postcard from another "bleeding-heart nympho"

I think I've marveled before at the serendipity of the Netflix queue. So often, it seems that what arrives in the mail--whatever I may have added months ago--reflects something uncannily timely.

This weekend, I got a little film called The F Word. It's an odd film in that it's hard to keep in mind that the whole thing isn't real, so documentarian is its style. In the film, Joe, a radio talk show host, takes to the streets of NYC on the last day of the 2004 Republican National Convention-- and that day just happens to be the day on which his teeny indie station is being shut down by the FCC for not paying some extortionistic obscenity fees. The show itself is called The F Word mostly because its primary discourse surrounds first amendment rights ("F," I think, is meant invoke not just that f-word that in the most concupiscent of Carlin's 7 Words You Can't Say on Television, but also the F in "freedom.") Hence, the pointedness in the plot device of the FCC's iron-fisted edict.

As Joe ventures forth, he stops to interview all sorts of folks, attempting to capture as many different opinions on the re-nomination of Bush as the Republican presidential candidate in 2004. I honestly have no idea how much of what his interviewees said was scripted and how much of it flew out of their mouths in rough draft form. For most of the film, Joe meanders in and out of the crowd of 500,000 people who were protesting the RNC in one of the largest political demonstrations in the history of our country. Remember that? It was all over the news. Oh, right. It wasn't. The so-called liberal media totally squelched it. Barely a mention of it made the national news shows. But it did happen. 500,000 people of every political stripe-- the pro-military conservatives, the run-of-the-mill liberals, the anarchists, the libertarians, the Green Party-ists, the hippies, the women's rights proponents, the angry, the disenfranchised, the gung-ho, the opinion-havers--took to the streets and, by and large, the news media ignored them. And Joe tries to talk to as many of them as possible. And it's only when the credits run that you realize that all the people with whom he speaks are actors, with real names different from the names of his interviewees. Lending some realism is the fact that there is real footage of the protest and the convention itself interspersed with the low-budget handicam stuff in which you see Joe and friends. Reminding you that we're dealing in fiction, however, is a fairly odd dream sequence (which we learn was originally meant to be a drug-trip sequence in the "deleted scenes" portion of the DVD extras) starring Sam Rockwell.

The film was released in 2005, just a few short months after the second inauguration of our less-that-illustrious current lame duck. Clearly, it was meant to be a document of its very specific moment, and not much more. Toward that end, I'd say it is most successful. Here, I think I mean that it illuminates a remarkably stark contrast between this current election season that of 2004. In fake interview after fake interview, the left-leaning portion of the folks made it clear that they were not voting for John Kerry. They were voting against Bush. And those New Yorkers were pissed that he was using their city, one of the most progressive cities in the country, as a pulpit from which he could spew his retrogressive vitriole and 9/11-exploitative, hot-button-y rhetoric. But they would've been pissed anyway. They'd watched in helpless dismay as this man led the country in a direction they did not like for four years and were then hollering for a change of course as loudly as they could. Needless to say, not too many of us heard them. Thanks again, "liberal" media. Way to have our backs.

The frustrations and fears of these people are palpable in the film. But so is their resignation with regard to embracing a candidate like Kerry. One of the ugliest truths of the last election that the most devoted party-liners amongst us felt no real love for John Kerry. He was better than Bush, but he was milquetoast. Neither offensive nor inspiring. Simply palid. Beyond that, he was just too damn conservative. And therefore alienated a bunch of us who were supposed to be his base. A mistake, I'm afraid, Hillary Clinton might have repeated this go-round.

Four years ago, the DNC held their convention in Boston. Does anyone else remember Obama taking the stage at that convention? I'm sure you do. Before that, I'd seen his picture in a few magazines. I think I'd heard him give a short interview or two on morning news shows. He was engaging, handsome, smiled easily and beatifically. He looked like a politician. But on that night of the convention when he spoke, I was dutifully watching from my parents' kitchen, hoping to get just a little fired up about the candidate for whom I'd doubtlessly, eventually, vote. I had just finished my MFA. I was unemployed. I'd just ended an important long-term relationship. My personal footing was off-balance and I was scared about everything-- my own life and my country's.

When Obama began speaking, something just...shifted. He didn't make Kerry seem any more appealing but he reminded an awful lot of us of the essential humanist ideals for which our party is supposed to stand. A lot of folks talk about "drinking the Obama Kool-aid" or "being hypnotized" by his style-- and maybe some of that has gone on. Maybe a lot of us really are wowed by the more superficial aspects of his presentation.

I, however, choose to think there's more to the man. And that there's more going on in this election.

Now, several of my blogging friends have suspended usual blogging activities to focus primarily on this election, and I've been glad of it. Their blogs have been the source of many a YouTube video that I've forwarded around to my politically akin friends. However, I decided I didn't really want to do that. Based on pretty much everything I've ever written here, my political persuasions should be readily discernable. Though I am certainly as liberal as humanly possible about a lot of things, I value my civil liberties above all and therefore sometimes find myself resenting the limitations on those liberties imposed by well-intended liberal legislation... and casting furtive glances toward the civil libertarians. But because I've been so transparent about my beliefs up to this point, I figured who needs any more ramblings from yet another "bleeding-heart nympho?"

