The Revolution Will Be Live

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

-- Gil Scott-Heron

So this blog is, onstensibly at least, about Ole Miss sports. And infinite amounts of hyperbolic rhetoric have already been written or will be written on this subject in the days to come. But Ole Miss is on the bye week, and I don't know if I can start a blog on Nov. 5, 2008 without addressing the elephant in the room.

To say the least, it wasn't easy for me to vote for Barack Obama. Back when there were still a dozen candidates on both sides of the aisle I singled out John McCain as the one I was most confident in. I remember listening to a Republican debate on the radio when a question was asked about torture. Long story short, McCain took a stand against it, the other 11 candidates were for it, and McCain was nearly booed off the stage. In my head, I could see a hook emerging from behind the stae curtains like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

I knew then that I liked the guy. For all the divisions of the Catholic church, if it is in lockstep over any one issue, it is for the dignity of human life, both before and after birth. McCain was on the right side of both of those issues. It didn't hurt that none of his opponents could say the same.

It also didn't hurt that the guy had done everything short of dying in the service of his country. By the time it came down to just he and Obama, the differences between the two were stark. But for all his inexperience, listening to Obama felt like listening to JFK, and the guy just plain out-campaigned his opponent. While McCain was making much over a comment about lipstick, was desperately relying on the old tactics of dividing up "real America" and "suspect America", was questioning patriotism, was posing (or at least not doing enough to dispel) wild accusations as to his opponents religious beliefs, Obama was laying out his platform.

And I would be remiss if I failed to mention how much of an impact August 28, 2005 had on this election and my decision. Those were my people on the coast who got left behind. The image of those people holding signs that said "Help Us! We are Americans!" was probably the last image that went through my head before I filled out the box next to Obama's name. They were the ones who suffered thanks to an ill-prepared and underqualified FEMA staff put together by a good old boy administration.

Still, marking the ballot yesterday was difficult. I don't think I'm alone when I say it felt a little like Brutus must have felt after giving Caeser the old shiv. Et tu Beckus?

There is no honor in voting against a guy I would have wholeheartedly helped elect in any of the previous three elections I've been able to vote in.

But there was certainly excitement. At 10:00 p.m. last night, shortly after the race was called, the fireworks started going off. When I stepped out onto my porch I could see people all up and down the street doing the same. They were shouting, incoherently, from different points throughout the neighborhood. And the scene in Chicago that was, in fact, televised - that felt like redemption. And it was enough to make me proud of my vote.

Obama will certainly face some adversity in the years to come. You don't get out of this quagmire without making decisions that some people are going to resist. But for last night, at least for the night, there was a sense of national unity and hope that I haven't witnessed in my lifetime. And I got the sense that the Revolution was happening, and it was live, and so was I.

ed: Rebel content coming soon, mercifully.