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Jan. 21st, 2009 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauraanne_gilmanOn my way home now (I love wi-fi enabled transport) and facing another two weeks of serious work to catch up. But it was worth it. My thanks to Nea and Mo, who were wonderful hosts.
And, because it's been wondered elsewhere why so many of us turn to President Obama -- not with blind idolation, as some assume, but with a clear-eyed and somewhat battered sense of hope and respect?
He is my president. By that I mean he is of my generation. He sees America, and the world, as I see it, with many of the same influences and goals. He is not the scion of Establishment -- he is a hodgepodge of cultures and histories, the same as my family. Probably the same as yours. The NYT said it best today --
For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
If you've already taken against him, then my words won't change your mind. But this is what is in mine. When he speaks, I hear a call to reclaim America for all of us. Every one of us, not just those with pale skin, the silver spoons, or the well-tithed Church. I feel myself stirred out of cynicism and exhaustion, and think "we can" rather than "we're screwed." My father said Obama reminded him of Bobby Kennedy: passionate yet pragmatic. I want that in my president. I want that in my people.
No, I do not expect Obama to be perfect, I do not expect him to be ideal, and I will go toe to toe with decisions I disagree with (have you guys ever known me to hold back a political opinion?). But I trust him to do a good job to the best of his abilities, to move the USA back to a vision he has laid out, time and again -- A USA that begins with us. All of us.
EtA: also?
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of President Barack Obama's first acts is to order federal agencies to halt all pending regulations until his administration can review them.
The order went out Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The notice of the action was contained in the first press release sent out by Obama's White House, and it came from deputy press secretary Bill Burton.
and, alas, the perils of wi-fi -- I just got a work e-mail. Back to't....
And, because it's been wondered elsewhere why so many of us turn to President Obama -- not with blind idolation, as some assume, but with a clear-eyed and somewhat battered sense of hope and respect?
He is my president. By that I mean he is of my generation. He sees America, and the world, as I see it, with many of the same influences and goals. He is not the scion of Establishment -- he is a hodgepodge of cultures and histories, the same as my family. Probably the same as yours. The NYT said it best today --
For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
If you've already taken against him, then my words won't change your mind. But this is what is in mine. When he speaks, I hear a call to reclaim America for all of us. Every one of us, not just those with pale skin, the silver spoons, or the well-tithed Church. I feel myself stirred out of cynicism and exhaustion, and think "we can" rather than "we're screwed." My father said Obama reminded him of Bobby Kennedy: passionate yet pragmatic. I want that in my president. I want that in my people.
No, I do not expect Obama to be perfect, I do not expect him to be ideal, and I will go toe to toe with decisions I disagree with (have you guys ever known me to hold back a political opinion?). But I trust him to do a good job to the best of his abilities, to move the USA back to a vision he has laid out, time and again -- A USA that begins with us. All of us.
EtA: also?
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of President Barack Obama's first acts is to order federal agencies to halt all pending regulations until his administration can review them.
The order went out Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The notice of the action was contained in the first press release sent out by Obama's White House, and it came from deputy press secretary Bill Burton.
and, alas, the perils of wi-fi -- I just got a work e-mail. Back to't....
