Bourgeois exploiters, beware: socialists pop up everywhere - satirical analysis of Washington, D.C. special election to fill a City Council seat - The Last Word - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 4, 1993 | by Tod Lindberg

For weeks, I have had a certain strange, niggling feeling about an obscure election in the District of Columbia, where I live. It was a special election called to fill out the remainder of the term of the deceased chairman of the City Council.

There were five candidates on the ballot. Three of them are well-known veterans of city politics -- one former council chairman, two current council members. A fourth had plastered large, full-color photos of herself all over town, superimposed with the slogan "FIX D.C. -- ELECT MARIE." They were everywhere, those eyes gazing at you, that enigmatic smile that seemed a cross between the Mona Lisa and Lizzie Borden. Although it would be understandable for anyone to wake up in a cold sweat from dreams haunted by Marie's eerily grinning phiz, this was not the niggle I was feeling.

My niggle concerned the fifth candidate, one Emily Fitzsimmons. She was on the ballot as the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party.

I should explain that politics in the District of Columbia runs the entire gamut of the spectrum from way left to way, way, way left. (I just live here because I personally like high taxes and poor municipal services.)

When Republicans heard about the election, they gathered at the D.C. Convention Center, and while leaders were gratified by the overflow crowd at table No. 4 in the snack bar, it turned out that none of the six registered Republicans in the District was interested in running for council chairman. So that left the field to four Democrats -- and the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party.

One Emily Fitzsimmons. Something about that name. I kept reading it in the newspaper, and there was that strange feeling.

I should explain haughtily that I do not watch television. (Well, all right, I do watch a certain amount of very sophisticated television: CNN. C-Span. MacNeil and Lehrer. Ren and Stimpy. Beavis and Butthead.) But I do not often catch the local news. Therefore, it was only late in the campaign that I first saw a picture of Emily Fitzsimmons.

An attractive, earnest, dark-haired young woman in a nice, proletarian floral print dress -- oh my God!

My ex-cleaning lady! My ex-cleaning lady is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for chairwoman of the D.C. City Council!

This is not good.

Now, the first thing to be said is that she was a very fine cleaning professional for the period in which she was with us -- once a week for a couple months several years ago, as best I can recall. I should explain that we got her through a service that had provided us with a number of fine cleaning professionals -- including, preeminently, Andrew, who would put on a Walkman and listen to progressive heavy metal music such as the Goo-Goo Dolls and was a wizard with hardwood floors.

But, good heavens, read how I have just described our relationship with Emily Fitzsimmons. We "got her." It is as if I am talking about a piece of chattel. The sheer exploitation of workers by a corrupt, self-serving bourgeois class -- including me! -- that is implied by such a statement.

Now, some men's wives leave them for other men. This is perfectly common. But some men's wives leave them for women. And this begins to hint at my problem. Because it would be natural for the jilted husband in such a situation to ask himself, "Was it me?" -- which it very probably was. And let's face it, it is a challenge to one's self-esteem to know that one's relations with one's wife have driven her to swear off men forever.

Now imagine a woman who has left her husband for another woman and has written a best-selling book called Why Men Are Scum and has become a regular feature on Geraldo, Oprah, Donahue and Jerry Springer.

In other words, imagine the cleaning lady who worked for you becoming the Socialist Workers Party candidate for chairwoman of the D.C. Council.

What did I do? When she was dusting our chandelier, was she thinking, "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class . . . "?

Now, mind you, we had some inkling of her -- how shall we say? -- other interests. One time, she had a copy of the Daily Worker or some such publication protruding from her bag.

I remember this becoming a topic of conversation over dinner -- and drinks, good Lord, drinks -- with our friends Henrik and Helle. I seem to recall floating the possibility that perhaps she was merely intellectually curious, you know, going through one of those phases of exploration and discovery. I seem to recall this possibility being greeted with a round of guffaws. I seem to recall Henrik -- who (as somebody once put it) believes in the class struggle and knows whose side he's on -- suggesting that we inform the authorities. I do not seem to recall much else of that dinner, a number of brain cells having been tragically destroyed in the course of it.

Years later, here we are. I was wondering whether I should really write about this. Would this exploit our former professional relationship?