Undecideds I Can/Can’t Understand.

The article is from Time.

Sheen, of Lincoln, Nebraska, says his vote is coming down to one issue: abortion. Sheen says he’s “definitely pro-life” and he’s trying to decide whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain is more in line with his views.  “Neither of them have the track record I would like in a political candidate. So at this point, it’s me sort of deciding upon, who do I think will be the best representation for if something is able to happen with the issue of abortion,” he says.  – Isn’t this one pretty clear?  Someone who is anti-abortion (I don’t agree with the term “pro-life”) has only one choice here, no?  One candidate will appoint conservative justices, one will appoint more liberal ones.  Am I missing something?

In McCain’s home state of Arizona, iReporter Kyle Aevermann, 21, is preparing to vote in his first presidential election. He is one of the few who has yet to reach a decision on his vote, although he knows he will not vote for the state’s long-time senator. Aevermann is debating between Obama and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, although he acknowledges voting for McKinney might be a “waste of a vote.”  – This kind of undecided I get.  This is where I was with Nader/Gore way back when.  I broke for Nader, largely because I knew it didn’t matter much in New York.  Gore simply didn’t represent my views as well as Nader did.  And honestly, McKinney probably represents my views as well if not slightly better than Obama.  I’ve made a decision to get behind someone I feel is competent enough to handle the job, and who has great symbolic and cultural weight.  The fact that I agree with lots of his ideals make the decision a lot easier.  Still, I completely get the pull between voting for major party vs. third/fourth party in terms of following one’s conscience.  Paul supporters, McKinney supporters — it makes sense to me that they’re undecided.

But McCain vs. Obama?  You’re torn still?  Really?

Why Pumpkins Have Made Me Teary.

A few weeks back, a big group of us went apple picking and pumpkin patching. Someone, in passing, joked that we should should carve pictures of Obama into our pumpkins instead of the traditional jack-o-lantern. I’m not sure anyone from our group did it, or carved our pumpkins at all (I didn’t even bring one home).

Today, I got a look at this. And I got a little misty-eyed.

So here’s the thing. As we get down to the wire in the presidential election, it looks more and more like the work we’ve done over the last few years (and many folks have done far more than me, clearly) might be rewarded. By proxy, the work we did four years ago on behalf of John Kerry — that’s being rewarded in this campaign as well. So this all is eight years in the making. A lot of money has gone into this. A lot of money. My friend Bill Bragin raised $40,000, largely through Facebook and a big old birthday party. I’ve never seen anything like that happen before for a presidential campaign. And it’s beautiful. We’ve rallied around a leader for once, instead of fighting against a candidate we couldn’t stand. We’ve been given symbols and slogans, a powerful and presidential face to stand behind, a common figure to inspire similarly-minded folks to unite.

And we’re carving pumpkins, an entirely local act, an entirely individual act that then spreads out to one’s community, only since there’s a common theme and a common bond and a common location to send all our pics and videos, we stand together in a visible way on a national and international scale. They’re pumpkins, yeah. And they’re marketing logos, for sure. And they’re centered around the cult of personality, the celebrity of Barack Obama, celebrating him the way fans of a hip-hop star or a famous actor might celebrate their own entertainment matinee idol. I get all that. I understand people’s concerns about so many people throwing so much of their faith behind one guy. I get that the big rallies, the catchy signs, the wholehearted devotion (often even blind devotion) to the eloquent speechifying, they all conjure up images of cults and political movements that don’t always lead to the best results. I get it.

But listen to what folks are saying during the pumpkin video:

“It’s going to be about living for every other American.”

“I don’t want a nation just for me. I want a nation for everybody.”

“We’re organizing ourselves. The campaign helps us, but we’re organizing ourselves.”

