BARACK'S PREDECESSOR--A DIFFERENT BILL

The front page of the Sunday Arts section of the New York Times featured this article by Monohla Dargis and A.O. Scott called, "How the Movies Made a President". The writers claim that fifty years of edgy portrayals of black men in the movies have prepared the country for Obama's presidency. The piece is basically fluff; the writers go on to name black male types as they have appeared in film and television, many of whom have nothing at all to do with Barack Obama. The "black provocateur", for example, in the Richard Pryor tradition is really more Jesse Jackson than Barack. "Black Yoda"? Okay, Condi Rice, maybe, Colin Powell. But Yoda is a behind-the-scenes kind of fella, and there is nothing behind-the-scenes about a presidency. It is both oversimplified and overly inclusive to plot the cultural journey that led to Barack Obama's acceptance by the American majority using every single black man we have ever seen on the big screen as stepping stones.

But about halfway through the article, the writers land on something interesting when they get to The Cosby Show.

"The novelty of that series, at once revolutionary and profoundly conservative, lay in its insistence, week after week, that being black was another way of being normal.
The traditional composition of the Huxtable family, with the father as its benevolent, sometimes bumbling head, was part of the series’s strategy of decoupling blackness from social pathology. “The Cosby Show” did not deny the existence of serious problems in black America — not least the problem of absent fathers — but the presence of Cliff Huxtable, in his own home and yours, suggested that the problems were not intractable."

Could Barack Obama have been elected without the Cosby Show? Who knows? I think that Bill Cosby did a lot of work for Obama. We already have a cultural memory of feeling totally comfortable, feeling right at home, in the house of two highly educated, wealthy, successful black adults. Can't you just picture the Obamas in that Brooklyn Heights home we loved so well? Maybe its Christmas Eve, the girls, who are supposed to be asleep, are huddled on that great staircase. Michelle, looking fierce, is "mad" at Barack for sneaking a cigarette (his version of Cliff's weakness, the hoagie), but they're smiling, so in love, he gives her an early Christmas gift, tickets to see Harry Belafonte or an original issue of her favorite Ella Fitzgerald record, she forgives him his weaknesses. Then the doorbell rings, its Bill and Hillary from across the street, coming to bring some side-character Christmas cheer, it's Michelle's mother, who calls the girls down, everyone can see them anyway, and they all gather together on those couches that may as well have been from our own childhoods, we know them so well.

Roll credits.

THE SECOND TIME I VOLUNTEERED FOR OBAMA...

...It was in Scranton, PA. Actually outside of Scranton. In a little suburb called Olyphant. Who knew Scranton had suburbs? (If I sound citified, it's because I am. Picture me and my friend, a beloved homosexual, ambling cheerfully down the pedestrian-free sidewalks of Scranton to the charming coffee shop and roaster [With wifi! And soy milk!], while we waited to be assigned turf. Picture how impressed we are with the selection of goodies and sandwiches and specialty espresso drinks. Be embarrassed on our behalf.)

I dressed badly for the trip, which is disheartening, since I pride myself on putting together outfits appropriate for any given occasion. When we went to the Atlantic Antic, a famous street festival that stretches for miles through downtown Brooklyn, I wore a hooded sweatshirt and my brown trucker hat that has "Dope" spray painted in Wild Style on its face. I wanted to keep it real, you know? But to Lackawanna County (Was I hung over when I dressed? Or still drunk?) I wore a short brown suede skirt with striped knee socks and oversized fake Uggs, a long sleeved shirt, and a brown, down, Elie Tahari vest with a huge dramatic hood. When I got out of the car to ask for directions, my friend who had been driving shook his head at me.

Out on the streets of Olyphant, the mood among we three Brooklynites who had made the trek could not have been more ebullient. The sun was out, the trees boasted their Autumn glory from the peaks of the Poconos that surrounded us, and Obama was kicking major ass in the polls. Most of the people we spoke to were already on our side, we were just reminding them to get out and vote on Tuesday. It was a good day. Then someone waved us down from a once-blue American car. It was a real beater, probably from the 70's when cars came in two sizes: hearse and boat.

