[You think you have it bad? Hillel Stavis votes in Cambridge and here he describes his encounter in line with the native species. -S]

Where All Our "Friends" Meet - Despatches From Quakerland

As I walked to my polling place in the PRC (People's Republic of Cambridge) yesterday, I had a feeling that trouble was brewing - and I wasn't wrong. I was about to encounter Moose looking for his Velma in the person of that self-parodying Brattle St. resident (white, of course) laboring hard under the weight of too many Obama pins.

The belly of the belly of the beast is Longfellow Park, home to the Society of Friends (with Friends like that...) what we all know as the Quakers aka The American Friends Service Committee. I long vowed never to set foot in that perfect little building because of its plethora of Israel-hating flyers tacked to a bulletin board. Of course, its walls have never heard a talk on honor killings and its lectern has never recited the genocidal Hamas Charter.

It's bad enough that I am forced to vote in a place that practices anti-Semitism nearly every week of the year, but to wait in line with the robo-rich denizens of Brattle St. was too much.

An overly healthy and thin couple in line in front of me turned and asked me where my Obama pin was. I sensed an opening and I took it.

"Excuse me, tovarich, are you the Block Commissar around here?" I asked.

The male of the species was wearing the tony, standard Wellfleet- issue duckbill yachting cap from behind which trailed the standard- issue graying pony tail while his wife sported an AlpenStyle flannel jacket generously punctured with still more Obama pins.

"By the way", I lunged, "how many square feet do you live in?" 3 or 5 thousand? Empty nesters, right? Daughter at Yale Law, son at Harvard?" "Summers in Wellfleet? Or is it Tuscany this year?" They turned imperiously away.

I'm sure this type were staunchly behind Cambridge's recent school decision to implement "income leveling" by which the abject poor kids would become enlightened by being seated next to the offspring of wealthy liberals. Except, of course, the wealthy brats all go to Buckingham, Brown and Nichols or a privileged equivalent. Ah, the risks the wealthy left take.

"You know, under General Secretary Obama, we might have to expropriate a few thousand feet of your house. It's clearly bourgeois to live like a parasite off the backs of the proletariat. Why, your mansion could accommodate at least two families from Roxbury or Dorchester. Or perhaps one other family at the Wellfleet house -- Whaddya think? Can I submit your name to the People's Housing Collective?"

"Better yet, why don't we assign Aunt Zitouni to your house? She's an illegal immigrant and related to Obama -- and she's living in the projects in Cambridge."

I can just see her accompanying them to the American Repertory Theatre to see the latest painfully eastern European version of Mother Courage (updated to include the obligatory slams at GWB). I'm reminded of the old New Yorker cartoon portraying a limo liberal remarking to a black couple at their cocktail party, "Can we drop you in Harlem on our way back to Westchester?"

Once inside the holy Friends' tabernacle I was sure to vote against Question 4, the stealth Somerville Divestment Project's non-binding resolution "against apartheid" in Israel and "the occupied territories".* But of course I wrote my own version of the resolution "deploring the genocidal aims and war being waged not only against Jews in the region, but against Palestinians as well which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Jews and Arabs at the hands of Hamas and the PA".

My version didn't win.

Just another progressive day in the PRC.

*Here, Stavis is talking about the SDP's latest ballot initiative(s). I haven't bothered mentioning much about them because it hasn't seemed worth giving attention to their essentially meaningless effort this time around. -S