Artist: Robert Indiana

Heterosexuality isn’t normal, it’s just common.

When I moved to New York in the early seventies. I was astonished to meet intellectuals, who, in the fifties, had actually believed that Adlai Stevenson could defeat Eisenhower for the presidency—a wishful misconception that was surely a measure of their psychological and social distance from ordinary Americans in the nation’s heartland. My parents, grandparents, and most of their friends had voted for both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, but all I ever heard about Stevenson when I was growing up in a small town in Michigan was that he was too much of an egghead to have any understanding of ordinary people and their problems. Stevenson’s cultivated speech, such a strong point in his favor among his fellow intellectuals, was seen as a liability by most of the adults who inhabited my childhood world. My grandmother, who before her death at the age of ninety-nine boasted that she had never voted for a Republican, was able to overcome her distaste for Stevenson’s syntax and elevated vocabulary only by recalling the Depression and her beloved FDR. “Adlai talked down to people,” she recalled, “and he didn’t have the common touch. Ike had the common touch and I loved him, but in the end, remembering which party gave us Social Security and which party couldn’t care less about starving old people, I just couldn’t bring myself to vote Republican.”

SUSAN JACOBY, The Age of American Unreason

“The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee”

The invention of heterosexuality

Photo: D. Winter, NYTimes

All-American.

Barack, age 2.

Photo: Vanity Fair

I mean, really.

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

DAVID SEDARIS, “Undecided” The New Yorker, October 27, 2008

____

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

The Motherfucker.

He’s so W.

Charity, dear republicans.

Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.

OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Now abideth faith, hope, charity, three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1. Cor. xiii. 13)

A Bible dictionary defines charity as “The highest, noblest, strongest kind of love, not merely affection; the pure love of Christ.”

I don’t know what passes for “Christ-like” behavior these days. I’ve never heard mention of Christ described as a “barracuda” or a “pit bull in lipstick” or a fighter, or black or white for that matter. To many he was considered a radical leftist, a threat, a terrorist, given today’s blanket definition. They killed him.

Now, we’re only stuck with his followers.

Actually, no. There’s “good news”. We have a leader. A leader with a presence and a message and a hope as simple, as stirring as any I have read or heard told of in the New Testament. A leader who’s call to compassion and action has changed the lives of the people he’s touched. People with “ears to hear.” No, he is not the Christ, but I would humbly wash his feet, and gladly serve him, sing his praises.

I do not fear him. I rejoice. He shines and America, the world, shines with him.

Courage and Godspeed, Barack.

With malice towards none, with charity for all. – Abraham Lincoln

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

I’m voting for ‘That One’.

. . . and Senator McCain, just in case you didn’t intend any disrespect and were simply having another one of those “senior moments”, ‘That One’s’ name is Senator (soon-to-be President-elect) BARACK OBAMA.

This moment.

“America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.”

America the Beautiful

Obama’08