Election Night with Barack
November 12th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
Barackobama.com has just put up a Flikr slide show of the night of the election with the Obama Family. It’s pretty amazing. Make sure you look at it by clicking the “slideshow” button on Flikr.
TO MR. BLACKWELL:
What’s with the dress? Is it…
The Black Widow?
The political “fire in the belly”?
The graphical representation of the Female Circulatory System: reproductive core vs. that of the Male: all to the extremities, as ever?
Payback for something Barack perhaps did once, such as marry a meal ticket, in the manner of FDR?
Shall we call it, then, The Preying Mantis outfit?
TO MR. BLACKWELL:
What’s with the dress? Is it…
The Black Widow?
The political “fire in the belly”?
The graphical representation of the Female Circulatory System: reproductive core vs. that of the Male: all to the extremities, as ever?
Payback for something Barack perhaps did once, such as marry a meal ticket, in the manner of FDR?
Shall we call it, then, The Preying Mantis outfit?
Oh, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Blackwell, whatever shall we do with you? You’re a good old queen, but Sakes Alive, Sir, what a killjoy you are…
Oh, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Blackwell, whatever shall we do with you? You’re a good old queen, but Sakes Alive, Sir, what a killjoy you are…
Oh, Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Blackwell, whatever shall we do with you? You’re a good old queen, but Sakes Alive, Sir, what a killjoy you are…
Dear Hugo I believe Mr Blackwell is dead and so are those comments. Somehow you seemed to miss the joy of the celebration.
I think those slides show that President Elect Obama is quite aware of the massive task that is before him. While I am sure he is glad he won, I think he is also concerned about what is ahead of him.
I wish him well no matter what is family wears
Dear Hugo I believe Mr Blackwell is dead and so are those comments. Somehow you seemed to miss the joy of the celebration.
I think those slides show that President Elect Obama is quite aware of the massive task that is before him. While I am sure he is glad he won, I think he is also concerned about what is ahead of him.
I wish him well no matter what is family wears
Dear Hugo I believe Mr Blackwell is dead and so are those comments. Somehow you seemed to miss the joy of the celebration.
I think those slides show that President Elect Obama is quite aware of the massive task that is before him. While I am sure he is glad he won, I think he is also concerned about what is ahead of him.
I wish him well no matter what is family wears
Hey, Jim. You’re a good sport, but please, lighten up, man! Hell, I’m PRAYING for the guy, and meanwhile I just thank God that he’s the quickest study in the land…
Hey, Jim. You’re a good sport, but please, lighten up, man! Hell, I’m PRAYING for the guy, and meanwhile I just thank God that he’s the quickest study in the land…
Hey, Jim. You’re a good sport, but please, lighten up, man! Hell, I’m PRAYING for the guy, and meanwhile I just thank God that he’s the quickest study in the land…
And Jim, just to mess with your earnest head a little…
If Bill Clinton could be our First Black President without his being black, might Barack Obama become our First Gay President without his being gay?
Because, I mean, the guy’s the Deacon of Cool already, but THAT would be truly, deeply cool…
And Jim, just to mess with your earnest head a little…
If Bill Clinton could be our First Black President without his being black, might Barack Obama become our First Gay President without his being gay?
Because, I mean, the guy’s the Deacon of Cool already, but THAT would be truly, deeply cool…
And Jim, just to mess with your earnest head a little…
If Bill Clinton could be our First Black President without his being black, might Barack Obama become our First Gay President without his being gay?
Because, I mean, the guy’s the Deacon of Cool already, but THAT would be truly, deeply cool…
Suppose I’d settle for Metosexual, whatever that is…
Where’s Toni Morrison when you need her?
Rose like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number !
Chake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen into you-
You are many, they are few!
ANDRES! How beautiful! How…healing.
While I’ve got you, and perhaps the others anon, I want to ask a question that’s been working my way up from my bowels through my heart and head since the week before Election Day. It’s so fresh in me, this question, that I’ll try my best to come to it plain, but yet, as fresh as it is, it remains somewhat yet in the third of my four bovine stomachs; so, a little Borscht Belt set-up, if you will.
It’s self-important, if not downright narcissistic, of me to say so, sure, but: the happy outcome of this Presidential has taken a great weight from my shoulders. For more than a year I lived in fear of picking up the dailies to read of the filthy work of former associates in Oppo Research, Dirty-Work Division, The Devil’s Workshop. Former associates, I’m afraid — was afraid — on both sides. Lightweight “policy guy” that I am (“policy” being a political pejorative meaning not “political”, and certainly not “fiscal”, the two former being the same thing with the slightest inflection of difference) — lightweight that I am, I could not stand the constant prospect of seeing our best and boldest, both Barack and John, run down in the media streets. Every day, then, a constant, acidic dread.
