I did not go to the event, so I did not live blog it. But I have a question for you: Do you know why Obama went to Kansas, and why he chose El Dorado? His mother, and his mother's parents, were from Kansas. I keep trying to tell all of you, Wichita, Kansas is the center of the universe. Ever heard of Pizza Hut or Boeing? Ever heard of an atheist named Stanley from Wichita? That is Obama's mother. Stanley Ann Dunham. Maybe I am wrong, but I once heard a saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." I think Obama's god that he is listening to is very much like his atheist mother. Because we fashion our imaginary gods after the wisest people we know. When I used to believe in god, he was a lot like my parents. Maybe we should learn about Obama's parents, and, in order to understand his parents, we should learn a little about his grandparents as well. I am writing only about his mother and her parents. Because it seems easy to me, because they are from here, my hometown, Wichita, Kansas.
I did a search, and no one diaried Obama's visit to Kansas, unless I messed up my search. So, here is the link to the Wichita Eagle article at Kansas.com.
Roughly 3,000 people packed into Butler Community College buildings to see Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama...
Some had a sense of history, looking ahead to the day they would tell their children about the day they met the great man...
Megan Fowler, 20, ditched classes at Pittsburg (Kansas) State University and drove 150 miles to El Dorado for Obama. "Wouldn't you rather tell your kids you drove two and a half hours to see him instead of going to class?"
Some were old enough to draw parallels with other great men who visited Kansas.
Obama's visit caused Steve Wentz to recall tagging along with his father 40 years ago to see Robert F. Kennedy speak at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence. He was 8 and it was March 1968. "I knew that was a historic moment, like this," Wentz said. His father had taken him out of school for the speech. Tuesday, Wentz brought his two daughters and his parents to see Obama. "It was nice to see the Kennedy family endorse him," Wentzes father, Bill, said. "They had a similar vision about people and uniting them."
Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick gives us a summary of the actual content of Obama's campaign speech:
He asked them to believe, to imagine, and even to dream........ "The dreams we share are more powerful than the differences we have," Obama said to cheers........ But throwing caution to the cold, howling wind outside, the crowd did as he asked. With several standing ovations, they endorsed a belief in possibilities as unlikely as a white couple from Kansas having their black grandson graduate from Harvard University and run for president.
This brings me to my point, a point of hope for the majority of Kossacks, who are atheists or agnostics. My hope is what I feel about Obama's mother and her parents. I found an article, almost a year old, from the chicagotribune.com site.
The education of Obama the would-be politician didn't begin, of course, until after his birth in 1961, in Honolulu. But the parental traits that would mold him -- a contrarian world view, an initial rejection of organized religion, a questioning nature -- were already taking shpe years earlier in the nomadic and sometimes tempestuous Dunham family, where the only child was a curious and precocious daughter of a father who wanted a boy so badly that he named her Stanley -- after himself.
And once again, in case you missed my point, the article states:
In a recent interview, Obama called his mother "the dominant figure in my formative years....The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."
I encourage you to read the rest of the article. It really paints a colorful picture of Stanley, Obama's grandfather, as a very effective salesman. That is why Obama is so good at politics, he is a salesman, like his grandfather. Reagan was an actor, Edwards is a lawyer above all, and Obama is a salesman. The three are similar, but I have spent fifteen years as a salesman, so I feel a small desire to root for my fellow salesmen. But the main point I am repeating, and the article develops very well, is that Obama's grandparents and mother were free thinkers, the kind of people to question god and capitalism, to consider atheism and communism. That is my kind of people. One more link. About ten days ago, I wrote a diary that got rescued. It was my first rescued diary. I was so excited. Here is the link. I will not give you a quote, but I called attention to two of my pet issues, contraception, and school desegregation. Go ahead and read it, it must be pretty good, it got rescued, right? Anyway, the theme is hope, hope that Obama, or Clinton, will get elected over McCain, and will follow a path similar to the path of Obama's mother and her parents. The path of questioning the conventional wisdom, even the most popular and money-backed conventional wisdom, such as Christianity and capitalism. That is my hope.