As a card-carrying member of the middle class, I couldn't be happier.
A few days ago, I was forgotten.
Now, out of the blue, I'm hotter than a hunky TV emergency-room doctor.
Suddenly, everyone in Washington wants to know not what he can do for his country, not what he can do for his party, but what he can do for me. Move over, Al Franken. This is my decade.
(If you want to know the truth, what I desperately need right now is somebody to clean my gutters. Maybe I'll put a call in to Dick Gephardt.)
Politicians are falling over each other to show their commitment to what is routinely called the forgotten middle class. Gosh, I remember those days when I was forgotten. Literally weeks would go by without a single politician calling, although MCI salespeople usually filled that particular gap in my life.
I call it my wilderness period.
Those days are gone, maybe forever. I read the papers. The way I understand it, politicians have pledged to do whatever it takes to make me -- a middle-class guy -- happy. These guys are no longer greedy, self-serving politicians. They're my greedy, self-serving friends.
(Here's a test. If these guys really cared about me, somebody would set up a lunch -- just a lunch -- for me with Geena Davis. Maybe I'll put in a call to my new best friend, Phil Gramm.)
The president, of course, has called for something called the middle-class bill of rights. I watched him do it. He said he felt our pain. He knew that middle-class guys had problems meeting such critical expenditures as college tuition or Mortal Kombat software. He wanted to help out with tax relief.
He looked solemn. Actually, he looked like Newt Gingrich had slapped him across the face with a 2-by-4.
But I guess maybe it's time for a new bill of rights. If I remember my high school history right, the original bill of rights deals with such matters as free speech and jury trials and the quartering of soldiers -- the soldier housing problem apparently looming much larger in the late 18th century than it does today.
If I were writing a modern middle class bill of rights, I'd put in the stuff that is important to middle-class people today, like guaranteed transportation for your kids to soccer practice.
The weird thing about the middle class being forgotten is that virtually everyone seems to belong. So, who could forget?
Clinton is ready to define the middle class as those taxpayers making under $75,000, which means 90 percent of Americans. That's just a guideline, though. If you've got a kid in college, Clinton is willing to push the envelope to $120,000, which, you'd think, would make most people happy.
Congressional Republicans don't buy it. They bleed for people making a mere $120,000. How you gonna make your BMW lease payment on that kind of money, without at least a capital-gains cut? No, Republicans seem to think everyone who makes less than Ross Perot should be counted among the middle class.
The Contract With America says any family making under $200,000 -- in other words, 99 percent of Americans -- could be eligible for tax relief. Think of it this way: If you won a $4 million lottery, meaning you'd get $200,000 for 20 years, Newt Gingrich would still say you're not rich.
This is a peculiarly American deal. In the U.S.A., everyone wants to be identified as middle class. In Europe, they used to go to cafes, wear berets and complain about the bourgeoisie. Except for Ralph Nader, John Waters and a few other weirdos, all Americans apparently love the bourgeoisie. I've seen polls where poor people (money-challenged) are as inclined to define themselves as middle class as the Beamer-driving affluent (the rarely challenged). We're all in this together.
Actually, we know who the poor are. They're on welfare or live in housing projects or populate John Steinbeck novels.
The rich may be harder to define. I don't know anyone who makes $100,000 a year who thinks of himself as remotely rich. Here's my working definition of rich people -- anyone who seems to have cool stuff that I can't afford.
Like many of you, I think the middle class should stop with me.
Of course, there isn't just one middle class. There are upper-middle, middle-middle, lower-middle, nearly-middle and middle-as-soon-as-I-get-paid-on-Friday.
I'll bet you fit in there somewhere.