This weekend’s Post tackled one of my biggest pet peeves—when politicians use “Washington” as a disparaging euphemism for the national political scene, in which they willingly participate. The topic, covered by Dan Zak in the Sunday Source section, has been ripe for the plucking for years. But, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a story on it.

And Zak’s piece could not come at a better time, as he points out right away.

“The hating will reach a pinnacle in Denver and St. Paul., Minn., this week and next. At the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, we’ll get soaring speeches about how awful Washington is. How it is a quagmire of corruption. How it does nothing for anyone. How it needs to change.”

Yes, we’re about to be pummeled by a bipartisan bunch of bullies. All the politicians will try to inform the good, decent, humane, wholesome citizens of America that Washington D.C. is a place where the bad, corrupting, manipulative, power-mongering people of the District seek to destroy their integrity. (Though their integrity is of course fully intact, even though they spend all day surrounded by the evil inhabitants of this sinful place.)

“‘The city of Satan,’ John McCain declared to a crowd in Nevada.

The place where people ‘boil all the hope out of” you, Barack Obama warned in Akron, Ohio.

We are all condemned. And you know what, it’s sloppy oratory…is what is!

Let’s take for example a few quotes from the candidates, and consider some edits. Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the Washington Post, here are the facts of a very interesting accident:

*A Maryland State Trooper, James Davis, is checking for speeders on a strip of I-95 near Laurel.

*Some motorcyclists pass by at speeds of around 100 mph.

*Davis pulls out and turns on his lights.

*Sixteen miles later, on an on-ramp, two brothers, Suky Shamin Heureaux and Suky Shamin Heureaux, die in nearly simultaneous crashes on a Baltimore exit ramp.

*A twist: It turns out that one of the bikes that the brothers had acquired had been reported stolen–a circumstance that could have motivated the brothers to flee from the police.

The father of the brothers, Maximo Heureaux, is irate. From the Post story:

“They tell me they were racing, that’s all they tell me,” Maximo Heureaux, 45, who shared his home in Landover with his sons, said of his limited contact with investigators. “I don’t believe the police; nobody here believes the police. We all need to know what really happened.”

I guess the question here is whether Davis chased the motorcyclists, which is a controversial practice in law-enforcement circles. The state police declined to release a copy of the pursuit policy to the Post. So take your pick:

A) This is clearly a case in which a police chase caused deaths. The state should apologize and pay.

B) This is clearly a case in which two people were recklessly driving dangerous vehicles. It’s their fault.

C) This is a murky case.

The other weekend, Jessica Gould went camping in lieu of driving, and she left me all alone with a new instructor: my boyfriend, Tim.

I wanted to put Tim at ease, to make him feel like he was not going to meet a low-speed demise in a Zipcar named “Yuletide.” So I projected an easy confidence as I took the wheel.

“Press down on the brake pedal and take the parking brake off,” said Tim. Easy enough, I thought, but which one is the brake again? I flashed back to Lesson #1, when Jessica mused on pedal placement.

“It makes sense that the brake pedal is bigger than the gas,” she said. Or was it the other way around? I decided to guess, and I guessed wrong. A look of panic flashed in my instructor’s eyes as Yuletide’s engine revved.

To Tim’s credit, he didn’t take my keys away, and we went on to drift around Wheaton. This particular neighborhood had many dead ends, which gave me opportunity to perfect my three-point turn. Less accommodating to driving lessons was this one narrow street with a very large boat parked right behind a father washing a car with his young daughter, who had a glint in her eyes like she was just itching to dart out in front of me.

Yes, I could see eye glints. I took this particular obstacle course at about 2 miles per hour.

I also had trouble with the many four-way stops in this particular community. I prefer to let everyone go first, including vehicles that got to the intersection just a little after me as well as those still five or six blocks away. “Don’t confuse other drivers,” said Tim, who waved on several cars while I was paralyzed with indecision.

On the way home, we drove under the Beltway. I could see cars zipping along at speeds that would make me catatonic. On that congested interstate, one poor decision would seem all too easily to lead to human tragedy on a massive scale.

“Someday, you’ll drive on that,” Tim said.

Next time: Jessica and I learn the importance of imagination.

DRIVING LESSON 3

Destination: Wheaton
Weather Conditions: Unseasonably warm
Lessons Learned: Don’t confuse other drivers.
Sadie: B.
Jessica: Truant

I’ve been living in D.C. long enough that I thought I’d seen Beltway jams from all possible causes. Accidents, of course. Construction and lane closures. Cars pulled over on the shoulder, fully engulfed in flames. And once, a rubbernecking delay caused by the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile broken down near the River Road exit. But Friday night I witnessed a new slowdown cause: chickens.

Coming around the inner loop from the 270 spur Friday at 7 p.m., traffic abruptly slowed. I couldn’t see the cause. All I could see was that somewhere ahead, cars were parting around something in the road. I assumed it was debris, but then I saw a small, middle-aged man, wearing sling-back Crocs and bearing a vague resemblance to Dennis Kucinich, standing in front of his stopped car. When I finally pulled alongside, I saw that he was trying to shoo a rooster off the highway, a tall white one with black streaks and bright red comb and feet—and yes, this chicken, seemingly unconcerned by scores of honking cars, was trying to cross the road. I pulled off onto the shoulder to see if I could help catch the bird—though I had my dog in the car and was beginning to consider the chaos that would result from loading the chicken into the back seat with her—but then I saw in the rearview that Kucinich Lookalike had succeeded in herding the chicken back onto the D.C. side of the Beltway. He pursued it down a shaved strip of grass, and the chicken plunged into a clump of brush and disappeared.

I pulled back into traffic slowly moving along towards the Connecticut Avenue exit, wondering how the chicken had come to be there. An escapee from a poultry transport? Part of a feral chicken colony summering in D.C. to escape the stress of life in Key West? Before long, I saw the answer: About a mile past the chicken’s crossing zone, a maroon pickup truck had pulled over, and as I watched from the slow-moving traffic, two men—a young thin guy and an older, chubby dude—emerged from the truck and stepped back to the bed of the truck, peering in with confused expressions. As I watched, the head of another chicken rose from the bed of the truck. It turned and regarded the highway balefully as the younger man began to count the remaining flock.

I was in the middle lane by then—too much traffic to get over in time to tell them where to look for their missing clucker. Besides, it seemed foolish to be transporting live, feisty chickens in the open bed of a pickup, and I doubt the chickens were headed for anywhere more exciting than an arroz con pollo. Likely the escapee will end up as Beltway grease regardless, but maybe not. Maybe it’ll take to the District and end up being sighted from time to time, wandering the alleys of Adams Morgan, jogging in Rock Creek Park, rallying for voting rights, frightening local salmonella-phobes. D.C. needs its own version of the Loch Ness Monster or the chupacabra, and really, The Mystical White Chicken of the Beltway is about all the monster the city can afford.

—Carrie Allan