The Grant Park Countdown

Enjoy. The above is footage of the countdown to 10:00 PM CST in Grant Park, when Barack Obama was declared President by CNN. Goose bumps. Check. Go see other victory celebrations around the world at the Countdown to Victory blog.

Our South Sider-In-Chief

Happy Third Day of the Barack Obama Epoch!

Today my happiness comes from the above picture. The day after the election, Barack left for meetings with his advisers with a Chicago White Sox cap perched on his head. I have left my home countless times in my life wearing that exact logo. The President of the United States is a South Sider. The President of the United States is a Chicago White Sox fan. A maligned and near-invisible half of a major metropolitan city will walk in pride for the next four years (OK, I'll say eight years...I'm pretty giddy).

If you are not a Chicago native, you don't understand what it is to be both a South Sider and White Sox fan. Over the last thirty years, the make-up of Chicago has changed dramatically. In 1978, Chicago was on its way to becoming yet another Rust Belt casualty- a memorial to its own past grandeur like its siblings in Cleveland, Gary, and Detroit. At that time, the Chicago White Sox overwhelmingly outdrew the Chicago Cubs. Wrigley Field lay in a neighborhood of flophouses, massage parlors, and vacant lots. The White Sox broadcaster was a fellow you may know-Harry Carey. Neither team won titles, but the Sox were the 'Hit Men' while the Cubs were just hitless.

Then a perfect storm happened. Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Sox and fired Harry Carey, who was immediately snapped up by the Cubs. With the power of superstation WGN behind him, Harry became a cultural icon, starring in Budweiser commercials and giving the Cubs a party image. At the same time, DePaul University and the Chicago Tribune (new owners of the Cubs) began to buy up the land around their property and pressure the city to clean up Lincoln Park and Lakeview. The seat of culture migrated further and further north. Most major rock acts played the Aragon, the Riv, the Vic-all on the North Side. The booming Chicago theater scene blossomed on the the North Side with Steppenwolf and Second City as its leading lights. Living on the North Side was cool. Soon thousands of young whites from all over the country moved to Lincoln Park and Lakeview because it gave them a mini-city that was clean, white, and out-of-sight.

The South Side had one major problem that prevented gentrification. Blacks. Any blacks who lived in Lincoln Park and Lakeview were quickly moved to heavily segregated neighborhoods on the South and West Side. All of these events led to a severe and mystifying fact of life for South Siders. Black or white, we were second-class citizens. I grew up with this sense of inferiority, and it drove me crazy. People labeled our side of town as 'dangerous', 'ignorant', 'racist', and 'backwater'. What drove us South Siders nuts was that most of the people who said this would turn into a puff of smoke if they ever crossed Madison Ave.

In 2005, the White Sox won the World Series. Hundreds of thousands emptied out years of angst on Western and Cottage Grove Avenues. We finally had something the North Side didn't. Of course, the next three years gave us more trouble. Each Cubs playoff failure only increased the celebrities who would come to butcher "Take Me Out To The Ballgame". The White Sox had Bernie Mac. I love Bernie Mac. But he's not Bill Murray.

Then Tuesday evening came. I know I speak for a million or more South Siders when I say my deep North Side resentment is over. You can have your wine bars, your life-long Cubs fans from Iowa, and your hipsters. I'll take this President of the United States and the knowledge his wife doesn't need directions to the Plaza. You can keep your executive and his North Side statehouse.

You get the politician you deserve.

Let's Go Change The World!

You must bear with me today. The last five days have flown by with the speed and vividness of a fever dream, and I am still attempting to catch my breath.

Friday morning I was in a Rome airport on layover from my honeymoon. After seventeen days abroad, I longed to be back in the States amongst my people, amongst the things I knew. That evening I was at a Chicago Italian restaurant with my wife and parents. My father brought my attention to the television, where I saw the man above. I recognized the man instantly. He is to my life as permanent a fixture of what home is as Lower Wacker Drive or a boiled Vienna dog on a sesame seed bun. The next morning I found out that man had died.

The man is Studs Terkel and he loved America-all of America- in ways few ever have. He had a show on WFMT in the evenings and through him I learned about Walt Whitman, jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Great Depression, and why they call it the blues. Through his books I took a crash course in political science, reading the words of people from every area of our country, from every class, creed, and color.

More important, though, is what Studs stood for- an active American past where the greatest excitement came from civic action. His was an experience of speaking at Bughouse Square, shouting at union meetings, and toasting strangers in smoky clubs. His community was wider than a land between the great oceans. His community was all of us.

Studs lived through two world wars. He hustled through the Great Depression. He was spit on during civil rights marches. Through all of this, all of this, he never doubted once that we should end this American experiment. He knew you had to have skin in the game to make it all work. You can't let the next guy pick up the tab. You heard it in his voice every broadcast. "We shall overcome these differences," he would say.

Studs would be over the moon today.



Last night, Barack Obama became the 44th President of these United States, and the first black one. I watched the election returns at a near-by bar. The surrounding streets sung with electricity. At the bar, there were a group of West Indians watching the returns. There were a couple of guys from Bosnia. There were tables full of white kids. Every state that went blue was met with a thunder of applause. When the result came final, we hugged. We kissed. We cried. It was a shared national experience I had never known- the anti 9/11. You didn't want to go home.

And the world woke up changed.



What got us to last night was what Studs was all about. Corporations and agents of prejudice did not elect Obama, we did. The American people did. We as a country stood up and said, "Enough!" We did it through unions. We did it over the internet. We did it over coffee at diners and in breakrooms. After eight years of misrule and how many more years of shared apathy, we rediscovered our own power. We renewed the civic bonds that make this country a living thing.

