Happy Holidays

The Obama Family Holiday Greeting

The Face of Evil and the Power of Forgiveness

Try as I might, there are just certain things I cannot understand. Joe Lieberman is one of them. He's like math or Mandarin Chinese to me. Conceptually I understand that he IS, but to be able to organically relate to the concept of math, Mandarin Chinese, or Joe Lieberman is beyond me. But in my limited world and with my limited intellectual capacity, Joe Lieberman comes closest to anything I can think of to pure evil.

And yes, without naming names I'm fully aware that others would consider some contemporary and historic figures to be higher on that list of pure evil. I respectfully disagree and here's why.

As horrid, hateful, and virtually unimaginable as the other potential toppers of the evil list might be, they each stood for something larger than themselves. No doubt they were motivated by very personal needs, but they found a way to satisfy those needs in service of something larger than themselves. And yes, hundreds, thousands, millions died while these ego maniacs served their larger goals. Indefensible.

Yet, how many died because of Joe Lieberman? Looking back at the last ten years of Joe Lieberman's career can anyone identify a single consistent cause larger than his own interests? Not his constituency, his political party, his country, nor his religion have held a higher priority to Joe Lieberman than Joe Lieberman. The expense of his priorities to the United States of America are incalculable.

And in my limited little world, that is the absolute depth of evil.

Of course I've met people who fall outside my paradigm of the world, whose actions and motives are breathlessly incomprehensible to me. It is to my complete shame that each and every time I encounter one of these people I am taken absolutely by surprise. I wish I was smarter. As an antidote I tend to be overly cautious in my dealings with people, keeping them at a manageable distance until I can ascribe a trust level to them. That has been my coping mechanism.

It is no secret how much I have come to admire Barak Obama, or at least the image of Barak Obama that is being built and prepped for the history books. I think that Mr. Obama is the right person at the right time to begin the horrific task of revitalizing America. But I'm finding personal inspiration in Mr. Obama's campaign and transition in to power.

I would have banished Joe Lieberman to some rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Obama, however is showing the way to deal with Lieberman and his ilk. Not only does Obama demonstrate his larger character by "forgiving" Lieberman, not only does create a political debt that Lieberman will never be able to fully repay, not only does Obama now have a political lap dog in a very powerful position, but Obama has also given Lieberman the opportunity to either redeem himself or to finish himself and his political legacy all on his own.

Had Obama banished Lieberman, then Obama would be the villain in the Lieberman. Now, there is no one to hold that mantle but Joe Lieberman.

Maybe Obama's approach isn't that different than mine.

Truth

There was a point in my life -- somewhere around age twenty-two or twenty-three -- when I knew everything. My knowledge was complete and my faith in my comprehensive knowledge was unshakable. I was never, ever wrong.

Then my father died and for the first time in my life I began to realize that there is nothing in life that is absolute. From that moment onward, my life has been an endless struggle to find something that is a certainty. That struggle becomes less and less vigorous as the years go by and I become comfortable with the fact that there are no absolutes, that nothing is constant but change, and that I in fact know absolutely nothing and never have.

One of the concepts that I began to wrestle with while I worked on my master's degree is the idea of objective truth. Does such a concept exist, especially in an arena such as human interaction. Trials are predicated upon the belief that truth can be determined through rhetorical skill, that two opposing sides can present arguments to an objective jury who will then weigh that evidence and determine the truth.

And for me, right now, the closest I can come to an absolute truth is: "...there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet: Act II, scene ii)

It's funny how I am haunted by Hamlet. Back in my days of absolute certainty, Hamlet was the pinnacle of success for me. I'd have died to be cast in that role and auditioned for the play every chance I got. My first brush with it was as a freshman in college when I played a collection of the smaller roles, and then again the next year when the production was remounted and I played an expanded collection of the supporting roles. It was my first brush with complex language. I was cast as Bernardo, who is one of the courtiers who first sees the ghost of Hamlet's father. He tells Hamlet of the sighting, and the speech begins, "Last night of all, when yond same star..."

The director of that production scared the living daylights out of me in rehearsal by telling everyone, "That speech is the audience's first exposure to heightened language." Then he turned to me and said, "Don't fuck it up." I was terrified by that speech and I struggled to learn it. It was such an issue for me that my roommate told me I recited the speech in my sleep -- with a southern accent. I'm not sure I ever successfully introduced the audience to the heightened language of Hamlet, but I do know that when I stepped on the stage and delivered that speech, I knew I could.

As I begin to lose interest in the concept of truth, I become more interested in the idea of possibility. There is no life in truth. Life lives in possibility.

Life is bringing possibility to truth.

