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Out and about while running some errands, Pamela Anderson was spotted walking back to her car in Malibu, California yesterday (November 20).
The former “Baywatch” babe looked a bit disheveled and unkempt, going sans makeup and sporting a drab summer dress with flip flops.
Barack Obama will be nominating Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State after next week's Thanksgiving holiday.
Woo! Woo!!!!!
President-elect Obama has named 7 openly gay people to his transition team!
Pamela Anderson seems to have confused the job of “actress/boob displayer” with “presidential advisor.” While I can’t blame her – the two positions are nearly interchangeable – I think someone should have corrected her before she went on her website and wrote out a very long to-do list for President-Elect Obama.
At first I assumed it wasn’t really written by Pam – she starts out by assigning our next president some reading, specifically “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein and “Crimes Against Nature” by Robert Kennedy. So you can see why I was skeptical. However once I began reading the long recommendation, it became very clear that it really was Pam who wrote it – due mostly to the random capitalization and often forgetting to use “and” as well as “the” and other short but necessary words.
Pam would like marijuana to be legalized. She would also like the prison system reformed and all potential child molesters castrated, along with the promotion of vegetarianism. Finally, she shares some words on the economy. But we’ll focus on the pot for now, because frankly there are just too many deep thoughts in Pamela Anderson’s head.
I think we should Legalize Marijuana, tax and monitor -farm Hemp etc-this would make our borders less corrupt and then I think eventually this will be more secure option and save children in the long run – we should be able to farm Hemp in America- it’s just silly— it would create jobs- and be good for environment.
[From Pam Anderson’s website]
Honestly I agree with the majority of Pam’s opinions, she just phrases them so poorly. It’d be one thing if a bigger, at least semi-respected celebrity expressed the exact same opinions (albeit better worded). It might get some attention and Obama might in some way respond to it. But Pamela Anderson has been the punch line to sleazy jokes for the better part of two decades, and little more. I doubt anyone’s too worried with her views on Guantanamo Bay. Unless she wants to run on the beach in slow motion or something.
In related Obama news, Ariana Huffington notes that he’s working hard to encourage important values for Americans by focusing on volunteerism and helping others.
…The campaign [email] was letting me know that barackobama.com was directing visitors to volunteer for – or donate to – relief efforts to aid the victims of the Southern California fires. “Throughout the campaign,” said the email, “we saw time and again that when ordinary people act together, they can make a huge difference.”
Obama’s high-tech outreach has been instrumental in getting people across the country to donate millions of dollars and contribute millions of hours working on the campaign. Will it now become a hub for civic action?
Obama has always said that a call to service would be “a central cause” of his presidency. “We will ask Americans to serve,” he said in a signature speech in July. “We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing challenges.”
…Obama clearly understands this. “In America,” he has said, “each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose… Because, when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem — they are the answer.”
[From the Huffington Post]
Pretty impressive. I think we have a lot of positive things to look forward to in the future, and good reason for optimism.
Here is a very cool mosaic of Barack Obama made by Ohio resident Brent Quebman. It’s made entirely from newspaper headlines reporting Obama’s win. Header of Pamela Anderson promoting her reality show ‘Pam Spirito Libero’ in Rome on September 15th. Images thanks to WENN.
We feel for the President-Elect, as we assume most of you will.
According to new reports, the soon-to-be President will likely surrender his beloved BlackBerry before stepping into the White House.
In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he apparently faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence (ALL of it! Profesh AND personal!!) in the official record and ultimately up for public review.
Barack has proven to be like many of us, BlackBerry (literally) attached to his side to keep constant tabs of what's going on at work and with family/friends.
Can you imagine life without your BlackBerry, iPhone, or SideKick?
Unimagineable, huh?!
[Image via WENN.]
President-Elect Barack Obama raised more than $600 million for his presidential bid and, now, post-election it looks like he still has some major cash in the bank.
According to new reports, his hard working campaign staff is getting a nice bonus from boss man Obama.
Happy holidays to them!
