Wish I was there…

I heard the news from Mom, appropriately enough. Five-thirty in the morning Paris time, I got a call from the Boogie Down Bronx letting me know that Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States. Fireworks and firecrackers were going off throughout Co-op City, she said, people shouting and crying in the streets. I was 99% sure of the outcome before my head hit the pillow last night, but the confirmation was still a lil moment in history for me, like everybody else. I flicked on the box of tricks just in time to catch the acceptance speech live at Grant Park on CNN.com.

The tinge of regret I feel not being there for all this is the same I felt missing the Million Man March back in 1995; I was studying abroad in London that fall, and had to be the spokesman for black America in class that day instead of out on the Mall. Well, I’m moving back to America! (Truth is, I was moving back anyways. My projected date was always about 2010.) Let’s see how long it takes for Obama to clean up the mess he’s inherited. Paint the White House black!

So, this is the last day before President Obama. Feels sorta like September 10, 2001. The final 24 hours before we know for sure. Y’know, I didn’t leave America for political reasons, but there were totally times when I felt as if staying there was like remaining in a relationship with an abusive lover. I felt hypocritical more than occasionally, bitchin about the country with my homies for the millionth time without doing something about it…like leaving (e.g., Nina Simone, James Baldwin, etc.). When I first heard about the possibility of Barack Obama running for president years ago, I felt like America would never elect a black man. My opinion changed immediately when I found out he wasn’t reeeeally African-American, that his dad was from Kenya and his mom was white. “He’s exactly the black guy America would elect,” I thought. “He’s not from enslaved ancestors, he’ll never invoke the white guilt race card that Sharpton, Jackson & co. use as their modus operandi. He’s in.”

Mark my words on this one: it won’t even take till summertime 2009 for the honeymoon to be over. Americans black and white will be bitchin and moanin in no time about how Obama isn’t affecting change fast enough. Expectations are so sky-high (I see them all the way over here in France) that there’s no way he’ll be all things to all people, and I guarantee you the public will want results overnight, or nearly. I’ll celebrate as hard as anyone two days from now, but Obama is not the savior. (Save your Self.)

As a sad non sequitur, it’s incredible that Obama’s grandmother would pass away the day before he gets elected president. Madelyn Dunham, rest in peace.

America: show em whatcha got.

Got a call this week from Claire, the former editor of the French section of Expatica.com. She’s got a column at a British paper now, looking for black Americans in France to talk about Obamamania. (Barack made the latest cover of French GQ as the #1 stylish man of 2008.) I’ve had a few furthermuckers ask me to blog about Obama up on here, but I’ve never said my piece too extensively. Obviously I’m for Obama; what more is there to say? Commenting on the day-to-day dog-and-pony show (the same spectacle that 10-million other bloggers track passionately) isn’t really my thing. I got fresh thoughts on things, sure, but even I can’t bring too fresh an angle on Obama vs. McCain.

Let’s get it over with, I say. Obama raised $66 million in August. August. As in one month. The whole presidential race is incredibly uneconomical, the conceit of a hugely wasteful nation. If this money were put to a hundred other things (the homeless, the construction of real New Orleans levees, research into alternative energy sources), the world would be a much better place. But anyway.

My vote goes to Obama, and “not because he’s black.” If Clarence Thomas or Colin Powell ran for president, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. I’m feeling Obama’s politics, but even on that score, I’m not entirely certain what they are on every single point. I still haven’t gone through that New York Times Magazine piece on Obamanomics. I’m reading The Audacity of Hope right this second, and I knocked out Dreams from My Father earlier in the summertime. The man has definitely become an icon of King/Kennedy stature, and we sorely need one in these desolate times. I love what he means for the post-race aesthetic (the civil righters get shown up for what they’ve become while the happens-to-be-black Harvard Law grad becomes leader of the free world).

But I just don’t presume to know enough about politics to pontificate about the man and his candidacy. In fact, I hate armchair political commentators with all the intellectual masturbation, jerking off their ideas in front of me when it’s clear they probably couldn’t cogently explain the Cuban missle crisis, Vietnam, the Iran-Contra affair or anything any earlier than Monicagate. I can’t either really. That’s why I keep my mouth shut, for the most part. But, vote Obama!