STAYIN’ ALIVE… and
STRUTTING FOR OBAMA…
Should we—who fought so passionately for Obama against the desperate ones who, in the final days before the election seemed willing to do ANYTHING to win—play the roles of “gracious” victors…? Forgive all the lies that were told about Obama’s being a “terrorist” (like Kay Hagan was “godless”) and--as Obama himself--“rise above it all” and simply be “happy” it’s over and celebrate the opportunity we now have to repair the havoc the Republicans have reeked during the past decade?.... Or should we take this occasion to uncork the champagne, dance, shoot off fireworks and otherwise go deliriously nuts with the absolute and utter joy of it all? …
Or maybe both? Enjoy our own editorial staff—aided by other writers—wrestling with the urge to “be nice” to our ousted and slam-dunked GOP losers and at the same time contend with the irresistible impulse to strut like victorious warriors and dance with delight on the dashed hopes and aborted plans of those losers who demonstrated--until the very moment they knew the contest was over--that they would do and say literally anything it took to con voters into giving them 4 more years to destroy what’s left of America.
By: Dusty Schoch, DI Editor Nov. 5, 2008
Accompanied by…
Collateral reactions from:
Leonard Carrier (DI Senior Associate Editor), Letters exchanged between DI contributor Michael Murphy and West Pointer, Michael Ellerbe; a beautifully complex reaction by Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, entitled “Yes We Did” (forwarded by N.C. Artist, Alan Mackeraghan) and finally, letters exchanged by
Marissa Murphy and Cathy Beasley—the wife of a U.S. Diplomat living in Ghana.
Dusty Initial DI Take…
It’s all over and Obama has won…and in the middle of election night I find myself as Alice behind the looking glass…wondering if this is real…or an illusion…too good to be true. All I could do was run through the local bars finding people to buy drinks for who’d voted for the new hope of America…the great not-white-not-black-but-both hope, Barack Obama.
After the public celebration I come home to discover that the State of Virginia has effectively re-joined the Union of Blue enlightened America, and North Carolina might just follow suit. Obama already had 30 over the needed 270 and so I was left in a quandary. Not in recent memory had I felt the desire…rather the NEED to strut. Smiling, shouting, unloading a 9-mm clip of ammo into the night air to wake up oblivious neighbors wasn’t near enough. I felt like Travolta coming out the victor in his Saturday Night Fever Sequel, “Stayin Alive” and needed to go out and strut with a Bee Gee beat somehow, somewhere… but there was no audience, no dance floor and no Bee Gee beat.
I awoke this morning with the same dancing determination—the same need to go publicly on a Strut for Obama’s victory, for the victory of Obama’s brave new America…the America which has now begun at the end of the neo-con fascist reign of the Bushite’s…the end of the 1984 nightmare coup of corporate-media spun and dictated lies, and the beginning of a new era of unity…through truth.
I felt my need to strut building when I saw Obama graciously and nobly eschew any impulse to strut on his own behalf. His victory address could not have been more gracious and humble. It was easy to see that he has a realistic appreciation and anticipation of the scope of the task before him. But somebody needed still to strut!!
So this morning I was ready to give up my impulse to strut…until I received an e-mail from an arch-conservative friend who had the foolish temerity to call the election in McCain’s favor before he went to an early bed on election day (yesterday). The message was a neo-con video piece of racist caricaturing of Obama as an African tribal dancer, performing a mockery of a Kenyan dance celebrating—prematurely—his own victory. The joke, of course, backfired on my sending neo-con correspondent who went to bed before it became apparent that Obama would ultimately have landslide cause to dance.
In short, the piece he sent to me was as offensive as anything I could have imagined. It was sent with the sender’s assurance that the receiver would get a good laugh by hitting on the Youtube link that shows the Obama-effigy dancing in his little African version of a silly tutu.
With that as preface, I will hereafter put the link to the you/tube neo-con “joke” on Obama, and trail thereafter my reply. My reply, as it turns out, finally gave me my occasion to “strut” for our new President Elect and his—make that OUR—shared victory. We have re-captured America, my friends, and here is my strutting in celebration of that Event:
First: Here’s the message (in red) and You/tube link
I was sent by my then confident Republican
Neo-con friend:
The video link is at the end and following it
My strutting reply to all who were sent the
original message.
Enjoy!
