POLITICAL DRIVING: Bipartisan Love of Celine

Like I've been saying, I'm in the middle of moving and my sister, who lives across the Potomac, has been nice enough to lend me her car for the move. Saturday morning, I was driving north on Glebe Road from Ballston toward the Chain Bridge when I pulled up to a red light at Lee Highway. A blue BMW pulled up next to me with its windows down.

The car came to a stop right as the climax of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was blaring from the sound system. I turn over out of sheer discomfort. No, it was not a soccer mom on the way back to McLean. It was a man in a pink-striped shirt and a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Golf clubs were clumsily sitting up diagonally in the back seat. And he was enjoying the song. I could tell this was the case because of the fact that he was singing along with such devoted intensity, without a care that he may have been making a spectacle of himself.

I turned over in disbelief. I can't really describe my smirk, but it was enough to make him instantly shut up when he turned over and realized that outsiders could hear him. He immediately began tapping the steering wheel.

The light turned green, the car sped off toward the Chain Bridge. The car had Virginia plates (too bad they weren't vanity plates for that would have completed the package quite well) and two bumper stickers, well three if you count the obligatory OBX sticker. One was a Rick Santorum bumper sticker, the other was a Charlie Stenholm sticker. It was a bipartisan car, though Stenholm and Santorum don't seem to be an obvious match.

Men who love Rick Santorum and Celine Dion are certainly an interesting commodity, and are one of the more odd combinations I've seen in a long time.