First things first: I promise that the title is the only part of my post yesterday that I'm going to parody.
Second, thanks everyone for the great response. I was happy with the way the account turned out, but you never know what kind of response you're going to get when you hit the Publish button. And, wow, y'all made the gamble of putting it all out there on the Internet worth it.
But that's not what this diary is about.
Heh, ok, so I broke my promise not to parody the earlier diary there. Sorry. But this diary really isn't about me. Ok, it is about me. Almost completely, as a matter of fact. Me me me. It's about the great day I had because of all of you.
But first an aside. Work has kinda sucked lately. I'll spare you the details in part because you don't really want to hear about them and in part because my casually maintained Internet anonymity can only take so many more hits before the curtain comes down (more about which in a minute) and in part because my work situation is still pretty good so I have no real reason to complain compared to a lot of American workers.
Work has, however, been much less pleasant than in the recent past. I've mentioned around here before that I'm a lawyer, so you might be asking yourselves how my life could ever be pleasant. Well, you have a point, but I'm lucky to work for a great firm with great people in a great field. And I'm not going to complain about my job when there are folks out there getting paid less money to work longer hours with no benefits doing harder work.
Of course, I am going to complain about my job. The last two paragraphs wouldn't exist if I weren't. But it's complaining with perspective, I suppose.
ANYWAY.
The point is that (all together) work has sucked. But not today. Why? Let's go to gmail.
I sat down at my desk this morning, and noticed my little gmail checker said I had two messages in the account that I use here. I use that account for a lot of other things too: metafilter.com, contact forms with companies I'm not really sure about, and a brief adventure on MySpace solely for the purpose of making sure my niece didn't get up to any mischief (both she and I have now migrated to the much less brain-clawing Facebook). As you might expect, the last of these has resulted in a nearly constant barrage of friend requests from "Crystal" and "Amber". I wasn't expecting much.
Much to my surprise, the first email was from Paul Loeb, informing me that he'd excerpted my diary at HuffPo. Cool! I actually said that. Out loud.
I opened the second email.
I'm a producer on World Have Your Say on BBC World Service Radio. We're having a radio debate today about whether America should be talking about race - sparked off by Barack Obama's speech on the subject yesterday. I was reading your fascinating blog post about watching his speech on TV in a waiting room in Atlanta, and wondered if you might like to take part in the programme?
Blink. Wha? Blink. I ... wha?!
I emailed her back immediately to say that of course I'd like to participate. She called a couple of hours later and we talked for a few minutes about the show and about Obama's speech. I haven't done radio in a while, but I suspect she was screening me to make sure I could string words together on the spot. I guess I passed. We arranged for a pair of half-hour blocks this afternoon.
The first block came, and I was introduced, and I told my story and then chilled out. I was on with a professor from Cleveland State University and a guy from Texas. They were apparently in studios, and I was on the phone. The host introduced other callers, so I figured I was one of many who'd gotten the invite. Fifteen minutes later, they thanked me and said they'd call back for the second half-hour.
Wait, fifteen minutes? I was still on with a producer, so I asked about the format and it became apparent that I was supposed to be a bit more involved and that I was supposed to be one of three panelists, not any other caller. Right.
So 45 minutes passed and my phone rang again, and, zap, I was back on the show. This time, campers, I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines, so I talked about white discomfort about talking about race. I talked about knowing someone who shares a family name (a distinctive family name, so it's probably not a coincidence) with my family but is black. In the South, there are only a couple of ways that could come about, and none of them are happy thoughts. But I talked about wanting to meet this person, talk to her, share our tragic but shared family histories. I talked about the challenges of racism, of sexism, of basic acceptance of other people. And I talked about the fact that we've done a pretty good job in this country of tackling the easy questions: yes, black people deserve to be equal and yes, most white people aren't cross-burning racists. But then I talked about having to move beyond that, to a deeper discussion of the subtler forms of racism that endure despite (and sometimes because of) the efforts of Americans to move beyond our racist past.
And it wasn't me talking. I mean, it was me talking, but I was speaking with your voice. When the host introduced me as a "blogger on DailyKos" I thought "yeah, I am, and that really means something!" We had callers from Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. Everyone was talking about how important Obama's speech was. All of us strangers to each other, but all of us talking about continuing the serious dialogue that Barack Obama has started.
The one criticism was that we needed to move beyond words and towards action. I tried to rebut by saying that sometimes words are necessary to unstick the logjam of tough issues. It was fun.
Thirty minutes pass quickly when you're having fun talking about something important.
Anyway, I was on BBC Radio today, talking to the world about my experience. I tried to be a good representative of white folks, Americans, Southerners, and kossacks. I hope I was. But I was there, and it was an awesome experience. And it's all thanks to you for giving the story some attention.
Thanks everyone. Just thanks. A lot. A thousand times.
[UPDATE - And once more, thank you. I'm reminded that we do have a global reach here, on this website and others like it, but there are folks who don't come here, and it's a special opportunity to be able to go into a different medium to talk about the things we care about here with folks who might never see what we write every day. I hope others will have this chance as this campaign unfolds, and I hope you'll share your stories if you do. It's not curing cancer or going to the moon, but it's important to speak out as American voters and to ensure that people have the chance to hear what good people you kossacks are. I can only hope that I lived up to the standard you set here every day, and that's not false modesty.
Keep going out there and showing people that we support a new direction. Donate to your candidates (Obama, Clinton, downticket, everyone) and raise the dialogue in this nation. And, hehe, be decent to your fellow Democrats. Be decent to Republicans. And call out people who only want to lower the debate, to debase our democracy. We're in this together.]