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 10:25 AM
Subject: election 2008
Hope this proves to be untrue at the end of the day, but it's still pretty funny
TAKE A MINUTE AND WATCH - GUARANTEE YOU'LL LAUGH!
VKG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN954aYdFdI
Dusty’s Open Letter to the Neo-Cons:
Dear “all”—
I assume you are all Republicans or this tasteless piece of racist innuendo crap wouldn’t have been addressed to you. If you aren’t, please disregard this comment. If you thought the Youtube piece was cute, please read on; this message is for you.
If you are one of those who thought it was cute to liken Obama (or his supporters) to a native African tribal dancer --if in fact you feel in any way superior even to that You/tube subject--you likely deemed it cute because you feel in some way superior to the guy who was just elected your President. I don’t even know you (on the original mailing list of this forwarded message) but I can say without hesitation or doubt you’re not (superior to Barack Obama in any way). Here’s some of the reason(s) why: Compare your CV (I wouldn’t have had to explain to him that “CV” means “Curriculum Vitae, i.e. your resume of career and educational credentials) to his:
***Obama was elected President of the United States.
*** A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he served as president of the Harvard Law Review.
*** Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
***He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.
***After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
Here’s a rhetorical question for you all: Which one of you could have done even one of the things listed above? Which one of you has accomplished any single thing equivalent to any one of the things Obama has accomplished (forget his having accomplished what he has in a social milieu run largely by white male bigots --like you?). Just writing for Harvard Law Review is an honor one in a million law students have the IQ and achievement level even to aspire to; Obama was President of Harvard’s Law Review. As such, by professional consensus, that placed him among the most brilliant law scholars in the world. He could have named the firm—any international law firm in the world—he aspired to work for and could have named his salary and the salary would have been multiple 6 figures. There is no argument about this. He chose a life of public service in your country instead.
Not one of you in this (initial and posted) mailing list could hold a candle to this man either by way of intellect or achievement and you have the temerity and dogmatic ignorance it takes to make a mockery of him on the basis of race. You are a disgrace to your own race and this country and everything it stands for (if you just chuckled at this moronic, bigoted …. crap).
I just this morning (November 5th) spoke to a disappointed Conservative Republican friend, very near and dear to me, and asking him how he felt this morning, was told: “Well here’s the best way I can put it-
“Now we can say the little dog who’s been long chasing the car has caught up with it. Now we’ll see what he can do with it.”
I asked my friend in reply if he’d mind my supplementing the metaphor/parable he just related and was given reluctant license. What I added was this: Well, here’s the best way I can envision the “little dog” in your case as posed: The way I see it, the brave canine was chasing a huge, militarily-clad Humvee that guzzled gas so fast its tank went dry on a dangerous curve traveling through the economic back roads of our country—now dangerously under-maintained because the Humvee class exported all the industry that was once there. The Humvee has plummeted off the crumbling asphalt into the precipice and now lies crumpled in the valley of Eco-Armageddon where it was driven by its heedless and reckless driver. The dog was chasing the car but the chasing had nothing to do with the crash. I’d say the poor canine, through his dogged pursuit, has at least found himself a pile of heavy-metal junk to provide him shelter while he goes about re-learning the art of hunting and gathering. Maybe now the wounded driver and the dog will get together in a hunt for new resources, the way it used to be, the way nature intended. In any case, I’d say it’s hardly the dog’s fault that the machine of his dreams—the American dream—is lying in a mangled heap in the valley of the shadow of 8 years of neo-conservative steerage. But one thing is clear--When the driver of the Humvee wakes up, dresses his wounds and vainly turns the key to his faithful Hummer, he’ll blame the whole worthless wreckage on man’s best friend.
Jim Crow is dead in this Country. It’s time for you now to play fair and …eat it. May Obama—and we along with him--live long and prosper. Better still, let’s see to it that the man (the reckless driver) and his trusty dog re-unite and learn to hunt together once again in a sensible and symbiotic way…this time hunting for the “right” things. As to what those “right things” might be, I’ll simply refer you—for a guide and template-- to what was said about America at our President Elect’s Democratic nomination :
“People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by examples of our power.”
