The Clone Wars Are Over: Standing Upright in the Shadow of No Towers

Six years ago on the evening of the 2002 state of the union address, I was loopy and baffled, looking to the president for some guidance and some answers. I was glued to the screen, exhausted by the still-smoldering rubble in Manhattan, Virginia and most recently, Afghanistan. Every word that shot from his stifled smirk mattered, whether I shouted at the screen in defiance or half-nodded/shrugged at words and concepts that were new to me. The Axis of Evil was introduced that night. Phrases like War on Terror still had some mystique and luster. Last night, the same ideas sounded more like predictable punch lines to an old, off-color joke. This year’s state of the union address commanded as much attention as something I’d play in the background while folding my laundry and talking to my mom on the phone.

This is a round-about way of saying that the heaping neapolitain sundae of optimism that’s dripping all over this election season has earned another scoop: the president is finally, officially and obviously irrelevant. But it’s not just the president that doesn’t matter any more. The whole school of bleak and terrifying politics is going down with him. The same day of the address, Rudy Giuliani, the “Mayor of September 11” looks to be laying his campaign upon its death bed. He’s learned the hard way that you can’t get by on terror any more. Americans can’t just be raped and milked by the fear of the past or, to borrow and fudge a magnificent phrase from Art Spigelman: this means that we don’t have to cower in the Shadow of No Towers any more.

I don’t have to waste key strokes here explaining the significance of Ted Kennedy’s monumental endorsement of Barack Obama earlier in the day. It’s marvelous—and indicative--that the announcement trumps the president’s address as the leading political news of the day. I have to say, though, that I can’t pretend to place Obama in the lineage of Bobby, Jack and Dr. King because I never knew those men. By the time they got to me, they were gone and canonized. I recognize them only as saintly icons, painted on velvet at my friend’s grandmother’s house. No one in my generation has ever heard a politician (or anyone of note, really) speak to us about hope and optimism and a new tomorrow with the earnestness and enthusism that Barack is speaking to us. This is all brand new to the army of awoken giants in the youth voting demographic.

There were also clues, buried in the fanfare of the state of the union, that tired, dour partisanship is losing its relevance. One of my personal favorites was when the president vowed not to support funding for cloning. The point itself is debatable, but as he said it, one half of the room stood up clapping and the other half sat on its hands. In a long shot of the hall, they looked like . . . clones. Not that a Star Wars reference is necessary here, but it’s good to remind the people that the clones may have won the Clone Wars but their demise was quickly hastened by something called A New Hope, also known as Luke Skywalker.

The tired partisan clone image was not helped by Hillary, who sat fuming the whole night in her blazing red Imperial Guard dress with its pointy collar, wishing she could shoot lightning bolts out of her hands. It must be infinitely frustrating to be on the losing side of hope and optimism. Not that I’m counting Clinton out at this point, but it’s an understatement to say that yesterday was a rough day for her.

So now, with no time to breathe or analyze, our collective attention turns to Florida, which might prove to be the Republican kingmaker this time around. The optimist would ask, “what are the odds that the same state that made the electoral blunder of the century could do it again?” And I’m with the optimist on this one, except it’s hard to say what a blunder would look like this time. There is no George W Bush in this race, just confused sums of his whole: an evangelical, a businessman, a warhawk.

It’s exciting, though, to think of McCain taking Florida, if only because he’s appearing on stage with the “independent” Joe Lieberman and that his brilliantly scatalogical senatorial career drives people like Mitt Romney up the wall. With this president no longer relevant, a race between Barack Obama and John McCain would blow partisanship out of the water, create new, living heroes and effectively end the clone wars. A New Hope indeed.

2 Democrats, 1 Cup -- OR -- Fuck it, I'm a Republican

A warm evening in Boca Raton with 5 articulate Republicans turned out to be a welcome rest from the mess that the Democratic field has become. Those guys are killing me. I am at once disgusted, baffled and livid. The two-headed beast of Clintonia is breathing fiery feces all over the campaign trail, which has resulted in the glorious return of cynicism. To which I say, “Wow. That was fast.” It almost makes me want to post a video of myself on youtube screaming and crying with my mascara running while squawking, “leave Obama alone! You’re lucky he’s even running for president!” Or: with all the fecal matter and vomit being spewed and regurgitated, I could keep it simple and call it 2 democrats, 1 cup. (Ew.)

