A few observations, since I can't find any other place to say these things

Let me begin this way. I tell people all of the time that I am a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, heterosexual, Southern liberal Democrat. So pretty much everything is my fault.
I believe this might be the first thread I've actually started on this forum. I'm a writer and have been all my life, but I don't cover politics (at least, not electoral politics -- all beats have politics) so I don't really have another forum to get what I feel the need to say down anywhere else. So I came here.
Anyway, the first thing I felt Tuesday as it became apparent that Barack Obama was about to become President-elect Obama was a sense of wonder. Not the "Obama-mania" variety, but just the wonder that a black man was about to become president of this country. I grew up in a textile mill town in North Carolina. When I was in the sixth grade, schools were basically integrated via the use of busing. That's my lifetime. I remember in junior high going home with my friend Eric Meeks to his family's apartment near our school just to hang out one afternoon. Eric is black. When my dad found out I went to a "black boy's" house he freaked out. That was probably 1970, maybe 1971. In many ways it seems like the day before yesterday.
One of our assistant sports editors is black. He has a teenage son. I told him Tuesday that I can't even imagine how it must feel for him to be able to look into his son's eyes and say "You can be and do anything you want to," and perhaps for the first time absolutely KNOW that is true.
It does not surprise me at all that 70-year-old black people around America wept for joy when Obama was elected. There's no way I can imagine what that must have felt like to a man who once had to drink from a "COLORED ONLY" water fountain.
The reaction to Tuesday's result has been interesting. My paper in Charlotte, like so many, had to restart the presses to print more papers. People needed them to save for their children and grandchildren. I bought the New York Times in the airport and will save that for my young grandson. It's heartening to see that reaction. I've read six of the seven chapters of the Newsweek behind-the-scenes piece and it's riveting.
But I've also seen the braying about how the "mainstream" media was "in the tank" for Obama. Talk radio, the 90 percent on the right, is having an apoplexy. It just seems to me that somebody needs to come out and say something, so I will. If you're hosting a talk show and you've spent the last six months telling people that Obama is a radical or a socialist or a neophyte or a Muslim or whatever, and yet a majority of the country still elects him as their president, perhaps it might be you who's "out of touch" with America?
I am in Phoenix for the race this weekend. They've got a clown out here named JD Hayworth. This guy used to be a weekend sports guy and somehow he signed on for the Newt Gingrich wave and got elected to Congress. The voters of his district came to their senses two years ago and benched his lunatic ass, but now he's doing a talk show on one of the local stations. I caught about 20 minutes of his act Wednesday and he's going on about Obama's birth certificate and how the Constitution would handle it if Obama is proven to be ineligible to serve. He's stark raving mad. But he might be perfect for John McCain's home state, I don't know.
Back home, though, there's a woman who does a late-evening show on WBT in Charlotte. It used to be one of the GREAT radio stations in this country, but it now wallows in this right-wing miasma that so many stations have fallen into. This host worked for the alternative newspaper in Charlotte, so she's a lifelong basher of my paper. She goes on her show and cackles about people losing their jobs in our industry. You know the type. Because of that, I refuse to use her name here. For that alone, she can kiss my fat, white fanny.
Anyway, she was on one night last week just ripping Kay Hagan, the Democrat who unseated Liddy Dole in the NC Senate race. Just railing on Hagan. She sings out of the standard right-wing choirbook every day, drumming home the "Barney Frank and Chris Dodd caused the credit crisis" and the "Barack Obama is going to use Saul Alinsky as his guide to governance" stuff.
OK, in the election, Obama carried her county by like a 68-32 margin. Hagan drubbed Dole there. In the state, a Democrat became the first woman to win the governor's office in NC history and beat Pat McCrory, who'd been the mayor of Charlotte for 14 years. Democrats won every contested seat on the county commission. I mean, paint ran blue all over her home county. And yet my paper is the one that doesn't "represent" the county effectively? Please!
There was an op-ed piece in Thursday's USA Today that I found incredible. The thrust of the piece was that by allowing early voting, the election had been "dumbed down" because allowing more time to vote meant more "lazy and uninformed" people could vote. It also said implied that Obama won only because so many first-time voters' voted for him and that means people who didn't know what they were doing elected Obama over McCain. The irony of that? A lot of people who believe that are the same ones who call the other side "elitists."
There. Thanks, I feel much better now.

 

Take it to the politics board, newb!!!!

(Hey, Pooleo) :-*

 

Wow you are going to give Ragu a run for his money to see who can use up the most bandwidth saying nothing.

 

Hey, America's awesome now! It sucked my entire life, but now I love this country. I think I'm gonna cry.

 

Not really what he said, pall.

 

Good thoughts, David.

 

Yep, cause that's exactly what he said. Jeebus. :

 

That's the general tone around here these days. But, hey, I understand that liberals only like the country when they're in power. Otherwise, it's useless to them.

 

Sorry, Pooleo.

 

Hey Pallister, you're absolutely wrong. But then again, that's not a surprise. I know it's tough for your side to understand this, but Ronald Reagan can't run again. You guys are like Clemson football fans. They will never be happy unless Danny Ford comes back to be their coach. You guys keep looking for another Reagan. He ain't coming. America isn't going to be like it was 100 or 50 or 25 years ago. Not ever. Not again. It's time to go forward.

 

HEY!

Don't generalize. That's where he's wrong, and it's where you're wrong too. I'm nothing like a Clemson football fan.

 

Yeah, Spurrier coaches at the other BCS school in South Carolina.