William Jefferson Clinton, 8-27-08
Dusty Schoch
www.DeclaringIndependents.com
Len’s Coda
(Dr. Leonard Carrier, DI Senior Associate Editor)
What a joyous day! Who wouldn’t feel like strutting the day after the people of the United States threw off the shackles forged during the past eight years? As for myself, I toasted Barack Obama’s victory the night of November 4, 2008 with a glass of 101-proof “Wild Turkey” bourbon. How sweet it was, and how sweet it was to serenade my wife with my rendition of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
I had been predicting this landslide victory for the American people for weeks, ever since the gamblers of InTrade announced their verdict. When a tennis friend thanked me today for my prediction, which I issued to ease her mind about a possible last-minute stolen election, I replied that she should thank those Irish bookies, who have rarely been wrong in predicting elections. You’ve got to love them!
Beyond the strutting, and beyond the pride that we can take in the voters of this country, going for Obama by millions in the popular vote, there is something that needs remembering. On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 79 years old today. Instead he was cut down by a racist assassin’s bullet at the age of 39. But now, two score years later, it behooves us to remember the words from that speech, words that have now taken form.
“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’.” Martin Luther King did not live to see his dream come true. But we have been privileged to see it. So now I have some inkling of what he felt when in ringing tones he thundered, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Len Carrier
11 05 2008
Captain K’s Corner:
“Captain K” is DI’s nickname for DI’s Staff Contributor
Michael Kevin Murphy**
(Mike practices law in Fairfax, within the now
True blue State of Virginia and
Is a decorated Viet Nam War Veteran
Dust: Thought you might be interested in an email I sent a client of mine, a West Pointer and an African American. MKM
From: Michael Ellerbe [mailto:[email protected]] To : Mike Murphy
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 12:08 PM
Subject: A Great Day for All Americans
Just talked to my Mom. She could hardly speak through the tears.
Regardless of political affiliation this is a great day for all Americans. It is an affirmation of the ideals that made this nation great. It is a significant step towards unifying a divided nation. It is a calling for every American to stand together to overcome the daunting challenges this nation faces. It is an example of the extraordinary nature of the American people. It is a validation of American Democracy. It is the nation we love and would lay down our lives for. When I think of the significance of this day, my eyes well with tears. I have never been prouder of this nation. I have never been prouder of being an American.
God Bless the American People and God Bless this Great Nation
Mike (Ellerbe)
From: Michael Kevin Murphy [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 4:25 PM
To: 'Michael Ellerbe'
Subject: Re.: A Great Day for All Americans.
Mike:
Marisa forwarded your trailing email to me. I can recall only two times in my life before yesterday evening when I felt so tightly bound to my Country, the character of its people, and its role among the Nations of this World. The first was when I took the oath of office as a second lieutenant on my graduation from the Virginia Military Institute, an act that would head me off eventually toward service as an infantry officer in Vietnam; the second was when I saw the brief, fuzzy video images of Neil Armstrong taking the first human steps on the surface of the Moon. Yesterday I added a third: I'll join with you and every person who both loves this Country and understands the significance of what happened yesterday to celebrate the election of U.S. Senator Barack H. Obama of Illinois to be the 44th President of the United States of America. You and I and so many people all over the World will be privileged, I believe, to remember his election and the details of that day for the rest of our lives and the way it forever changed the way many Americans see themselves and the way others see us.
As I watched the television coverage of the crowd before Senator Obama's victory speech last night I was struck by the fact that the expressions on the faces of each person, whether black or white, young or old, famous or unknown outside their local communities, whoever --- said the same thing to me: By this election, we have all been lifted up and set free on the other side of a great divide that has separated our people for far too long and can, if we can see the way, now move beyond the few remaining cultural and social divisions that began in this Country in 1619, when the first twenty captured Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia by a Dutch trading ship and sold into slavery here.
