Obama, The "R" Word, and Me

Race is a touchy subject for a liberal, especially a white liberal. Even more so for a white liberal female who cast her primary vote for Hillary Clinton.
It's hard to know where to start, in expressing how I feel about the likelihood of our first black president. But I feel excited.
I feel proud to be an American.
Sometimes I catch a few minutes of the Michael Baisden Show while station-surfing on the way home from work, and get caught up in the excitement there. Yeah, I know I'm white. I check out sites like The Root and feel the same thing.
Maybe part of it is the proverbial guilt. My maternal grandparents hailed from western South Carolina and western Virginia, (Falwell country) respectively. And, of course, I voted for Hillary, so there's that.
But although guilt breeds a sense of responsibility, it doesn't tend to breed excitement.

Part of it is just about Barack Obama himself. He has a certain something, a certain aura of leadership, a certain authenticity, a certain down-to-earth intellectualism (versus Al Gore's and John Kerry's more detached, off-putting variety) and, of course, a certain charisma. There's something in his voice that's both soothing and inspiring, and he has the (admittedly handsome) but furrowed brow of someone who doesn't take decisions lightly, a steadiness and a quiet confidence. These are the qualities that won him all three presidential debates.
I like the guy, as I have since I saw his keynote address four years ago. I liked him even when I cast the primary vote for his opponent. But now I'm on board.
It took a little while to get enthusiastically on board. I was a Bill fan since witnessing his first inaugural, and have wanted to see Hillary run since it was first tossed around as a remote possibility. It took some time to move on, but I've moved. I don't regret my primary vote, but I think my fellow Democrats made the right decision, and I look forward to following their example on Tuesday in the general election.

And part of it really is about race. I want to see unity in this country, and I want to see real healing, and I know that the former can't come without the latter. And I know how deeply Barack Obama feels and believes this (as a crucial aspect of his own identity, no doubt) and that gives me hope that we can see both, and maybe sooner than most of us thought we would. That's the sense I got after hearing his Philadelphia speech.

So, yeah, I'm white. Yeah, I voted for Hillary. And yeah, I'm excited about our first black president, excited about racial healing and reconciliation... and excited about electing Barack Obama.

Veiled for a Day...

... or "Invisible Like Me."
from Zaiba Malik in The Guardian

An Embarrassment of Riches for Black Women Voters

Tough choice... but long overdue, and probably one MLK would have been pleased to see.

I've been a stranger to blogging this past week, and have kept away from all the various primary-related melodramas, while trying to do some more in-depth research on the candidates, and mull things over...

And I still have no idea who I'm going to vote for myself next month.

I wish everyone would try to play nice, though. (Or if "nice" is too much to ask, then at least fair.) Is that too much to ask?

The Gen X Demographic: Why are we so cynical?

The naivete of the Baby Boomers' 60s leaves a bad taste in our mouths. It seems they gave everything an honest try, and failed.
We were born in the 70s, at the pinnacle of decadence, when everything was in decline.
Then we saw America born-again in the Reagan '80s. We (the lucky ones) were too young to know that renaissance was built on lies, staged by cynics with a handsome frontman saying all the right things.
In the early 90s, at the start of the first Iraq war, it looked like we might get our own movement together. We didn't. I guess we just didn't have the heart for it. We were too clever, and knew too much, although most of it was secondhand. We let our parents blame the media for that.
Things were looking up in the Clinton era, and a lot of us got on the prosperity bandwagon, hoping all our country's foibles would just work themselves out, one dotcom success story and trade agreement at a time. Some of us stayed by the sidelines, but to listen to us, there wasn't much difference anymore, between the sell-outs and the rest of us, in contrast with the Boomers.
Oh, what went wrong with us?
We were such a beautiful baby. Look at those Gerber commercials.
And who will set us straight?
In 2008?
Stay tuned.

***

Pop Culture Brats: The Songs of our Lives

"Good Times" by Chic, 1979

Boys will be boys, better let them have their toys.
Girls will be girls, cute pony tails and curls.
Must put an end to this stress and strife.
I think I want to live the sporting life.

"The End of the Innocence" by Don Henley, 1989

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, 1991

With the lights out, it's less dangerous.
Here we are now, entertain us.

"The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, 1997

I've never had to knock on wood
And I'm glad I haven't yet
Because I'm sure it isn't good.

"Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer, 2006

It's not that we don't care.
We just know the fight ain't fair.

A Chessman's Life

I think I've seen this guy before, playing a game in "the circle" down in D.C.

