Watch Out, Louisiana
Back in college, a history professor told me that Hawaii is the second most corrupt state in the US, behind Louisiana. I believed him. Worse, I didn't care. An eighteen-year-old apathetic to local politics? In Hawaii? Yeah, not exactly a rare breed.
Now in my mid-thirties, I've been mulling over that statement. I've been toying with the idea of writing a novel that's partially set in the world of Hawaii money and politics, and how decades of backroom deals made the Hawaii we see before us. Probably watched too much The Wire, if it's possible to watch too much of the greatest show, ever.
Dabbling with research led me to George Cooper's and Gavan Daw's Land and Power in Hawaii. It covers the rise of the Democratic Party from the mid-1950's to the mid-1980's. It's an older book, published in 1985, but it's funny how a ton of the names still ring familiar. Chances are, if you went to Punahou, Iolani, or Mid-Pac, you had classes with people with the same last names.
Most of the robust book's near five-hundred pages is simply a compilation of public records. It's not riveting narrative, and it's not supposed to be. It's in-your-face with facts and figures, who served on what board of this trust or that trust, and who pushed for this piece of legislation or that piece of legislation. It's not riveting narrative, but it is riveting. It lacks a Huey P. Long-like character, but does not lack Kingfish turn from idealism to jaded politics. It was, after all, the Democratic Party that knocked off the land-owning Republicans, the guys who instituted such ridiculously low taxes on land so they could keep hundreds of acres without using or selling it. The guys who started businesses like Hawaiian Airlines and refused to hire non-white employees. The guys who wouldn't let James Michener buy a house on Kahala Avenue because his wife was Japanese. Reading about how the Democrats seized (yay!) then abused power (doh!) is more like reading research material for Animal Farm than All the King's Men.
I highly recommend this book unless you're clinically depressed. Or if you prefer books about 100-year-old emo vampire high schoolers . Ultimately what this book told me, without coming out and saying it, is we are all complicit. Twenty years later, 1.3 million Hawaii votes for Jasmine Trias during American Idol's "Disco Night" versus the 9,000 or so votes it took to win a State Senate seat in the same year? Louisiana got nothing on us.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Thanks for recommending this book. Have you read Ben Cayetano's memoir yet? Though he's not our Huey Long, he does provide a lot of the narrative and character for the same events. And of course Superferry Chronicles takes it right up to the present. If you wrote a book on Hawai'i politics it would be fascinating!
September 24th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Unfortunately, if you don't vote, don't complain.
The bumper sticker: "ahnohkeah" is a sad statement about the apathy and unwillingness to get involved, follow the politics (constantly, not just before an election) and make it a matter of pride to vote.
In my view, the apathy has some roots in the fact this was a feudal society until the Democratic takeover of politics after WW II. Most people on the islands came here for plantation work, then struggled to survive. Knowing the big landowners/plantations controlled everything, why bother to pay attention, to vote?
That's why it is easy for blatant corruption to exist. The newspapers, unfortunately, are all part of it, so there is never any effort to do investigative reporting. Without an independent press, it is hard to fight it all.
But keep trying!
Judie Fernandez