After that event, even the most progressive minds of our "Enlightenment"-inspired Founders had no answer to the questions that arose from that transaction, not in our Declaration of Independence and not in our Constitution either, but it was not yet time. A Civil War tore this Country apart for four years in the Ninetieth Century and cost the lives of over six hundred thousand Americans on both sides, and while there was considerable progress in the immediate years after it ended, still the answer was incomplete. Another four-year war in the last Century would test us again and tease out a bit more progress as African American service members were allowed to serve. They served with distinction and heroism, too, in units such as those Army Air Corps units comprised solely of African American pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen; those units became legends for their exemplary service. After WWII ended the U.S. Military was desegregated but, still, progress was slow in the civilian community for many years more and although civil legislation and court opinions broke down many barriers to full equality the remaining few answers would continue to elude us until a first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois began his campaign for the U.S. Presidency and people came to see who he is and what he is made of, and in less than two years voters in the U. S. re-drew the map for U.S. Presidential elections, elected a man of African descent to be our next President and gave us an answer to one of the last previously unanswered questions: Yes, he can work and succeed. Yes, he can go to integrated public schools and succeed. Yes, he can attend previously all-white universities and succeed. Yes, he can attend professional schools and practice his profession successfully. Yes, he can serve in uniform and set an example for others by his sacrifice and heroism. Yes, he can argue landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, then be appointed as a justice of that court or serve as a judge in any court. Yes, he can be elected to Congress and serve with credit. Yes, he can be elected as a governor of a state and serve with credit. Of course, there are many more "yesses" but now we have all advanced to the point where a resounding majority of us can also say: Yes, he can be our President too.
For my part, my decision to vote for Senator Obama had almost nothing to do with his race. To me he was just "the smartest guy in the room", self-possessed and possessing a keen intelligence and fine education, a person who places a high value value on his family, someone who never allowed his opponents in either the primaries or general election goad him into making ill-considered responses to questions or taking ill-considered actions. Of all the candidates, he has articulated, in my judgment, the most responsible World view and responses to the many challenges facing this country and its next President and he ran what must be the most successful political campaign in human history and scarcely put a foot wrong from start to finish.
This morning many of us stood a bit straighter. Senator Barak Obama convinced us that his race was irrelevant and he was more fit and better suited than his opponent, Senator John McCain, to serve in the highest elective office in the United States. Then we did the right thing and put him there; I know of no other Country that could do what the electorate of this Country just did and for that we can be very proud. The task before each of us now is to determine how we can best help him do what we elected him to do.
Mike
**Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent of long standing. Mike, a V.M.I. graduate, served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and his badges and decorations include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.
Yes We Did !
Forwarded by Alan Mackeraghan (Alan is an artist residing in High Point, N.C. and a previous B.E.A. --now DI--Contributor.)
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/11/05/notes110508.DTL
This is no time for gloating.
This is no time to get carried away by some sort of rapturous rose-colored ROTFLMAO celebration full of streamers and confetti and blissful weeping in the streets, all wrapped in a big creamy ribbon of stunned disbelief, the overwhelming sense that, oh sweet God in heaven, our wary and battered nation has finally agreed, after all these years and seemingly all at once, to grow the hell up.
Is that not the feeling? That we as a country just did the impossible, just chose to get a little bit serious with ourselves, to actually attempt to right our myriad wrongs and rid the national body of our Republican toxins and oh yes by the way make a huge, shocking jolt of unprecedented history while we're at it? You're damn right it is.
The best news of all: Despite all vicious rumors to the contrary, it turns out that we are not too collectively stupid to know a rare and historic opportunity when we see one, no matter what his middle name. I mean, thank God.
So then, a warning, a caution, a hard-bitten piece of buzz-killin' advice, right here right now, before it's too late and you get all ecstatic and naked and drunk on the sheer WOW-ness of it all:
Put down the kazoo. Hold off on the champagne. Do not get too cozy. Do not let President-elect Obama's stunning victory go to your progressive thoughtful oh-my-God-I-Can't-believe-it's-true liberal head. This is not a time for cocktails and screaming and dancing in the streets (that comes about six paragraphs down. Shhh).
After all, there is much work to be done. There is a staggering pile of damage so deep and so wide it would take a hundred Obamas and three trillion dollars and a forklift the size of Shiva to even make a dent.
That is no joke. Did you notice? Buried beneath the avalanche of Obama stories, this bitter hunk of gristle: Right this minute, the Bush admin is trying like the Devil's own biotoxin to sneak through a whole slew of last-minute rollbacks and deregulations, a final parting gift to Bush's corporate cronies and a parting sucker punch to the country.
It's like the world's worst chef spitting on your food one last time before sending it out, cold and limp and full of as much MSG and rat feces as he can jam in there because, well, why the hell not?
And don't forget something else: The sickly, reclusive billionaires and scabrous Blackwater moms who spent their personal millions forcing their intolerance on California by way of Proposition 8? The kind of dysfunctional, ultrawealthy fanatics who not only pray to a dour and heartwrenching God every single day that Christian militants take over the country so we could, quite literally, stone all the gays to death, but who have the millions to fund their nightmares? They are not exactly going away anytime soon.
