Did anyone catch the Republican Debate yesterday?  It was at a weird time, 2pm hosted by the Iowa Registrar and broadcast by PBS.  Of course, being the last debate before the primary MSNBC and CNN picked it up as well so I had a little afternoon delight to view at work yesterday. And low and behold guess who I see among the sea of white men, but Alan Keys.  That’s right Alan FUCKING Keys.

You remember him don’t you?  Alan Keys as in the most conservative man in the United States?  Whiter than Strom Thurman and just as racist (which is confusing).  Father of a lesbian and spends his time spouting hate speech against our GLBT citizens?  Yeah THAT Alan Keys.

Yeah he was in the debate, and I don’t mean like jumping up to ask questions, he was on the God Damn stage!  Totally confused because I was almost sure we were finally rid or this whackjob on the national level I google Keys and Iowa.  Apparently anyone can get on the Caucus ballot in Iowa.  Seriously its so easy I’m considering signing up my dog just to see how many votes he can take away from Keys.  Keys is only on the ballot in Iowa, not really making him a national candidate but apparently he thinks he’s there to make a point and yell at the other candidates so Iowa was legally bound to let him participate.

Lucky me because I got myself a show yesterday.  Weird thing about Keys,  as conservative as he is, Keys has this way of talking like a Minister in an African American church, you know the type, like Jesse Jackson.  Except instead of rallying on justice, equality, and nondiscrimination, he spouts the opposite.  He continually got upset with the moderator a rather plump woman with sever hair and sort or emo glasses.  She was bitchy and would cut off the candidates reminding them of the time limit and if they continued to go over the time she would have to continue to cut their response allotment down.  She was bitchy, putting these old white guys in there places.

I liked her.

But Keys, he was having none of it, he interrupted accused her of skipping him and that she was rigging the debate to favor the front-runners, blah blah blah, wah wah wah.   She continued to chid him and kind of threatened to have him removed at one point.  It was hot, I can only imagine the rage he felt at having a woman assert her authority over him.  He continued to show his self-righteous indignation throughout the debate making a total and complete fool of himself.  But, as all good things do, the debate ended and I was forced back to my computer to pretend to work a little longer.

Keys got me thinking though, about a time in my life when I was a self-righteous indignant little shit.  A period in my life I call the age of 19.  I was such a prick at 19, as I suspect many of us were.  I thought I was so wise, educated, open-minded and mature.  The summer between my freshman and sophomore I rolled up to my parents’ house, it no longer being my house, no I was a woman of academia, the world was my home now; cock, arrogant, and immature.  I was such a dick to my folks that summer I’m amazed they still speak to me.

I was especially awful to my father.  My dad is old school, you know?  He grew up in a well-to-do wealthy southern family.  He learned early how to live in that world of privilege and expectation.  He’s a Republican, of course, with traditional values and feelings.  And at 19, I was an ultra-liberal feminist driving cross the state to participate in protests and threatening to get my nosed pierced.  I was outspoken, indignant, and actually quite angry.  Dad became my target.   Let me give you a picture, I think it will help illuminate our relationship.  I had returned from my crap summer retail job and was soaking in the hot tub out back.  My dad came out to join me and asked me about my day.  Of course I started bitching, I worked retail for Christ’s sake, there is nothing pleasant to say about that line of work.  The conversation goes a little like this:

Me: “I hate my boss.  She’s so rude to the college students because she knows we’re going to leave at the end of the summer.  She can be such a bitch sometimes.”

Dad:  “Now, DivaLizaB, is that a way a young lady talks?”

Me: “I don’t know father, how the fuck should a lady talk?”

I got out of the hot tub and didn’t speak to him for two weeks.  Many fights lead to me not speaking to my dad over the years.  I once went 8 months without speaking to him, asking for mother if he happened to answer the phone when I called home and avoiding him over the holidays.  I think it hurt my mother the most.  She was our go between both of us bitchy to her about how the other was completely inflexible, ignorant, and hateful.   I feel bad about that, I really do.

Since college,  my dad and I have gotten better.  I still wouldn’t say we are the best of pals, but  we get along and  understand each other a little better.  My father has stopped chiding me for not doing things the way he’d do it and I’ve stopped bringing home documentaries on gender reassignment (sex change) surgeries.

It’s a give and take.

I have been invited to a holiday reception at the Governor’s mansion this weekend.  I sit on a political committee that warranted my invitation and I was allowed to bring a guest.  Typically I would go to one of my stand by gays, I mean dates, but instead the first person I thought of was my dad.  Yes my gun loving, Republican father would get a kick out of meeting the governor.  When I called him to ask if he’d like to go, I could hear the pride in his voice when he accepted.  His daughter, hobnobbing with the governor.

I think he was always worried about me going into politics, engineering seemed a much stabler route.  And I think he pushed me because of that fear.  Who wants a deadbeat kid at 30 out championing silly causes and getting arrested at protests.  I can understand his fear, he grew up in the 70s when that shit happened all the time.  But I think he understands that there is a different side of politics, the side of policy, power, and change.  I think, well I hope at any rate, that he sees me as a part of that side of politics.  I’m not a dirty hippie making out with a girl named Fawn (although I’m not saying that isn’t a possibility, it just hasn’t occurred), I’m not burning a flag outside the White House, I’m not taking swings at cops trying to protect an old lot from being torn down.  His deepest fears unrealized.

Although, it’s been two years since I started leaving HRC literature in his bathroom and I have noticed that he doesn’t seem to flinch anymore when my gay roommates come by.  So even though he’s rubbed off on me, bringing some of that sense of properness to my edgeness.  But I think I’ve rubbed off on him too, afterall I got the man to vote for Tim Kaine, Jim Webb and vote No on the anti-family Constitutional Amendment  last year.  So maybe we are a good influence on each other after all these years.

Although he gets to drink with the governor and I get to help paint the new house, I really think he’s getting the better end of this deal.