fallout in the aftermath of the Obamenon...
perhaps this will be a long diatribe. perhaps will be something considerably less masturbatory. for my own sanity's sake, perhaps this should be something that finds the halfway point between the two.
it was just last night that will and i were talking about getting distance from election day 2008 in order to write about it with a clear head. we were joking about writing in such a way that it sounded like "i woke up, i voted, i went to work, i went home." basically, we both didn't want to make a big production number out of it.
will was over election day even before it arrived. like myself, he had grown tired of the election season and just wanted it to be over. as for myself, i was too busy thinking about the work that lied ahead of us to be overly jubilant about the election day outcome.
but something happened this morning that has caused me to finally write something for the site. if you have a facebook account, you've seen these little add-ons to your page where you can become supporters of artists, groups, or people you admire. last night, i become a supporter of michelle obama. one of my high school friends commented:
“that sort of took you a minute, really...”
something inside of me snapped after that. this was my response…
“GOD FORGIVE ME. i just saw this yesterday, so i added myself. sorry for not getting there 185,569 supporters earlier. i come here to build with people, not to find numerous things to support and superpokes to enact and whatever other bells and freakin' whistles to add to my page. to be real honest with you, i'm more happy to see michelle as 1st lady than i am about barack being president. that's why i added myself.
since this forces me to go into it, my vote was not an obama nor a mccain vote. it was a green party vote, the cynthia mckinney/rosa clemente ticket, to be precise. yes, i saw something on election day that i hadn't seen before and yes, i was in awe. and on some level, i was happy to see so many people happy, not just black people. at the same time, i will not allow myself to say 'yes, we did.' it implies that voting was all we had to do and now our part is done. and that is far from the case.
and beyond that, just exactly WHY was i supposed to show said support earlier? just because i'm black doesn't mean that obama support is automatically programmed into my dna and my melanin. members of the democratic party didn't show up in my 'hood with a negrocentric neural implant and a 'barack the vote' bar code to stamp on the back of my neck. one would think that i wouldn't have to explain this to people, but apparently i do.
(note to self: do not check facebook comments in the morning before you go to work...)”
"sheesh, i was sort of being whimsical there...." my friend replied about two hours later, only to counter with the following:
"note to you: remember to take this whole facebook thing with a proverbial grain of salt and try not to offend friends (offense taken)."
i suppose that's what i get for responding to such comments before nine in the morning. not for nothing, but "whimsical" is a place for two-year olds, peter pan and maybe michael jackson. i can understand it when my two-year old daughter's being whimsical. it becomes increasingly unnecessary and straight up annoying when grown-ass people do the same. life ain't a tim burton movie and your name ain't edward f**king scissorhands. and although i turned 35 the day after election day, i mentally feel twice that old, which means that i probably have no business being on a site like facebook. the grain of salt i should take things with i often treat like sand in the vaseline, because that's just me.
i've been accused by best friends, my wife, and plenty of other people that i overthink things too much. yeah well, for every person that overthinks things, there are at least 10,000 that don't think enough, if at all, so i suppose we all have some shortcomings to work on. but let me reel the anger in, because i make it sound like i'm unrepentent about all this, and that's not true. i threw out verbal daggers, somebody took offense to it and the power of Christ compelled me to make things right. so even though i stood by viewpoints, they admittedly could've been handled with more tact and i apologized for that. i closed the issue with the following thought:
"now everyone hug, make like post-racial muppets and sing "Obamahna" to the tune of "Mahna Mahna" and go about our business..."
remember mccain's concession speech and the torrent of boos from the crowd just from mentioning obama's name? remember him trying to quell the crowd in that same calm manner that he uses whenever he says, "my friends..."? did you notice a slight twinge in his voice and mannerisms at that moment that seemed to suggest that he really wished the booing throng would just shut the hell up, as if they had clearly done enough damage to his presidential run already?
remember jesse jackson's tears? ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, his tears didn't necessarily translate into happiness for obama? let's be real: his tears could've meant a number of different things, either "that should've been me" or "i really wish martin was here" or "i really wish i hadn't talked about cutting barack's balls off in front of a live microphone."
and remember barack obama walking out onto the stage to a cheering crowd of thousands? of course you do. now please note that i said "walking" and not "floating" or "hovering." he does not walk on water. he does not have the cure for AIDS. and his win did not move us into a post-racial america. (and if you think i'm just pouring out haterade, you might want to have this conversation with the black muslim brother on staten island that got his ass beat by four white men on election day, just after barack was named our president elect.) to treat obama as some sort of cure-all or worse yet a messiah figure is setting the brother up to fail: he is a HUMAN BEING, prone to make mistakes, miss the mark, and not always get it right. may GOD protect him and the first family, but the sooner that this sits well with black america (and obama supporters of all backgrounds), the better off we'll all be.
okay, so...long diatribe. what do you want from me? just be thankful that this wasn't written before nine in the morning...i probably would've gotten this site shut down by lunchtime...
it was just last night that will and i were talking about getting distance from election day 2008 in order to write about it with a clear head. we were joking about writing in such a way that it sounded like "i woke up, i voted, i went to work, i went home." basically, we both didn't want to make a big production number out of it.
will was over election day even before it arrived. like myself, he had grown tired of the election season and just wanted it to be over. as for myself, i was too busy thinking about the work that lied ahead of us to be overly jubilant about the election day outcome.