I will now pause to mourn the campaign of one Dennis Kucinich, who announced today that he’s dropping out of the race. I liked Kucinich a lot, but he didn’t leave much of a mark this time around except to gain the endorsement of Russell Simmons (kiss of death, Phat Farm) and, quite memorably, provide the most entertaining moment of the campaign when he told Tim Russert during a presidential debate that he had, indeed, seen a UFO. He then defended the zany assertion by reminding America that Jimmy Carter, too, has seen a UFO. And then I wondered whether, in a tight democratic field, it is more damaging to come out as a Roswell kook or to liken yourself to the peanut farmer who handed the white house to the Reagan group. Who’s to say? It is fitting, though, that he withdrew from the race the same day that NASA released photographs of a mermaid statue on the surface of Mars (true). Now we’ve lost the only candidate with any Extra terrestrial experience.

Enough of that mess. January 24 belonged to the Republicans, who faced off in what will prove to be a significant and decisive debate. I have to say, these guys are good. For the first half hour, I didn’t hear much because I was mesmerized by Mitt Romney’s staggeringly good looks. He’s just so damn handsome, I don’t even care what he’s saying. It’s like George Clooney for president. With less abortions. I have to say, though, that he looks exactly like Mr Fantastic. For all non-geeks, that’s the leader of the Fantastic 4 whose power is extreme elasticity. The rest of the 4 included Johhny Blaze: the human torch, the Thing and Invisible Girl, who all have counterparts in this race. Moving on.

The whole crew came to Boca Raton (literally, Rat’s Mouth) for the face off and my, what a town. This is where the 80s TV classic The Golden Girls was set, so you know there’s youth and exhuberance galore here. Jerry Seinfeld used to call it God’s waiting room. But I guess that’s fine, since old people are the only ones who vote anyway.

Half way into the debate, the guys had me convinced the war in Iraq was a good idea. John McCain says that yes, there are a lot of casualties in Iraq, but soon enough we will “eliminate casualties” in Iraq, which basically means we are going to “kill killing”. Kill it to death! Kill it good, Psycho McCain Manchurian Cantidate who, um, might win the nomination.

No, thankfully the only man crazier than McCain on that stage chimed in and shattered my good idea Iraq fantasy with some straight talk about how not only do we not need to be in Iraq, we don’t even really need to have a government at all. And then the sane people in the room put the words “ooooo-kaye” into a bazooka and shot it into outer space. Maybe Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich should just hang and watch Battlestar Galactica DVDs or something. Can you imagine THAT conversation? Yikes. No drugs necessary.

Not to be outdone in the psycho show, Huckabee—the guns and God guy—spoke up long enough to compare the absence of WMDs in Iraq to an easter egg that never gets found. Which is true, except that tens of thousands of Americans don’t usually get their legs blown off in easter egg hunts. But whatever.

Actually, the night was not about the war at all. It was all about the Benjamins. Ecomonics. Why is we broke? I will now quote one of my favorite rappers Trick Daddy, who has a marvelously relevant line for this debate: “But all my Boca Boys, they know dough, that’s fo’ sho’ doe.” And these boys know they dough, foooooooo shoooooooo. Or at least, they know that taxes is some bullshit and uncle sam needs to get the fuck up outta my pocket. That’s what I heard. Romney shined in the economic portion of the debate because he seemed the most knowledgable and articulate and SO DAMN HANDSOME!

The rest of the debate was largely forgettable, except that half way through some one reminded me that in 2001, Boca Raton was the site of America’s first Anthrax attack. And I asked myself, “Did we ever catch that guy? No? Hm. How about Bin Laden? No? Dang. How come we’re not talking about that? Oh well. Tax cuts! Woo-hoo!” And so forth.

So I have developments galore. First I said apathy was dead because Obama won Iowa. Then I said be nice to Hillary because she fake cried for America. Now I’m so disgusted by the donkeys that for today, I’m a Republican. I like God and I don’t like taxes and maybe, secretly, I still think it should be an old white guy in the White House. And if you want to know, I’ve got my money on Mitt Romney. He’s got money and a silver tongue and he’s SO DAMN HANDSOME. If he gets the nomination he will truly be Mr Fantastic and please Jesus, maybe he can make Hillary the invisible girl.







