1) MY MORNING IN PORTLAND
I arrived at the airport this morning and an employee at the check-in desk (United - you know, one of the bankrupt ones) mentioned a vacation he plans on taking in six months, then added, "if I have a job then." The woman who checked my luggage said, "Please try to be optimistic. I have two kids to feed."
Then I bought coffee from a woman who asked how I was, and when I said I hadn't gotten much sleep, she said, "Yes, it was pretty awful, wasn't it."
Then watching John Edwards' concession speech on the airport TV, a flight attendant sitting next to me began crying and pretty soon she had tears streaming down her face. She got up and got some napkins, turned to me, and said, "I think I'm going to have to redo my makeup."
2) HOW TO REACT:
A friend of mine called today and left a really voicemail saying "Just calling to make sure you're not on the verge of suicide, to check in and shoot the shit...." I really appreciated it.
Novelist Rick Moody, on Salon:
Despair is OK for an afternoon, but it's important to remember: This is the most corrupt presidency in modern history. It's unlikely to improve. So there's lots to do.
Email from my brother:
"What a complete fucking disaster."
3) HOW NOT TO REACT (?)
The New York Times has run a story called "A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America." I understand the feeling, and I experienced the phenomenon of collective grief in public places today, and I strongly identify with the 25-year-old barmaid's observation that she doesn't know anyone who voted for Bush. And yes, it's true that homosexuality was on the ballot in Ohio and abortion was on the ballot in Florida and this, as the CBC put it, "inspired many direct voting appeals from Catholic and Evangelical pulpits." And yes, I can't stand the way the declaration that the election was a referendum on "moral values," which is, as the Washington Post points out, "basically a code phrase for abortion and gays"?
And yet - and yet, there's something so wrong about this article, and so symptomatic about the state of progressive and liberal politics in America. What happened to class? What happened to corporate power? Why does this piece report exclusively on the views of professionials, teachers, and others in the college-educated, Salon-reading, latte-buying people? Why doesn't the Democratic party wake up to the fact that people in low-wage service-sector jobs can't simply be cast as nameless doormen who give consoling hugs? Why simply cave to the religious right's efforts to cast itself as representative of the heartland?
At the Kerry party at the Oregon Convention Center last night, someone literally said to me that only those in the elite should be allowed to vote, and then today at the Portland airport someone I got into a conversation with said that he thinks only people with college degrees should be allowed to vote. I am not making this up. And on Nov. 2, I heard a long story on "Marketplace" about how for the stake of our stock portfolios we really ought to hope, above all else, that a president is selected by the end of the night.
Honestly, I think part of why Barack Obama has inspired so many people and does represent the future of the Democratic party is that in such tense times he's in a very literal sense a uniter, not a divider. Let's remember the most brilliant oration of this year's Democratic National Convention: "The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States."
2 comments:
I saw David Sedaris last night in Saint Paul and he commented on what a dark day November 3 had been for all of us. Then he pointed out that he'd seen two women standing on a bridge with a sign reading "God Help Us All." The image of those two standing out there after all the other sign-wavers had gone back inside really cheers me up.
On the other hand, I'm frustrated by some of the comments I read on news sites like Salon (no, I'm not drinking a latte): "The Democrats deluded themselves by counting on the youth vote, forgetting that most liberal American youths are drunk, stoned or getting laid and don't start to care about things until they go through their P.J. O'Rourke-ish epiphany stage a bit later in life."
Do you know anyone who wasn't involved in the progressive movement this time around? Who didn't canvass doors, dedicate cell phone minutes, donate his/her beer budget, call strangers in swing states, write and share an opinion, drive strangers to the polls, or drop lit in sketchy neighborhoods long after our elders were tucked into bed?
If the future is indeed in the hands of boozy, horny kids like me, the rest of the party would be wise to step in line behind us.
--Caitlin
Amen, Tim. I think that sentiment coming from Barack Obama, is why I have moved out of what was a "red" state, at least to me, for my entire life, and stayed and voted in blue states, and will likely continue to do so. Ohio just would not produce a politician like this.
What sucks about so-called progressives and liberals is that, at least in our circles, they are all burgeoning yuppies (he says as he prepares to write his blog about being in medical school), and there are some real inclications toward problematic elitism in that group of young progressives. Which will, in some hidden cases, turn to Republicanism. This is one reason why many don't see a difference between the parties.
Barack Obama also said something interesting on election night, about how he was able to just wrestle a lot of "moral" Illinois away from crazy Keyes: "The American people are not an ideological people. They're a practical people". And he goes on to talk about how Americans want practical solutions to our real problems. I think that self-righteous, elite intellectual bent that our party, and lets face it, young progressives have, may have been part of what hurt us in the general election.
Which doesn't mean that we're not right. We just go about being right all wrong.
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