I am still reeling from the racist and jingoistic images of the RNC convention. I woke up this morning early, and caught the tail end of a re-run of Larry King Live. His guests, Democrats, were responding to the RNC convention and McCain's speech.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Mario Cuomo, a man who was the governor of my home state, and who I have always admired. He is a good man, a thoughtful man, and I had hoped he would run for president. I know quite a bit about him - my mom worked with some of his family members, and my sis worked for his law firm.
Other guests were Katrina Vanden Heuvel; Editor, The Nation,
Robert Gibbs; Senior Adviser, Obama Campaign and Arianna Huffington; Co-Founder And Editor, Huffingtonpost.Com:
At the very end of the show, almost as an afterthought, Larry King asked the "race" question.(my emphasis in bold)
KING: Mario, we only have a little over a minute. How much do you think race will play in this election, do you think?
CUOMO: Too much. Whatever impact it has will be wrong. It's not intelligence. It's not fair. What people should be judging is, is this man, Obama, good for me? Will he give us the change we need? Does he understand the economic problems? Will he give us a broader and more intelligent view on foreign policy? The notion of saying, yeah, he might be good for me in terms of a job, but I'm not going to vote for him because he's tan. It's unfair and stupid. It exists but it's not going to beat him here. We're not that stupid.
KING: We don't know how much, do we?
CUOMO: No, we don't but it won't be enough to beat him. (CROSSTALK)
VANDEN HEUVEL: I think last night, Larry, -- just quickly, the whole attack on community organizing, which is about ordinary people from below bringing on change and taking on establishment politicians, had a subtext. It was about urban cities. I think you will see coded attacks like that from the Republicans, which is, after all, the party of white refuge at a time in this country with extraordinary demographic shifts.
KING: Arianna?
VANDEN HEUVEL: This may be their last election. Looking at the country, that party in St. Paul is not representative.
KING: Katrina, I said quickly.
Arianna, anti-black vote?
HUFFINGTON: I don't really think it will be ultimately significant because probably the people who are racist in this country, and there are a few, won't be voting for a Democrat anyway.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/...
My heart was lifted by these responses, simply because I have been angry since getting my first dose of a Republican Convention. I'm even more angry about the use of 9/11 video last night, as a WTC survivor, but that is a topic for another diary, and was covered very well by my former co-worker plf515 in his diary A 9/11 victim speaks
I had posted a diary last night on my responses to what viewing the RNC convention, in comparison to our own, and with your permission, and at the request of two people who made comments, I am going to repost my response, since it scrolled off in a few minutes in the flurry of Palin responses.
The RNC: A Whiter Shade of Pale
In all my years on this planet, I had never watched a Republican Convention, until today.
I didn't watch tonight.
I peeked for a half second and the sound of that woman's voice drove me right back to watching Venus and Serena. I'll read the reviews tomorrow, and I'll read the comments here on Dkos.
But I did tune in earlier today and watched shots of the crowd of convention goers, in the background behind pundits, on the floor with more pundits, with close-ups and medium shots on C-Span.
I'm really finding it difficult to openly tell you how I feel, but here goes.
I keep flashing back to the Democratic Convention last week. A multi-colored rainbow of faces, hands entwined, jubilant shouts, heartfelt tears, but more than anything else the wondrous diversity of the people in our party.
And then I look at the people at the RNC. Lot's of blue hair. Lots of palefaces. A few spots of color dot the crowd, and there seem to have been a few obvious attempts to put some speakers of color on the stage, but the cutaway shots show disinterested faces. Those colored folks seem to be there for the cameras, only.
I watch a few people dancing rather jerkily around waving their signs, and my ethnocentric response is we Dems have rhythm (not just Dems of color).
This could just as easily be a group of Dixiecrats pre Fannie Lou Hamer. Or a rally for George Wallace. The faces look so familiar, and yet so foreign.
These are the faces of people who have turned away from the future. These are the bitter, the frightened - forcing themselves to "have a funky good time". They don't even look like the rich and powerful. Some of them look like a portrait of lower middle class America. They aren't the lobbyists, the men in slick suits and power ties, or the women in red Chanel suits.
They are so "white". There - I've said it. Rhymes with "uptight".
So why don't I react the same way to white faces for Obama - from Iowa to Vermont?
Good question.
I guess it's because there is something very different in the faces of friends and those of foes. It is something in their eyes, lurking, and smug. Something in the body language I've learned to read. These are the smear believers, the nay sayers, the proponents of "reverse-discrimination". These are the left-behinds. Sadly many are of my generation, or a bit older.
I take a closer look at the faces of the young ones. I scan the crowd for them as they sway to the sound of Christian rock. They are being bred to hate, bred to close themselves off from the richness of America. They are the children of Lou Dobbs, or Pat Buchanan. Of Bill O'Reilly, or Ann Coulter. How sad, and yet how frightening.
I muse about this. Does anyone else see this the way I do? Am I biased because I look out at the world through the eyes of a black woman?
I keep hearing the haunting melody of Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" in my head.
A song with no relationship to this orgy of middle American family values voters. But maybe it's because that song for me was always like a dirge. It becomes a death song for a Party; over-dosed on its own empty rhetoric.
We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see.
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might have just as wellve been closed
After another day of reflection, and reading comments here and around the blogosphere, I'm beginning to realize that I am not alone in my view of the Party of exclusion. It is not simply my own view as a woman of color, that has made me sensitive to the colorless funeral in the Twin Cities.
I am heartened. I am even more energized and have sent in another donation to Barack Obama.
We are the rainbow. We are the future. We will win.