OF A GOLDEN AGE

Let’s get one thing on the table: I love Barack Obama. Brilliant, educated at Harvard, a success story to rival any Horatio Alger hero — this is a man of presidential caliber.

I am almost equally excited and hopeful over the inevitable reform of the Republican party (Washington Post), which has experienced a humiliating faceplant culminating in the selection of the celebratory ignoramus Sarah Palin as the Great White Lady Hope.

McCain said in his concession speech that this was “an historic” moment or whatever, and it irritated my shit right up like always because there’s no need to say AN in this context. We aren’t British. What’s more awkward than N and H back to back? Anyway, Barbara Wallraff, language columnist for the Atlantic, agrees and goes a step further, describing the difference between historic (correct to describe an event the day of) and historical (correct to describe it forty years later).

Finally, Andrew Sullivan posts this simple, moving cartoon by the Washington Post‘s Tom Toles, known for the marginalia self-portrait he includes in the lower corner of each of his pieces.

Obama’s theme should be a song from one of Chicago’s own: “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman.

Good morning America how are you
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son

He is our native son, contrary to the xenophobia-mongering of various people in the opposition. Barack Obama represents the American dream, perhaps better than anyone. An Indian-American man called in to Chicago’s newsmagazine Eight Forty-Eight this morning and made a point I honestly didn’t think about before. We have now elected the son of an immigrant of another race to the most powerful leadership position on earth. My stars!

The following Gchat exchange contains adult language.

ME: oh and shockingly whites in the south are showing stupid low support for obama, the least support since MCGOVERN
FRIEND: lol
ME: racist christianist f—s
FRIEND: butthurt hillary-supporting racists for john mccain

Ta-Nehisi Coates over at the Atlantic makes this, um, pugilistic point:

Electoral politics are about showing and proving–no amount of Affirmative Action can get you to the presidency. You have to compete and win. If you’re the sort of voter who shows up at one of these dead-end rallies, who likely believes that Obama never deserved the hype he got, that he was only a big deal because he was the “black guy,” then, yeah, you are liable to be stunned when he Buster Douglasses that ass.

Coates evokes the great upsetter “Buster” Douglas who all kinds of kicked Mike Tyson’s ass and topped the presumed master. Of course, Tyson never fell back into ageist mudslinging, since most people in the world understand that youth, energy, enthusiasm, and creative ingenuity are good things, especially coming from a man with the varied background (and pronounced lack of McCain Silver SpoonTM) of Barack Obama.

In what universe is McCain’s oldness, not to mention his rudeness, any kind of asset? Considering McCain’s always been a hothead, going so far as to call his ice-princess robot wife a cunt in the public eye (three reporters witnessed this but the McCains now deny it), I don’t see this meanspirited, stubborn jerk as any kind of asset to anyone.

And now more than ever, the McCain campaign’s escalating smarminess and xenophobia is whipping ignorant, underinformed voters into a frenzy that might turn violent. In an earlier post, Coates gives voice to the fear plaguing many liberals AND conservatives right now: the question of Obama’s personal safety.

A handful of supporters at McCain rallies now shout violent threats and epithets, conjuring the French Revolution more than a free election in our very public democracy. Andrew Sullivan brings us this video of one extremely vocal ignoramus. Once again, the comedy and tragedy are back to back, cut from the same cloth. That cloth being, of course, white and American made.

And finally this, from Simpsons writer Daniel Chun:

If John McCain wins after what we’ve been through these last eight years, we’d be telling the entire world that we’re perfectly content with being hated and ridiculed. We’d be Pam Anderson who dumps Tommy Lee, complains about wanting to find a nice guy, and starts dating Kid Rock.

Couldn’a put it better myself. (Chun has his own Wikipedia entry.)

My literary hero and shortlisted celebrity dream friend, Anne Lamott, has this to say on the Palin/McCain ticket.

“Laughter is carbonated holiness. It is chemo. So do whatever it takes to keep your sense of humor. Rent Christopher Guest movies, read books by Roz Chast and Maira Kalman. Picture Stick Freedom in his Batman underpants, having one of his episodes of rage alone in one of his seven bedrooms. Or having one of his bathroomy little conversations with Froth Moonshine. (Bless their hearts.) Try to remember that even Karl Rove has accused him of being a lying suck.”

I’m trying, I’m trying.

As Martin posted much better than I would, Sarah Palin’s over the barrel for using her personal Yahoo! email account to conduct state business.

This situation speaks for itself in a way inimitable by any commentator or humorist.

The American identity today is more complex than ever before. Our populace becomes both more evangelically Christian and more liberal, creating a polarized national climate that is stressful to even casual participants.

I hate this.

It deeply saddens me that the first female Republican vice presidential candidate is serving as a token for her small-town folksiness and extreme social-conservative values. I’ve accepted that John McCain would say anything at this point, even though he was always the voice of Moderate reason to the Bush administration. I even choked down the smarmasaurus speeches of Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani in an attempt to hear their side, though my interest waned when Huckabee harped on how Sarah Palin and McCain both believe life begins at conception.

There is a distinctly urban-versus-rural flavor to this election that makes me deeply uncomfortable. Small-town America is not a romantic notion any more than “the Big City” is. My experience, and those of most young people I know from small towns, was overwhelmingly negative and alienating. If a town’s size allows everyone to know and pursue everyone else’s business, this is never, ever a selling point, nor should it be for a classical conservative: small government, less interference, more privacy. On the other hand, cities don’t have any inherent advantages besides more revenue in one place and more carry-out restaurants. Having spent big portions of my life in many environs (suburbia, a town of 4,000, a city of 35,000, and now Chicago), I don’t like the idea of a potential President who spouts on God’s will and believes in abstinence-only education. Frankly, we’ve had enough of that.

Anyway, diatribes aside, this election is getting me pretty hot under the collar, and at least abstractly I appreciate that it’s doing the same to the rest of America. If everyone is fired up about politics, participating in the process, arguing about it on their smoke breaks, heck yes. This, underneath any specific situation, is the beautiful American system that I truly love.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Lee Greenwood’s song, this entry’s title, is any less embarrassing.