Singing the Same Old Songs

Here they come again.

They’ll stride through the ‘hoods and the barrios like apostles of the Lord, arms outstretched, smiles tuned to megawatt brilliance, beckoning for the poor and the dispossessed to follow them to the promised land.

I mean the land of promises.

There isn’t much difference between the two, I guess, because they’re both kind of ethereal places that exist out there somewhere beyond our vision.

Preachers talk about the promised land. Politicians create a land of promises.

But it isn’t necessarily the preachers who’ll be coming to the places where the jobless and the hungry live, alternately smiling those big, happy, hopeful smiles and shaking their heads wearily in sad and melancholy dismay.

It isn’t the preachers who’ll be singing hosannas for the glory of new beginnings in the land of promises where the happy-faced sun shines bright and the pork chops grow on trees.

It’ll be Clinton, Gore, Dole and Kemp, and maybe even the little guy with the nasal twang and the big ears. No doubt he’ll be leading all those elderly white people who’ve been waiting for someone like him all their lives.

It’s just like it was four years ago, sans Bush and Buchanan, candidates for high office trooping through L.A.’s streets of pain offering salvation.

The same old group singing the same old songs.

*

I remember them from 1992. That was the year of the riots. The smoking streets of the poor formed a perfect backdrop for the presidential campaigners because the whole world was watching and politicians love an audience.

They did their drive-throughs and sometimes brief walk-throughs, trailed by puppy-dog assistants and nervous cops, watched by eyes that were both suspicious and hopeful.

I heard them promise new worlds for blacks and Latinos, jobs and crime control and a massive restructuring of the social order that would include them in.

Well they’re not in yet, they’re not working yet and they’re not safe on the streets yet. The gap between the haves and the have-nots widens and hope is a wounded sparrow trying to make it through the storm.

But here they come again.

Jack Kemp is the first to say he’s going to visit South-Central, but you know, sure as the Lord created demographics, that all the others will be coming too, doing their dances and their little songs.

I suspect Bill Clinton will be next because, well, South-Central isn’t too far from Hollywood and that’s where they keep all the kinds of people the boss likes to hang out with.

And then Dole will come with his precision drill team of aides in a perfectly coordinated, beautifully rehearsed parade of promise, holding out his 15% tax cut to people who don’t even have an income.

Al Gore will fit in there somewhere, but no one is quite sure why. Maybe he’ll plant a tree. That’s what they need in Watts. A tree.

*

So here they come again.

But someone ought to tell them it’s going to be different talking to the poor this time.

Everyone knows they’re part of the political class that’s been battering the immigrants, smashing down welfare and kicking aside affirmative action.

They’re the same brave guardians of America’s borders who’re hell-bent on ringing the necks of the “illegal” sick and the young because it’s politically expedient to dance with the strange and scary xenophobes.

They know that in the ‘hoods and the barrios. They’re smarter than they were in ’92. The streets aren’t smoking anymore so there’s not that shrill emotional high the candidates used so effectively four years ago.

There is instead a measured realization that the land of promises is a place which, like Brigadoon, appears only periodically, but, unlike the mythical Scottish village, exists for the sole purpose of winning elections.

Four years ago, after Clinton had breezed through South-Central, I talked with an elderly man who stood staring at the blackened shell of a burned-out building. I remember him saying, “This is a lonely place.”

The streets were full of do-gooders, politicians and media, but they were there to acknowledge a community’s violence, not to explore its soul.

The ‘hoods and the barrios are still lonely places, isolated by economic disparity and cultural hatreds, and a million politicians singing a million songs aren’t going to change it with their land of promises.

But they’ll keep coming back . . . again . . . and again . . . and again. . . .