Over the past forty five years, (as of today), I've collected a healthy group of heroes who were all born on the 17th of January.
Benjamin Franklin, Muhammad Ali and Steve Earle.
They come to mind as they do every year on this day. Other than a January 17th birthday, I don't necessarily share anything else with my three unlikely comrades. Still I feel an arbitrary kinship to them -- so I have collected them into my own personal club. Among them, they are poets, thinkers, stand-up wordsmiths of the first order and extreme patriots in the pure sense of the word. They have exhibited boatloads of courage and sometimes they were/are just plain bad.
Today I'm thinking about Michelle Obama too.
Not only do Ms. Obama and I share Birthdays with my unlikely trio, but she and I were also born a few minutes apart on that very same day in 1964.
more heroes, after . . the . . . flip . . . .
When I was a grade-school kid learning U.S. history -- including those tales of our founding "fathers" to which we were all treated (subjected?) -- one of those founders stood out to me above all the others. Ben Franklin. Franklin was an edgy satirist, patriotic to his core and a Statesman (i.e., lefty insurgent). As an aside, I am writing this post from my home in Vermont, while in the midst of an arctic blast. I strongly believe that the Franklin Stove, by itself, qualifies Ben Franklin for centuries of historical praise.
As I grew to adolescence, I latched onto another hero. Muhammad Ali. I vividly remember the morning in the fall of 1978 after he regained his WBA heavyweight title. I had just started high school, it was 4:00 a.m., and I was waiting for the truck to deliver the morning papers for my paper route. The truck arrived and the first thing I asked the delivery driver was "did he win?" The driver said "yeah the Champ has the title again." No need for me to say who "He" was and there was no need for the truck driver to say "Muhammad Ali" because "He" could only refer to one person and one event.
I was never really a boxing fan and I never followed this sport. I was just drawn to Muhammad Ali. He was a baddass in all the right ways. Sure he was "the Champ," - heavyweight no less - which is as bad as it comes. But he was "bad" because he talked pretty; because he walked pretty; and because he has never uttered a dull syllable in his life. Mostly he was "bad Great" because his principles spoke to this young adolescent, and by standing on his principals I heard him as loudly as if he were yelling in Howard Cosell's ear. While other celebrities were content selling candy bars, Ali was willing to take his principles to prison and stand behind bars. He had fought for, stood up for, gone to the mat for and defended all of us by refusing to go to war in Vietnam. All the while, he was fighting the U.S. government and the U.S. military at a time when our government was waging a campaign of fear against us. while the U.S. was committing war on Vietnam.
He was brave not to support the war on Vietnam. Had I been born twenty years earlier, I like to think I would have been brave enough to do what he did. I found Muhammad Ali a captivating figure because I wanted to believe I might have found the same strength he did in the face of a U.S. war on Vietnam. I'll never know of course, but his strength and his principled actions during the 1960s have been an example to me and something I've looked to my entire adult life.
Steve Earle's birthday is today. Less well known on this board than my other two heroes. But along with Johnny Cash, no one is more deserving of the triple crown -- i.e., the Rock'n'Roll, Songwriters and Country music Halls-of-Fame.
He is the greatest songwriter of our generation and a direct descendant of both Eugene Debs and Woody Guthrie. No celebrity has ever worn his heart on his sleeve as honestly, and in pursuit of social justice in civil society, the way Steve has. I'll probably be listening to swaths of his his collection for most of the day.
Today -- this particular January 17th -- I add someone else to my list. Michelle Obama.
Wow. Talk about the pressure on this beautiful woman. She faces a tough job, but no one is in a better place to guide and influence one of the most important persons in the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As the presidential campaign started in earnest in latter 2007, I knew all the candidates' histories well. I've followed several for decades (I first met Joe Biden at the age of ten so I've followed him for, literally, most of my life; and I interviewed Ralph Nader 25 years ago for a book I was editing). At a minimum, I had followed all of the Democratic candidates for several years at least, as well as the featherweight Republican-Americans. (The only mystery "candidate" to me was the Wasilla Flash-In-The-Pan I did not see that train wreck a'comin').
For me, the candidates, with the exception of our President-elect, were not necessarily the most critical people to follow during the campaign. All of them campaigned, spoke, and finished basically as predicted and expected. There were no big revelations - policy or personal - about any of them. By November 2008, I had ended with the same confidence I had in Barack Obama that I acquired almost five years earlier. By November 2008 I still knew the shame and disappointment that, for me, John McCain has demonstrated for more than two decades. I can say something similar for each and every of the contenders.
The big story, to me, and the most important person I came to respect during 2008 was Michelle Obama. She had pretty much won me over before this day:
-- and her speech last winter earned her a lifetime of my respect.
I listened to her speaking, I heard what she was saying, and it was one of the best speeches of the campaign. Her speech was so good, in fact, that the same people who sold-out the United States in the name of their own greed proceeded to spend endless news cycles pillorying her for it. The same people who feigned "shock" at her honesty, just happened to be those same sanctimonious war-pigs who, consumed by fear and hate, spent a generation running the United States into a militaristic and class warring ditch.
Our non-objective, professionally simplistic media, lazily called her words a "gaffe." Remember, a "gaffe," particularly in Washington D.C., is where someone speaks the truth in a thoughtful way - particularly about a subject that we must acknowledge but, generally, are afraid to confront. Well, Mr. Spaulding flew out of the park on that February day when this particular 44 year-old voter heard a then 44-year-old Michelle Obama give that speech.
I remember her talking about feeling "alone in my frustration and disappointment."
Go ahead, listen to it again . . .
The fact is, if you are not frustrated, if you are not disappointed, if you are not ashamed at how low the United States has sunk; and if you are not angry at how much of our country's future has been squandered - never to be redeemed - then You.Do.Not.Have.A.Pulse.
A personal lack of pride in our national failures is not special, it is merely showing up for work, as a U.S. citizen -- particularly at this point in U.S. history. A lack of pride in our collective failure as a country is the quintessential act of respect for the promise of our country. It is a show of respect for the promise of the United States that conservatism has stolen, squandered and marauded before our eyes. It is a patriotic acknowledgment that conservatism has drowned the promise of our country in its illiberal bathtub of fear, hate and criminality.
Well folks, the woman who I want to join my club of heroes showed up for work that day in February 2008. She looked at my shame and my hope, and she respected it. She respected my country, on that February day, when so many others were afraid to step up and do the same.
Michelle Obama may yet be the most genuine daughter of the American Revolution living in the White House since the administrations of both President Adams (Father) and President Adams (son). Seeing how she handled herself during the campaign, and knowing that she will be counseling our President for the next eight years, helps reassurance me that we might finally put our national nightmare to rest.
Happy Birthday Benjamin, Muhammad, Steve and Michelle.
(and thank you Darkblack for the artwork).