Oddball spelling, political views can be kin

I have had an inside joke with Sharon Martin through the years about the spelling of her first name. That spelling really should be as obvious as the nose on your face. Our banter may not seem terribly funny but it carries a lesson on how we ought not assume things like spelling.
This story goes all the way back to when - gasp - Sharon, who today is a Morris Area High teacher, was a student there herself. No, there were no I-pads then.
She was getting her photo taken with some classmates, perhaps for Homecoming or maybe class officers. As was common when I made these rounds (for the local media), I made certain my spelling was "just so."
I had to carefully clarify name spelling for at least one student in the "lineup" on this day, perhaps by making sure a vowel was correct. As the group broke up, Sharon made sure there was clarity with her first name, saying "that's Sharon with an 'o'."
It's funny because, how else could you spell Sharon?
Well, I got a lesson last week. I was referring to the Republican U.S. Senatorial candidate in Nevada - the challenger to Harry Reid. It's a woman and I was certain of the spelling of her last name: "Angle." But despite my years of journalistic background, I made the mistake of assuming the spelling of her first name. I spelled it "Sharon."
After all, any dispute over how to spell that common name would be unheard of, and perhaps only undertaken for purposes of levity as with me and the extroverted Ms. Martin.
Crusty old journalists know anything is possible. But I was still taken aback, with wrinkled forehead, when discovering a day or two after I posted about Ms. Angle, that this upstart politician is named "Sharron Angle."
It's her right to spell her name any way she wants. But it almost seems like she's trying to irritate people, like she does most assuredly with her extreme tea-partyish political ideas. What possible purpose could the addition of the superfluous "r" accomplish?
Her parents had something to do with this. I wonder what they were thinking when they arrived at the "Sharron" spelling, which would require their daughter to explain and clarify the spelling all through school and probably the rest of her life..
I'll be politically incorrect and describe the spelling as "retarded." Funny, but Angle's political views would seem to call for the same description (in my view).
It's scary that she's actually a viable candidate. Our best hope for understanding this is that Angle comes from the very idiosyncratic state of Nevada.
The late political humor columnist Art Buchwald was gauging public sentiment on an issue once and decided to visit "a typical American city" and its "local hangout." That city was Las Vegas and its hangout was Caesar's Palace.
Humor was Buchwald's stock and trade. He is missed among the punditry. He taped a news report about his own death when his health was failing.
Art's heyday was during more moderate, thoughtful and temperate times for political discourse (i.e. pre-cable TV news). I have to wonder if he could adapt to the environment of today, where views that were once on the margins can seep into the foreground. Like the tea party views. And libertarianism.
Pundit Michael Gerson (Washington Post) had a firm warning for Republicans in an op-ed that appeared Saturday in the Star Tribune: "Don't hitch your wagon to these people."
He did spell Angle's first name right. Kudos on that.
I'm not sure we need to worry so much about what happens in Nevada though. Las Vegas promotes itself with the saying "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
We should be so lucky with Angle's tea party refrains emanating from Nevada. But such talk is gaining some currency and the polls show she's viable, at least now.
Angle is certainly diametrically opposed to President Barack Obama.
I think we need to look back to when Obama made comments about conventions in Las Vegas and how this location might not represent putting your best image forward. At the time I thought "oh no, you're going to be raising some hackles."
I have visited Las Vegas several times through the years and I know what makes that city tick. Obama would become persona non grata there, and fellow Democrat Reid would get pushed into a defensive corner. But what could Obama say to backtrack?
"I guess gambling isn't so bad after all?"
No. Because once this issue is out in the open, certain realities have to be acknowledged. Gambling is dangerous and corrosive for an appreciable percentage of our population.
I actually thought it was refreshing to see President Obama bring the issue into the open. It's rarely done anymore, as we are today surrounded with state-sponsored gambling in the form of lotteries, along with pull-tabs and God knows how many other gambling distractions in a society no longer encumbered by any moral restraint about this.
But Obama implied that there are image-related issues connected with conventioneering in America's gambling mecca.
Ironically many skeptics about gambling argue that the vice is best kept out in the desert in a destination setting. Quarantined? You can visit there as a deliberate and defined action and then withdraw.
Fat chance for some people. But the hope was that the vice could find some acceptable boundaries.
The fundamental moral question of gambling seems so quaint now. Minnesota's late Governor Rudy Perpich kicked the can and kept his own hands clean by saying "let the people decide," regarding having a lottery.
The door was open and it wasn't going to get closed again. In these recessionary times, gambling looms as a more dangerous distraction than it otherwise might be. Maybe the moral question should be introduced back into the equation.
In the meantime, we have the oddball Senatorial candidate from Nevada, Angle, venting in a way that ought to push her to the margins quickly. Is her venting a form of pushback from Las Vegas and the gambling-oriented state as a whole? Who knows, but between this situation and the Arizona immigration imbroglio, we are looking at potentially serious cracks in the solidarity of our Federal Union.
Maybe the Vermont secessionist movement has it right. That movement asserts that the U.S. has become too big and complicated to be managed out of Washington D.C. Can the American Southwest stay in the fold, or will it start to crumble away? If Senator Reid fades and Angle climbs, those dark clouds will be accentuated.
Angle has uttered quotes beyond belief. She sees the Second Amendment as a license to contemplate violent response to "a tyrannical government."
This would be a French Revolution type of response. Fun, right? Palatable?
Angle is scrambling to try to re-state, clarify or sanitize her blunt positions. It's uncertain whether she or the idiosyncratic wave of libertarian politicians like Rand Paul (Kentucky) can be dragged kicking and screaming closer to the mainstream. Because surely they can't hold firm to their positions, not if America is to stay on its steady course with certain fundamental understandings like the 1964 Civil Rights Act (representing a totally settled matter).
It isn't? Ask Mr. Paul about that. Or ask Angle about Social Security. There was a time when questioning any aspect of Social Security would immediately sink you as a politician.
Apparently not now. You can't assume anything anymore, not even the spelling of "Sharon."
It's 2010 and where are we headed?
-Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com