Search Lobsterland

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

How Historic?

I asked one of the owners of the company where I work what he thought of the history factor with Obama winning.

Because I keep thinking Kennedy: ambitious, a natural politician, out of an astonishingly corrupt machine. And unelectable by conventional wisdom.

It sounds cartoonish to me, because who's afraid of Catholics? But this is a guy who can easily remember 1960, and he's a Catholic to boot.

I think he misunderstood my question at first, because he sees Obama as more like Carter. And on specifics, that's probably fair.

When I clarified, he said he thought America today was more open to a black President than America in 1960 was to a Catholic.

My Dad's Uncle Charlie stayed up all night listening to the returns in 1960, dying of cancer, convinced that the Masons would vote as a block to prevent a Papal Presidency.*

He got a bit of an education about the limits of Masonry, I suppose.

So we've come a long way, baby, as it goes. I just hope Obama doesn't get so Kennedy-ish that he ends up with is gray matter all over the trunk of a car. Then he gets to skip any criticism for proposing a lot of impossible bullshit and goes straight to sainthood.  Ends up on our currency.

* Not that family lunacy ends there:  I have another relative who canceled her PartyLite order because Obama might win and then she just didn't know what would happen. I don't know what she meant.  Just being President Elect, Obama's evil could somehow prevent paraffin from being flammable or something?

No comments: