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Feb. 3rd, 2008 05:51 amWent to see Barack Obama talk Saturday evening. That was a cool experience, if he really said nothing new. I mean, I follow the candidates as closely as I can (though the democrats more than the republicans, at least until the nomination), and so it really just was his standard old stump speech with all the lines ("Fierce urgency of now", "I've been going to the same church for more than 20 years, praising Jesus," when he mentioned the Islam/terrorist rumors) we've heard before. I would have gone even if I had the whole speech memorized, simply because it's cool to say that I went.
Still. It was like a democracygasm. He really is damn good at working a crowd, and the speech--though I'd heard most of it before--came across really genuine. Half the time I really wanted to stand up (or, you know, stand up more, if that was possible, as there were no chairs) and go "Elaborate", though. I want detailed plans on the things he says he'll do, because I'm geeky like that (remember the Bernanke joke?). And my dad said that he's now definitely voting for Obama, which is win, coming from the moderate republican. He's kinda my political hero right now, my Dad is, because he's able to say "Yeah, I voted for Bush. And boy, was that a big frakking mistake." But I mean, he's a history teacher. How can he teach the bill of rights and the writing of the constitution and all that other stuff when we're breaking its laws right and left? That's his big issue, the habeas corpus and Patriot Act stuff, the one that really turned him toward the left. Plus teacher salaries and funding public schools, naturally, but manly the rights stuff.
I was kinda pissed, though, because they were all "DO NOT BRING stuff into the center", namely bags, for they will be taken away and not given back. But tons of people had those huge purses that you could conceivably store a whole nuclear arsenal in. Plus, doing it downtown during Mardi Gras just brought in half the drunks from the town. My whole side of the room was pretty constantly distracted as first one guy and then his girlfriend finally absorbed too much of the alcohol in their stomachs to keep standing up and the people around them had to make a fuss signaling for the police circling the stands (we were on the floor of the dome) to call somebody over to get them. Screw metal detectors at the gates (which were hidden quite well, as I assume they had to be in these planters that we passed, because I didn't see anything else--nor anyone pulling people aside to dig through purses), we needed breathalizers.
The metro was hell. We managed to get seats both directions, so it wasn't bad for us (except the only coat I had was my huge one, which I didn't bring for fear they'd take it away because it fits under the category of things you could hide a nuclear arsenal in, so I was bloody freezing in my 3/4 sleeves and rather thin pants. I would have brought something else, but I had just come back from the gym when we left and was still in that "I'm hot and sweaty and can't even conceive of putting on a coat right now" mode, and so thought I'd be okay without one. Which I was, pretty much, until we had to hoof it to and then wait for the train on the way back), but people were so packed that it was miserable. It was Obama, Mardi Gras, and a hockey game all in the same 4 stops or so of each other at the same time, and St. Louis's public transit is shit (nobody uses it day-to-day, so they don't have that many trains, which is hell on the special event days when everybody uses it), so people were trying to push their way on at stops and just literally not being able to force anybody to budge because it was so tight.
And then I came home and found out that somehow my brother managed to not only use the special fat-free salad dressing that I bought (that supposedly he doesn't like), but use literally 1/3 of the bottle and pretty much empty it out (he pitched the bottle by the recycling to hide it from me/to be lazy and not rinse it out, I'm not sure which, but I managed to get out about 1/2 a tablespoon for my salad, which was still fail and not nearly enough). So with that and my having no cheese, this was essentially a bowl of lettuce with some corn and beans thrown on top. Fail.
But back to the issues with security. I was terrified, to be frank, at just how lax everything was. Not for me, but for Sen. Obama. And by extension, for me. In that if something happens to him (and people are going to try, there's no doubt about that, because they do it with every president, but more so because he's black), race relations in this country instantly go back 50 years. No matter how much progress would be gained by electing him, the whole world climate would be totally shaken up by such an event. We're talking riots the likes of which haven't been seen since Martin Luther King's day, especially in really racially charged cities like St. Louis. Dad mentioned there being something about this on NPR that said the same thing. I can only connect it to Rushdie's Midnight's Children, when they're all sitting around the radio, terrified that it's going to report that a Muslim killed Gandhi. I think there's that same basic fear for America, that something like this could destroy everything we've worked for and that Obama would work for for the past however many years. We saw a preview of it with the Jena 6--it starts in rural, racist hickville, but it spreads, and it takes absolutely nothing to unbalance this tenuous peace that we've come to over the years. I'm undoubtedly thinking too much into something that will hopefully never happen, but the fact that they're talking about it on the radio too makes me think it might be justified.