They'll be getting a check equal to a month's worth of salary in the mail!
A former 'low-level' Obama campaign worker told the NY Daily News, "It was totally unexpected, and you can't believe how helpful this is with the holidays coming. A lot of people thought they were going to be broke and would have to try to find a job in this rotten economy. It's a huge help."
Furthermore, it's reported that staffers also have the option of keeping their campaign-issued computers and BlackBerrys (but must pay income tax on the items if they do so).
We're hopeful that President-Elect Obama will run the country as well as he ran his campaign!
P.S. Are U happy that your campaign contributions are possibly being spent this way????
[Image via WENN.]
Bill Cosby seemed surprised and a little flattered by a writer’s theory that the “Huxtable Effect,” named for his 80s sitcom family, helped people feel comfortable voting a black man into office. Writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez coined the term “Huxtable effect,” which she meant as a counter to the “Bradley effect,” a theory that the polls might not be correct because people would fib about whether they’d actually vote for a person of color. Valdes-Rodriguez claims that positive images of African Americans in popular culture like on “The Cosby Show” helped change public perception, with Obama directly benefiting from that change in this election.
Cosby said of course his show wasn’t responsible for Obama’s win, and that the historic moment is more due to who Obama is as a person. Cosby told a very touching story about how he brought photos of his late parents and brother with him to the polling booth and said they were voting too.
Cosby talked about the concept for his 80s show, which was a positive family-friendly sitcom in which the parents, not the children, were in charge.
When Bill Cosby entered the polling booth in his neighborhood last week, he carried with him photographs of his late parents and Jimmy, the kid brother who died in childhood.
“I pulled out the pictures, pulled the curtain shut. And I said, `You guys are gonna vote.’ And they did, on one piece of paper,” Cosby said.
He couldn’t resist delivering a punch line for fellow voters in Shelburne Falls, Mass. _ “I yelled out, `How do you spell plumber?’” _ even as he exulted in casting his ballot for the first African-American president.
There’s an argument circulating that “The Cosby Show” laid the groundwork for President-elect Barack Obama by presenting an appealing black family, the Huxtables, to young TV viewers who grew up equipped to thwart stereotypes and barriers.
Writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez called her theory “the Huxtable effect,” a counter to the so-called Bradley effect (named for failed black California gubernatorial hopeful Tom Bradley) of possible hidden racism among white voters.
Ask Cosby, 71, his view of the part his 1984-92 NBC sitcom played as political groundbreaker, and the man who looms large as both a comedian and blunt commentator on black America first offers a measured appraisal.
“I was amazed when the young woman’s theory came through,” said Cosby. It sounds plausible, he mused, recalling the show’s immense popularity and the many times that fans said Cliff Huxtable reminded them of their dad _ their white dad.
But he chafes at what he calls the “Karl Rovian” interpretation, referring to the Republican strategist’s Election Night comment on Fox News that viewers embraced the Huxtables as “America’s family” and not a black one.
“The reason why he’s in the White House is Cosby? No, no, no,” Cosby said.
He suggests looking beyond the influence of a TV family to that of a real one: the household in which the future president was raised.
He cites Obama’s account of being woken early to do his homework and his mother’s refusal to brook any complaints. Cosby bows as well to Michelle Obama and her father, who refused special treatment despite multiple sclerosis.
“This is what Michelle and Barack are made of, the things they see” in their parents, he said.
It was Cosby’s firm belief in parental responsibility _ and aggravation over ’80s programs _ that shaped the creation of “The Cosby Show,” out this week in a boxed DVD set of the complete series.
“I was not happy with what we used to call family TV in those days. … They had all these shows where you just dropped to one knee and fired, then a car blew up or a plant blew up _ all this dopamine-raising violence,” he said.
At a time when the sitcom genre appeared near death, the few family comedies that aired were especially dismaying.
“The situation comedies were failing because they had children seemingly who had taken over the house. In a sense, TV comedy writers and producers had decided they would no longer have a family where grown people were making corrections and kids were going through … `Leave It to Beaver’ type things,” he said.
