Ann

When I was a kid, my parents watched, and had my sister and I watch, the Democratic National Convention every presidential election year. It was just part of our lives every four years. I always wanted to be a delegate, but when I actually had the chance, I wasn't really thinking about it because I never thought it was possible. I was never that connected, even when I was connected. How I became a delegate in 2004 is a whole other story which I have written about before. That's not my story here. Here I'm going to tell you about an inspiration that led me to do what I did that ultimately got me to the convention.

Flash forward from my childhood in the 60's and 70's to 1988. Texas State Treasurer, Ann Richards, took the DNC stage and delivered the speech of her life. We were suffering through the Greed is Good Reagan administration, and Richards got up and finally said what a lot of us were thinking, but the news media, in its love for the fake Great Communicator, was not articulating. There was something wrong here, wrong in the economy and wrong in our society excluding women and minorities from power. Richards talked about her childhood during the Depression, and the economic concerns of people in Texas that were being out-shadowed by it's swaggering tough-guy gun-toting image.

The most famous line from Richards' 1988 DNC speech (taken from a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon ) is often quoted even today:  [talking about two Texas women in 160 years making it as keynote speaker] "But if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." It wasn't the line itself, but her delivery that made it so great. Notwithstanding the famous line, this perhaps was the most meaningful passage of the speech:

They told working mothers it’s all their fault -- their families are falling apart because they had to go to work to keep their kids in jeans and tennis shoes and college. And they’re wrong!! They told American labor they were trying to ruin free enterprise by asking for 60 days’ notice of plant closings, and that’s wrong. And they told the auto industry and the steel industry and the timber industry and the oil industry, companies being threatened by foreign products flooding this country, that you’re "protectionist" if you think the government should enforce our trade laws. And that is wrong. When they belittle us for demanding clean air and clean water for trying to save the oceans and the ozone layer, that’s wrong.

No wonder we feel isolated and confused. We want answers and their answer is that "something is wrong with you."  Well nothing's wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with you that you can’t fix in November!

Richards was the real Great Communicator of the 1980s. She rose to the national scene after her speech and became Governor of Texas in 1990.

Richards' life is now the subject of a play showing at the old Schubert Theatre in Chicago. The play was written as a one woman show by its performer Holland Taylor. Taylor is known for several movie and television roles, but I most remember her as a Boston circuit court judge from Ally McBeal and The Practice. I saw the show, Ann, this week.

Taylor bears a remarkable resemblance to Richards. She had met Richards, was a friend of a friend, and played the role affectionately. As the play begins, Richards is speaking at a fictitious college graduation. She kids around with the offstage president of the college, and tells the students how she got to be Governor from her days as a housewife who entertained a lot to break up the boredom, and drank too much. She tells stories about her parents, her loving, but bawdy father and her difficult-to-please mother. She told one of her fathers less smutty jokes and described her mother's approach to teaching her daughter to sew. She could not please her mother, but she pleased her father who always told her she could do and be anything she wanted, a very modern notion for a girl in the 1930s. 

Richards went to Baylor University and excelled in debate. She married young and she and her husband became politically active. She taught school and had her children. Eventually, her drinking took a toll on her marriage and she divorced in 1980.

Taylor describes Richards' dilemma when she was asked to run for Governor. After all, she was a woman, divorced and a 10 year sober alcoholic. But she had the nation's attention from that speech and Texas just wasn't that bad in those days, before it was gerrymandered into right wing lunatic oblivion. 

The scene then moves to Richards office in the governor's mansion. She's busy trying to set up the family's Thanksgiving, a fishing trip complete with turkey, ham and pies, with her 3 now adult children She's also trying to decide whether to stay the execution of a man who killed a nun, but had a terrible childhood that never made it to the court record. The execution was being protested by the Catholic church and the nuns who knew the murder victim had forgiven the murderer. At the same time, she's trying to get a first draft out of her speechwriter for an event she's attending that night. Then, she finds out she has to personally pay for an $8000 travel bill because one of her staff made a mistake in the vendor hired for the job. She's on the phone constantly and calling out to her secretary in between calls.

Taylor's play takes a poignant turn as Richards explains to her secretary and staff that few in Texas understand that as Governor, she is only able to temporarily stay an execution. She had no authority to pardon the perpetrator or grant any sort of clemency. As the Texas law was written, it was very likely that he would be executed in 30 days no matter what she did. As an aside, she comments that Texas cannot continue on in this way, but the audience knows that Texas decided to take a different path and now proudly executes the guilty and innocent alike without looking back.

Taylor then brings Richards to her election loss in 1994. Richards waxes philosophical stating that if it was her stand against conceal carry, then so be it. While never mentioning Bush by name, she then talks about her hopes for her successor, hopes that we know she knows will never be met and we know never were. Notwithstanding the unlikelihood, she hoped her successor would realize that the actions he would take as governor would have a real effect upon the lives of the people in Texas.

The play ends with Richards talking about her active life after the governorship and her ultimate battle with cancer.

I found Richards' 1988 speech inspiring. Here was an older woman (with Republican hair as she quipped), who cut through the meme of the time, that greed is good, profits are the only thing that's important and that Americans' duty is to shop for cheap goods increasingly made overseas. She talked about the poor in a time when it was fashionable to only talk about the rich and people did everything they could afford to emulate them. She also talked about inclusion, bringing women and minorities into the political process. Her proudest achievement was in making her government resemble the demographics of the state. That was the Richards who inspired me to get involved in politics. She described what I was seeing in everyday life in the 1980s when many others were seeing, or at least only willing to admit they were seeing, the riches of the popular television programs of the era, Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest.

The play was a nice look back. It showed Richards grit and humor, but I would not call it particularly powerful piece of art. Holland Taylor's performance was good; she played Richards truly, but I think her difficulty in writing the play, described by her note in the Stagebill, showed in her performance. It must be hard to capture the essence of a person you admire, almost a contemporary, who died before her time from a difficult disease.

I give Ann 3 cat treats for helping us remember a woman who should be remembered for her compassion, toughness and humor in a time and place when humor and toughness meant picking on less fortunate people when they were down while brandishing a gun in their faces, and compassion was only a word used to win elections.