Good god, can you imagine how pompous and pedantic I would be if I drank?

Everything Old is New Again.

My parents divorced when I was very young. After the divorce, my father moved into his mother's home, and on weekends my sister and I would go to their home.

My father painted signs. In our hometown, if you needed a sign painted, you went to my father. He was a master at free-hand lettering and his work was beautiful. In the summer, he'd do his signs in the garage, but in the winter he'd have to go to the basement. If he had a particularly tight deadline, he could get a little testy. Any movement in the house would make him crazy, and I remember that many times he would come raging from the basement demanding that my sister and I stop whatever we were doing that was so noisy.

The stress and panic was overwhelming. At our mother's home, we lived in apartments and we were told that we would have to be quiet so we wouldn't disturb the neighbors, or we'd be thrown out into the street.

More stress and panic.

Of course, the ultimate was when we visited our other grandmother and her husband, when we were basically only permitted to sit in the chair and stare at the wall.

I now work in an office that is essentially one big room, and sit across from my two bosses, both of whom are very focused.

And every day, I go back into work and feel like I'm six years old again.

As If

The historical significance of Barack Obama's election is not lost on me. The first African-American president is something I was sure I'd never see in my life time. Only historians will be able to say that this moment was a watershed moment in American history, if in fact more than a new leaf was turned, but an entire new volume begun.

And for the past few days, national figures have been congratulating themselves and Americans for taking this historic step. "See, we're not racist!" Yet this morning Maureen Dowd writes an entire column about nearly every white person she knows quizzing every black person they meet on how they 'feel' about Obama's election.

As if the color of his skin was in any way a qualification for the job.

The fact that Barack Obama was elected as president says more about the American public than it does about Obama himself. And as a nation we deserve a moment to reflect upon this moment. But let us not forget that this event pales in comparison to the issues that loom for Barack Obama.

Let us also not forget that an incredibly qualified candidate had to run a near-perfect campaign against an old-school campaign and candidate of the incumbent party only to win the popular vote by six points. And nearly a week after his election the only thing we can discuss is the color of his skin. The celebrations should not be held until we can confidently say that Obama was elected because he was the best candidate and not simply because there wasn't an even comparable white candidate. If a mirror-image white candidate of Obama had run on the Republican side, is there really any doubt as to which candidate would have won? If the Republicans had been able to produce a candidate who ran an intellectually, fact-based campaign instead of one based on fear and emotion, where would the Democrat Obama be now?

The excitement this country should be feeling is about the renewed hope, about the one-hundred and eighty degree turn that we made in one day. The excitement should be about the fact that we are literally standing on the edge of extinction and for the first time we have someone going into the White House who has convinced the American public that he can come up with a plan to back us away from the abyss, and he has about twenty minutes to do it.

For the better part of a year I read Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches and Malcolm X speeches. I am not in any way an authority on the American Black Experience. I can only imagine what they would be thinking and feeling at this moment. Still, once the euphoria and self congratulations die down, someone has got to stand up and say that Obama is now first, and foremost the President of the United States, and all other roles and titles will take a back seat to that. And he needs to be evaluated and held accountable on that basis. I'm sure that MKL, Malcolm X, and Mr. Obama himself would insist upon no other criteria.

Sherry Shepherd

To think that Sherry Shepherd could be more eloquent than anyone else I've heard on the subject. And even she only gives a glimmer of the emotion.

Martin Luther King and Others

Yesterday would not have been possible without the legend of Martin Luther King. There were many, many African-American men and women who but cracks in that particular glass ceiling that Obama shattered.

Yesterday's election was a monumental moment in American history -- far too large for a concise little blog post. It was an event that may transcend words. I couldn't find it, but if you can find a still shot of Jesse Jackson's face during Obama's victory speech, it said everything. The man stood in Grant Park and bawled like a little boy.

It was an emotional night. I knew it was over when they called Ohio for Obama. As is our tradition, I was on the phone with my mother as the results came in. She literally started to cry.

I could not be prouder that it is my generation that has produced Obama.

As I watched Michelle Obama join her husband after the speech, I found myself praying. He has a monumental job in front of him. I did not get a sense of joy or victory. Rather I saw two people who were ready to get to work. Who had accepted the enormity of the task they had just been saddled with. And I was grateful that I had such confidence in my president. That is a forgotten feeling.

And I have to admit that I was scared. I was very aware that Obama was on that stage behind bullet-proof panels. I believe that there will be very unfriendly forces working against him and I have no doubt that there are people who would wish him dead.

When I woke up this morning, I truly had a sense that a new day had dawned. I had the hope that Obama promised.