The idea for a show where “the parents weren’t losing to the kids” was rejected by other networks before NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff bought a revamped version of it, with the original blue-collar family now morphed into affluent professionals.
“The Cosby Show” starred the comedian as a mellow physician who, with his lawyer-wife Clair (Phylicia Rashad), kept a loving, firm hand on their five children.
Tartikoff knew that Cosby, a recording, movie and TV star (with shows including the 1960s “I Spy,” in which he was the first black star of a drama series), was funny and likable.
“And Tartikoff also said, `What I like about this show is dignity. The family has dignity,’” Cosby recalled. “And what’s odd about it is it was just natural for me. Because what I wanted, the only thing I wanted, was to stop these children on TV from running the house.”
Wasn’t he also intent on shattering racial stereotypes?
“Look, I’m already black,” Cosby said, so pressing the race issue “gets to be stupid after all.”
But, he adds, “What I did have in mind was that the images that you see on television are not the behaviors of Americans who are black. Racism is so stupid, but it is and it does exist. Period.”
[From AP via Huffington Post]
I watched this show all the time when I was a kid and you just kind of got involved in the story and didn’t think about the fact that the family wasn’t white. Maybe it did change people’s ideas about race, but it did it subtly by just being a fun show. That’s probably the most effective way of all.
“The Cosby Show” aired for eight years, from 1984 to 1992 on NBC, and according to TV Guide it “was TV’s biggest hit in the 1980s, and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC’s ratings fortunes.” [via Wikipedia]
Here’s a clip of Cliff trying to get Rudy to eat her vegetables.
If you’re in the US, you can watch whole episodes of The Cosby Show on YouTube.
Bill Cosby is shown outside The Late Show on 10/11/08 (credit: WENN) and performing on 1/20/08. Credit: PRPhotos
In an interview with Access Hollywood’s Maria Menounos, Lindsay Lohan says the election of Barack Obama was “an amazing feeling — it’s our first, ya’ know, colored president.” Yeah, she actually called a black guy in 2008 “colored.” Lindsay, we don’t use that term anymore. Oh, and “colored” people, as you so eloquently put it, are allowed to eat at lunch counters nowadays. Shoot me an email (celebslam@gmail.com) if you need anything else cleared up (like who’s now allowed to ride in the front of the bus — the news may shock you).
When you’re 7 and 10 years old the excitement of your dad becoming President of the United States might be a little lost on you. But being invited to appear on Hannah Montana is a whole other story. Malia and Sasha Obama, President Elect Barack and Michelle Obama’s daughters, have been invited to appear on the hit Disney show.
President-elect Barack Obama’s two young daughters have been invited to appear on popular kids television show “Hannah Montana,” actor Billy Ray Cyrus said an interview aired on Monday.
Cyrus, the father of “Hannah Montana” star Miley Cyrus and also an actor on the hit Disney Channel show, said the show had asked Malia, 10, and Sasha Obama, 7, to take part in an episode possibly around April.
“They probably will. The invitation is there,” Cyrus told Access Hollywood in an interview. “You know the ‘Hannah Montana’ film comes out in April. Maybe something might happen around then.”
Pressed for details, Cyrus said; “I can’t, I can’t. I have got to keep a secret.”
[From Reuters]
Obama has mentioned that his girls are big fans of the popular tween show so I’m sure they’re freaking out right about now. But the next President and his wife haven’t said if the invitation will be accepted. The girls have been kept pretty sheltered from the media side of the circus that has surrounded their family for the last year, and that’s been done on purpose.
How would you explain to your pre-teen girls, who will be right in the midst of having their world turned upside down in April, that they can’t go be a part of a show they’re crazy about. Sasha and Malia appear to be very mature and well-raised young ladies, but no 7 and 10-year olds could be expected to be that understanding. On the other hand, it would be hard as a parent to let your young, impressionable daughters go hang out with Miley Cyrus.
