OF A GOLDEN AGE

I do not believe in God or any other personal deity of organized religion. I really, absolutely do not. At the same time, I very strongly believe in everyone’s duty to keep their business to themselves in a free nation.

The fact that President Obama directly addresses believers, disbelievers, and nonbelievers together makes me happy. More than that, it does not make me angry, which probably means more in the long run. Believers and nonbelievers have to stop excluding each other.

Everyday life makes it clear that people can act morally without religion. Richard Dawkins, arguably the most annoying, axe-to-grind atheist on the planet, has not killed anyone yet and I doubt he ever will.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Andy directed me to this New York Times story about Barack Obama’s reading habits, and I love it because of the following:

Lincoln, like Mr. Obama, was a lifelong lover of books, indelibly shaped by his reading — most notably, in his case, the Bible and Shakespeare — which honed his poetic sense of language and his philosophical view of the world. Both men employ a densely allusive prose, richly embedded with the fruit of their reading, and both use language as a tool by which to explore and define themselves.

Yes! Obama may be Harvard-educated, but he has followed a Lincolnish self-educating Great Booksy curriculum in his own life. His questioning attitude toward life and his professional pursuits indicates that Obama would wring more meaning from a reading of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax than Bush did from the 95 books he purportedly read last year.

The New York Times pays gracious tribute to Chicago in this article: A New Wind is Blowing in Chicago. (The photo with the article shows the sign for one of the city’s busiest train stops, Jackson on the CTA’s Blue Line.)

Oh, Chicago, no longer even the Second City but the third. My friend John described it best as a big city on a budget: Chicago is well-organized, inexpensive, accessible, and humble. The whole city was offended when Sarah “Irascible Moron” Palin cut down the work of community organizers, especially in the city’s flux, transitioning South Side neighborhoods. She really drove a stake between working-class Republicans and working-class Democrats, who often believe in the same values but live in different environs.

I think many people forget that charity is as often about advocating for poor people as it is helping them financially — it is by no means a “HANDOUT” to educate a single mother on her tenant’s rights, to offer her guidance on cheap, healthy meals for her family, to help her choose the right schools for her children. Is this the stuff of controversy, over which city-dwellers and small-town citizens disagree? I’m guessing it isn’t.

Last week I picked someone up at O’Hare, and while circling the airport several times waiting for his arrival, I noticed the parade of Obama banners attached to every lightpole. Oh, hometown pride. As usual, the particulars of Obama and his connection to Chicago are only symbolic of a much bigger feeling.

Title taken out of context from “Chicago,” written and recorded by Graham Nash but most famously performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on the live album Four Way Street:

Somehow people must be free
I hope the day comes soon
Won’t you please come to Chicago
To show your face
From the bottom of the ocean
To the mountains of the moon
Won’t you please come to Chicago
No one else can take your place

Over at No Caption Needed, photographer and scholar Aric Mayer has a guest post called Obama, Aesthetics, and the Way Forward. The part that struck me:

Obama inherits two lengthy and costly wars, the near bankruptcy of our own domestic policies, an American economy in free fall and a world economy that appears to be teetering on the edge of the unknown. But as dark as this may seem, the alternative was even darker. John McCain’s last efforts at character assassination and fear mongering left him in the isolated position of having nothing to win but a completely fractured constituency.

Greetings from Fake America, where even conservative David Frum knows the GOP is going to have to fight like hell (quoted by Andrew Sullivan here) to win the respect of college-educated Americans.

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!

Oh, bother. Michael Crichton, progenitor of Jurassic Park and its resulting sequels and movie franchise, has died of cancer at age 66.

What Star Wars likely is to you and your childhood, Crichton is to me and mine. Crichton meant the world to me because JP and his other novels were the way I learned about the huge ups and downs possible through the application of human brilliance. His characters were smart and flawed, sometimes greedy, sometimes overwhelmed, and his stories were near-future cautionary tales against reckless science.

Then of course he created ER, one of the most successful television shows ever, based on his own training and expertise as an MD.

This is especially sad because Crichton helped bridge the gap between pop fiction and something deeper and more stimulating.

As a side note, he was 6’9″, a fact that I greatly appreciated as a 5’11″, thirteen-year-old girl. He would have towered even over Abraham Lincoln, my perennial childhood hero. But not over Lincoln’s hat. Barack Obama, by the way, made three Lincoln shoutouts in his victory speech, holding Lincoln up as the catalyst of the Republican party and an example of cross-partisan ideals. I suspect we are on the way to something wonderful.

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.)