Buckets of Struggle

The theme of today?s speeches: My dirt-poor hardscrabble life during which I lived on dog skeletons and sold orphans to cover the rent. Here?s C. Virginia Fields:

Growing up in the south, I have lived with the indignities and injustices of a segregated society. Yes, I know about struggle.

Exactly why this should be today?s theme is a mystery. Are these feisty strugglers seeking to humiliate a certain horse-featured zillionaire candidate on his big day? Sure sounds like it; here?s Michael Michaud:

As a third generation mill worker, I carried the same lunch bucket to work for 28 years ? I lived through layoffs and picket lines and worked with people who struggled just to stay in the middle class. Today that very same lunch bucket sits prominently in my Washington office and reminds me ?

? to try Atkins one day. Eleanor Holmes Norton reached back to pre-Civil War days for her hardship anecdote:

My great-grandfather was a runaway slave who came to Washington in the 1850s.

Gary Locke relied on a family member, too:

My father served his adopted country in World War II, landing at Normandy Beach with the U.S. Army. I learned English when I entered kindergarten.

And Barbara Boxer has overcome several generations of noble strugglehood:

My mom was an immigrant who never graduated from high school because she had to work to support her widowed mother. My dad went to college at night.

Later, as an antidote to this, Matt and I might attempt to write a speech glorying in the opposite of these did-it-tough sentiments. That?s if he hasn?t been arrested for tunneling below the FleetCenter perimeter wall.