Photos used under Creative Commons license from Barack Obama’s flickr. Credit: David Katz/Obama for America.
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President-elect Barack Obama's first press conference happened the day the nation shed yet more jobs, it began a half-hour late, and the subject was mostly the miserable economy. Obama looked tired, and lapsed occasionally back into campaign boilerplate when discussing the pressing issues he'll have to address the second he's sworn in. As he reminded us, again and again, "there's only one President at a time." But with one question from Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet, Obama immediately won over the audience, and America. He's getting his little girls a puppy! "With respect to the dog," President-elect Obama said, "this is a major issue." Slipping into deadpan mock seriousness, Obama discussed the crux of the problem—the dog should be a hypoallergenic breed, but they wanted to rescue a shelter dog. "Obviously," Obama said, "a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me." Even Fox is being nice to our new President now.
Tuesday night was an incredibly emotional evening for many Americans. Knowing you are witnessing history is a deeply profound feeling – especially when it’s such a needed change. I was truly touched to see the joy on people’s faces, as well as the deep displays of emotion.
Several celebs have said how excited and happy they were to watch Obama being declared the next president of the United States. Both Diddy and Beyonce said they cried that night – and I’m sure they’re one of millions.
Mr. Bad Boy himself, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, could not keep it together when Barack Obama was announced President-elect Tuesday night. “I was straight up crying,” he confesses. “I was with my kids. It was a beautiful thing. I just thank God my prayers were answered.” A greater gift? It happened on his 39th birthday.
“I don’t know why God blessed me by having my birthday [on Nov. 4], but we’re here to celebrate 80 percent of Obama being elected and 20 percent my birthday,” Diddy told reporters Wednesday night at a celebration sponsored by Ciroc Vodka at Mansion nightclub in New York.
[Beyonce] Knowles watched the election results at home with friends and family – while wearing a blue suit and tie with matching red, white and blue stilettos. “I’ve never been so patriotic!” she said. And, like Diddy, she was moved to tears. “I fell asleep crying and smiling at the same time … I woke up with mascara running and a smile on my face!”
Should Obama require her services, the singer is game: “Whatever they want – if they need me to volunteer, they need me to sing, I’m there and I’m ready.” But what is most important, Knowles said, is that the newly elected president has provided inspiration for African Americans.
“My nephew, who is 4, when we say, ‘You can do whatever, you can be whatever,’ it’s not cliche,” she explained.
[From People]
I heard a lot of people echoing that sentiment: that it was very powerful to be able to say to their children, “Anyone can grow up to be the president” and it was true. I think I was most moved by Jesse Jackson. He was clearly deeply overcome with emotion and was shown weeping in Grant Park throughout the night.
Tuesday’s election was the second most watched TV event this year – with the Super Bowl being the first. 40 percent of American households tuned in. The general public seemed to be much more involved and passionate in this election than in many others in recent years. The Huffington Post has some great pictures of people’s emotional reactions on Tuesday night.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
Now that Barack Obama has been elected President ________.
Yesterday’s Presidential Election was one of the most exciting in recent memory. And when the dust settled, Barack Obama was named as the first black President of the United States.
In a rally at Chicago’s Grant Park, the President Elect stated, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
Barack Obama is the President elect of the United States of America. As Mara Liasson said on NPR tonight, Obama “didn’t just pick the lock of the Electoral College, he kicked the door down.” Obama won by an unprecedented margin, bolstered by a huge turnout of younger voters and first time voters. His staffers and volunteers waged an incredible campaign with clear, on-point, well-designed messages that were immediately accessible over the Internet. Obama supporters were on Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Myspace, twitter, texting and blogging to get the message out. They worked tirelessly to ensure that their candidate was elected - and they were triumphant.
Early this morning my time, I watched Obama’s acceptance speech as I sat there crying, thinking about this moment in history and hoping that this great man, this powerful speaker, can help lead the most powerful nation in the world toward a better tomorrow. He was honest about the fact that it will be difficult to accomplish his goals in one term, and said it would be an uphill battle. He also said that we can do it together, as a nation, and as hardworking people who care about our future and our children’s future. For those who did not support his candidacy, he said he hears you and he hopes to work with you on behalf of America and our shared interests.
