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# Dreams of my mother
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/dreams-of-my-mother/
- Published: 2008-09-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:58:38.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

IN THE ERA OF TRADITIONAL “STAY AT home mothers” and “go to work fathers” of the 1950s-60s, my late mother, Rose, was a pioneer of the “working class mother.” She was better educated than my aerospace rocket science dad, yet despite her education and the cultural ambiance of the time, she could only find work as a humble file clerk at the Santa Ana Police Department. She eventually ascended as the chief accountant for the entire SAPD a scant 7 years later.

Each day after work, she’d come home and vacuum our already immaculate 4-bedroom home (she wouldn’t let me vacuum after I accidentally sucked up our family Pekinese).

She was proud of the products of her and my dad’s middle class merit-ocratic endeavors. Weekends were devoted to my Little League games and church stuff. She was well loved by everyone.

She worked and played hard, complained little and laughed a lot.

She was little, but she was feisty. She grew up in Hawaii as the eldest of eight kids and worked hard in the sugar cane and pineapple fields after school. Her childhood experiences included the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and eating dog meat because of the wartime rationing problems from the mainland.

There were no food stamps, Section 8 housing or other racial grievance quotas back then. As a Filipina, her upbringing informed her that there was “No Free Lunch.” It was up to you to make it or break it.

I miss her still. So does dad. Now let me get this straight. DNC Chairman Howie Dean arrogated, “ … women … have more opportunity in the Democratic Party than in the \[Republican\] white party?” This “opportunity” obviously doesn’t exist, however, if you could reasonably be your party’s vice presidential choice.

Sorry, no girls allowed. As for the “opportunity” provided by Howlin’ Howie for the loyalistas of Hillary Clinton, I understand that he enjoined Hillary and her girls to make cookies and pass out the Kool-Aid to the Obama-maniacs at Denver’s “American Idol” coronation until Hillary made her Wednesday night speech. I understand Obama prefers his cookies with macadamias and coconut just like his Granny Toots made them. Mmmm, yummy!

Has anyone noticed that the predominant source of criticism surrounding Hillary and now Sarah Palin have generally come from men?

Even Hillary and Bill offered Gov. Palin a classy congratulations the day before Obama’s mealy-mouthed, left-handedly loaded “… good luck but not too much.” Men, with their large intellects and larger egos, dictate that if mass character derogation worked on Hillary, it’ll doubly work on that snow bunny from Alaska acces-sorized with the hunting rifle and go-go boots.

It must have been a gratifying spectacle for you ladies seeing Obama at the Barackopolis with all the Wise Men of the Geritol Gang promising “change” even though 83-year-old Jimmy Carter had his toga on backwards. It just sends a thrill up your leg, doesn’t it? Personally, I think these men, “just don’t get it.”

Which presidential ticket looks more like “change” to you: Obama, anointed son of Zeus, standing atop Mt. Olympus while backslapping with the same farty, blue-haired Methuselahs whose politics Obama has claimed he rejects, or the ticket that features the future of feminist power and mys-tique realized, capable, savvy, ethical and self-sufficient?

My conservative Democrat mother would recognize Republican Sarah “the Warrior Princess” Palin as a political cousin; a successful working-class mother who did it the hard way. The only blue-collar day job Obama ever had was working for a summer at Baskin-Robbins during high school … part time.

Sarah Palin was a commercial fisherwoman. You can break a nail or two doing that, you know.

Haven’t you gals earned a front row ticket to the Big Show? Obama and the mandarins of the DNC don’t think so despite those “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.” What has Obama done for your tribe lately? Reasonably, since McCain might only do one term, I’d like to see a 2012 election catfight between Hillary and Sarah in the next presidential bikini mud wrestle.

Sarah Palin may not fit your liberalista Kodak moment for an anthemic “I am woman, hear me roar” musical oratorio, but how can you deny her achievements and ascension from hockey mom to Reformer-in-Chief of Alaska to the possibility of national office and then say that you haven’t come a long way, baby?

The former British Prime Minister Margaret “Iron Maiden” Thatcher once quipped, “If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

I know how my Mom would vote.

STEVE BREEN is a conservative momma’s boy and is still “the best looking mailman in the U.S. Post Office.” He

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 10, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091008.pdf?ref=smdp.com)