plans?
November 7th, 2008From my sametime log at work:
overheard
November 7th, 2008This is Genius. It’s from little acorns like this that great big story ideas grow. Oh who am I kidding? The story’s already there
You Always Hertz the One You Love
Thug on cell: Yo, hearse rent a car? Yo man, I need to rent a hearse. Yeah, I’ll hold. (pause) Y’all don’t rent no hearses? Why y’all call yoselfs hearse rent a car? (pause) Word? Well, I need to move a body, maybe you got a van or something? (pause) I don’t care, I just need to move his dead ass. (pause) Cargo van? Whatever. Yeah.
Thug’s friend: Ask if they got am’blances.
–Grand Concourse, 158 St
Overheard by: Big Larry
change?
November 5th, 2008I was wrong: I’d predicted, back in September that, much as I was fervently hoping for an Obama victory, I feared that there were going to be huge swathes of the population of the US who, when in the privacy of the voting booth, would decide not, after all, to vote for a black man.
I wanted the United States of America to elect Barack Obama as its President. I wanted it, whilst feeling that, in reality, it was none of my business: I’m not a citizen of the country, and so, to a certain extent I have no more claim to an interest in its politics than I do in, say, the German elections for Chancellor, or the French Presidential Battles (I typed that as Ballets, and what a lovely mental image that would be).
Hell, I’m a citizen of the Irish republic – still have my passport – but I haven’t lived there in over 20 years, and yet, because I don’t live there, I have never voted there. The Irish govt would happily extend to me, if I so wished, the right to cast a vote for anyone I liked; at which point I could flee back to the UK and leave the fallout from my vote to the locals; can you tell I’m not a fan of absentee electors?
But the difference is, of course, that I don’t live in a world where the German, French or even Irish culture is the predominant force; where their interventionist ways and aggressive pushing of global capitalism since the late forties have made the internal politics of any of those countries anywhere near as important as those of the United States.
As a student of History, I think, sometimes, that this must have been what it felt like to be living in Britain towards the end of the Roman Empire: The local politicians matter, their actions are, perhaps, more immediately felt, but one dismisses the imperial overview at one’s peril. And make no mistake about it: We live in an increasingly Imperial world.
And so it came to pass, in the late years of the reign of Augustus Caesar… Wait, what I meant was I’m glad to be wrong. Glad that so many Americans have disproved the jaded worldview of a cynical old-worlder.
I’m so very happy for the people in this NYT article. It made me cry. Such a long struggle, but it bears some fruit at the end. Let’s hope the gays get there one day – they haven’t banned them from voting in the US. Yet. But the whole gay marriage thing is as baseless, bigoted and politically divisive as any of the old racial issues were.
But I’m still, sort of, drawn to the comment in another of today’s NYT stories.
“We have so many hopes and wishes that he will never be able to fulfil them,” said Susanne Grieshaber, 40, an art adviser in Berlin who was one of 200,000 Germans to attend a speech by Mr. Obama there in July. She cited action to protect the environment, reducing the use of force and helping the less fortunate. In essence, she wants Mr. Obama to make his country more like hers. But she is sober. “I’m preparing myself for the fact that peace and happiness are not going to suddenly break out,” she said.
This is a great day for America and, I think, for the world. But the hangover will kick in shortly. The requirement to deliver that Change that was voted for, and I pray that the battle doesn’t grind down so many, as it has in previous teams. Clinton’s support for ‘The gays,’ after election, resulted in Don’t ask don’t tell. It produced the ‘Defense of Marriage Act.’
Politics is about, compromise. That’s understood. But, Obama needs to remember that the Change is what he’s there for.
I hope he does, and I hope the memories of the past 8 years can be slowly and definitively erased.