Today II

Something that the right-wingers are going to have to work through in their minds, hard as it may be, is that nobody voting for him sees Obama as some Messianic figure who in his first hour as President is going to desperately spread liberal orgies of immoral craziness and left-wing bombings all over the land. I for one voted for him because he is a calm, efficient pragmatist, which I much prefer to another 4 years of some dude still trying to measure up to "daddy." I only see him achieving real greatness if he gets a second term, as much of the next 3+ years I would assume will be spent untying the fucking knots of the last decade. I see today as the first of many, many, many, MANY steps we will have to slowly take to get back to where we should be as a country.

Nor was I hoodwinked or "seduced" by his Messiah-esque voodoo charms as people on the right like to scoff. Yes, his youth and charisma add an excitement we haven't seen in a while. Maybe we're all just tired of the same old, rich, duller than dull white dudes vaguely prattling on about the same old shit while everybody except the same old, rich, duller than dull white dudes keep getting screwed.

I saw this in the paper this morning, and it struck me as a small way in which Obama will be different. He was asked about drafting a law to make that omnipresent pants-below-the-ass fashion trend illegal. To whit:

"Here is my attitude," said Obama. "I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq, and anybody, any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there.

Having said that," he added, "brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face, that you don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear -- I'm one of them."

What other President have we ever know would've said that? First of all, they wouldn't have been aware of such a thing since I'm guessing they would think that low-riding jeans wearers don't vote, so fuck 'em. And if they WERE actually forced to say something, you now it'd be some rambling, vague "I love America!" nonsense about family values, faith, God, blah blah blah blah. But here we see someone who can walk into ANY community and speak to young people, and say exactly what anybody else would wanna say: "Hey - pull up your fucking pants!!"

Fucking refreshing, no?