Well,
it's another election night eve for me, and lord knows I've been
through a lot of them. 41 consecutive years of casting votes for
somebody since I turned 21, back in 1971.
The
year after I turned 21, I worked on the campaign that successfully
gave 18 year olds the vote, when I was already legal, as we used to
say. Seems it's my life karma to be early or late, never in perfect
step. In other words I have always had to bring my own music and make
up my own dance as I went along, while time and circumstance did it's
own thing. But that's another story. I digress.
Thinking
about what we are about to do again, which is to give the reins of
government back to Barack Hussein Obama for another four years, makes
me happy, sad and nostalgic all at the same time. On this night, this
election eve, the climax of a never ending campaign that started on
inauguration day 2009, I'm feeling like what Fannie Lou Hamer said,
“I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.” This time around,
it was too much. Too much information. Too much lying. Too much
pontificating and equivocating. My head hurts.
I've
been watching elections since before they were televised in color.
I've been voting since before somebody dreamed up HDTV.
General
Eisenhower is the first president in my memory. I was born during
Truman, but not until just before his election. John Kennedy was the
first president I loved. It wounded me deeply when he died. Never
met Lynchin Bains Johnson. That's what we called him. He signed the
Civil Rights Bills into Law, but that didn't endear him to me. Not
then.
Rumor
had it that he was nuts. We had a crazy man in the White House, who
may have had our beloved JFK killed. However, nobody really knows or
will ever know who hired the gunmen on the grassy knoll down in
Dallas that day.
Nixon
was the first president with whom I shook hands, both he and his
wife. Didn't vote for him. Wasn't quite old enough to vote against
him. Do know I didn't like his bigotry. Smacked of the same ole shit
being dished out by the likes of George Wallace and Bull Connor,
except this man occupied the White House.
I
was still naive enough back in the day to believe that if a man could
rise to the level of President, he certainly couldn't also be a bigot
or a racist, not really. Silly me.
Gerald
Ford, the man who took over for Tricky Dick Nixon was a decent man. I
was a working reporter by the time he came into office and I was
humbled by the fact that he knew me on sight and called me “jo.”
President Carter was another decent man who has been totally
disrespected and wrongfully forgotten.
I
interviewed Ronald Reagan four times, starting in 1976 at the
Republican convention and could never get past the fact that I was
talking to an actor, somebody who was playing a part in a B movie.
The conversations were great, but I never bought the good guy act.
His voodoo economics initiated the downfall of the American Middle
Class and the decline of Unions as well as worker's rights.
Daddy
Bush, Bill Clinton and Junior Bush were merely days at work...more
fun with Clinton, less so with George the elder and George the
younger. The younger Bush especially was like hitching a ride across
the ocean on a boat named Titanic with no Leonardo DiCaprio to save
my ass.
And
then comes Barack Obama.
I
was not a supporter in the beginning. I didn't believe a Black man
could be elected in America. I dreamed of the possibility, but
expected to be dead by the time it actually happened. I believed the
racists were too strong to let it happen. I still believe they will
turn out tomorrow in an attempt to keep him from a second term.
And
I still fear for his life. Because in this country, it's a truth
that what white men can't control, they kill. They kill when their
status quo is threatened, and Barack Obama is the walking, talking
example of threat to the complacency of the masters of the universe.
Obama
is one of the few people who can move me to tears. I cried when he
won in 2008. I cried at his Inauguration. I cried when I heard him
speak last night.
But
Last night at the UC arena, I also heard within his speech echoes of
the last speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it bothered me.
“I
have been to the mountaintop....”
Those
uncomfortable echoes are resting heavily on me tonight, as I write
this now.
In
the meantime....I will happily vote tomorrow to move this country
forward, and wait for what I hope will be a joyous night. History to
be made, and a happy ending to be written. A celebration of the 44th
President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.
To
be continued......................................
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