Who Are These Women?: A Dispatch from Philadelphia

I’m concerned that this election is turning me into a misogynist.

Last night, I watched Hillary Clinton deliver her victory speech in a hotel in downtown Philadelphia, cringing. I looked around nervously and realized I was in a ballroom full of my mom. Instantly, I became terrified of this middle-aged white woman army, marching through America, stomping young people’s dreams out with their sensible shoes.

After the address, I shared an elevator with several of them, one of whom gleefully snapped, “That and his change didn’t get him Pennsylvania.” Her girlfriends giggled as they emptied the elevator on their way to taunt the Obama supporters who had gathered outside the hotel, one of them with a bullhorn tucked under her arm.

This is a reflection of a lot of these women’s attitudes, as if they resent the notion of change.

It occurs to me, though, that it is not strictly a gender issue. I also take issue with these women because of their age. I am not a declared Obama supporter (though if I vote, I might vote for him), but the attitude of these women is pushing me toward his camp.

Every event I go to, I see them circled up, uttering the phrase, “it’s our turn.” I don’t know what that means. I have come to see Clinton as every teacher, nun, mom, principal and judge who gleefully punished and scolded me my entire life. I see myself in Obama, not because of his ideas or his race, but as a victim of the tyranny of bossy old women.

Outside of the hotel, a group of Clinton supporters yelled at a passing car of Obama supporters, chanting “we won.” I got the sense that when they say “we” they they mean women. I don’t know how to hide this disdain any more. It’s embarrassing. It’s awful. But it’s in me. By the same token, this must be the same thing that latent racists are experiencing in response to Obama.

Hillary’s victory speech came at the end of a long day for me, witnessing the glee and enthusiasm of young Obama supporters in the streets of Philadelphia.

I covered the forgettable election in 2004 with the aim of extracting the “youth voice," a perspective of a new political generation. The problem came when I realized there was no new political generation, just a lot of old people poisoning young minds to fall in line.

During the Republican Convention, George Lucas told me that the world was controlled by corrupt old people twisting malleable, idealistic young minds. As a result, all of the young people I talked to during that disastrous campaign were more interested in drugs, alcohol and baseball. It was nearly impossible to get anybody to talk about the election.

I felt nerdy, like I was trying to draw members of my generation into a debate about Star Trek. Now, almost regrettably, I can’t escape political discussions.

I’m realizing, after my visit to Philadelphia, that a generational divide is developing as a result of this election that might not ever be repaired -- not that it should be. Tuesday morning, I boarded a bus in New York’s Chinatown for Philadelphia’s Chinatown on the other end.

I sat next to a young Ghanaian college student who grew up in New York and the conversation quickly became political. I didn’t even bring it up, he just started offering his opinions on Hillary, Barack and the tax code. “The rebates don’t make any sense”, as he pushes his glasses back on his forehead. Not surprisingly, he’s an Obama supporter.

As I made my way off the bus in Philadelphia, I entered the realm of election mania. Market Street was crowded with Black teenagers toting hand painted Obama signs and singing double dutch rhymes.

Street vendors lined the street, selling t-shirts with slogans like, “Stop the drama. Vote Obama.”

There was even a dress code: Phillies hat, Obama t-shirt. And spotted in the crowd were some odd anomalies: middle aged white women in visors, clutching Hillary signs, looking scared of roving packs of the young and colorful -- with the occasional black Clinton supporter or older white female Obama backer blowing up the sterotype.

I made my way through downtown to meet with a woman, Mrs. Hopson, who is volunteering for Obama’s campaign in Philadelphia. She is a middle aged black woman, newly politicized. In 1980, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and as a result, she is in a wheelchair, though she leads a very active life. She’s always voted, but she tells me she’s never been particularly excited. I was curious if she was ever torn in the course of this election. She laughed and shook her head. “I was never conflicted. From the beginning, I knew I was for Hillary. And then Barack got in it and, well . . . “

From Mrs. Hopson’s house, I made my way to City Hall, where supporters of both campaigns had gathered to wave signs and chant at passing cars.

It was a massive collection of people, crowding the steps of this city’s iconic center to capacity. It was peaceful, but there was tension, with both camps trying to “out-chant” each other. O-ba-ma and Hil-la-ry can be shouted in the same cadence.

I realized that if you took away all the signs and t-shirts, it would still be easy to identify who was who. One side of the stairs was crowded by the post-feminism feminists with color treated hair and dour looks of Clinton’s camp.

