He's Pretty. He's Black. He's ... Pretty Black?

OK, so now that the anticipation/excitement/anxiety of the 2008 Presidential Election has subsided a little bit (don't get me wrong, I still get the chills when I picture President Obama being sworn in), life has started to settle back into normalcy.

Or at least as normal as it be right now, what with the worst economic crisis (no-no, not a recession just yet!) of the past two generations, a lame-duck President STILL trying to fuck things up just so he can leave a legacy (don't worry, Dub, your legacy has been established many times over) and, on a personal note, an almost-three-year-old who seems to take great pleasure in pushing his mother and father to the brink of insanity on what seems like a daily basis.

Anyway, back to normalcy. Leading up to the election -- and still today -- the issue of race has been a big topic for discussion. I've heard people say they're worried that Obama is going to "black out" (imagine that, as he says the last phrase of the swearing in process, Barack's hair suddenly explodes into a giant, '70s blaxploitation-style Afro, he slaps the Bible five, then does a spin move, causing his Hartmarx suit to slide off revealing a purple pimp suit with one of those giant Africa pendants around his neck) as soon as he becomes President, and that whitey better be ready for some payback. Or some of the less extreme paranoid think he's going to "favor" Blacks in every decision he makes.

Funny thing is, race never even entered my mind over the entire course of the campaign. Not that I'm hoping for a medal, but I've always been conscious of race. ANd that's not to say I'm a racist, but in the past when I'd see a Black guy I'd think, "Oh, there's a Black guy." This is most likely due to the fact that I grew up in a small town that was mostly white (and whoever wasn't white was Mexican), went to a prep school that was 98% white and then went to a college for a year that was slightly less white, but not by much. But the somewhat culturocentric view that Obama was "different" and might somehow skew everything "Black" was never on my radar. He was neither Black, White nor Bi-racial; he was simply the Democratic Presidential candidate.

But today I started thinking about people voicing their thoughts, worries and opinions, and it make me think to myself, "Does the fact that this is news to me make me progressive, or just naive?" Of course, I don't think my failing to "classify" Obama makes me either progressive or naive. I choose to believe it's a sign that maybe I've evolved a little bit, and I'm better able to look at people as fellow people, not as ethnicities or races. I don't know if this shift in my world view has anything to do with Obama, but I already like the Change I've seen in myself.

Couric Interviews Palin: Deleted Scene

Pure genius!



In case you don't know Terry Tate, he's the original Office Linebacker:

Hell Yes, We Can!

I want Barack Obama to be our next President. Strike that, I don't want him to be our next President, I need him to be. I know that he's a politician, and politicians are known to tell people what they want to hear. But the thing about Obama is that I believe what he says. I've heard him stumble when he speaks off the cuff, but to me that just means he's really speaking off the cuff, and not regurgitating some line his campaign advisers made him practice over and over.

When he says, "I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible," I want to stand up and sing the goddamn national anthem -- as a single tear runs down my cheek. During the first debate with McCain, when he referred to McCain's similarities to Dubya and proclaimed, "Eight is enough!" I was ready to go out and beat the shit out of Dick van Patten. And I didn't care that Mr. Tom Bradford is an octogenarian -- I was doing it for Barack!

But it's four simple words that gives me the chills. He doesn't overdo it, but to me, it's one of his catchphrases: "Now let's be clear." That's his way of saying, "OK, I know I've been talking a lot and so has my opponent, but I'm not messing around now. Listen the fuck up, and believe me when I say this." When he said that during the first debate in response to one of McCain's confused (and confusing) rants, something inside me took things to a whole 'nother level. I got my Obama t-shirt, sent money to his campaign, got my Obama bumper sticker -- and believe me, where I live putting an Obama bumper sticker on your car is like painting a target on your back.

With less than a week to go, I can feel the winds of change blowing. Obama said that he's been warned against giving Americans false hope, but America is what it is because, as he said, "there's never been anything false about hope." I know Barack is going to shake things up and re-establish the United States as a powerful, respectable and admirable nation. But I also know it's not going to be easy, that there will be sacrifices. And I know this because he said so.