Photo by Chris Hardy
Indiana is a strange state. My oldest son and I drove through there some years ago after some meetings in Chicago on our way toward Michigan. We were hoping to find some fireworks, illegal in most of the Midwest but still, at that time, legal in Indiana.
Yet we were most of the way around the bottom of Indiana's Lake Michigan shoreline, nearly to the Michigan border, when we saw it: Rocket Fireworks! We went in and bought our goods. It is still one of the most magical moments in my parental memory, and (I suspect) in my son's as well.
I was reminded of this memory tonight as I watched the strange, slow-moving primary results coming in from Indiana.
At the last minute, Obama started catching up to Clinton. He already won North Carolina, by a huge margin.
If you've ever been to Gary, Indiana, you know it is an industrial wasteland, the leftover of a time when steel was king. People out here where I now live, in sunny California, cannot imagine what cities like Gary used to be like -- with fires from its mills literally shooting into the night sky, turning it foul and orange.
We make no apologies that in our family, we are all Obama supporters. Why? If you listened to his speech tonight, it's easy to understand. Politicians are a dime a dozen. People who bring hope for substantive change in this frustrating society of ours are rare sources of light.
Racists, conspiracy theorists, frightened right-wingers will believe any manner of nonsense about Obama. They lack the character to look at a person of another race with unbiased eyes.
Their views reside on hate and fear, not to mention ignorance. They are the types to blame Obama for a typical black minister's rhetorical excesses, which no more represent Obama than John McCain's rabidly racist minister's comments represent him.
But, unlike Obama's minister, McCain's hasn't yet attracted widespread attention in the media. When he does, McCain will look far worse than Obama. Tonight only confirmed my conclusion that Obama will be our next President.
Get used to it.
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6 comments:
Alas, for all of your experience, you have arrived at a belief in an Obama who is not reality. Barack the candidate will not square with Barack the real person. This will only, in the end, exacerbate your frustrations.
I fail to see any evidence to support your bias. Obama is above board, completely transparent. Give me one piece of evidence that he is not who he appears to be, apart from the racist, conspiratorial crap that is beneath the contempt of thinking people. Do not mention Rev. Wright. Do not mention Bill Ayers. That is the kind of toxic propaganda (just like the Naxis used) of those who killed JFK, RFK and MLK. Bitter white people afraid of losing their unfair privilege, after slaughtering the native people and enslaving blacks. I say a new day is due. Step aside, let go of your prejudice, and join those of us who recognize that old biases need to be dropped. We don't have time to live in the past.
My apologies for this poor, unenlightened mind, which apparently does not well countenance such lofty thinking. I hold many conservative beliefs and, apparently, presumptively, my perceptions are crippled by racism; actually wide ranging discrimination “...to people who aren't like (me)” to use some of Barack's own (revealing) words used in your city recently.
And now you ask me to further hobble this poor mind in the instant challenge of evidencing Obama the man. How unfair that you won't allow use of Rev. ------ or Mr. -----. How easy the task is still.
I reference here words of a fellow I much admire:
"...'Bitter,' says Sen. Barack Obama, the man of hope and change, about those who live Pennsylvania, small towns and the Midwest.
'You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania,' Barack Obama said two Sundays ago to the Brie-and-chardonnay crowd at a fundraiser in San Francisco, 'and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'
I spent nearly 20 years living in the Midwest. I attended law school in Michigan, and moved to and lived in Ohio for another 15 years. I married a woman from Menominee, a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her strong, values-oriented, working-class parents produced a doctor and two computer engineers.
Yet people living on the East Coast and West Coast, and those with 'superior education and breeding,' often dismiss those living in the Midwestern and other states, especially small towns, as existing in 'flyover country.'
'Anti-immigrant sentiment'? Obama here makes no distinction between the legitimate resentment over illegal aliens versus legal immigrants. Obama ignores the cost to society and the damage to America's values as a result of our porous borders and our failure to reach a consensus on what to do about the presence of illegal aliens. A newly released study by Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Edwin S. Rubenstein analyzed immigrants' fiscal impact on 15 federal agencies. Rubenstein, a noted economist, found that each immigrant costs taxpayers more than $9,000, or $36,000 for an immigrant household of four.
'Anti-trade sentiment'? Didn't Obama, too, criticize NAFTA for shipping jobs overseas? (Of course, Mexico, the United States and Canada are contiguous, with no "sea" between them. But never mind.) Obama says the 'bitter' blame trade, but didn't Obama -- apparently insincerely -- promise to renegotiate NAFTA as a result of its alleged negative economic impact? He implicitly acknowledges the statement by a Canadian official, who said that an Obama campaign aide contacted him and labeled Obama's anti-trade remarks as 'campaign rhetoric.'
So, Obama considers small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners stupid, irrational gun-toters, religious zealots, hicks lacking the sophistication, knowledge and worldliness possessed by him and his Harvard-trained wife, Michelle, who only recently became 'really proud' of her country.”
And another fellow equally admired said:
"There is no question that Barack Obama is a clever and glib fellow. There is also no question that some of the most foolish, dangerous and horrific things done around the world in the past hundred years have been done by clever and glib fellows."
Clearly, the three of us hold unmanageable bias... except, the first admired is Larry Elder, the second is Thomas Sowell. They, along with many, many other thinking people are attempting to open the eyes of folks swept up in a dream.
Thanks, as always, for your comments, Dan. It's refreshing to encounter a different perspective.
Actually, my concerns about Obama's critics are among Democrats, not conservatives. It is the Clinton attack machine that has dragged out the Rev. Wright and the even more ludicrous Bill Ayers "connections," long before fat losers like Rush Limbaugh got involved.
It's the Democrats like Clinton who I am angry at. I actually doubt John McCain will stoop to this level in the fall.
The point is this: A person cannot be judged by those many others who exist in his broader community. Nobody should be judged by their pastor, if only because we believe in the separation of church and state.
As for tentative connections with a former radical/criminal from a different generation who has since reformed and tries to help his community, there is no justification whatsoever to use this against Obama.
Shall we start the six degrees of separation debate and examine the McCains? Former slaveholders in Mississippi; a wife with $100 million beer fortune; a Senate career pockmarked by corruption?
No, we should not. These two candidates, and OBAMA HAS NOW WON THE NOMINATION, should be evaluated on the basis of their policy ideas and their ability to inspire the nation to implement much-needed change.
That's the debate I'm looking forward to, not all the gutter talk about "the real Obama,"which is peddled by nuts and kooks.
You stated: "If you've ever been to Gary, Indiana, you know it is an industrial wasteland, the leftover of a time when steel was king. People out here where I now live, in sunny California, cannot imagine what cities like Gary used to be like -- with fires from its mills literally shooting into the night sky, turning it foul and orange."
David - I was born, raised and educated in the "Steel City" of Gary, Indiana. I remember what it was like very well, in both the good and bad times. Gary is far more than just an industrial wasteland.
One can get a sense of its rich history, through words and pictures, at the Dave's Den web site.
In closing, I might also add that people in the midwest cannot even begin to imagine what Watts is like either.
Thanks, Dave. I agree that I overstated my case against Gary. No city should be reduced to a generalization. (That's certainly the case with San Francisco, considered a joke by much of the nation, but also a diverse, complicated city mostly undeserving of its wacky reputation.) Even Detroit has areas of beauty and charm. I'll have to revisit Gary. I'm sure I'd be surprised. I'll check out your blog too. Thanks for writing.
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