Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A House Divided

The timeworn saying is that "Truth is stranger than fiction." That's certainly true in the case of this house, which I drive past every day on my (wonderfully short) commute from my house to Mississippi College School of Law, where I teach. There it is, a house divided: one side painted blue, the other side painted red. What a wonderful image! It represents our national state of affairs quite nicely. I wonder what Abe Lincoln would think of it.

It gets better, too. The house is not painted just any shade of blue and red. It sports a very untraditional (shall we say liberal?) shade of electric blue, and a rather staid and conservative shade of brick red.

And, of course, the red side of the house is on the right.

I absolutely love this house. I keep waiting for someone to figure all of this out and paint the whole duplex some bland shade of brown. I sure hope that never happens.

And it gets even better: the cars in the carports match the house. Not in color, but rather in make and model. In the blue/left/liberal carport (which you can see in the picture), a Mercedes sedan is parked. In the red/right/conservative carport (which is obscured by the tree trunk), a Ford Escort is parked. I am not kidding or making this up. The cars are there every day.

So this little duplex is our nation in a nutshell. Which makes me wonder: if we did paint the house the same color, or at least colors that coordinate better than electric blue and brick red, would we get along better as a nation? It would be nice to think so--and as much as I love this house, I'd paint it in a heartbeat for a little more political conciliation and cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, and between red states and blue states.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Correction... I recognize this shade of blue... being that it is very similar to the one back on linden place in MS... Its CAPTAIN AMERICA BLUE!!!

I am only privy to this trivia having been married to a lifelong DC comic fan.

CHEERS

Anonymous said...

Quote -

"In the blue/left/liberal carport (which you can see in the picture), a Mercedes sedan is parked. In the red/right/conservative carport (which is obscured by the tree trunk), a Ford Escort is parked. I am not kidding or making this up."

I have no idea about your politics or the politics of the folks who own the cars in question. It does strike me as funny that one would identify the (foreign built, elitist, gas guzzling) Mercedes as the liberal car and the (domestic brand, small, more gas-economical, decidedly-non-flashy) Ford Escort as conservative. Compare that to attitudes about energy, taxation, etc. ad infinitum et ad nauseum.

On second thought..that actually makes sense, if one follows political belief through to action.

Cf. Al Gore's energy consumption (I know he buys offsets, but from a company that he controls - and offsets are dodgy science at best).