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The Surreal Life On The Granite Planet OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Primaries

I never dreamt that my vote (a miniscule fraction of the mythical, elusive “youth vote”) would ever mean anything of consequence in a presidential contest. Foolishly and almost predictably, I assumed that my optimism peaked last week in Iowa with Obama’s victory and the next eleven months would be a gradual dwindling of interest and enthusiasm in the election. But then New Hampshire laughed milk through its nose, spraying it in the face of over-zealous pundits and injecting even more chaos and excitement into this already zany, drunk Jenga match of a presidential race. Both nominations are still wide open and the field of candidates is so broad and bizarre that if Vanilla Ice threw his hat in the ring, VH1 could put them all in a house and shoot another season of the Surreal Life. I can feel that I’m witnessing history and for the first time, I’m eager to perform my civic duty when the time comes.

In a development too ironic to be dubbed irony, it was Hillary Clinton who brought the fun this time. 180 years ago at a place called Dover’s Cocheco Mills, New Hampshire was the site of the first women’s labor strike in America. Last night, a large group of women (and men) sent a similarly powerful message: No matter how charming, articulate, handsome and captivating Barack Obama is, he’s not going to get a free ride to the Democratic nomination. New Hampshire reminded America (particularly Democrats) that as divisive and controversial as she is, Hillary Clinton is still qualified, competent and insanely motivated enough that she deserves her crack at making history, too.

Please don’t misinterpret this as an endorsement of Clinton’s candidacy. I’ve still got a laundry list of issues to address concerning Hil at the helm of the machine, but for today, right now, I’m holding my tongue. She blew the thing wide open all over again and reminded us just how profound a shift it is that we’re witnessing.

She wasn’t alone, though. John McCain did just as much to jostle the elephant team and keep them guessing. Every one seems to be able to say 5 nice things about McCain—patriot, hero, fighter, believer, maverick—before dropping the unkind truth that he’s too old, batty, unpredictable, stiff and tired to make a real run at the thing. That’s probably true, but he fought off Mitt Romney in New England and that’s commendable.

I won’t blow too much venomous ink on Romney just yet (we’ll see how far he gets), but it’s nice to see a presumed frontrunner get the smarminess backhanded out of him. A lot of my enthusiasm in Iowa came from Huckabee’s defeat of the all too slick Mitt. From the start, it seemed as if he thought himself the Music Man who could blow through Iowa like it was River City, selling 76 trombones to every Marion the Librarian in the state. So I had to smile when his humble pie was served up by a goofy preacher man from Arkansas with Chuck Norris on his team. (Seriously, though: what the hell is Walker, Campaign Ranger doing on stage with Huckabee at every event? I feel like I’m watching Saturday Night Live or something.) Last night, Romney had to eat it on his (almost) home turf, which must have left a particularly bitter aftertaste. This is not intended as a personal or even political attack on Romney, it’s just nice to see a Sure Thing from Massachusets lose, considering the recent maddening successes of the Patriots and Red Sox.

The only other observation I can share concerning the Republican field is my relief at the relative sputtering failure of Giuliani’s campaign. We’ll see what happens in Florida or whatever, but I’m thankful that for the time being, his candidacy can be reduced to a tasteless joke, reworked from an old ‘Nam riddle:

Giuliani: How many 9-11 survivors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
America: Um, I don’t know.
Giuliani: HOW COULD YOU KNOW? YOU WEREN’T MAYOR, MAN!

So this brief chapter is over now and I’m sure we can agree that New Hampshire, the Granite Planet, is a strange place indeed. Something I learned along the way is that the stae was once home to the famous rock formation The Old Man In The Mountain, until the thing eroded and crumbled back in 2003. John McCain seems to have fared a little better than that. New Hampshire is also famous for inspiring most of Robert Frost’s greatest works, including his poem Nothing Gold Can Stay. On the heels of a disappointing defeat for Obama, that might be a fitting headline for some campus newspapers this morning. And it would have been, were it not for Obama’s staggeringly inspirational “concession” speech last night.

In impossibly calm but forceful tones, Obama brought his faithful back to church after a difficult blow. And he introduced a new rallying cry by leading a chorus of “yes, we can”. The slogan sounded oddly familiar to me and I quickly realized that it is the same chant I heard while in the midst of one million immigrants in the streets of Los Angeles. When I heard it then, though, it sounded like this: “Si, se puede!” That was May 1, 2006, when a marginalized group of Americans announced their presence and the phrase “A New America” began to mean something. Obama knows who he’s appealing to: the future.

That’s why the youth vote might actually mean something this time. Same, too, for the Latino vote. As the rest of America starts to look more like my home, California (that is: browner and younger, with the obvious exceptions of, um, Iowa and New Hampshire) the future—mine, Obama’s, America’s—comes into much clearer focus.