The other side was busy with the young, jubilant and multicultural people of Obama’s team. As they turned their chants towards each other, it became a jarring, battling symphony of adolescent enthusiasm versus menopausal angst.

I made my way to South Philly to meet up with some friends, a young couple who just bought a home in this historic neighborhood. After work, they went to the elementary school on the corner to vote together. I don’t want to project anything onto their relationship, but they’re clearly in love and excited about starting a life together.

I was happy to walk with them and share that moment. They’re not strictly “political people,” but they’re aware and invested, which is increasingly common in my generation. For the first time, I felt like I was witnessing the future unfold: a young, interracial couple, optimistic and happy.

Hours later, I was entrenched in the ugliness and entitlement of the baby boomers, as the numbers came in and Pennsylvania broke, predictably, for Hillary.

Pope Benedict XVI in the Holy City

The day before Pope Benedict was to arrive in New York City on his first visit here as vicar, as God on earth - a taxicab burst into flames on Fifth Avenue.

It could not be extinguished and policemen and firemen cleared the street, closed it to traffic as the yellow Ford smoldered, alone in the middle of five lanes. This oddity, which hurt no one, occurred in the middle of the most elegant shopping drag in the free world. It burnt amid Cartier and Chanel and Tiffany's and directly in front of St. Patrick's cathedral, where Benedict XIV said mass only days later.

Curious, anxious Catholic that I am, I took this as a miracle. I took the burning cab as a modern day burning bush, here in the holy city of New York, an omen. An announcement. I listened for updates, straining my ears for the voice of God.

Throughout my life, I have turned to the Catholic Church (and not necessarily God) for guidance in difficult times. At fifteen, as my chest heaved from running to escape a court ordered institution, my partner Gustavo and I paused in a corn field for a moment to ask God for a car to steal so we could get away before the police came. He heard our pleas and as thanks, we later attended mass at the same parish where I served as altar boy.

We spoke to the priest afterwards, the three of us leaning on the hood of our stolen car in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, and he advised that we turn ourselves in.

I am what my mother calls a “cultural Catholic.” An Irish Mexican Kentuckian from California, my Catholicism was my strongest identifier growing up. And still, my faith long since questioned and largely washed away, I get ashes on Ash Wednesday. I wear a scapular, assuring my entrance to heaven. I cross myself on planes at take off and landing. And when the Pope comes to visit, I see a burning cab as a messenger from God.

I call New York a holy city and I mean that. I realize that truth more and more now, as a recent transplant to New York from San Francisco. It is a city of shrines and holy places: to Babe Ruth in Yankee Stadium, to commercialism in Times Square and the holy of holies, to expansive wealth itself in the form of a bronze bull (father of a golden calf) at the foot of Wall Street.

I am a young person, in the midst of my obligatory American pilgrimage to New York City. Success! Trial by fire! We are actors, writers, dancers, models, piano players, tunneling each day for hours, clawing through the sewers from places like Williamsburg to emerge in the dazzling light of an island of staggering wealth and boundless opportunity. A holy city.

It has become such a protected shrine of wealth that you can no longer find homeless people or beggars on the street in Manhattan. They’ve been banished, in the same sweep by a Catholic mayor that turned Times Square into an elaborate parody of the Las Vegas parody of New York: pornography theaters turned into the most ostentatious Applebee's in America, the most opulent Olive Garden.

And awaiting the Pope’s arrival, I had to ask myself what his interpretation of this place would be. There is no room for the poor here. No room for the soul, even. Would he be like Jesus in the temple of cheaters and misers, tipping over tables and shouting?

Where would he visit? What would he say? As it turns out, he visited the holiest places in the holy city: Ground Zero and Yankee Stadium. These places, incidentally, are the inspiration for the majority of tattoos in this city, as well: a Yankees logo on one bicep, “Never Forget” on the other.

The Pope’s visit to Ground Zero is particularly eerie, praying over what is still in our minds, rubble. A destroyed monument of wealth. It feels biblical, like Jericho or Jerusalem. But there was no such profundity. Pope Benedict breezed through here like a rock star, shaking hands, waving. He prayed along classic themes: peace on earth, benevolence. And people came out for that.

People cried and cheered. They sang and prayed. It wasn’t earth shattering or life altering for any one that I could see, though. The flaming cab predicted nothing. And now Benedict is gone.

