Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day


People of America. Vote for Obama today.

It is a good idea. Take it from me.

I am a man who knows what it is like to open an email inbox day after day and find nothing but a job search email with a bunch of jobs that don't even seem like real jobs or come from real companies.

I know what it is like to be lonely even when you are around your friends.

I have a job, but the emails keep coming. Every day they get sadder and sadder.

Can you believe that Obama's grandmother died yesterday, the day before he is going to become the first black pres in American history? It's almost too much. If we were to see that in the film, the protagonists primary caregiver succumbing to cancer one day before her spawn wins a general election and becomes a black president, inspiring many in the process, the caregiver dies, we would think it a great contrivance on the part of the screenwriter. We would question the versimilitude of the narrative. It happened though.

Goes to show that a) things that would seem like bullshit could really happen in real life, and that b) those are exactly the kind of things that you WANT to see in movies, because they make more sense, allow one to draw more meaning from events than is there, heighten the emotional impact of a story, etc.

I am reaching on b). There is a bullshit American dream narrative of exceptionalism in a lot of biopic movies, and movies in general. It feels like such a hunk of putrid bullshit. But then someone like O comes around and hey, you have to remember that sometimes god or universe or nature or whatever combination of human will and external force goes for sentimentality even in politics.

And next we get him giving a speech and crying at a rally. First politician to cry since Hillary. I don;t know if I even believed Hil when she was crying or if I thought she was trying to manipulate her femininity and the sensitivity of others. But I believe Barack, like I believed him for that long time, the run up to the general, before he 'broadened' his message.

All politicians are politicians. That is a pure fact. But this guy was like, an avant garde politician. He cut across the grain. He drew attention to the artifice of others simply by the way he spoke and the things he said. He was like a great artist that way. I mean that. And he writes well.

So you may say that there is a character aspect to my endorsement. It is not idolatry. I do not consider him a messiah. I think he is a great leader, and I want to help him.