And that, my friends (to steal a phrase from Senator McCain) is what’s happening here, at least theoretically. That’s what we’ve got to be excited about. Personal responsibility, not just for one’s self and finances and health and safety, but for everyone around you. And that, to me, is the only way to go, even on the most selfish level. If you want to be safe, and healthy, and prosperous, you need the folks around you to be safe and healthy and prosperous. If you want to hold on to what you have, the best way to do that is to make sure that the folks around you have enough. That’s this “spreading the wealth” idea that seems so foreign and evil to so many conservatives (or at least to the McCain camp). So folks are carving pumpkins, and the pumpkins mean nothing — they’re just a symbol of reaching out to the folks around you. And I love that.

The concern, of course, is that folks will forget that the pumpkins (and the man on them) are just symbols of the cause, not the cause themselves. Go back to Tupac and the Notorious BIG. Both were genius MCS with major flaws (BIG had incredible flow, but nothing to say. Pac was just the opposite: lots to say, not a lot of art to how he said it.), and both became symbols of something greater, especially in death. Folks believed in what both those guys brought to the table, and wanted to emulate them. Problem was, it was really hard to rhyme like BIG. It was really hard to open yourself up like Pac. All that required work, and folks chose not to put that work in. Instead, they picked up the easier stuff to copy: BIG’s subject matter, Pac’s flow. They got the worst of both worlds. They celebrated the symbol, but lost sight of what actually made the symbol worth celebrating.

That’s my biggest fear in all this. If Obama gets elected, the work has just started.

“Hope and change” doesn’t mean that we’re hoping to change who lives in the White House. “Hope and change” doesn’t apply to the election — it applies to what the election theoretically will allow us to do. I’ll repeat: “will allow us to do.” Obama’s going to have to hold up his part, for sure. He’s making a lot of promises. He can’t possibly keep them all. We have to be aware of that. We have to be realistic in what can happen over four years, over eight years. We also have to demand that the man we rallied behind, the man we raised hundreds of millions of dollars for, stands up and leads and remembers what he’s led us to believe he stands for. We need to demand results. We need to hold him to an almost impossibly high standard. Yes, all those things are true.

But ultimately, we need to take what this campaign has given us, and we need to take it regardless of if he wins or not, and we need to hold ourselves to that almost impossibly high standard as well. “Hope” has been mocked in this election as a slogan, not a way to solve problems. And those mockers are right. Hope in and of itself is worthless. Hope will not take care of our problems. Carving the word into your pumpkin doesn’t make our country safer, our communities tighter, our art more truthful or more beautiful.

But.

Hope allows us, empowers us, impels us to get out there and do those things ourselves.

So carve your pumpkins. Paint your lawns. Hell, get a tattoo. Do whatever it takes to remind you of the mission and the message and the ultimate goals.

Just remember that this election is a step. A relatively small step at that. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

McCain/Palin on NBC.

Tonight’s interview with Brian Williams.

I don’t want to comment.  I want to leave it to you to decide what you think.

But I do have to ask: how many of the questions are actually answered?

Explain It to Me, McCain Supporters.

Maybe more accurately: explain it to me, undecideds.

I watch the debates, and I see one candidate who (and let’s put aside “values” and “issues” for a second) is calm and measured, who answers questions placed before him by providing a logical context, then ennumerating step-by-step the plans he’d take towards solving the problems at hand, who speaks eloquently and specifically about the state of the world and the United States’ position within it.  On the other side, I see a man who comes off cranky and unsettled, who paces nervously while the other candidate is speaking, who tosses off snide comments as jokes (that immediately plummet to earth with a thud).

I don’t get it.

Yes, I know the issues are important.  Most people vote on the issues.  I vote on the issues.

But the difference here is clear.  The difference between Biden and Palin is clear.  This shouldn’t even be a race.

UPDATED: This is a long, very interesting take on the whole thing from an outsider perspective.  A lot of it actually makes sense to me–I need to spend some more time with it, of course, because I’m not sure I can wrap my mind around all the accusations just yet.  And I’m certainly going to try to spend some Ron Paul/Cynthia McKinney time here on these pages shortly.  But here’s the thing: listening to these two folks last night, there are obvious differences.  One candidate is more acceptable than the other.  It’s incremental change in the grand scheme of things, but it’s huge in the here and now.

Obama Has An Arts Policy.

You can read it here.

