On the way to the Richmond airport, I had a long, extremely entertaining conversation about local politics with my cab driver, a 60-something white man from Talleysville, Virginia with an accent as slow and thick as molasses. We covered a lot of ground: zoning for a new mall near his house, a bill to privatize the sale of liquor by getting rid of state ABC stores, and local Congressman Eric Cantor, who will likely become the Majority Leader in the House in January, at which point this fine gentleman threw out the following:
“He spends too much time buttering up those Tea Party people. I’m conservative as the next man but those people are crazy-mean like possums.”
And sometimes Virginia surprises me. This is kinda awesome. (Equally awesome is that I’m supposed to get my “Trust Women” license plate pretty soon!)
where’s the like button?!
small ray of hope for humanity?
I’m from Virginia and the Tea Party presence here is absolutely terrifying. It’s always good to hear a local with a little common sense and rationality.
He left out “rabid”.
Somehow, I feel marginally better about my probably pending migration to the depths of the Commonwealth. Wonder how far Talleysville is from Blacksburg . . .
@Brennan: Talleysville is in the Tidewater, so it’s about a 4-5 hour drive from Blacksburg, which is in the mountains. My grandparents lived not far from Blacksburg and a lot of my friends went to school there. It’s a good college town—kind of out in the boonies, but the mountains are beautiful. That part of VA is very white and tend to be pretty conservative.
Poor possums. They get a bad rep. They may not be considered cute, but they’re not really mean (like Tea Party people). Remember, they play dead when they’re scared, they don’t attack, lie and distort facts.
@WashingMyHair: LOL! Yes, if only the Tea Party would play dead. Although not all possums play possum…when I lived in VA I remember letting my (55 lb mixed breed) dog out one night and when he didn’t come back, I went looking and found him backed up against a hedge with a big possum hissing and baring its teeth at him. Poor dog didn’t know what to do, even though the possum was less than half his size.