It is uplifting, emotional, and so heartening to be here at this place in history. There is a lot of work ahead for Obama, for his chosen cabinet, for Congress, and for all of us. But with this election we have shown that we care deeply about the future of our nation and the world, and that we will do our best to ensure that it is led in a direction that is best for all of us. Thank you Obama, thank you volunteers and thank you to everyone that voted and cared.
Update: Here’s are links to the Huffington Post to photos of people celebrating throughout the US and around the world.
Here are videos from YouTube of people celebrating in the streets.
Union Square:
Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA:
Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC:
Obama is shown speaking at a rally in Florida on 10/29/08. Elated supporters are shown at the DNC headquarters in Washington on 11/5/08 and there are also some scenes from Times Square. Credit: WENN
Barack Obama's ascent to the presidency tonight was a perfect moment of cinema: A graceful conciliation by his opponent, dramatic music at Grant Park in Chicago, a moving speech and a picture-perfect finish surrounded by family and his vice president. Also: Crying. Not only by the Democrats in attendance but, from what we can tell, even among some Republians. "I was crying and I despise the Dems," one tipster admitted to us. MSNBC cut to a gently weeping Oprah Winfrey as Obama reached the "Yes, We Can" crescendo of his spech; some other criers follow below. Good luck not choking up again.
HE DID IT!!!! WE DID IT!!!! 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE US - BARACK OBAMA!!!
A NEW BEGINNING!
People are turning out in record numbers for the 2008 US Election. In some districts the turnout is 90% and more of registered voters and people are waiting in line for a few hours to exercise their right to vote.
What was your voting experience like? Did you wait at all and were your sure your vote went through?
I sent in my absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago to my last district in the US. It’s times like these (and Halloween) that I really miss home.
Please send links to your voting pictures and share stories about your experiences. I may be going to bed soon as it’s 6 hours later than EST here in Berlin and I plan to wake up early like a kid at Christmas time to see what happened. I’ll update this post with your photos in a few hours once I wake up. JayBird will let you know if there is a clear winner by 12am EST.
Photo below credit Dan Carlson. It was taken in Sherman Oaks, California at about 10:30 am and Carlson said it took him around a half hour to vote. Header image credit David in Chicago.
Update: Here are more photos of people voting in Brooklyn’s 26th district, where there was over a two hour wait. Credit: WENN. There is also a photo sent in by user T-Money:
Today Barak Obama’s grandmother passed away. Madelyn Dunham was 86 years old. Obama was very close with his maternal grandmother. She helped raise him, and he lived with her and his grandfather from the fifth grade until he graduated from high school. I would imagine that for him this is very much akin to losing a parent. The timing is especially sad.
Obama and his half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, released the following statement to Usmagazine.com:
“It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.
“Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes, and prayers during this difficult time. It brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you make a donation to any worthy organization in search of a cure for cancer.”
[From Us Weekly]
Us’s article is very thorough and gives a great background on Mrs. Dunham. Maya Soetoro-Ng gave an especially touching tribute to her to the magazine last Wednesday.
She taught Barack and I to be content with modest material goods but not mediocrity. She is fastidious and brave. She is the toughest woman I know.”
[From Us Weekly]
Obama has said how much his grandmother sacrificed for him, noting that she often went without new clothes or passed on buying a car so that she could help him follow his dreams. The timing is particularly sad and will no doubt cast a pall on the next few days, no matter what happens. Certainly she was already immensely proud of Obama. Our thoughts go out to their family.
Here’s Obama in 1979 getting a hug from grandma Madelyn Dunham during his high school graduation. His father Stanley Armour Dunham is on the right.
Barak Obama did some last minute campaigning this weekend. With the election on Tuesday, Obama covered some of Ohio’s most important cities including Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. Longtime Democrat Bruce Springsteen sang at a really in Cleveland and was joined on stage with his wife Patti and the Obamas.