If I didn’t have other reasons to vote for Obama, the existence of this arts policy would be enough.  Highlights:

*Money/resources for arts education,
*Increased NEA funding,
*Health care for artists (as part of his health care plan),
*Increased emphasis on cultural diplomacy and exchange.

Arts are my issue.

Here’s another, more detailed article about both candidates and their view towards the arts.

And here are some artists making their choices known (thanks to Marlene for directing me to them):

And of course, you’ve seen this one:

And this one:

White Privilege, Male Privilege, and Obama.

Great article on white privilege here.  Some thoughts:

*I talk a lot about this concept in my day-to-day life, usually avoiding the term “white privilege” because, well, it tends to scare white people and make me come off as the angry Latino.  I’d say that the vast majority of rooms I find myself in (particularly in the theater world) are full of unspoken but readily accepted privilege, and that even the positive-minded conversations we’re having during this election cycle drip with that privilege.

*Years ago, I taught at an activistic high school/afterschool program run primarily by people of color (Latinos, to be precise).  There were a remarkable number of women in high places in the organization, and it was through my relationships with those women that I first became aware of my male privilege–the ability to dress however I wanted without fear or repercussion, the fact that I was instantly taken more seriously be certain people in power due to my gender, the inherent assumed authority I was given in rooms with female peers and even superiors.  Over the five years I worked with those women, I learned (in often painful ways) to be aware of my privilege, relinquish it when necessary, embrace it on occasion, and most of all, to empathize with the women who were victims of it.

I think that one of the reasons I was able to understand male privilege is because I was (and still am) on the flip side of white privilege.  I find myself in rooms (often) where the burden of speaking for all people of color falls to me, because I’m the only non-white in the room.  I write plays that are destined to compete for single spots in theater’s seasons with every other writer of color, even if our work is vastly, impossibly different.  I see how screwed up the system is, and it makes me not want to perpetuate that system with my own privileged power.

*One of my old colleagues–a white women (now married to a Dominican man)–wrote this a few years back.  I think it’s a good place to start.

And this is all I’ll say about that.

Go here for some good Alaska insight on the Sarah Palin experience — I’ve obviously got nothing I can add on any substantial front about who she is or why she’s been selected.  That post does a pretty good job of explaining it all, I think.  While you’re at it, check out what the very smart Miss Erica (fellow Liam Tancock hater) has to say too.

But here’s all I’ll say about it: the big story of the last few days was, and still is, that speech.  In fact, it was the whole convention.  Democrats–and a lot of them–are excited about our candidate in a huge way.  In fact, Democrats–and a lot of them–are excited about the entire party in a huge way that I wouldn’t have imagined possible four years ago.  80+ grand packed into that stadium and heard Obama clearly delineate his agenda, speak powerfully and eloquently, and call for the kind of common ground decision-making that is mandatory for effectively running any kind of organization that calls for consensus.  It was a historic moment, and it deserves to be remembered and built upon.

This is not a time to be reactive, folks.

If you’re excited about what you saw at the convention, be excited.  If you believe in Obama, support him.  If you believe in Biden, support him.  If you believe in any of the folks who believe in Obama/Biden and have implored you to stand behind them, support them.  Don’t hedge your bets out of fear of what could go wrong.  Don’t complain about the timing of the GOP VP announcement–that’s politics.  Don’t let the small details and difficulties and fears make this decision for you.

Yes, Obama is a politician.  So is everyone else involved in all this.  The fact that he’s good at the politics aspect of this biz shouldn’t work against him.  Nor should his popularity.  If you’re excited about what you’ve seen, be excited.

Don’t be reactive.  Don’t get bogged down in what you might perceive as pandering to the female vote.  Don’t get hung up what you dislike; rock with what you like.  And if you like what you’ve seen, like it.  Love it.  Embrace it.  The rest is distraction.  In ‘04, the work was all anti-Bush, not pro-Kerry.  But folks: we can be pro-Obama here.

And look.  If you dislike stuff about what you see, dislike it.  Question it.  Hold his feet to the flames.  The promises are large and perhaps unrealistic.  But, for me at least, they are infinitely better than the alternative, which means…I’m not concerned with the alternative at all.  I’m excited.