I’d tried my best to gird each side for the shitstorms to come, yet I couldn’t of course reveal sources or try to boast of insider-ness or any such thing. Over the months I saw others making the same gestures, others from diverse positions from which they pursued my same ends in disparate media. In retrospect I truly believe that we, strangers mostly, came to know and trust each other from afar — if you see what I mean.
Anyway, I’m please to report that, far from lamenting the outcome of the election, it’s the outcome I’d hoped for; that, I find myself full of silly “apple pie in the sky hopes” for our new President to-be, and for his country that is mine also. Still, I’ve already got it set up with the Printing Office: the moment he is sworn in, my standing, diploma-framed portrait of the present Incumbent comes down, and his goes up on the wall of my home office. (I work at home.)
That’s the way it is with me, and that’s the way I was taught. And my folks were right.
NOW, THE QUESTION I WANT TO ASK OF YOU, AND THEN OF JON, AND THEN OF THE COMMUNITY, has a little to do with the late Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan had this single, defining thing, about which he’d made no secret since the early-1960s: he wanted Communism dismantled whether Communists liked it or not. It was his One True Thing, and everybody who ever voted for him past his lifeguard days knew it about him. And furthermore, the man delivered. (Well, except for the murderers who still run the greatest, most ancient culture on Earth, China.)
During Reagan’s own presidency we all dined out on Professor Berlin’s famous essay concerning the “Fox and the Hedgehog”. Reagan, the thinking went, was the hedgehog, and the blindingly straightforward yet formally philosophical point of the celebrated essay was, as I’m sure you’ll remember, as follows:
The fox knows many things. The hedgehog, only one thing; BUT, it’s a very important thing.
NOW, THEREFORE, my question to you all is, in my utmost sincerity (because I simply don’t yet have a feel for the answer):
What will be President Obama’s hedgehog thing?
(…and please, don’t nobody point out that Barack ain’t the hedgehog but rather is the fox; for chrissakes we know that already, after his survival of this, the most exhaustingly dirty of all elections in history )
Hugo,
Can a fox have a “hedgehog thing”? Are you arguing that Obama — like Berlin’s account of Tolstoy — is a fox who thinks he ought to be a hedgehog?
Of course, Obama did cite Energy as his top priority in one of the debates. (The last one?) A lot of the elements of “Change” are bound up in Energy. But with collapsing energy prices and an economy grinding to a halt, it’s possible our Fox will decide he’s the Healthcare Hedgehog instead.
Wasn’t familiar with the Berlin essay. After reading about it, think the real answer is that it is a silly academic conceit that doesn’t work in the real world.
Even though people process best when presented with simple dichotomous views of their worlds, the world itself goes on being spectral.
I think our young Rushmore candidate may well be a blessing compared to Reagan (who had many other arrows besides the end of Communism in his quiver, like deficit spending being ummm, ummm good) because he can see the shades.
If I had to guess at one passion that drives him it would be giving his kids a world they can survive in. Lucky for us, if he gets it right we can go along for the ride.
Aw c’mon, Ken. Don’t take yer ball & go home. You’re wanted on the playing field.
Look, you guys, here’s what I’m after. When Reagan took office everything, after Kennan, was about Stability and Equilibrium and Balance, etc. Stability, equilibrium and balance of the worse things ever imagined on Earth, yes, but still we were schooled to idolize the beauty of symmetry in sheer Evil. Then old Daft Dutch came along, and he kept pointing out that the idol was cheapjack, and that we could do for some upsetting of our tschatchkes. If you’ve ever had the bizarre pleasure of coaching young girls at soccer, you’ll understand that special moment at which the two teams are tied at the inevitable 1-1 and your own adorable Captain comes racing to you from the timeout exclaiming that it’s so wonderful, it’s so wonderful, ’cause “now everybody wins!”
Bullshit. Some folks just need a pounding, and Charlie Don’t Surf! THAT was Reagan’s contribution to world civilization. His legacy is not the gilded excess and coke-crazed status-seeking of Yupdom. It’s his disequilibrium, his rejection of the best thinking of the best minds of the best universities the world had then produced. His “Bullshit!”
So, if you don’t cotton to foxes or hedgehogs, then tell me, please — because I’m utterly in earnest: What do you think will be Obama’s signal cry of “Bullshit!”
When the rich say that paying their share will destroy the nation.
YYYES! Thank you!
That works for me. For now…
The fox has its own mind- intuition and he will go where its safe to be.
I know, believe me,
Bernard
Bernard/Andres,
You are perhaps too goddam fascinating.
And so, definitely, is the fox. (Esp. Vicente.)