Sunday, with just two days left, Barack Obama woke in Missouri and flew to Ohio to canvas the state. After a rally in Columbus, Obama, along with wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia, flew to Cleveland for another rally. There Obama was joined by supporter Bruce Springsteen, who also came with his wife Patti and son Sam. Then it was to Cincinnati.
[From the Huffington Post]
One of my roommates has been volunteering for the Obama campaign for the last month and I’m truly amazed to hear about all the incredibly hard work people around the country have put into his campaign. This is a man that clearly garners a great deal of respect and admiration and arouses a lot of excitement in many people. Looking at the photos below says so much about how moved his supporters are. They’re truly emotional, passionate pictures.
Tomorrow’s a future-changing day. No matter who you support, make sure you vote!
John McCain will be returning to Saturday Night Live, the McCain campaign has confirmed. McCain was the featured host in 2002, and this will be the Senator’s second cameo appearance this year. It couldn’t come at a better time, for him, either. The November 1st show is airing just three days before election day and SNL has been a great way to get a little push in popularity this election.
Aides to the Republican presidential candidate said Friday that McCain will make a detour from battleground states to appear on “Saturday Night Live,” the late-night show that has been a must-watch for many during the political season.
McCain last appeared on “Saturday Night Live” in May, after clinching the nomination and while the Democratic primary continued. The 72-year-old Arizona senator joked about his age, saying: “I ask you, what should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly, someone who is very, very, very old.”
When McCain hosted “SNL” in 2002, he mocked singer Barbra Streisand’s political advocacy by performing a medley of her songs.
[From Associated Press]
John McCain was funny and likeable in his previous appearances. His turn on Barbra Streisand by getting into her repertoire of songs the way she gets into politics was priceless. His sense of humor has waned a little bit in these final weeks of the election but I’m sure the SNL writers will come up with something, possibly even to joke on his recent irritability, and I’m betting McCain will be enough of a sport to go along with it.
About a month ago, rumor had been that Barack Obama was going to be on this weekend’s show, but that rumor subsequently dissipated. Lorne Michaels, the man behind SNL, said that the show doesn’t confirm a guest star until they’re in the building and no one was in the building yet, so he’s not even confirming McCain at this point. He did say Obama was tentatively scheduled to be on last week’s show but was unable to make it after having gone to Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother. I was honestly still expecting him to show up on Saturday, until I heard McCain had been scheduled.
McCain will have another Democrat to face, though. Ben Affleck, an outspoken Democrat and Obama supporter is the host this week, and that has been confirmed. Affleck has been hinting at getting into politics for awhile now. Maybe McCain will provide the same opportunity for him that Joe the Plumber was given, I hear he’s thinking of running for office, too.
Here is a link to a clip from 2002 of John McCain as a creepy husband.
John McCain and his wife Cindy are shown campaigning in Sarasota, FL on 10/23/08. Credit: ANG/Fame Pictures
Quickly approaching the kickoff of her annual Halloween party later on tonight, Heidi Klum and husband Seal were spotted out in New York City on Friday afternoon (October 31).
The couple strolled hand in hand sporting badges in support of Presidential candidate Barack Obama, with Seal even throwing on a Barack mask for a short while.
With just a few days until the Presidential Election, celebrities are doing all they can to support their candidates. And last night (October 30), Sarah Jessica Parker was spotted working the phones for the Obama campaign.
The “Failure to Launch” hottie headed down to the Obama Headquarters in New York City to take a turn at the phone bank, contacting undecided voters to encourage them to vote for Barack.
