I'd like to make a sale, but what can I do?

[austin_dern]

Eventually, and after my father asked for the old license plates again, we got to meet the financing person, an amiable and weirdly chatty person who started out with the usual discussion about how he liked us, individually, as people, based on our having talked to him. Then it started to get strange, as he started to talk about his family, and where he comes from (he's black, and his family lives on the Gulf Coast somewhere although he grew up in North Carolina, where my father failed in business in the mid 70s), and what sort of progress there's been in this country the past couple generations, and before sense could constrain him he got into talking about how with John McCain you knew exactly what sort of president you were going to get. While I agree with this assessment, he seemed to believe that this was sufficient or even necessary reason to vote for McCain.

This assault of charm hit a crash point when he mentioned in a flattering manner my mother's faded Brooklyn accent. My mother is from the Bronx (although by a deliberate choice of hospitals on her parents' part, she was born in Manhattan so that she would qualify for New York City citizenship). She doesn't hold herself excessively loyal to the Bronx -- I don't think she's even set foot in it the past decade except for a visit to a restaurant someone else arranged -- but she is not Brooklyn in accent and she made that point clear. Meanwhile my father and I watched each other and tried not to burst out laughing.

All right. So, after these odd preliminaries he got my parents to sign for permission to check their credit, and investigation turned out that they've both got what's regarded as extremely good credit, coming in over 800 on the official credit report agencies. This puts them as better credit risks than every United States corporation these days. In fact, my father turned out to be about 20 points higher than my mother, making him a better credit risk than the federal government. This outstanding credit will let them save literally dozens of dollars over reach of the next five years.

Trivia: The other play which Abraham Lincoln might have attended on 14 April 1865 was Aladdin! Or His Wonderful Lamp, at Grover's Theatre. Source: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, James S Swanson.

Currently Reading: Edison: A Biography, Matthew Josephson.

Comments

[orv.livejournal.com]

...he got into talking about how with John McCain you knew exactly what sort of president you were going to get.

That kind of logic frustrates me to no end. I remember hearing people say, "Well, I don't agree with George W. Bush, but at least with him you know where you stand." I don't understand how someone whose positions I know I disagree with is somehow preferable to someone who's positions are less clear.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's like saying "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." That "certainly bad" is better than "possibly even worse." I don't think that's a very good gamble but I can imagine someone making a case for it.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The case can be made for that, although it really depends on having confidence that choosing `the devil you know' precludes the appearance of the one you don't.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Right. The ``you know what you're going to get'' is really only compelling when it's attached to ``you like what you're going to get''. Which I suppose is what the car guy was trying to get at, and is in any case a bizarre conversation topic given the high probability that pushing one political candidate over another is going to introduce an unpleasant moment into what is a pretty big yet not-yet-closed deal. He'd really be better off sticking to trying to guess at my mother's accent instead.