However, watching that movie has put me in a mood to spill out some of my reflections on our current campaign season. Please forgive me the cheerleading that is to come.

The morning after Obama's speech at the convention, two young black kids in black suits rang my parents' doorbell. I answered in my pj's, against my better judgement. The first thing they asked me was, "Are you happy with the way the country is going?" I probably snorted and said, "Um, no." Then one of them said, "Do you have any hope that it'll get better any time soon?" Right then, some little tremor of emotion pricked up through my throat and nose, as Obama's "I-don't-believe-there's-a-red-America-and-a-blue-America" speech rang in my head.

To my surprise, I told these kids, "Yeah! Yes. I honestly do!" They looked at me a little dumbfounded. Apparently, I'd inadvertently upended their script. They then handed me a couple of issues of The Watchtower, the dogmatic publication of the Jehovah's Witnesses' church. Oh. Of course. That's why they were there on my doorstep.

Now, these were two kids-- they couldn't have been much older than 16 or 17-- who'd pointedly been denied access to information on the political goings-on in their own country for their whole lives. Their church taught them that it is not the place of men to govern each other. God's, after all, is the only power that matters. As this was the belief system in which these boys were raised, they were scarcely aware of our country's two-party system-- let alone one rising-star senatorial candidate from Illinois. They had no idea that Democratic politicos from across the country were meeting in Boston at that very moment. And among those politicos was a man who was to be the first serious contender for American president who shared their skin tone. And that that was a big deal. Probably, they didn't really care.

But I wasn't lying when I told them I had hope for our country based on that speech. Truthfully, I developed a big ol' ideological crush on Obama that very night. Throughout all the hemming and hawing of the primary season, I knew he was my man. And no, I do not think that my early preference for him over Senator Clinton makes me any less of a feminist (quite the opposite, actually, but that's something for another post). I'm not in love with everything he's proposing -- I'm wary of tax breaks for anyone in a time of such extreme national debt, I do not think his proposal for maintaining the employer-based model of health insurance goes far enough towards dismantling and rebuilding a very sick system, and I honestly don't know how he's going to afford a lot of what he wants to do-- but I see something rare in this man.

I've been reading articles lately that criticize Obama's unflappable, cool demeanor and call him "detached." These articles warn us of a disengaged, do-nothing president, so passionless that he will be unable to rise to the occasion of any real challenges. I read those articles quizzically because, in my mind, detachment and disengagement are not the same thing. In a perhaps more Eastern mindset, one could define detachment as the opposite of attachment. Detachment would then include the notion of the ability to step back from one's own biases, recognize them for the the biases they are, and then make a more objective decision that wouldn't be possible if one stubbornly insisted upon standing by one's initial opinion. That's not disengagement at all. In fact, I might argue that that's a more fully engaged position that the unquestioning assertion of singular truth to which our current president is famously predisposed. Furthermore, I might argue that this capacity of detachment, if it's really present in Obama, makes him uniquely qualified to lead the sniveling, bitching, whining, partisan, bickering masses of us. Could it be possible to have a president capable of rising above the fray every once in a while? My goodness! What a boon that could be.

Beyond that, Obama is thoughtful. He is mindful and he values intellectual discourse. These aspects of the man's character are as transparent as daylight. Those are things I value in a leader-- as well as a person-- and they're not things I see as readily apparent in John McCain. Certainly, Bush's hokey anti-intellectualism and misplaced accusations of "elitism" are diametrically opposed to that for which Obama seems to stand. Diametrically.

However, I want very much to be able to say that I'm not voting for the character of either of these men. I want to say that I'm voting for the man who's written the platform more closely aligned to my own belief system than the other one's. And fortunately, that happens to be true. The courses of action McCain has planned seem short-sighted at best, catastrophic at worst, from every angle at which I look at them. I do not think it's a mere regurgitation of campaign rhetoric to assert that he will perpetuate and calcify mistakes that have merited Bush the lowest approval rating in history. I really do think Obama's ideas are simply more practicable and more sound. And would benefit the greater number of people.

However, there is no denying that it takes a special kind of charisma to inspire a center-right nation to vote a more progressive candidate into its highest office. Now, I'm writing this when we're still two days off from the election, buoyed on the optimism of the current polls. But even if the polls are wrong and we wind up with another four years of misguided conservatism, I think it's still clear that something in this man has sparked a light in the voting constinuency. And that's new.

The F Word really did hit the spot, in so many ways. Not the least of which is that it points at the possibility that the Democrats of Tuesday, 4 November, 2008 will not be voting out of lack of alternatives but out of, dare I say it, hope. And out of genuine, if cautionary, excitement about Obama's leadership, his character and his policies. How far we've come in four years, eh?

My polling place is about two blocks from home. When I walk over there Tuesday morning, I'm anticipating doing so, not with resignation that I'm voting for Senator Not Awful, but with goopy, sloppy elation that, for the first time since I've been of voting age, I'll be voting for a candidate in whom I believe. Goddamnit. That damn near brings a tear.

Correction: another bleeding-heart nympho dork!

More specifically, though, I'll wont' be voting against McCain, but for Obama. That's the difference 4 years makes.