You can pretty much size up a person by the bumper stickers they place on the backs of their vehicle, and by how they feel about the Kennedy clan.
Like this one driver, who was in front of me today as I listened to news reports on the situation involving U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
One bumper sticker on his car read, "We Speak English in America. Learn it or leave it!" Another bumper sticker across from it read, "If you are missing your kitten, try looking under my tires." And below them both was the one that caught my ire. "I would rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than drinking with Ted Kennedy."
The person was driving a teal Hyundai. Go figure, huh? Super-macho Americans driving cars made by foreign-based corporations, and in a color that doesn't belong on a 3 ton mass of metal.
I wonder what the driver now thinks about Ted Kennedy, the last surviving brother of the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Senator Robert Kennedy? Ted Kennedy is hospitalized with a malignant brain tumor. I doubt the driver has any remorse, or shame.
But I feel sad. Although, the latest news is Ted Kennedy is surviving this medical trauma.
The Kennedy family has always had special meaning in my life. The closest thing to American royalty. I know exactly where I was when a friend yelled out to me on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, "The President has been shot." I was walking up Chappel Avenue on Chicago's South Side next to my elementary school, returning from lunch. A few years later, the school became the center of racial turmoil in Chicago's era of White Flight.
I don't remember where I was at when his brother, Robert Kennedy, was murdered after winning the presidential primary fight in California in 1968. I do know my parents and relatives were very frightened. We are Palestinians and Kennedy's killer was identified as a Palestinian immigrant from Jordan.
Chappaquiddick was never a moment worth remembering. It was a personal tragedy for Ted Kennedy. I don't know where I was when I heard about it, but much is made of the tragedy by the GOP Jihadists who dominate conservative Republican TV and radio talk shows.
And then there was JFK's son, John Jr., the little boy in the funny jacket who stood so proud in front of his father's casket. I was sure he would one day grow up to be president himself. His death came in what seemed like an "era of death," almost two years following the paparazzi-prompted killing of Princess Di. The very idea that the British Princess might marry Muslim Dodi al-Fayed had prompted so many fears that she would hand the English Crown to modern day Islamic Jihadists. Oh those Neocon nightmares. But I didn't see a bumper sticker about that topic anywhere.
I met Caroline Kennedy as a Chicago City Hall reporter. She was also so gracious, reflecting the powerful spirit of a family that meant so much to so many Americans.
Yet, the driver of the teal foreign car with the ugly bumper stickers bothered me. Why so much hate? I wondered if the driver's parents were immigrants once too, or were they part of the Neocon fairy tale that all true and patriotic Americans are born of "immaculate conception?"
How people treat or mistreat small animals says a lot about their own personal demons. Celebrating in the killing of kittens? That's terrible.
But as Ted Kennedy recovers, hopefully, in a hospital room, I felt a real sense of disgust at the bumper sticker. Not just that it was digging into Kennedy's past personal tragedies but that the driver favored Vice President Cheney.
Cheney is not exactly my idea of a hero. Certainly, his brief contribution to America has not even come close to the inspiration that the Kennedy clan has brought to this nation. In my Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour standup routine, I often joke with audiences that as far as I am concerned, Dick Cheney may in fact be the anti-Christ.
But then, again, that wouldn't be fair to the anti-Christ.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and the author of the new book "The Catastrophe: The One-State Solution is the No-State Solution. How Palestinians can Standup to the Extremists and Create a Palestinian State." He is managing editor of the Arab American Writers Syndicate at www.ArabWritersGroup.com.)