John Mayer has penned an article for the Huffington Post about his hope for the future of America under presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Like a lot of things that Mayer does, it seems unnecessarily self-referential, but he at least keeps it short. He does make some good points about what Obama’s candidacy means for our faith in the way things can turn around for the country:
I was 23 years old when the nation was attacked on September 11, 2001. I can remember hearing pundits say “this changes everything” and “things will never be the same.” Obviously it was a tragic and traumatic event, but that sentiment has carried on through the better part of my twenties. If you were 43 years old on that day, I would imagine it was a difficult concept to get your head around as well, but if you were a young adult just entering his or her individual life, there was an added twist; how can you process the idea of everything changing and things never being the same when you have no point of reference for what “everything” and “the same” is? I was just beginning to put my hands on the world around me, to interact and engage with it, and to actualize the dream of being an adult in a free society. To wait in line for 23 years only to have the “sorry, future canceled” sign flipped in my face was depressing, to say the least.
The social and political narrative of the last eight years, if you’re a young adult, has been “you are the first generation of the second half of the rest of human existence.” That’s a huge psychological undertaking, and I believe it’s one that will someday be diagnosed on a massive scale as having led to a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Something has to explain away our premature obsession with 1980s nostalgia.) My generation has come to know itself as the generation that should have seen the good days, my, were they spectacular, now take off your shoes and place them on the belt.
What Barack Obama says to me is these days are good for something. Just when I’d thought my only role as an adult was to help shoulder the nation through its darkest days (known to us as “the rest of them”), Obama gives me the feeling that I could be alive to witness one of the most brilliant upturns in a country’s history. Imagine that — a young adult in this day and age being given something to someday brag to his children about having being alive to witness. What a concept.
That’s why hope is a worthwhile commodity. To those who question whether hope is a tangible product worth building a campaign around, I’d say take a look at despair and how powerful that has been in reshaping how people think and live. I believe the definition of the “hope” that Barack Obama enthuses operates on the unspoken thesis that there has to be a polar opposite to the despair of 9/11. Because if we accept that there’s not, the will to live becomes forever altered. To adults who will vote for him, Barack Obama represents a return to prosperity. To the youth, he represents an introduction to it.
[John Mayer's blog in the Huffington Post]
I’m optimistic for a future with Barack Obama as president, but cautiously so. To me Obama represents someone who may help to bring back some of the optimism and prosperity we had as a nation under president Clinton. I’m a bit older than Mayer and I remember Clinton’s presidency fondly. Clinton had a way of speaking and framing situations that made it seem like everything would work out for America - and it did. Sure we had some hard times under Clinton, and a sex scandal, but it was also a time of great progress. Some might argue that Clinton was just in the right place during the Internet boom, but he was also a strong, smart leader who made us feel better by just talking to us. Obama has that ability too, and you can’t underestimate how powerful it can be when a President charts out a positive and productive future for a country.
It’s not about me, though, or my generation being disappointed in the leaders of the past. It’s about what we’re all going to do together to make things better. And that’s exactly what Obama is saying.
John Mayer is shown on 10/29 and 10/30 out in Hollywood. Credit: WENN. Barack Obama is shown campaigning with Hillary Clinton in Orlando, Florida yesterday. Credit: Fame
The Times got to watch a very special one-minute trailer for Barack Obama's half-hour informercial, set to air tonight on NBC, CBS, Fox and various other networks. And it sounds like a total dork-fest. No flying saucers, fashion makeovers, musical guests, or variety show gimmicks, as the media elite has helpfully suggested. No, it looks like we're getting tons of "strings, flags, presidential imagery and... Americana," plus a whole lot of white people:
As the screen flashes scenes of suburban lawns, a freight train and Mr. Obama seated at a kitchen table with a group of white, apparently working-class voters, Mr. Obama says: “We’ve seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives; much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.”
Presumably the freight train is accompanied by a Woody Guthrie soundtrack, lest the Great Depression imagery be lost on viewers.
The show will also feature the struggles of four different American families, every last one of them damned Okies, probably.
Joan Sigurdson holds a sign opposing Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, as she greets the Democratic presidential candidate, Monday at the Maumee Bay Resort in Oregon, Ohio.
Barack Obama is looking at that and thinking "________________."
[Photo by Jae C. Hong via AP Images.]