blackshoeswhitesocks

I have been so wrapped up in watching polls and debates and generally nail-biting my way through the last few months of this election it has never occurred to me to write anything.

But last night’s Obama commercial was just too much. I was pretty nervous about it to be honest; it seemed like over-kill. But there is a surprisingly large segment of the voting public that still has not made a decision in this election. (Sedaris has a really funny piece on that phenomenon.)

I can’t get over the fact that he did not even mention McCain once. Not once. He’s on the air for 30 minutes and all of his focus is on his plans, the future of the country, the people he wants to serve. It was an astonishingly good piece of film and a true testament to the sort of campaign he has run and the kind of administration he will lead when in office.

Watching it made me realize I had been holding on to something like a superstition: I didn’t want to say he was going to win for fear that he would not win. I was pretty shocked when Mr Bush won both of his elections, and like many people, that probably made me a bit gun-shy.

But if there is any audacity to hope, then I have to say that I am confident he is going to win. God bless America.

Recently I’ve had a few moments of surreality, each of which left me thinking I had been transported to some astonishing future-time: walking back from Mo’s in Yerba Buena Garden in San Francisco; a documentary on mag-lev trains; and today, a black-and-white front-page photo of Obama.

1. The decent from the upper level down to Howard from the Yerba Buena/Moscone complex looks like something out of Logan’s Run. The heterogenous complex of buildings and the panoply of the city beyond - I stopped just before the walkway bridging Howard and stared. I thought, not unhappily, of Trantor.
2. Then the other night some hitler channel show on trains and a long segment on the maglevs. I remember reading about these, as ideas, when I was in high school, in ‘Science Digest’. (I once got beat-up for reading that. Good times.) In excess of 25 MPH the entire train is no longer touching the ground. I still can’t really get my head around that, even with a good appreciation of thermodynamics.
3. And now today, Obama. A black american man is poised to become the President of the United States, the most powerful nation-state human society has ever produced. I know there has been a lot written about that versus the first woman president; Senator Clinton (who I do not admire) aside, I just don’t feel like that is such a big deal. Really. Western democracies have had Thatcher and others, and there are numerous women who have been prime ministers and such in the rest of the world.

   But a non-white American president? It still boggles my mind. Perhaps I’m just too cynical about race and thus easily amazed? (The New York Times’ photo was certainly intentionally black-and-white. Perhaps to evoke a connection with Kennedy? The Sunday Times is usually in color, but maybe I have that wrong.)

Mr. Guiliani is truly an infuriating idiot and I think the desperation of his position is now clear from his horrific new ad exploiting the death of Bhutto. The logic of the contents of the ad are just not worth discussing, it’s so base and ignorant. But I think this means — along with his recent slips and dive in the polls — that his withdrawal is inevitable.

In Orange County for the weekend, I encountered the hapless Register, which unsurprisingly focused on the development-spurred fires of the last few weeks. Like many of the California dailies the bulk of the content comes from the AP and other sources; the sports, entertainment and city hall stuff comes from the local reporters. Pretty much like the San Francisco Comical, but with unread conservatives in charge of the opinion pages.

Knowing this makes me somewhat less angry about the paper in general; it is not, at least, quite as reactionary and freakish as the San Diego Tribune. But maybe I just need to have a look at the Tribune again.

Anyway, 18 pages into the paper I finally encountered something to do with subjects other than hollywood productions, the wildfires, and the corrupt sheriff’s department: the “Nation & World” section of the paper (four pages, not counting the full-page ads).

Every story is from the AP, so I should direct my ire there I suppose, but at the least I would expect the story about Bush beating the war drum to somehow make it to the front page, ahead of say, “Seinfeld on his new movie and enduring TV series”.

I am not quite so grim in my views that I expect us to go to war with Iran; the Turks are more of a problem at this point, massing their troops on the northern Iraqi border. But I do remain grim in my views of Iraq, and cannot for the life of me find a silver lining anywhere. Neither, apparently, can the AP as they stretch to report something not awful from the hell we have created:

Five corpses were found in the capital [on Thursday] - a low figure compared with the scores found every day several months ago.

The title of the article was Death takes it easier in Iraq.

I disagree. After the Nazis murdered all of the Jews in Warsaw, it would be insane to suggest that things had quieted down because there were fewer shootings. Same in Baghdad: there are just fewer people to kill. The “insurgency” has met with wild success, and we are hanging on with our fingernails, with the help of murderous, hired goons.