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Can You Smell What The Rock Is Cooking!
Blog Note: The following entry was originally written in the spring of 2007. In light of New York City’s upcoming elections this Tuesday, September 10, 2013, I hope this encourages my fellow citizens to take a critical look at the field of candidates and above all else, VOTE!
“Can you smell what The Rock is cooking!”
Dwayne Johnson, aka “THE ROCK”
It’s May 2007 and we’ve just had our first round of democratic and republican debates for the 2008 presidential election. I fear a long and bloody season ahead of trash talking, body slamming, victory proclaiming candidates in this latest version of the CW Smack down. It promises to be great theater!
We have our first wife of an ex champion, Sen. Hillary Clinton (you all remember Southern Comfort Bill); the first clean, mainstream (according to Sen. Joseph Biden, who is also running) Black male candidate, Sen. Barack Obama; 9/11 New York City hero, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Massachusetts Mormon (he’s only had one wife) former governor, Mitt Romney and the old war hero, Sen. John McCain. Throw in former Vice Presidential and Presidential hopeful John Edwards, the possibility of an inconvenient former Vice President Al Gore, plus the 4 democratic and 7 republican candidates who also participated in the debates and one can see the body count rise.
Each will take on a “ring persona” to vanquish their foes and capture your vote. As the weeks and months progress there’s bound to be a “bone crusher”, “righteous avenger”, or “stealth bomber” in the bunch. Each will vow to save America, if you just choose them. Some can speak to what they have accomplished on a national or state level, others to their record of public service. But does the past and what you say, translate to what you can and will actually accomplish once you get there? This is the difficult task for each voter to assess. What is the measure of a man?
Playwright August Wilson deals with these issues in his new play, Radio Golf, which premiered May 8th on Broadway, at the Cort Theater. Radio Golf is the last of his epic ten play series chronicling the decades in Black American life of the 20th Century, before he died in 2005. Don’t let the title fool you. It is a serious examination of the challenges facing a potential candidate or elected official. Set in late 1990’s Pittsburgh, the story’s protagonist, Harmond Wilks is running for election to become the city’s first black mayor. All of his ducks are in a row: Right Wife: a fellow Hill District hometown girl, Mame, with powerful ties to the governor’s office; a thriving family real estate business, first started by his father; a business partner, Roosevelt, prominent in the banking community, with access to major capital. Harmond’s campaign platform is urban renewal. He has big plans to resurrect the community with a large scale, planned living development of high-rise apartments, parks and prime retail space. It’s a slam dunk until he discovers that property he bought years ago, which is scheduled to be demolished to make way for the new high rises, may not be his.
Harmond reluctantly begins to investigate the property dispute at the nagging insistence of down and out old-timer, Joe Barlow, who swears the house belongs to his daughter. Family secrets and city government blunders are uncovered to substantiate Old Joe’s claim. Tensions escalate as Harmond seeks to rectify the situation and stay true to his promise of urban renewal. Add the pressure of his wife’s PR job in possible jeopardy along with the economic backing set up by his partner Roosevelt if he chooses “unwisely”, and you have a candidate in crisis. Without spoiling the ending, Harmond makes an intensely personal decision that ultimately satisfies his soul. A decision most candidates are not willing to make as they accept the hard truth that politics is a life of inescapable compromise.
As voters we must seek genuine information vs. opinion and rumor and try to answer where our candidates’ hearts and loyalties lie. Who do they owe and how will that debt compromise their vision? These are the questions we must ask through out this election season. Not can we smell what they’re cooking, but WHAT’S COOKING?
