Author: Cynthia Samuels

Report from London: Barack Obama, Man of the Year and Best-Sellwe

LON Man of the Year inside pg.
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year.  This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too. 

But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time.  Add that to what happened  when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know.  The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.

Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:

What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.

London Obama books cropped
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community. 

There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four.  This will be a president the world wants to know.  So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too.  The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.

We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us – and much will be.  But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.

Money, Madoff, Seniors and Struggles

ROnnie banner
NO this is not the lazy way out – sending you to another blog.  Ronni Bennett is a highly visible, highly regarded "elder blogger" and has formed a large, vital community around her blog Time Goes By.  A retired CBS News producer, she moved from Manhattan to Maine for a more affordable standard of living and she's got her fingers on many pulses.  Today, she writes about the already tragic costs of the economic crisis for "the rest of us" – those not losing fortunes because of Bernard Madoff but just losing ground.

I think the Madoff story is worth the attention it's getting,  not just or even mainly because of the damage it did to high-end investors but because someone of such stature (Head of NASDAQ) would – and could- do such things – and that he got away with it for so long.  It's institutionally mind-blowing.  As I wandered the web reading stories for this post, I discovered more reasons, too.  It did disproportionate damage to Jews and Jewish charities – and Madoff was Jewish.  Another "how could he?"  Non-profits around the world, literally, are devastated; an example of the non-profit chaos generated by Mr. Madoff's activity. 

Even so, Ronni's point about the focus on the big stuff when there are so many stories, especially at this time of year, is worth taking a look at.  She's right about that; we need to see more profiles of those people who "work hard and play by the rules" and are struggling to figure out how to survive.  They're our neighbors – and, in many cases, they're us.

Harvey Milk, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and the Pain of Gay Life in America

James-baldwin
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss.  It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama.  Me too. 

MILK poster
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process.  Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation.  Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.

Here's what's hard though.  Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret.  Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence.  In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers. 

Look at us now.  On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry.  Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.  

Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption.  Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays.   Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory."  Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers.  Get the wrong judge and you're toast.  Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.   

To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw.  She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can. 

But  to a pop culture vulture like me,  it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.

  

ADD:  I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman.  A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.

John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers

JFK Inaugural crowd
I seem to be living in the WayBack Machine this year.  Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963.  Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms.  January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

See that crowd?  Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother.  Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snow on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.  

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy.  And Jackie.  And Caroline.  And all the other Kennedys who came with them.  Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled  back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters.  I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family. 

JFK Inaugural tickets

So.  My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets.  My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived
around dawn Inauguration morning.  We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integration soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.

It was very cold.  We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled.  Which I was.   As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander in Chief.

That was half a century ago.  I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory.  It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me.  I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time.  (Of course there was no next time.)   Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history.  And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories.  If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did)  If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.)  I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own.  So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home. 

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right.  But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come.  After all, he’s their guy.  What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours.  Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives.  Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change the world. 

Twilight: Teenage Girls Love It But They’re Not the Only Ones

TwilightminicoverTwilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere.  Translated into 20 languages and now a film,  with even a Twilight Moms site for,  well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon."  It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association  "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade…So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller.  All before I even got to read it.  There would have been a time… ah well.  At least it's fun now. 

And in a way, embarrassing.  After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent.  It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad.  There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like.  I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge.  When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.

Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen.  He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz.  We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours.  When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours.  Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected.  It was a beautiful time.  There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then.  He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen.  As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant.  He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back.  There's more than one way to be free.

In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible.  Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human.  There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it.  The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.

I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was.  When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either.  Sex was private, and for grownups.  Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values.  There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.

I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight.  Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go.  And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes.  The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them.  Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way?  Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?

Here's a preview of the film, too:





Edgy, Funny Prop. 8 “Musical” — Hilarious or Horrible? Doogie, Jack Black, CJ (aka Juno’s stepmom), Maya and more

I missed this one* so figure maybe you did too.  I promise to be back with a "real" post soon but it's pretty provocative so wanted to share it. (Read more about the battle over Proposition 8 here.)  There are a lot of comments on the original page that call it blasphemous and it's certainly edgy – but well – what do you think?

*For background on the video, try this.

Obama, McCain and the Power of Words

Obama speech cloud
 I'm working on a big new post on a weird topic but in the meantime, the always original David Wescott has done, (at the suggestion of his wife), a very interesting word cloud comparison.  Basically, he created clouds for the election night speeches of President-elect Obama and Senator McCain.  Both the differences and the similarities are striking.  Take a look.