When I was younger, my mother and I would go to church together every Sunday. I was a teenager and these were difficult times in our relationship - shortly before she moved out - but we still went together, just she and I. I was the altar boy and she was the lector. Afterwards, we would go to a donut shop on Clement Street for something to eat. We didn’t usually talk. She would page through the bulletin, sipping her coffee. I would watch the old Chinese men smoke cigarettes and play cards, laughing and yelling. Not earth shattering or life altering, but these are some of my most pleasant memories of time spent with my mother.

The Pope’s presence here, though brief and kind of mundane, solidifies New York as a holy city. His choice to visit here, to visit Fifth Avenue and Ground Zero and Yankee Stadium makes those places that much holier. And to see the throngs of people lining the street, crying and cheering, indicates that his visit breathed some love and benevolence into a generally soulless place, if just for a couple of days.

Tibetan Monks and Frat Boys Unite!

As the U.S. dollar marinates in the world economy’s toilet and as we consider whether to elect a woman or a black man president, and our young people limit their political outrage to wearing ironic T-shirts, it’s a good thing that China is becoming the "evil-er" empire.

It might just give us a breather to re-brand America.

Last Saturday when I read a report that local authorities had tear-gassed a large group of Michigan State students I was at once shocked and inspired. After five years of war and 4000 American casualties, young people in America, I thought, had risen up in defiance.

As I read further, however, I discovered that the melee was not an anti-war protest, but was instead prompted by a group of rowdy frat boys with bellies full of Jägermeister, throwing bottles and trash at police officers. In fact, it was such a Mountain Dew rush for them to be attacking the police that at one point, they began chanting “TEAR GAS! TEAR GAS!” in the hopes that the cops would invent a new X-Treme Doritos flavor in their eyeballs.

This news broke in the same week that people in London and Paris caused international spectacles by disrupting the passage of the Olympic torch in protest of China’s human rights abuses. It also came less than a month after real riots exploded in Tibet, where businesses were burned and people killed. The amount of negative attention being paid to China right now gives me some hope that the United States can pass the torch of international scorn on to them.

China’s troubles continued throughout the week, specifically in San Francisco, as thousands gathered and protested the Olympic torch (while others gathered to support it, mostly Chinese) and others gathered just to take pix of well-protected Olympic torch runners.

For most of us, knowledge of Tibet is limited to obscure blips on the popular culture radar: Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child, cracking wise with Buddhist monks, Brad Pitt lost in the Himalayas, and the Beastie Boys’ habit of hosting epic concerts in the name of the struggle. I’m not saying any of this to degrade my generation or give the tired mockery of an ignorant American populace. I certainly don’t mean to undermine the nature of the Tibetan struggle, but it’s just so far removed from relevance when you put it in an American context. But the fact that China has become a nation on the verge of superpower status that has an even more atrocious reputation than the United States is a good thing for the United States.

I mean we get a break for a minute, with the focus on the other empire, and we should try and ride it out. While the world is distracted by an “evil-er evil,” we can use the time to focus on electing a president and answering questions like, “How can we not turn into a poverty-stricken nation of train hopping drunken hobos?” and “Why not have talks with Iran?”

If we do that, by the time the last eastern European growth-stunted teenaged gymnast has tossed her last hula-hoop and China is still beating the world off its back, we’ll have a new America to present to the world. All the kids with Obama stickers on their backpacks will do their homework and be able to explain an effective international intervention in Darfur, a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, a reasonable Iraq troop withdrawal timetable, a long term alternative energy plan, an economic stimulus package, heath care reform and a fair immigration policy.

After that mess is sorted, America’s young people can assemble a life from the rubble and adopt the post-empire lifestyle of Europe: drafting manifestos and drinking wine while passing harsh political judgment on those rich, arrogant, imperialist pigs with all the good movies: the Chinese.

Tupac Obama: The Real Dream Ticket

I can remember very clearly where I was when I learned that Tupac Shakur was dead. It was a pivotal and momentous event in my young life and I will always be able to tell the story of where I was when I heard the news.

On Wednesday morning as Barack Obama delivered his now famous address on race in America, I again knew that I was witnessing something that I would remember for the rest of my life.

I draw that parallel between two radically different men (a convicted rapist and the former editor of the Harvard law review) to highlight a startling truth: those men have captivated, intrigued and inspired my generation more than any other person I can name.