But I’m getting a bit lofty. New Hampshire was a reminder that Youth alone can’t take it. Blind optimism can’t take it. Neither can the Evangelicals or the Unions or Big Oil or Feminists or anybody else. There are no color coded states this time, there is no partisan gang banging. And that is an incredible relief.

A brief closing note: New Hampshire, oddly enough, is also where J.D. Salinger went to disappear. It’s fitting, considering that he is the prophet of the Catcher in the Rye, that bible of younth angst, alienation and disillusionment. But that’s the bible of some previous generations. The Great Generation, The Lost Generation, the Me Generation: they’re either gone or on the way out. We can leave all the all the angst and disillusionment behind in New Hampshire with J.D. It’s time for something new.

IOWA KILLED APATHY

Iowa Killed Apathy
Russell Morse

Many years ago, Kevin Costner starred in a magically absurd film set in Iowa. There were ghosts and corn fields and some baseball and I can’t say I know exactly what it was about, but a famous catch phrase emerged: If you build it, they will come. Last night, Barack Obama built it. And the kids showed up.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m slipping into mindless, sappy optimism, but I will say that after Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before in my young life. And remember, I’m of the generation that saw the Space Shuttle Challenger explode in our faces, yawned at two fruitless and futile wars in the desert, invented school shootings, watched the towers explode and sought solace from the mania inside our cell phones. So I know a few things about pessimism, irony, sarcasm, cynicism and apathy, as you can imagine.

But no longer. Now I’m apathetic about not giving a fuck.

Four years ago, it was my job to document the laughably rigged and painfully boring presidential race between George W Bush and the other guy through the “lens” (yes, editors actually use that word) of young people. I went to the democratic convention in Boston and discovered that all the kids there were drunk, on drugs and cared more about baseball than any election. I went to the Republican Convention in New York and was just creeped out by the wholesome pastiness of over-zealous pre-pubescent Christians and sharply dressed teenaged libertarians.

At the time, I thought it was my generation’s fault. Nothing’s changing because we’re not making it change. If only we were engaged and passionate and opened our eyes, we could undo the wrongs of the drug addled, money hungry false idealists that came before us. But that was far off the mark. We never cared because we never had a reason to care. And I can safely say that as of the evening of January 3, 2008, we do have a reason. It’s a formless ideology known only as “change” and it’s draped loosely across the shoulders of a Kansas Kenyan from Hawaii, but it’s a reason to care.

I had the pleasure of being the first to tell several friends about Obama’s victory and every single one of them gasped, grinned and shrieked with glee. That seem unremarkable, but four years ago, I was sitting down to a hangover breakfast with some young, idealistic and educated people and I told a joke. I asked : “How is John Kerry like a gay man?” They shook their heads and I answered loudly in a crowded café “You won’t see either one of them beating bush!” My friends sat stone faced, blinking heavily until one of them asked, “who’s John Kerry?” To compound things, it was May and Kerry had long since secured the nomination. This time around, we’ve got sixteen year olds watching the Iowa Caucus.

It’s not Obama. It’s not the pending doom of a nuclear Pakistan toppling into the laps of lunatics or Iran swallowing Iraq. It’s not four dollar gas or dead polar bears. It’s not student loans or Mexican dishwashers without paperwork. It’s just time for us to take the wheel and do something right. Or even something dastardly wrong. But something different.

I can’t say whether I’m more excited about Obama’s victory, though, or Hilary’s defeat. As much as I love Bill, I just can’t get behind that woman. She’s a shrew, a tired old partisan with a paranoid conscience and an irritably scripted routine. Her husband is a genuinely great man whom I will always respect and admire, but as they say: every John has his Yoko.

I rejected Hilary’s “patina of inevitability” from the start, but I was afraid hers was a machine that couldn’t be stopped. Much as I considered the maniacally hawkish neo cons and corporate goons calling the shots right now unstoppable, I was afraid we’d be stuck with a Botox-addled Queen Clinton on the Pennsylvania throne for the next four years. But Iowa knew better. And more accurately, the young people of Iowa knew better.

Barack said, “I want youth.” He built the Field of Dreams. And the kids
showed up. They came pouring over the gently rolling, snow dusted plains of the tall corn state with the highest percentage of Radon in its soil (true), the birthplace of Tom Arnold, Ashton Kutcher and Buffalo Bill, where 3 million white people work the land for its corn to sweeten our soda pop and curl our Fritos and they sent a clear message: Apathy is dead. Or whatever.