And as if this writing, their sad fearmongering and outright dishonesty appears to have succeeded in scaring a sufficient number of the less educated, more easily panicked mid-staters into condemning a variant of love their congested and confused souls simply cannot allow. Marriage equality has been, once again, slapped down. For now.
So please, defy your temptations. Do not, under any circumstances, join with the entire planet right now and enjoy President-elect Obama's dazzling victory, because the world is still in shambles and the nation is in super-duper trouble and... still must have to think... er, resolve the serious financial crisis because blood and banana creme pie and...
...that is, I mean racism and raging turmoil in the... death all around, war raging and puppies... um... pain and suffering in the sunshine shoelace... wait... oh yes, drugs and death and... er... anarchy and foreign policy... sex and tickling Paris Hilton and... and... andandanddddd...
Wait. What? What the hell was I just saying? Did I really just write all that? What the hell is wrong with me?
I am so sorry. I don't know what just happened. Shall we start over? Here, let me splash this water on my face. And then this cold sake. And then this refreshing sense of oh my God would you look at the country right now and can you hear all the horns honking and the children grinning and the massive collective sigh? There now. Ready?
Hell yes, this is a time for screaming. For dancing, crying, celebrating with a rare feeling of renewal. It is a time for feeling it fully. A great thing has been done. A great shift has just transpired. Best news of all: There is no going back.
Forget what I said before. Gloating is allowed, a great joyous I-told-you-so straight in the scowling faces of the racists and the warmongers and those so horribly terrified of the new and the different and the possible. Please feel free to let those rivers of gratitude course through you like molten joy coupled to the train of possibility pulled by the giant hand of hell yes.
Above all, it is a time to exhale, to relax a little, to get the hell on with it. I know I speak for roughly five thousand fellow media lackeys when I say, sweet Lord, I am just so glad this damnable beast of an election is finally over. It's like a combination of the day after Christmas and post-coital orgasm and giving birth. You can only sit in the wobbly afterglow, warm and buzzing and dizzy, insanely grateful you didn't get a stocking full of Satan and Alaskan moosemeat and dirt, or a baby with three tiny heads and a nail gun where his arm should be.
This, I think, is perhaps the most important sentiment of all. Not merely relief, not liberation, not even unadulterated joy.
It's gratitude. Deep and satisfying and good. A sense of profound thanks that, well, we made it through. The hopefulness prevailed. That Obama not only survived and flourished, but appears more determined and assured than ever. What's more, our massive, ungainly democratic system? That hugely flawed beast of burden, gutted by eight solid years of the worst kind of abuse and misprision? It still seems to work. Well, mostly. How astonishing is that?
And now, here we are. What a time it has been. What a time it shall be. There is no turning back. And for that, we can only say, thank you. Thank you, thank you, oh sweet God, thank you.
Now pass me that damn champagne.
FINALLY
Mike’s Wife, Marissa Murphy and the Wife of
A US Diplomat living in Ghana exchange reactions
Across the water…
Dust: Thought you might like to read the email Marisa sent to Cathy Beasley, a longtime friend of ours, who is married to a U.S. diplomat and is serving at our Embassy in Accra, Ghana and her response. Mike
Hi Risse!!!! The Ghanaians are stuffed that we elected Obama. All the Ghanaian motor pool taxi drivers -- Ebenezer, Emmanuel, and Bismark -- who I happen to be riding around with today, were talking about the election with tears in their eyes, saying what a great country you have. They think our country really belongs to the people. This election has totally inspired them. They hope their upcoming elections are as inspiring as ours. Kenya declared tomorrow a national holiday in honor of Obama's father having come from a nearby Kenyan village. Oh I really feel the hope from my head to my toes. I went to bed feeling so excited and energized. Yeah!!!!! oxoxoxox cathyb
On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Marisa Murphy replies to Cathy Beasley:
Regardless of political affiliation this is a great day for all Americans. It is an affirmation of the ideals that made this nation great. It is a significant step towards unifying a divided nation. It is a calling for every American to stand together to overcome the daunting challenges this nation faces. It is an example of the extraordinary nature of the American people. It is a validation of American Democracy. It is the nation we love and would lay down our lives for. When I think of the significance of this day, my eyes well with tears. I have never been prouder of this nation. I have never been prouder of being an American.
War is Still our Only Enemy 11 10 08
