Left Coast Cowboys

Watching the Barbara Walters interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, a relative, in town for Thanksgiving, piped up: “Well, I’m just going to admit it. I had a hard time voting for him because, well you know, the whole Black thing.”

“Uh, what Black thing would that be?”

“Well, you know, I know he’s smart and everything and will probably be a good President. But it was tough to vote for a Black man.”

The mind just boggles. I was so depressed by this admission I didn’t pursue it further.

I sort of didn’t want to know the answer to the obvious first question: “So you are presented with someone you think is smart and qualified, you like his views on the issues, but Race is a complete deal breaker?”

Or should I be encouraged that she eventually overcame whatever repulsion she felt for Obama’s race, actually voted for him and now thinks he’s going to be a great president?

Can I just set the record straight here that this relative did not grow up in a trailer park in Alabama.

She’s a University-educated New Englander.

Even worse, her husband was a career Army officer. You know, the US Army as in one of the FIRST institutions in America to be fully integrated. Back when the Civil Rights Movement was trying to guarantee African-Americans their rights to vote, her husband was serving beside and was friends with Black officers in the Army. He even went to West Point with African Americans. In other words, this couple, almost before most White Americans, had Black colleagues with whom they shared professional and social spheres.

So sorry, Obama, I know we’ve made progress, but I don’t think, as you said to Barbara, we’ve gotten beyond Race.

When do I get my JFK or FDR? You know, a leader who rouses me to think beyond myself. To ask not what my country can do for me. Who gets me on a boat to Liberia with the Peace Corps or teaching school in Appalachia? After eight years of acting in reaction to the horrifying results of the Bush Administration, I didn’t even come to support Barack Obama initially because of his stand on the issues. Although upon investigation, I decided he was my candidate, I was originally driven to him by The Palin Factor (see this post).

In Obama’s victory speech, I liked his use of the word “sacrifice” and the call to volunteerism. Hey, this was going to be a leader who didn’t give us platitudes in the face of disaster. (Remember: “The fundamentals of our economy are sound”? And how about the call to defeat terrorism by shopping.) Nope, I was finally going to get a leader who, uh, would lead. Like asking me to step up to the plate and help my country. Maybe Obama will be that guy for me…eventually. But lately, I’m still being motivated more out of fear of the radical wing of the GOP.

My latest depression stems from something I did that I knew I shouldn’t do. I read a right-wing blog: Pajamas Media. I have an excuse. A friend of mine, who it turns out is not all that right-wing (although I suspect she votes Republican AND Democratic depending on where her conscience sends her), actually writes for this electronic rag.

Her latest article appeals to Republicans to step away from that high ledge and be a little calmer in the face of President Elect Obama’s call for volunteerism. It’s not Marxism, she posits, and maybe it’s a good thing.

The result was a huge– as in nearly 500 comments — spew of hate, selfishness, disinformation and labeling of Obama as “Nazi, Maxist, Pol Pot, Socialist, Communist” and probably “puppy killer” somewhere in there. (Click on the article and read the comments. Just read ‘em.)

If you think my horror is hyperbole, check out the commentator who repeatedly states that volunteerism is ridiculous because poor people are “stupid, dirty, begetters of illegitimate children” and, something I’m not sure we’ve heard since the Victorian Era, “responsible for their own poverty by their own ignorance and laziness.”

Here’s an exact quote from the commenter called uburoisc:

“my position is that the poor are, for the most part, short-sighted, not very bright as a group, inclined to violence, and self-destructive. As it happens, they are also dirty, shiftless, and lazy as well…They are also noisy slobs who have almost no aesthetic sensibilities, litter everywhere, urinate in public, and place almost no value on cognition.”

How about this comment from Robert Bidinotto:

“My individual freedom is a birthright — not a social debt. I was not born an indentured servant, mortgaged at birth to pay off some eternal, arbitrarily defined debt via “service” to anonymous “others.”

My neighbors don’t own or owe me, nor do I own or owe them, merely by the fact that we exist. What I have, I’ve earned through hard work, producing goods and services that others may want; and I exchange these things with them through voluntary transactions that are mutually beneficial. So there’s nothing I possess that I have to “pay back” to them.”

—–

Dore's view of London's poor. Apparently some Pajamas Media commentators agree with the artist: it's the poor's fault they're poor.

Uh, how about you owe something to your fellow man because you are a member of the human race? How about the Christian doctrine that you are your brother’s keeper? If you aren’t a Christian, I can’t think of a single major religion that doesn’t insist that we owe help and aid to the less fortunate, simply because it is the right thing to do.

If you have no religion, how about Samuel Johnson’s suggestion that “The measure of a man is taken by how much he does for those who can do nothing for him.”

As much as we’d all like to believe that all our success is attributable to our sheer genius and hard work, the truth is that much of it is probably due to the influence of parents or mentors, our advantages and luck. Not to denigrate hard work and intelligence, which surely plays a part. But would we have been able to exercise those if we hadn’t gotten some breaks somewhere along the way. Why are some so resistant to helping others get a leg up?