Let us stay vigilant. A night that saw one maligned minority victorious, also saw the majority take away minority rights in California. America will always be an experiment. The minute any of us take any of this for granted is the minute our experiment fails. In Egypt, I walked amongst a people who lived under the boot heel of oppression. Thousands of armed guards walk their streets night and day. Their middle class live in a degree of filth you wouldn't see in our ghettoes. Their votes are suppressed, their voices imprisoned. America is a truly wonderful idea. We make it a reality when we stay involved. You can't own what you don't use. For eight long years, we have been used. Last night we took America back. Let us never give it away again.

Celebrate this. Don't forget how we feel. Later-think, pray, meditate. We have come a long way, baby.

And read. Yes, you can read quite a bit about this historic moment today. Newsweek begins a seven -part series on the campaign. Six years ago, the New Republic wrote about the inevitable new Democratic majority.

FoxNews, a prime vehicle of our past divisive habits, announces for Obama, and Juan Williams takes his token ball and and scores.



I leave you with this.

Thank you, Studs. Thank you, America.

Sarah Silverman for Obama

I'm not a big Sarah Silverman fan. Much of what I find transgressive about her material is so bound up in the fact that she's a LoooonnngIsland (all one word when pronounced) Jewish Princess...and I don't find that all too transgressive. Yes, when it comes to female comedians I'm a misogynist. Send the complaints to the email at the top.

Sarah has made a video promoting old Jews in Florida to vote for Obama. I further can't stand celebrity endorsements for any candidate. One, who cares? Two, it further emboldens the cavemen that Democrats are all celebrities. But this one is pretty damn funny. Here's the link. Enjoy.

Only In America!

Only in a America can a right-wing, wingnut, web troll top the New York Times' bestseller list. Jerome Corsi, he of 2004's error-filled Unfit For Command, is back this year with Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. You could not make up a guy like this. And because no one could, The Nation provides a great profile of the conservative dean of fiction.

After fleecing people in some crazy real-estate deal in Poland, Corsi made a name for himself as the scourge of the conservative blogosphere.

In a comment typical of the dozens he posted under the handle "jrlc," Corsi wrote, "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?" In another, he ranted, "Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA--oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's [sic] first act in office was to promote 'gays in the military.' RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters--it all goes together."

It gets better. After writing Unfit for Command, Corsi faded from the public spotlight. He returned by announcing his candidacy for the nomination of the far-right Constitution party.

In early 2007, Corsi huddled with an old friend, Howard Phillips, a veteran conservative operative who had attempted to organize the anti-government militia movement into a cohesive political bloc during the 1990s. Corsi emerged from their discussion convinced of his destiny. He would declare his campaign for the presidential nomination of the ultra-right Constitution Party, enthusiastically embrace the party's call for a complete halt on immigration, banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and upholding its official platform that the "US Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy." With this momentous announcement, Corsi hoped to cast himself as the last, best hope to save America from the godless, globalist duocracy conspiring to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a "North American Union." (His latest flop, published in 2007, was a screed entitled, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.)

In July 2007, Corsi spoke before the Texas Constitution Party. At the time, he remained focused on foiling the ambitions of Hillary and Bill Clinton. "I don't want Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House," Corsi proclaimed. "We had enough serial rape going on when he was President." But Corsi didn't want a Republican in the White House either, especially not Senator John McCain. The war-scarred McCain, Corsi wrote in a column for the far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, is a possible jihadist dupe who "has enjoyed strong support from a lobbying group that backs...a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and Al Qaeda." Even George W. Bush was now treasonous. "Bush," he told the Texas Constitution Party, "is post-America and post-God," a figure so indebted to foreign interests that he had allowed "communist China" to "run its gunboats up the Mississippi." In Corsi's mind, both parties were fronts for the money-masters, the Trilateralists, the plotters of Bohemian Grove--the "elitists who want to destroy the nation-state."

"They don't want to offend anybody. They don't want to offend Mexico. They don't want to offend God," he railed, accidentally inverting what he meant to say. "They take God out of my money. I think we ought to offend Mexico! I think we ought to offend the sexual abusers! I think we ought to respect God."

Wow! Yes, this guy's book is receiving serious coverage on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other outlets of conservative nonsense. Please, before you hear how this book is credible, know that you are dealing with an author who is one step away from a neo-Nazi.

Barack in the Middle

So Barack is getting it pretty good of late from us liberals. Seems some of us thought that we had a leader on our hands, someone who would fight for some key guarantees we Americans take for granted.

It turns out we were wrong. Barack has decided that now is not the right time for controversial votes, so he up and gave Bush what he wanted on FISA. In today's New York Times, Gail Collins writes that this is what Barack preached all along. Apparently, we liberals were duped. According to Gail, the FISA vote:

Put[s] some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap[, and] is
better than nothing, even though he [Barack] would rather have gone
further.

Really? Because to me the vote legalizes the criminal actions of this administration and the telecom industry while allowing for increasing privacy violations.

Barack is the one who has been duped, Gail. And he and his advisors better get back on point before bad votes like this leave a stain his charisma can't clean.

Hillary continues

Hillary won both Texas and Ohio yesterday, which means she and Obama will duke it out until probably June. People think it will hurt either in the general election, but I don't know. As long as they don't damage each other irreparably (which with a Clinton involved you can't take for granted), the two of them should dominate the media coverage for the next while. McCain will be like that great show on the CW-you're aware of it, but you don't even know what channel number it is. Whatever happens, it promises to be interesting.

Brett Favre retired yesterday. I think the Bears have an outside chance to win the division next year-and no, not because they just signed Marty Booker. When Marty Booker was last good for the Bears, I was still sulking through my undergrad years. The hope for the Bears lies in the defense, as their offense looks horrible right now.