I Hope They Never Ask About 2016

Hillary Clinton ended her second debate with Donald Trump with a lie, probably the worst one she’s ever told:

QUESTION: Good evening. My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?

CLINTON: Well, I certainly will, because I think that’s a very fair and important question. Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don’t agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that. And I think that is something that as a mother and a grandmother is very important to me.

I watched her say that with my two sons asleep in the next room. The next morning I made them waffles, changed their diapers, and cleaned up the ridiculous messes they made. You know, the sort of stuff Trump routinely brags that he never does, that no man should do.

Hillary is a great politician, one of the greatest of my lifetime. So she didn’t show any of the pain she surely felt to tell that necessary lie. Everyone says family to that question, even when it’s wrong. Especially when it’s wrong. We’ve all tacitly agreed that family are off limits so that’s the perfect way to falsely compliment your opponent.

So she said it. Hillary, whose motherhood was heckled for years, and still is, because she make a joke about baking cookies. Whose only daughter was ridiculed for her looks from the time she was ten years old, because of her parents. Who has been insulted for decisions only she knows about her family, for making them and not making them and all of the rest of a thousand tons of garbage we’ve heaped on her for being a woman while running for office.

And she smiled while saying it, because that’s what we demand from her. And she was called a liar by people on the television, for saying the only thing anyone would even accept.

I used to turn on Morning Joe sometimes when the kids were up early. I’d point out various politicians and reporters to them, whispering “look at that knucklehead. It’s always okay to call politicians knuckleheads. Ask daddy why. He always knows.”

I don’t do that anymore.

I don’t remember what I thought about Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis. I’m pretty sure they were okay, though. They didn’t do things like laugh when their children were called a “piece of ass,” or say they don’t care for their children, or say they’d like to date their kids.

I wanted to be a historian once. So when I see the ugliness I’ve encountered for ten years in politics bursting out into the open, “horrifying” people who had previously ignored it, I know it’s good. Better to be seen than hidden. Better that it’s excruciating than tolerated.

But you can’t say that to toddlers. There’s no way to tell them to look at this powerful woman but not that powerful man, to learn from this thing but not that thing. We struggle to accept that evil people exist in adulthood. Kids in diapers don’t have a chance.

One day my sons will ask me what happened this year. I don’t have any idea what I’ll say.

The Time I Almost Read My Parents' Divorce

It was a million degrees hot in Baton Rouge when I looked up my parents' divorce.

It wasn't even the first time bad weather had caused weird shit in my line of work. Once a former coworker looked up some parking tickets because it was a zero degree Minnesota winter and he didn't want to go outside quite yet. That set off a chain of events that led to a sitting attorney general being accused of trolling for anonymous gay sex in a public park.

Anyway. East Baton Rouge Parish had a new courthouse since I'd last been there. It had air conditioning and a lot of places to sit. I was there for a job, but I had wrapped it up pretty quick. I had time, and nothing to do but head back out to that soul burning heat by the convention center.

So I sat down at the terminal and looked up the case docket for Caskey v. Caskey, East Baton Rouge Parish, Family Division.

There are two kinds of divorce files: short and fast, or long and ugly. This one wasn't short.

I remembered as much. I remembered a lot of things in the file. Other things were unfamiliar. Still others I thought I remembered differently.

And there it was, in all its ugly glory. After years of reading divorces till I could speed read the damn things, I could finally see how everything went down, with a researcher's cold eye instead of a confused teenager's.

All I had to do was walk up to the desk and request it.

I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I cleared the search, left the building and got a root beer float at the Frost Top.

I've never looked it up since.

And now one day you, my Nonvoters, are going to be able to look up my own divorce from your mother.

Maybe you'll read this first. Maybe you won't.

Maybe you'll never even think to look it up, or want to.

Maybe you'll ask me about it first, and I have no idea what I'll tell you.

I'm not going to tell you to do what I did. It's your god given right to choose differently from me.

And I'm not going to tell you why I didn't go through with it. Divorce is a lot of things on paper and a hell of a lot more that aren't. If you haven't learned that by the time you read this, now is the time to do it.

I'm not even going to explain anything you might find. If you don't know, not feel but know, that I love you more than I even understand, then words aren't going to change that. And that's all that matters.

All I'm doing is telling you what I did in your position.

And if you want to do differently, I'll drive you to the Daley Center myself.