Ironically, the above lessons were things that were originally brought home to me by a Republican friend. Years ago when we were all in our early twenties, pouring our energies into that first job, climbing the ladder and trying to log as many parties and as much skiiing into our schedules as possible, this guy also had another agenda. He convinced a large group of his friends to start a mentoring program for at-risk youth. They not only spent money, they committed weekly face-time to the kids FOR A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS. His reason for this commitment: “Well, we’ve got to do something. We’ve got all the advantages and should try to do what we can to level the playing field.”

Are the voices of Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and the nutjobs from Pajamas Media just drowning out other voices or are there no more Repubicans like this anymore. Wait, there must be. Silently doing the right things. I just wish we could hear from them.

I got a hint that there might even be a few who were readers of Pajamas Media as a few brave souls floated some intelligent discourse on the Obama volunteer corps plan: who would oversee it, how would it be funded, who would decide what types of volunteering “counted”? All good points and all the sort of thoughtful points adult debate is supposed to elicit. Too bad they were drowned out by the hateful rhetoric.

But enough about Pajamas Media, Bill O’Reilly and their ilk. I should remember my grandmother’s advice: “You can’t argue with ignorance.”

So where does this leave me? I’m now feeling that I’ve got to up my volunteer quotient just to counteract the haters. Tomorrow I call Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Bay Area.

I’d love to hear responses. Especially from Republicans.

Why am I still waking up every morning expecting that the news will tell me the election results have been overturned? I think, it’s a sad commentary on how shaken our faith has been in our electoral system after two stolen Bush victories.

However, I’m also thinking about an anecdote from after John F. Kennedy was shot, as related by the columnist Art Buchwald.

Journalist Mary McGrory said to future Senator Pat Moynihan: “We’ll never laugh again.” To which Moynihan replied, “Oh, we’ll laugh, but we’ll never be young again.”

I think Obama has the potential, with his energy, his vision and his wonderful family (yes, I’m thinking about that puppy), to make us young again.

I can’t even process it yet. And I’m still asking all the people who gathered at my house to watch returns on the big screen: “Is there still time for the Republicans to steal this?”

Luckily, we had our own in-house pundit, two-year-old Miss Maisie who was calling the states with her red and blue markers.

Maisie was one step ahead of MSNBC all night.

Then she made some really bold calls:

Bet you didn't know Alaska went blue. And how about Cuba going blue and Mexico jumping into the red column.

You won’t get any more than this from me tonight. Still processing. And pinching myself.

 I’ve got an unexpected reprieve from the vineyards. The Cabernet was taking a little longer to hit the right Brix level and the varietals in primary fermentation went more quickly to secondary fermentation stage. That gave me what’s looking like a four day reprieve from the endless round of punchdowns and isolated country living. So I found myself back in the big City and ready to tune back into the news cycles and pop culture that I’ve been disconnected from living in a barn without radio, TV, telephones and only recently Internet connections. Unfortunately, I wrenched my back on the last day of Cabernet picking which is affording me a lot more TV time than I would have otherwise planned.

Which brings me to my discovery of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Conservatives, who embrace Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, are screaming that TRMS is “not news” and “just biased Liberal talking points.” I don’t think TRMS was ever intended to be “news” any more than The Daily Show is. It’s more like sitting down after a long news day and having the high and low points distilled for you by your sharpest, coolest girlfriend. Yeah, one who has a progressive viewpoint, but who isn’t afraid to tweak the Democrats when they do something stupid.

Maddow is a little bit smart-alecky, but mostly really, really smart. Smart as in Stanford University and Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. I love that Liberals have a Rhodes Scholar; lip-foaming arch-conservatives have high school graduate Sean Hannity and Southeast Missouri State University dropout, Rush Limbaugh. (Limbaugh’s own mother concedes that he was never one for “book larnin’. She’s quoted as saying: “He flunked everything, even a modern ballroom dancing class.”)

Yeah, I’m elitist — if elitist means embracing education, erudition and intellectual curiosity — and proud of it!

Back to my new TV BFF. My first thought on seeing her show — besides laughing through my tears as she skewered to the heart of the day’s political follies — was that this was almost the perfect commentary show. The only thing missing: Maddow’s dry wit would go perfectly with a dry Gin Martini. Then I find this self assessment on her official website: [Maddow] “shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader.” Excellent!

While I love her commentary and applaud her eclectic line-up of guests, I’d love to see her bring more conservatives on the show a la Bill Maher. Instead of getting into shouting matches with her conservative guests like Chris Matthews, I imagine Rachel would politely sit back and let them hoist themselves on their own petards. Then maybe jab home the final coup de grace with the perfect put-down. You don’t want to play hardball with a gal who looks like she could be the captain of The World’s Most Kick-Ass Girls’ Softball Team.

Panic that I wouldn’t get my Maddow fix when I head back up to Sonoma at the end of this week was put to rest by the discovery that I can get her on a podcast. Now you know what I’ll be plugged into while I harvest and process the rest of the Cabernet. Maybe Two Terrier Vineyards should put out a limited edition Rachel Maddow Rhone Blend. I’m seriously considering it.

In the meantime, if my readership leans the way I think it does, check out The Rachel Maddow Show! You’ll love it. And follow her on Twitter at @Maddow.