but something happened this morning that has caused me to finally write something for the site. if you have a facebook account, you've seen these little add-ons to your page where you can become supporters of artists, groups, or people you admire. last night, i become a supporter of michelle obama. one of my high school friends commented:
“that sort of took you a minute, really...”
something inside of me snapped after that. this was my response…
“GOD FORGIVE ME. i just saw this yesterday, so i added myself. sorry for not getting there 185,569 supporters earlier. i come here to build with people, not to find numerous things to support and superpokes to enact and whatever other bells and freakin' whistles to add to my page. to be real honest with you, i'm more happy to see michelle as 1st lady than i am about barack being president. that's why i added myself.
since this forces me to go into it, my vote was not an obama nor a mccain vote. it was a green party vote, the cynthia mckinney/rosa clemente ticket, to be precise. yes, i saw something on election day that i hadn't seen before and yes, i was in awe. and on some level, i was happy to see so many people happy, not just black people. at the same time, i will not allow myself to say 'yes, we did.' it implies that voting was all we had to do and now our part is done. and that is far from the case.
and beyond that, just exactly WHY was i supposed to show said support earlier? just because i'm black doesn't mean that obama support is automatically programmed into my dna and my melanin. members of the democratic party didn't show up in my 'hood with a negrocentric neural implant and a 'barack the vote' bar code to stamp on the back of my neck. one would think that i wouldn't have to explain this to people, but apparently i do.
(note to self: do not check facebook comments in the morning before you go to work...)”
"sheesh, i was sort of being whimsical there...." my friend replied about two hours later, only to counter with the following:
"note to you: remember to take this whole facebook thing with a proverbial grain of salt and try not to offend friends (offense taken)."
i suppose that's what i get for responding to such comments before nine in the morning. not for nothing, but "whimsical" is a place for two-year olds, peter pan and maybe michael jackson. i can understand it when my two-year old daughter's being whimsical. it becomes increasingly unnecessary and straight up annoying when grown-ass people do the same. life ain't a tim burton movie and your name ain't edward f**king scissorhands. and although i turned 35 the day after election day, i mentally feel twice that old, which means that i probably have no business being on a site like facebook. the grain of salt i should take things with i often treat like sand in the vaseline, because that's just me.
i've been accused by best friends, my wife, and plenty of other people that i overthink things too much. yeah well, for every person that overthinks things, there are at least 10,000 that don't think enough, if at all, so i suppose we all have some shortcomings to work on. but let me reel the anger in, because i make it sound like i'm unrepentent about all this, and that's not true. i threw out verbal daggers, somebody took offense to it and the power of Christ compelled me to make things right. so even though i stood by viewpoints, they admittedly could've been handled with more tact and i apologized for that. i closed the issue with the following thought:
"now everyone hug, make like post-racial muppets and sing "Obamahna" to the tune of "Mahna Mahna" and go about our business..."
remember mccain's concession speech and the torrent of boos from the crowd just from mentioning obama's name? remember him trying to quell the crowd in that same calm manner that he uses whenever he says, "my friends..."? did you notice a slight twinge in his voice and mannerisms at that moment that seemed to suggest that he really wished the booing throng would just shut the hell up, as if they had clearly done enough damage to his presidential run already?
remember jesse jackson's tears? ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, his tears didn't necessarily translate into happiness for obama? let's be real: his tears could've meant a number of different things, either "that should've been me" or "i really wish martin was here" or "i really wish i hadn't talked about cutting barack's balls off in front of a live microphone."
and remember barack obama walking out onto the stage to a cheering crowd of thousands? of course you do. now please note that i said "walking" and not "floating" or "hovering." he does not walk on water. he does not have the cure for AIDS. and his win did not move us into a post-racial america. (and if you think i'm just pouring out haterade, you might want to have this conversation with the black muslim brother on staten island that got his ass beat by four white men on election day, just after barack was named our president elect.) to treat obama as some sort of cure-all or worse yet a messiah figure is setting the brother up to fail: he is a HUMAN BEING, prone to make mistakes, miss the mark, and not always get it right. may GOD protect him and the first family, but the sooner that this sits well with black america (and obama supporters of all backgrounds), the better off we'll all be.
okay, so...long diatribe. what do you want from me? just be thankful that this wasn't written before nine in the morning...i probably would've gotten this site shut down by lunchtime...
Comments
Really? Exactly when did I sell out, when I signed up or when I shut down? If that's the case, let me be the first to say that when you read my stuff, make sure you save the damn receipt!
But I can't really see them or feel them or inflect upon their reaction or read their body language or duck the rightfully thrown left because they're not there. And in order to interact with these people, I have to create a representation of me that's actually far more interesting then the real me... By the eternal, is that what I'm doing right now?? (in Jay Sherman's voice) READ MY BLOG! READ MY BLOG!! READ MY BLOG!!! READ MY BL (pow!)...
I also love how some liberal types are getting nervous because Obama doesn't seem to be putting their ilk into his Cabinet. Could it be that the man is A) just another politician, saying all the right stuff to get in office (but either was lying all along or didn't have enough of the full picture, pre-Presidential clearance, to realize he can't fulfill 1/10 of those campaign promises) or B) has too much mother wit to be so [bleeping] "progressive" when it's just plain smarter to be a centrist?