Weeding out the truth
I loved your interview with Al Weed! [“Who’s your daddy?” The Week, February 1] He is so mistaken in most everything he says that it warms the heart of this Republican analyst. Here’s where Weed is so very mistaken:
He claims to have lost his race to Republican Congressman Virgil Goode because of Goode’s name recognition, that he underestimated Goode as a known quantity. Weed lost because his message was too liberal for the rural 5th District constituency. When Republican challenger George Landrith took on quasi-conservative and popular incumbent Democrat L.F. Payne some years ago, Landrith came within a few percentage points of Payne. So much for known-quantity-name-recognition excuses.
Weed claims that Republicans’ moral structure claims that wealthy people are, almost by definition, morally upright, and that the poor just aren’t working hard enough. What an old liberal canard that one is! Twenty-two of the 24 poorest states voted for Bush. The not-so-rich rural 5th District voted overwhelmingly for Bush with the exception, of course, of the more affluent Charlottesville/Albemarle area, which voted for Kerry, the richest, preppiest candidate we’ve seen since Kennedy and Roosevelt (liberal Dems all!). As the former 5th District Republican Chairman, I can tell you that the city and county Republican committees of the 5th District are made up of rank and file workers of all collars, but mostly those whose wages are well below the average Virginia wage! They are not wealthy, and they dislike you, Mr. Weed, because you don’t get how hard they work! They resent the people who live near them in housing just like theirs but who don’t work and are on the public dole. It makes them angry, and they blame the liberals (NOT the Democrats per se) for creating the welfare state that allows their neighbors to stay home while they go to work.
The more Weed explains why he’s a Democrat, the more the voters are going to shy from the Democratic Party. He claims that it’s community values, not family values that Dems espouse. That is way off trend. Any marketing expert will tell you that we are cocooning more (family), looking for employers who offer parenting-time off and ample day care as perqs (family), buying mini-vans and family-sized SUVs more (family) and even the “soccer mom” moniker is now a cliché (family). Even gays and lesbians are clamoring for what the rest of us have: family rights. It doesn’t take a village, Al, it takes a family.
Randolph Byrd
Charlottesville
Potent potables
If you have tired of the recipe I sent in for milk punch by now [Mailbag, January 18], there used to be a traditional joint birthday party near Berryville in Northern Virginia over the holidays where they sought to serve French Seventy-Fives, basically cognac mixed with champagne. Finding this was a little pricey, and in order to afford music and other amenities, this was scaled back to a more economical ingredient, highly recommended by med students, known as grain alcohol. Take one part grain alcohol, two parts sauterne, and some soda water and you have it. One of these tasting sessions was overtaken by an ice storm and 80 to 100 happy souls spent the night sprawled about the premises.
William W. Stevenson
Charlottesville