Washington Goes Crazy While Some Americans Yawn
“Excuse me,” I said as I pulled up to a Starbucks drive-thru window in Suffolk Wednesday evening before heading back to Virginia Beach. “Have you been paying attention to the impeachment news today?”
“The what?” the twenty-something blonde barista in the window repeated.
“You know, the impeachment of President Trump,” I prompted, as I handed over my credit card.
“Oh, it’s Starbucks’ policy that we can’t discuss politics,” she said.
“I don’t want to know what you think about it,” I said, “just wanted to see if you’re following the developments.”
“That’s the first I heard of any impeachment,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t have cable. But my father-in-law loves Trump. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it this weekend.”
As unbelievable as it may seem to those of us plugged in to the 24-hour news cycle, some folks are barely paying attention to the biggest scandal to hit Washington since, well, last week.
At least that’s what I found in my survey of almost everyone I bumped into yesterday.
My hairdresser, for instance.
She’s smart. She votes. But the salon doesn’t have televisions or radios blaring - that’s hardly soothing for clients - just Pandora, playing soft rock in the background.
By the time I was in her chair on Wednesday afternoon she hadn’t heard about the just-released transcript of the July phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine.
“Some of us have to work for a living,” she quipped as she expertly painted my roots with magical age-reversing chemicals.
It was the same story at the Virginia Beach 7-Eleven in the morning when I’d dropped in for a Coke.
“What’s the latest on Trump?” I asked the clerk, an older woman who waits on me almost every day
“Make America great again,” she joked. “What do you mean?”
I asked what she’d heard about impeachment.
“Oh, I have no idea,” she said shrugging. “It’s too depressing. I never watch the news.”
“Do you vote? I asked.
“Always,” she replied.
Yesterday was sunny and warm in Southeastern Virginia. I could have parked myself in front of my TV for hours, breathlessly watching the minute-by-minute coverage of Trump’s phone conversation with the president of Ukraine: The right-wing pundits insisting the the president did nothing wrong while the left-wing pundits danced around with their hair on fire.
Instead I spent most of my day running errands before driving out to Suffolk where my hair stylist moved a few years ago.
What I found were lives untouched by the impeachment inquiry and the latest developments with Ukraine. People doing their jobs, bored by the news.
Maybe this is what happens after almost three years of over-hyped scandals: growing indifference to the latest Washington hysteria.
I know, I know, a survey of people in my little sphere is hardly scientific. But it may be illustrative.
I pulled into a Virginia Beach Town Center parking lot first thing in the morning and saw that the car next to me - a handicap-equipped minivan - had a sticker on the window asking drivers to give the doors a six-foot space. I backed out and pulled into a nearby spot.
“Thanks so much,” called the driver, who rolled down his window.
I could hear his radio - sounded like news - and asked if he knew what was happening with Trump.
“Oh, Lord,” he said. “I don’t keep up with it. I’m driving my wife to her appointments.”
Later, I stopped at Kroger for gas and dropped my fuel cap. It rolled under my car and I let loose with an expletive.
“Want some help?” a woman on the other side of the pumps asked sympathetically. “I have a 13-year-old in the car who can crawl under there and get it for you.”
I apologized for my raunchy language, thanked her and said I’d pull my car forward and retrieve it myself.
“What do you think about about the impeachment?” I asked as we stood there as the gas pumps whirred.
“I am tuning it all out,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of all the fighting.”
So, it seems, are a lot of other pundit-weary people.