Homeless man is chess king of Washington

But I hadn't realized he was a tournament champion and aspiring master (the highest title in American chess.)
If he could just beat the bottle the way he beats his challengers... but nothing's as easy as black and white...
Wishing him luck, though.

Chimeras Among Us

MIT scientist offers help to cyclist accused of blood doping.
Apparently, DNA tests to look for chimerism have found that about 50 to 70 percent of healthy people are chimeras, a medical term meaning that their blood may have originally mingled with a vanished twin in utero, early on, or with their mother's own blood.

Complicated Woman

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a guest, Thursday night, on The Colbert Report, which, prior to my working in the news media industry, was one of my primary sources of news (and now I realize how hilariously misinformed I was) but it's still one of my primary sources of entertainment.
I was impressed with how self-possessed and poised Ali remained (it's hard to be poised seated opposite Stephen Colbert playing Bill O'Reilly) while discussing her controversial views on Islam and religion in general.
What wasn't discussed in the interview, and which I was surprised to read later, was that Ali, a feminist and atheist, works at the American Enterprise Institute. It's easy enough to understand why she would have taken the job when it was offered, given that she was under threat of death from Muslims in the Netherlands after her collaboration with Theo Van Gogh, who was assassinated -- and also suddenly unwelcome in the country itself (where she had been a member of the Dutch parliament) for fabricating her reasons for seeking asylum there as a young girl fleeing an arranged marriage.
It's a fascinating story, which Ali recounts in her new book, Infidel.
But with this knowledge in mind, I thought it was interesting that SC asked her whether Christian fundamentalists should use the "fire with fire" approach in combating the violent element of Muslim fundamentalism (the new buzzword is "Islamo-fascism.")
This is the perfect question to have asked because it isolates what separates Ali's views from some of her neocon colleagues. But maybe not all of them, as I might automatically assume. Maybe it is possible to be a feminist and atheist at the American Enterprise Institute. As my significant other pointed out, at least it provides a little diversity over there. And at least it's genuine diversity, i.e. diversity of worldview versus merely the skin-deep tokenism so beloved of the neocons.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

... or perhaps dishonor, this was interesting. Apparently the current inhabitants of the British Isles (does Ireland resent being called a "British" Isle? I bet they do; can't they come up with a more, or would that be less, inclusive term?) Anyway, apparently, the British, Scottish, Welsh and Irish all share the majority of their genes, owing to a prehistoric population, speaking a language similar to Basque, that have lived there for the last 16,000 years.

Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, introduces several theories that would turn long-held assumptions about British history on their head if they are further verified.

But he doesn't hold out much hope for shared ancestry healing old rivalries (maybe policymakers should take a hint from this kind of pessimism when considering other populations, say, in the Middle East):

If the people of the British Isles hold most of their genetic heritage in common, with their differences consisting only of a regional flavoring of Celtic in the west and of northern European in the east, might that perception draw them together? Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences.

The Celtic cultural myth “is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,” said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286.

Dr. Oppenheimer said genes “have no bearing on cultural history.” There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.

As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, “It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it won’t.

Bee in my bonnet

Something's been bugging me with regard to the expectations for this presidential season's groundbreaking candidates. Way too much is being expected of them. Obama has pretty much been unofficially canonized (he's already been all but knighted by Oprah, so an official canonization is probably not far off) and Hillary is bearing on her shoulders well over two centuries of American women's once only wistful hopes. Talk about baggage.
It's not surprising that it was (white) women writers and activists, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who set the moral bar for black men as higher than their white oppressors, because women have been saddled with that role from time immemorial, up to and including the American feminist past rooted in the Temperance movement.
The novelist Angela Carter, most famous for her updated fairy tales and lauded as "the high-priestess of postgraduate porn," was attacked by fellow feminists for her assertion in The Sadeian Woman that women cannot be genuinely equal until they can be equally reprehensible. Understandably perhaps, Utopian feminists were not wanting to hear that. But time has somewhat vindicated Ms. Carter.
Or has it? Maybe politics is the last-conquered realm of any social trend, but until we can have a black or female candidate who is seen as just another candidate with a big question mark over his or her head, instead of the weight of the world, who is permitted flaws and skeletons and even a bad hair/tie day, we still have a ways to go, baby.

We are all Macaca

U.Va. senior and reluctantly famous Jim Webb campaign volunteer S.R. Sidarth's piece in The Washington Post:

A Virginia Welcome: I Am Macaca