From TPM Reader DR …
I’ve been deliberately cultivating detachment from the Obama brouhaha (and have all along), partly because of my dashed hopes from the early promise of and ultimate deep disappointment in Bill Clinton. (You ain’t gonna suck ME in again, you foolish hopes for a transformative politician! not again!)
But I was watching the NewsHour tonight, a panel discussion with Rev. Joseph Lowery, the graying and regal Charlayne Hunter-Gault (who I had watched making her on-air debut as a nervous neophyte on PBS), and Gwen Ifill, and as they talked about the phenomenon of President Obama, I just started to cry tears of relief and (God help me) hope for this country.
Listen, my mother used to tell stories of segregated WWII-era Washington, DC, where she came to work for the war effort. In her boarding house, the ‘help’ was black, the boarders were white, and the ‘help’ lived in a ‘black’ part of town. I grew up in a border
state in the fifties, where it was “N** this” and “N**” that. I remember when Kennedy integrated the federal Civil Service, and the bitter joke among white civil servants of my acquaintance was, “Work with ‘great viggah’ or be replaced by a ______.” (I’m sure you can fill in the blank.)Hell, I didn’t even think Obama would make it; I thought he’d be cut down, like Dr. King. Now, though, I’ll leave a little room for hope. Hope that a country that could do such a big thing, after all this time, as elect a black man president, can maybe do the other big
things we’re all being called upon to do, to repair the heartbreaking devastation of the Bush years.
