Howdy Doody, New America

I caught Spike Lee on "Morning Joe" the day after the election.  He was in great form.  His funniest take was on the crowd that heard John McCain's sanctimonious, saccharine concession speech in Phoenix, the one in which McQueeg tried to reinvent himself as a decent human being. Spike noted the distinctively "pale" appearance of McCain's rabid followers, the ones who booed when L'il Johnny mentioned Obama by name.  This isn't the America of the 1950s, Spike reminded that crowd, although they "apparently didn't get the memo.  This isn't the America of 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Father Knows Best,' and 'How-dy Doo-dy.'"

No, indeed.  Spike spent half the preceding day in Obama HQ in Chicago and described the overwhelming energy of the place.  I spent a little time in the Obama HQ in South Florida on Monday, before heading out to a precinct in Mangonia Park on election day, and can attest to the same thing.  McCain field offices nationwide were apparently moribund joints, understaffed, with low morale and poor organization.  Obama staffers got out the vote for a solid two weeks in South Florida during early voting, as they did everywhere else that allowed the procedure.  McCain's people used an old-fashioned 72-hour approach to canvassing and motivation.  They lost the election before November 4 ever arrived.

The truth is the Republicans could have picked a wino up out of any alley in America, put an "R" next to his name, and the alkie would have won at least as many states as McCain did.  If they could dress him up a little, give him McCain's makeup artist, and if the guy had a little flair and charisma, which McCain would never have in a million years, the wino would probably outperform McCain by a mile.  McCain sucked as a candidate.  His running "mate" (and he wanted her to be so much more) does not know that Africa is a continent.  I am not making that up.  That's the person McCain decided to put one sketchy heartbeat away from the Oval Office.  "Country First," huh Johnny?  I could put an artful pun on that word "country" that would be closer to what you had in mind.

I think we've arrived at the point where the Evangelicals have been taken for a ride about as far as they ought to go with the Republicans.  In Europe they have parties (such as in Germany) with names like the "Christian Democratic Union," for example.  Why don't the Evangelicals unite with the Mormons and do the same?  Truth in advertising.  Stop kowtowing to the plutocrats and white supremacists and run on a straight Bible ticket.  Call yourselves the United Evangelicals or something.  Run directly on a platform that contends the Earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution is a myth and that fertilized cell clumps of 50 mitoses or so have souls with a destiny in Heaven or Hell.  Just put it out there and stop horsing around with fakes like McCain.  If you do so, it will probably promote the proliferation of other political parties to the left of the Democrats, like the Greens.  Then some real changes can start in this society instead of politics conducted only through these huge, monolithic dinosaurs we're currently saddled with in this country.

Meanwhile, I'm overjoyed that the unbroken string of pale folk in the White House has been broken.  In our orgy of self-congratulation (such as the anodyne history lessons of Chris Matthews on election night), let us humbly remember that African-Americans have been in this country for nearly 400 years, and that for the first 250 years they were owned by whites and worked for nothing.  America's early wealth was founded on this outrageous injustice, along with displacing the first "people of color."  White people don't really own the cuntry (oops), they just had a period of ascendancy which, as Spike pointed out, is drawing to a close.  As usual, as ever, as during Reconstruction, the po' white folk of the Deep South and rural America are totally freaked about that, but it won't change a thing.  That's just the way it goes.  Get used to it if you can.  The accommodation of reality was ever the wisest course.