She was a big lady, she possessed the kind of pillowy largesse that happens when a person never ever ever moves. She had the chin hair of a young Hasid, and the voice of a shy schoolgirl. But she was unwell. You could see that right away. I thought she was an alcoholic. My friend said schizophrenic.

"Are you with the Republicans or the Democrats?" she asked me. I had an Obama sticker right on my crazy vest which was maybe six inches from her nose, but I answered her anyway.

"Democrats," I said. I suddenly realized that the two boys were no longer beside me. They were across the street. And down the block.

"Oh, yeah? I like that one...oh, what is his name...Obamy?" It wasn't good. Curse those boys for ditching me! "Are you, uh, yous are workin' for that Obamy?" I explained that we were volunteers. She said she wanted to volunteer as well. She asked me where the office was located and I told her. "Oh yeah," she said. "Right by the Medical Center right? You turn right, that Medical Center is just down the road there."

The only thing I had done in Scranton was arrive and buy lunch.

"I'm not sure..." I managed.

"Oh, gosh, it's right there, isn't it? You from here?"

"No."

"It's right there next to the Medical Center!" I remembered that it was near the Curry Donuts. I told her as much.

"I spent all day cleaning out my attic," she moaned. "I don't know what I'm gonna do about the basement." I nodded with understanding. "What's your name?" she asked me. "Maria? Or Debra?"

"Sure," I said. "Debra. Why not?"

"I want to call you Debra," she said.

"Okay, yeah," I said. "You can call me Debra."

She looked at me for a second.

"What's with those crazy boots, Debra?" she asked me.

She drove away pretty soon after that.

Obama won Lackawanna County. FYI.

HONEY, WILL YOU TAKE OUT THE POLITICAL UNREST?

Last night, as I was walking home, I found this sign tossed in the garbage:


It was quite heartwarming, I must say, to see someone toss out their hard-earned fury with the trash. Indicators that we are at the end of a dark era abound, and for someone like me, who is having a lot of difficulty absorbing the magnitude of our accomplishment, gestures like the one made by my relieved lefty neighbor can be very helpful.

I say our accomplishment for two reasons. The first, and most poetic, is for the reemergence of the American Collective as a coalition of reasonable individuals. Ours is a country founded on angry action in the face of inept or immoral governance, and the size of our most recent refusal to fall prey to more inadequate leadership is inspiring.

The second reason why I take some ownership of the success of Obama's campaign is because I volunteered. Twice. The first, and undoubtedly more effectual of my volunteerships happened in Philly during the primary. I was in North Philly, an African American inner-city community, where I had a lot of interesting conversations. Here is the summary of my experience that I wrote in an email at the time:

One woman said to me, "I don't like that Hillary, she cries too much. She's always singing the blues." (I sort of loved the image of HRC leaning into the mic at a debate and busting out "My Man's Gone Now"). A lot of people were concerned for Obama's health, convinced he would be assassinated. I also talked to a lot of folks who had given up hope for their place in civic life. "We're lost up here," said a man I met in a laundromat while he sat on a table, sipping a beer. "Nobody even knows we're here." One guy I met in front of a church kept turning around to look at me as he was walking away. "You shouldn't get so worked up," he said, "You're only going to get disappointed." "Better to be disappointed and know you tried," I called back. He smiled wide at me, shook his head. "That was a low blow," he said. "I wasn't expecting you to say that!" I saw something in the smile...hope? It seemed like hope.
It was really wonderful to talk to people who had not decided, or hadn't given the primary too much thought. It was very empowering to be armed with such a positive message, to have such confidence in my candidate. There were plenty of people who paid a little attention and plenty of others who had latched onto only snippets of information garnered from who knows where. One crazed Hillary supporter in the laundromat screamed out, "He is in with Bush! Obama is in with Bush!" When I asked her where she learned that she just rolled her eyes and said, "TV." She didn't let her guard down very far, but I could detect a little shock in her eyes when I told her that Clinton had voted in support of the war in Iraq. And you should have heard the other folks in the place when I mentioned the war. "What are we doing over there?" the guy with the beer asked. "It's not our war!"