Still. It was like a democracygasm. He really is damn good at working a crowd, and the speech--though I'd heard most of it before--came across really genuine. Half the time I really wanted to stand up (or, you know, stand up more, if that was possible, as there were no chairs) and go "Elaborate", though. I want detailed plans on the things he says he'll do, because I'm geeky like that (remember the Bernanke joke?). And my dad said that he's now definitely voting for Obama, which is win, coming from the moderate republican. He's kinda my political hero right now, my Dad is, because he's able to say "Yeah, I voted for Bush. And boy, was that a big frakking mistake." But I mean, he's a history teacher. How can he teach the bill of rights and the writing of the constitution and all that other stuff when we're breaking its laws right and left? That's his big issue, the habeas corpus and Patriot Act stuff, the one that really turned him toward the left. Plus teacher salaries and funding public schools, naturally, but manly the rights stuff.
I was kinda pissed, though, because they were all "DO NOT BRING stuff into the center", namely bags, for they will be taken away and not given back. But tons of people had those huge purses that you could conceivably store a whole nuclear arsenal in. Plus, doing it downtown during Mardi Gras just brought in half the drunks from the town. My whole side of the room was pretty constantly distracted as first one guy and then his girlfriend finally absorbed too much of the alcohol in their stomachs to keep standing up and the people around them had to make a fuss signaling for the police circling the stands (we were on the floor of the dome) to call somebody over to get them. Screw metal detectors at the gates (which were hidden quite well, as I assume they had to be in these planters that we passed, because I didn't see anything else--nor anyone pulling people aside to dig through purses), we needed breathalizers.
The metro was hell. We managed to get seats both directions, so it wasn't bad for us (except the only coat I had was my huge one, which I didn't bring for fear they'd take it away because it fits under the category of things you could hide a nuclear arsenal in, so I was bloody freezing in my 3/4 sleeves and rather thin pants. I would have brought something else, but I had just come back from the gym when we left and was still in that "I'm hot and sweaty and can't even conceive of putting on a coat right now" mode, and so thought I'd be okay without one. Which I was, pretty much, until we had to hoof it to and then wait for the train on the way back), but people were so packed that it was miserable. It was Obama, Mardi Gras, and a hockey game all in the same 4 stops or so of each other at the same time, and St. Louis's public transit is shit (nobody uses it day-to-day, so they don't have that many trains, which is hell on the special event days when everybody uses it), so people were trying to push their way on at stops and just literally not being able to force anybody to budge because it was so tight.
And then I came home and found out that somehow my brother managed to not only use the special fat-free salad dressing that I bought (that supposedly he doesn't like), but use literally 1/3 of the bottle and pretty much empty it out (he pitched the bottle by the recycling to hide it from me/to be lazy and not rinse it out, I'm not sure which, but I managed to get out about 1/2 a tablespoon for my salad, which was still fail and not nearly enough). So with that and my having no cheese, this was essentially a bowl of lettuce with some corn and beans thrown on top. Fail.
But back to the issues with security. I was terrified, to be frank, at just how lax everything was. Not for me, but for Sen. Obama. And by extension, for me. In that if something happens to him (and people are going to try, there's no doubt about that, because they do it with every president, but more so because he's black), race relations in this country instantly go back 50 years. No matter how much progress would be gained by electing him, the whole world climate would be totally shaken up by such an event. We're talking riots the likes of which haven't been seen since Martin Luther King's day, especially in really racially charged cities like St. Louis. Dad mentioned there being something about this on NPR that said the same thing. I can only connect it to Rushdie's Midnight's Children, when they're all sitting around the radio, terrified that it's going to report that a Muslim killed Gandhi. I think there's that same basic fear for America, that something like this could destroy everything we've worked for and that Obama would work for for the past however many years. We saw a preview of it with the Jena 6--it starts in rural, racist hickville, but it spreads, and it takes absolutely nothing to unbalance this tenuous peace that we've come to over the years. I'm undoubtedly thinking too much into something that will hopefully never happen, but the fact that they're talking about it on the radio too makes me think it might be justified.
