Writing From the Inside

I don’t quite have the words this morning, but I am well pleased with the world. I’m not a political person, but by golly I WATCHED the news last night, and yeah, mostly the Comdey Channel’s The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, because they seemed to be able to see the big picture and poke fun at it, and made the whole thing palatable.  I’m really, really not into watching the news about this kind of stuff, but I had coverage about the election on from 6 pm till I went to bed at around 11. Even exhausted by a sinus infection, I was UP, talking online with a pal in Germany silkmoth101  and talking on the phone with amothea , both of whom were as excited as I was to see the results: Obama! Dude! Landslide. LANDSLIDE.

silkmoth101 also assured me that even though it was the wee hours of the morning, people in Germany were up, people in Denmark were up, people in France were up…You get the picture. Everyone was UP because this election mattered. I guess I get so wrapped up in my day to day concerns, writing and chores and bills, feeding those metaphorical fish, that I forget how connected everything is. I’m not saying that this election is going to cause me to turn over a new leaf, I’ll still not be watching the news on TV, I’ll still not get the paper; I can just feel good and proud for paying attention to THIS moment in history. I saw McCain’s speech and Obama’s, and I thought both of their speech writers did an excellent job; I even believed what McCain was saying about Obama, and I loved what Obama had to say about where we were headed.

I went to check Ebert’s movie reviews this am, and got this little snippet instead, which I rather liked, because it seemed that he felt like I did, that color was almost not an issue. The day that it really isn’t an issue, no one will even notice, because it WON’T be an issue. Won’t that be grand?

Ebert says:

“As the mighty tide swept the land on Tuesday night, I was transfixed. As the pundits pondered red states and blue states, projections and exit polls, I was swept with emotion. Not because America was “electing its first Black president.” That comes a little late in the day. It was because America was electing the right President.”

and

“President Obama is not an obsessed or fearful man. He has no grandiose ideological schemes to lure us into disaster. He won because of a factor the pundits never mentioned. He was the grown-up. He has a rational mind, a steady hand, and a first-rate intelligence. But, oh, it will be hard for him. He inherits a wrong war, a disillusioned nation, and a crumbling economy. He may have to be a Depression president.What gives me hope is that a great idealistic movement rose up to support him. Some say a million and a half volunteers. Millions more donated to his campaign. He won votes that crossed the lines of gender, age, race, ethnicity, geography and political party. He was the right man at a dangerous time. If ever a president was elected by we the people, he is that president.”

I love how Ebert thinks. Here’s a LINK to the rest of his post.