I also volunteered in Scranton before the general election. More on that to come...

¡VIVA!

I loved this...keep an eye out for the lady in the laundromat towards the end of the video. It's a nice touch.

HILLARY AND FEMINISM

Could it be that we are beyond feminism? Beyond racism? Could we have reached the moment when a person is to be judged based on his/her suitability rather than by gender or race? It seems to me that Obama believes we have, and Clinton (or Rodham Clinton, as it were) believes we have not.

Yesterday a friend said to me, "But blacks could vote before women could vote." The more I consider this argument, the stranger I think it is. This same friend argued that it was because of her being a woman that she was forced to vote in favor of invading Iraq. I have been a woman my whole life, and of the difficulties I have faced as a result of that fact, I have never counted the opportunity to make sound moral decisions among them. Whether or not I took advantage of those opportunities was a question of my relationship with my own self, and not with the world, whatever its bias.

Some have argued that Hillary's feminism is blown by her attachment to "her husband's flapping coattails", and although I believe it is a valid argument, (We are all very familiar the ex-president's embarassingly paltry respect for women), my issue is with the hearts and minds of we voters who consider ourselves to be progressive. We have a responsibility to take our collective civil rights movement to the next level, by voting based on who we believe to be the best candidate, and by no other considerations of a person's race or gender. African Americans, women, Mexicans, Chinese, what have you, all deserve that kind of consideration.

I promise to let go of these politics...seriously. Stay tuned for a guest blog from one Gregory Stuart Edwards, which should go live sometime today or tomorrow.

Happy Valentines Day! What a day for feminism, right? Nothing like exchanging heart shaped boxes of chocolate and tennis bracelets for sexual favors to really take down the patriarchy!

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL BLOG. PERIOD.

But I am politically obsessed right now, making it nigh impossible for me to talk about anything else. I have a friend who is a die-hard Giants fan. He reads everything on the Giants, their website, news sources, blogs. He has a serious presence on their fan site. I think my relationship to my candidate has morphed into this fan/home team dynamic. I can't refresh websites fast enough. I pace around, waiting for election results, scouring the web for something: a poll, campaign drama, unjustifiable opinion. I DON'T CARE.

I think the ones who understand this best are Andrew Sullivan's dogs.

A SLOW DAY AT THE OFFICE, A SERIO-COMEDY

PART ONE: SOME THINGS ARE NOT FUNNY
This is not a political blog, and for the most part, I am not a political person. But today I am going to share something I read in the New Yorker:

On Social Security, Clinton has avoided a detailed approach to fixing the system, which is expected to run out of money by the twenty-forties; for now, she would appoint a trusty “bipartisan commission” to recommend solutions. Obama proposes raising the ceiling on income that is subject to the payroll tax. As a political strategy, this appears to be a terrible idea. A potential crisis in the Social Security system is a long way off. Why, then, would a new President spend political capital on yet another tax hike when he will almost certainly seek to undo the Bush tax cuts for more immediate demands, like universal health care? When I asked Obama about this, he smiled and leaned forward, as if eager to explain that my premise was precisely the politically calibrated approach that he wanted to challenge. “What I think you’re asserting is that it makes sense for us to continue hiding the ball,” Obama said, “and not tell the American people the truth—”

I interrupted: “Politically it makes sense—”

He finished the sentence: “—to not tell people what we really think?”

I am so very tired of being lied to. I am so ready for someone to tell me the truth. Anyone else?

PART TWO: I'M GONNA EAT YOUR ASS UP LIKE STEAK AND SHAKE
But that's enough serious for today. Here's one of my favorite moments of onscreen musical comedy. The basketball scene from Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style.