feels like the message has to be an extreme one. The choice has come down to Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann. If in any way you are seen as compromising on either side, automatically the echo chamber considers you a turncoat and not “pure” enough of a liberal or a conservative. The news cycle makes people afraid to compromise, lest they be crucified for finding a middle ground. It’s a really scary and dangerous political climate that the media and politicians have produced for the American public, and more often than not I myself have been caught in the crosshairs. Unfortunately, if you want to get any message across, it must be done in talking points and sound bites.
That being said, the American public seems to have an insatiable appetite for extreme talking heads. Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that Republicans feel belittled and stereotyped by many members of the “liberal media elite.” As a result, it makes Republicans automatically overly defensive and extreme in their reactions to criticism from liberals. I mean, at times I have felt belittled and stereotyped in the media and I’m clearly not the most extreme conservative in the news cycle. Anyone who does not think that the majority of the media is in the bag with Obama and the Democratic Party has no experience dealing with the media. As a result, you get more radical conservative opinions that serve as a pushback, with the pendulum of opinions swinging severely from one side to another. Listen, I am part of that news cycle and a member of the media; I am an employee of a news network. I am not saying there are not good people who are trying to change things in the media but, for whatever reason, they never seem to get as much attention as the more radical voices. It’s this horrific, vicious cycle that just
seems to be getting more and more polarized with each passing year.
What scares me more than anything is the idea that the world of politics will stop evolving. What if there really can’t be such a thing as a more socially moderate Republican? I believe that if this party doesn’t evolve it will die, and I don’t want to watch it die, because Democrats are damaging this country and we should stop letting them. We have to start showcasing different kinds of opinions within the larger Republican tent. There cannot be just extreme voices being heard because all it does is make a lot of people tuned out and turned off from the world of politics. I believe all Americans need to start taking more responsibility for the kind of extreme rhetoric that is permeating our political culture; otherwise, quite frankly, as a country we’re screwed.
Michael:
Democrats are
supposed
to be the party of the little guy. They’re supposed to be interested in workers’ rights, minorities, helping those with less achieve more. Pro-union, pro-choice, anti–machine gun. But over the last thirty years or so, it has started to feel more like the party of small, special interests. It feels old and faded and kind of crusty, like a pair of Walter Mondale’s boxers. All the great causes feel played out. There just doesn’t seem like anything for us Democrats to rally around. Honestly, who’s going to burn their bra over the Glass-Steagall Act?
As much as I want to be a committed Democrat, I can’t quite justify it to myself. I don’t know what I’m fighting for except opposing what Republicans are fighting for, which more or less boils down to Jesus and putting more money in the pockets of rich white guys.
Yes, I understand these are all stereotypes, but stereotypes are fun because they allow me to feel intellectually superior. Liberals love nothing more than to feel intellectually superior. It’s what we do best. We sit around and say pretentious things while listening to pretentious bands like Radiohead and feeling smug about everything. It’s a great way to be, if only because we get to eat so much
imported cheese. Liberals love imported cheese. In fact, it’s pretty much all we eat. Well, that and quinoa, which is a grain whose main appeal is that it’s difficult to pronounce, thus making us feel even
more
intellectually superior when we get the name right. We read books we hate and watch artsy movies we loathe. We get off on it. A typical dinner table lib conversation:
“Have you read the latest Franzen?”
“I
looooved
it.”
“I thought it was pedantic.”
“Well of
course
it was pedantic.
That’s
what I loved about it.”
Meghan:
Republican stereotypes sometimes hit the nail square on. We love to read, as long as it is either the Bible or a nonfiction account of a prominent party favorite, especially if it is a book about President Reagan (
especially
if it’s about President and Mrs. Reagan). Over a dinner of perfectly grilled steak from a cow we knew by name and shot ourselves, and a potato that has been baked in the skin that God gave it, we love to dissect the latest entry to the Republican canon:
“Have you read Bill O’Reilly’s recent book on Lincoln?”
“I loved it. Read it in three days. Hands down the best book ever written about President Lincoln.”
“Bill O’Reilly is a man who truly loves America.”
“O’Reilly loves Lincoln because he is a true God-fearing American in a world gone to hell.”
How’s that for stereotypes about Republicans?
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
—ADLAI STEVENSON
Prelude: San Diego, California
A Hot Mess
Michael:
My own view heading into this trip is that America is at a particularly crappy time in its history. We feel like a nation adrift. To use the worst kind of corporate lingo, it seems like we have lost sight of our “mission statement.” What is it we do now? Who are we? What is our purpose? The answers feel foggy these days. Something about freedom, I guess, and democracy, whatever that is, and helping people, I suppose, unless it’s too expensive, in which case we all have to tighten our belts a little, unless we’re rich, in which case we actually need to pay less taxes, and something about the huddled masses, except for
Mexicans.
Underneath it all there’s this thing called the American Dream, and I’m not sure I know what that is either.
Growing up, I guess I believed the American Dream had something to do with having the opportunity to be anything you wanted to be, to get ahead in this country despite the circumstances of your birth, to be rewarded for your brains and skill, not your parentage. The American Dream felt tangible and achievable. It felt fair. In fact, I am a product of that dream. My own upbringing was humble. I attended public schools, got decent grades, went to a good college, and began pursuing my life as a comedian. What a ridiculous, useless career, and yet this country allowed me to follow a vision I had for myself without encumbrance. That’s pretty amazing. Of the 196 countries in the world today, how many of
them allow their citizens to devote their lives to telling fart jokes on basic cable television? Probably not that many. But America does. And for that I (and my fart jokes) am grateful.