Unglamorous patriots

I started to name my reality show “Who’s the Best Environmentalist?” but some of the imaginary contestants refused to be called environmentalists. One smacked me, another threatened to sue, and a third called me a racist. Then I got sidetracked and started thinking about how it is that those who call themselves patriots and those who hate the very word both think that patriotism is about who is most enthusiastic about nuking the Middle East … and so forth.
Just as a thought experiment, just as a game – not as anything serious, you understand – what if we thought, and said, that patriotism is about whose actions best show love for our land and people? Love, as in actually being willing to be uncomfortable sometimes for the sake of the well being of that land and people? Wouldn’t that be an interesting concept? For a reality show, I mean. So I decided to call my show “American Patriot” and hope the TV executives get it, but let me try it out on you before I approach them.
There are next to no rules. Contestants are nominated by anyone who cares to make a nomination. Then the viewers vote on the contents of the contestants’ patriotic characters. Here, in no particular order, is my collection of strictly imaginary contestants. Feel free to add your own.
Elbert Snore is a former vice president of the United States. His awarding-winning slide show, Vexing Verities, recently won several awards for publicizing the threat presented to the human race by climate change. Meanwhile, his enormous house has been running up astronomical electric bills.
Mordred Payne is currently vice president of the United States. Having made a ton of money in the defense and construction industries, he now invokes the right to torture to protect those industries. He does, however, own somewhere out west an energy-efficient solar house. When I called him an environmentalist, he threatened to sue me, mentioned that was not the worst he could do and insisted his solar house was a matter of national security in case of widespread systems failure.
Bob Straw and Jack Haye are best friends and professors at the University of Tennessee. You can find them at least once a month – if not more often – at a certain downtown bar drinking fancy beer and comparing technical notes on Professor Straw’s hybrid car and Professor Haye’s solar panels. If they drink too much, sometimes they get into shouting matches with Professor Donald Rivers, who finds their position on biofuels absurd given a technical point that I’m currently trying to wrap my mind around.
Rachel Carter and Malkia Moore are business partners in a spa, which uses only organic products. They also buy lots of carbon offsets and both are strict vegans. Both are slowly getting rich and are stunningly beautiful. They annoy the blue heck out of me, but maybe you find them as likable as I think I ought to.
Bill Menefee rides his bicycle everywhere he goes. His job commute features an interstate connection at a major thoroughfare, followed by a winding road with no shoulders where blonds in Expeditions go 60 mph through curves while chatting on cell phones about what they will buy at the mall. When I tried to congratulate Mr. Menefee on his bravery, endurance, and environmentalism, he shouted that I was a racist because only white people are environmentalists. Then he rode on.
Millie Fentworth refers to herself as a moderate environmentalist, explaining that she is anxious no one think her some kind of nut. She believes the paper-shredding service she hired for her office makes discarded printer cartridges harmless because “they grind it up all very fine and then it’s safe.” She asks that you vote for her in consideration of her effort hiring the paper-shredding service.
Sally Smith lives in a trailer park in Jefferson County and drives 60 miles round trip every day to a Knox County factory where, after ten years as a temp, she earns $9 an hour. With this job she single-handedly supports three children. After Katrina, gasoline hit Ms. Smith’s pocketbook pretty hard. So she asked her trailer-park neighbor and sister in permanent temping to carpool with her. They are considering adding a third woman to the pool. Ms. Smith slapped me when I called her an environmentalist because environmentalists are dirty hippies who object to the chemicals used at the permanent-temp factory.
Linda Little can be seen one Saturday every month driving a broken-down old heap as she runs errands. Her childhood was complicated considerably by the death of her uninsured cousin. The woods where the two of them once played were sold off to pay expenses from uninsured cancer and death. The trees were taken to chip mills. Not long after that, a teenage Ms. Little overheard a remark about wood chips being shipped overseas to become Japanese toilet paper.
Ms. Little entered adulthood obsessed with trees, money in general and with the insurance, medical, timber, paper and legal industries in particular. She must run errands only once a month, must buy the least expensive recycled toilet paper and must plan her route just so to spend the least amount of money on gas. This maximizes her savings and allows her to use as little gasoline and as few trees as she can figure out how. All this both comforts and reinforces her grief.
Michael Zimmerman has lived in a nursing home since he was two years old. His physical problems cause him to shake and tremble. He insists on feeding himself, and he makes quite a mess. He has a serious speech impediment and has never learned to read. Long ago, when institutions still showed 16 mm educational movies, Michael saw a film on ecology which concluded with assorted hints on what he could do to help. Ever since, he has been driving his care givers nuts with what the staff call “Mike’s napkin issue.” He refuses to have more than one paper napkin set in front of him at a time. If they give him the bunch of paper napkins they want to give him, he refuses to eat and instead sits and rocks and trembles until they submit. Michael is very lucky they do not drug and force feed him.
Advanced players of American Patriot may need some time to think about their vote. Which is more helpful, loving, and patriotic -- to be one big person doing one or two fashionable things, or to be one of many little people doing lots of unglamorous things?