The Republican run for the White House turns even uglier

Kamala Harris hasn’t yet been formally nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president but the mud-slinging already has begun. A 2021 rant by JD Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has resurfaced that targets Kamala Harris, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for being “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable.”

Vance has apologized—to cats. Pause here for laughter.

I’d never heard that expression but a quick Google search yielded various definitions, some humorous but most derisive, that involved unmarried, childless women who have cats as their only company.

Stew and I, who have kept cats since we got together 52 years ago, take exception at the latter definition, or any suggestion that cat fanciers who don’t have children are lonely or miserable.

For one thing, we’re not ladies. Even if we settle for the label “childless cat queers” we’re not about to accept the second-class place in American society that Vance has assigned to childless people presumably because we have nothing invested in the future of the country.

In June 1972, after Stew and I finished graduate school at Indiana University, we adopted the first of a long line of cats. This one had a rather aristocratic mien despite a hazy family history. He had long gray fur, particularly on his tail, which he would wrap around his front paws when he sat to observe the world around him.

A few weeks after we adopted him, the Democrats nominated George McGovern for the presidency and quite logically we named our first cat George.

Many years later, when I was working at the Chicago Tribune, I ran into the real George McGovern in the elevator. I introduced myself and before I realized my confession might not come across as a compliment or even a lame joke, I blurted out that I that I once had a cat we named after him.

Not to worry: McGovern let out a loud laugh, shook my hand and told me he was flattered. I’m glad I voted for the guy even if his presidential candidacy cratered.

McGovern’s sense of humor is quite a contrast to today’s toxic politics, when Republicans criticize Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for, of all things, her exuberant and frequent laughter. She laughs too much.

Recently Trump nicknamed her “Laffin’ Kamala Harris” because “You can tell a lot by a laugh.”

Like many of Trump’s remarks I won’t venture what he meant, except I’m sure it was mean-spirited. Yet I’d rather take a candidate with a sense of humor and a ready laugh, like Harris or McGovern, than one like Trump, who uses a scowling mug shot taken at an Atlanta jail when he was booked last August, as one of his publicity shots.

Along with George we adopted a tiny beagle we named J.D.—an inside joke at the expense of Jerry Donald Z., a friend from Indiana University whom we were sure was gay but remained resolutely in the closet. I won’t divulge Jerry’s last name in case he is still in the closet.

J.D. the beagle was the runt of the litter and never grew much either physically or intellectually, but remained an amiable and loyal creature, nothing like the JD Vance who compared Trump to Hitler some time ago—and then did a U-turn to become a Trump compadre and now his running mate.

Cats and dogs aside, what really rankles is Vance’s suggestion that because Stew and I don’t have any children we therefore don’t care about the future of the U.S.

I came to the U.S. in 1962, at age 14, and became a U.S. citizen in 1970. Since then I have voted in every single presidential election, either in person or by absentee ballot when I lived in Indiana or since Stew and I moved to Mexico 20 years ago.

Judging by the rather anemic voter turnouts in the U.S. for primary or general elections, I have performed this crucial civic duty more faithfully than millions of native-born American citizens.

I have been motivated by memories of growing up in Cuba, when political decisions were made by a few and often at the point of a gun, and free and competitive elections still don’t exist.

Also, the turbulent events in the U.S. since I became a citizen, including political assassinations, riots and particularly the January 6 assault on the Capitol, when mobs of thugs attempted to overthrow the results of a legitimate election.

So Stew and I, who now have two cats and four dogs in Mexico have already applied for absentee ballots from the Chicago Board of Elections which should arrive after the Democratic Party Convention on August 19.

I don’t take the future of a democratic America for granted and follow political developments back home closely, maybe too closely for my mental health.

Indeed, Messrs. Vance and Trump, us queer cat ladies do care about the future of the U.S. and in particular today, that we keep autocrats like you well clear of the White House.

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