Tupac Shakur’s name is on more lips than usual this week because the LA Times ran a front page story Monday which yet again rattled the cage of mystery surrounding his death. The story quotes several unnamed sources (jailhouse snitches, most of them) who claim that Sean “P Diddy” Combs had prior knowledge of an attack on Tupac.

The attack, which did not go according to plan, is the event that ignited the now fossilized “east coast west coast beef” of the mid-nineties which ended in the deaths of both Tupac and Notorious BIG. (Biggy Smalls)

The LA Times has published some other preposterous garbage concerning these murders, one such story contained a claim that Biggie gave a Crip a million dollars and his own gun to kill Tupac. I would not be surprised if Chuck Phillips, the reporter filing these stories, has a screenplay he wants to sell because the sum of these stories is essentially unsubstantiated Hollywood foolishness.

But Maybe I’m off base. Maybe Phillips and the editors at the Times are onto something. Maybe, for example, Tupac really did roll a joint while dripping blood from five bullet holes (as Phillips’ piece reports), but I’m more inclined to say that this story smells like caca. (Something closer to the truth can be foundin a book called Labyrinth, which implicates members of the LAPD in both murders.) As it turns out, however, it doesn’t really matter.

As I read the story, I wondered if this case is even relevant any more. The kids who are buying rap records now (or downloading them on itunes, whatever) were six years old when Tupac was killed. They still wear t-shirts with his picture on them and can quote his songs, but they only know him as a figure. The mystery surrounding his death isn’t relevant because the only Tupac they know is a dead icon, a hallowed saint of American rap history.

This is the only way I ever knew JFK.

Mentioning Kennedy in this context brings me back to the enthusiasm which members of my generation share concerning Barack Obama’s candidacy. We’ve never seen a politician like this: a man who intrigues and unites, speaks frankly and eloquently about race and inspires historically apathetic young men and women to participate in the democratic process.

We’ve only heard stories about the men like this that came before. And we also know that all of them were shot and killed and had high schools named after them.

Tupac’s legacy is in line with the Kennedy’s and Dr. King’s if only in his ability to inspire and communicate. In fact, aside from the truth that Shakur and Obama are both attractive black men, the only thing they really have in common is that they are both incredibly gifted orators.

My generation values an effective communicator and that’s fitting, as we came up in the communication age. Tupac showed us that you can be a super communicator: a rapper, actor, poet and, yes, even a politician.

This is a footnote from Tupac’s story that often goes overlooked. At the time of his murder, he was flirting with politics, speaking at voter registration drives in South Central Los Angeles.

True conspiracy theorists have floated the idea that the US Government killed Tupac because they saw his potential power as a political leader and were threatened by it. I wouldn’t go that far, but I would say that if he wasn’t killed and he decided on a life in politics, he would have done quite well, criminal record be damned.

I spent most of the day on Tuesday after Obama’s staggeringly eloquent speech puzzling over these men and their respective resonance with people of my generation. As evening approached, it occurred to me that while I’ve been to countless political events this campaign season, it’s been quite a while since I went to a hip-hop show. So I got off my Brooklyn couch and went into the city to see Masta Ace (of "Born to Roll" fame) perform and ask some people what they thought of the new development in the Tupac case.

When I first got to the club, I was pleased to discover that even on a cold Tuesday night, hip-hop can still bring a crowd. The activity in front of the venue was dominated by a group of about 20 young black kids pouring out of a white hummer limo with New Jersey plates, dressed impeccably and ostentatiously in silver shoes, gold teeth and blindingly white baseball hats.

Their arrival punctuated by the clink of empty Hennessey bottles falling from the back seat of the limo and onto the Manhattan sidewalk.

I went inside behind them, trying to blend into the entourage and spent some time at the bar, watching the show. After a while, I made my way across the room and walked past a familiar face in the crowd, a man I recognized as Q-Tip from the wildly famous and influential Queens rap group A Tribe Called Quest. I managed to get his attention and ask a couple questions about the Tupac case.

He was very quick to strike down the speculation about Puffy as divisive; something hip-hop doesn’t need right now. When I asked him if the deaths of Tupac and Biggie were still relevant, he smacked his lips and told me, “Of course it’s relevant. These are our icons. But all this mess isn’t going to bring them back.”

I nodded and thanked him for his time. It is a sign of our gradual maturing that my generation’s mantle of icons has expanded to allow room for someone like Barack Obama. It is the hope of millions of young people that he can appeal to the rest of America, who are older and whiter and decidedly not Tupac fans.