I feel like I might be a little rambly and unclear here, but I’m sure I’ll revisit this a ton.  The basic premise is pretty straightforward though: welcome to the race, Ms. Palin.  It’ll be interesting to see what you’ve got to say.

But I’ve already got something about which to be excited.

Hillary.

i’m listening to her speech for the first time right now.  Here are thoughts as I have them:

*”No way, no how, no McCain.” — Gangster.  And here’s the thing: she can be just as gangster and just as important to the Democratic Party without being the Presidential nominee or even the VP nom.  Obama can stay somewhat above the fray–because that’s kind of who he is–and folks like gangster Hillary can keep doing the important work that they do for the party.  I like the way this works.

*PUERTO RICO!  HOO!

*”Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits” — slightly less gangster, but the idea is a good one.

*The more I listen to her, the more pleased I am with the way things worked out.  I think she’s powerful and important.  She speaks well, she’s smart, she’s got moxie (and I debated long and hard before using that word, because I don’t mean it condescendingly), she’s a vital part of the Democratic Party.  But I think she’s going to do better things for this country outside of the White House than she would have from the inside.

*They’re going hard at gay rights this convention–good for the Dems.  Kennedy mentioned it, Hillary’s all over it–good stuff.

*She is doing such a good job of the “and that is why I am supporting Barack Obama for President.”

*”Were you in it just for me?” — DO YOUR THING, HILLARY!  This is exactly what I want Barack to ask to, especially Barack, to ask all of us who are standing behind him to make sure that we’re not just standing behind him, but standing together for the ideals that he and Hillary (and everybody including crazy ass awesome Kucinich) stand for.

*She is the striker, folks.  She’s got no restrictions, and is saying all the attack type stuff on McCain and Bush–again, she’s opening the door for Barack to be what he needs to be–cool, calm, above the fray.

*The woman voting stuff is so fundamental and important, and now it’s a part of the discourse for the years to come.  It’s a goddamn great thing to hear.

*HARRIET TUBMAN!  Hillary’s greatest moment is Harriet Tubman!  She’s suddenly turned into a preacher, and I effing love it.

Great speech.  Here it is.

1st Rule of Comedy: Don’t Punch a Monkey.

I’ve got this weird anti-sketch comedy bias in my head, and it’s really got no foundation in any kind of fact. In reality, I kind of dig sketch. I studied it a bit in graduate school (grad school part one, that is), and while I wasn’t great at writing it (I have a hard time with jokes–most of the humor in my plays comes from character and develops over time), I had a really good time watching the process of putting it all together. And I still dig SNL, even if the only time I really watch these days is when Justin Timberlake is on. Seriously. I think he’s kind of the most genius sketch performer of our time, and I said that way before Dick in a Box. But for some reason, when I hear about sketch shows, I kind of cringe. Maybe I expect juvenile humor from folks who are trying too hard. And maybe sometimes you get that. Okay, maybe often you get that.

On Monday of last week though, I went to Maude night at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and even though it was a long, long, long night of sketch, I kind of dug the damn thing. Maude night basically consists of four sketch teams doing 30 minutes of live (and some pre-recorded) material (with some long breaks mixed in there). The reason we were in attendance was the ridiculously funny Christine Nangle, who writes for the group 27 Kidneys, but there was my dilemma–see, The Nang is super funny person (and on her blog), but who knows how that will carry over to sketch? And she was writing, not performing–what if she had incapable actors? It’s a tricky thing, going to see friends’ work for the first time.

But we settled in (I was with Kool K and Joanne, who I don’t have a good nickname for yet), and we watched the first group, and they were pretty damn funny. Good start. And then the moment of truth–27 Kidneys gets ready to start up, and they cover the stage in Obama paraphernalia, and I’m thinking “this could either be awesome, or this could really suck, and then what do I say?” Needless to say, it was pretty awesome, and not in a way I could have possibly imagined; a Hillary Clinton-remix of the opening song from Beauty and the Beast is a hell of a way to kick off your sketch show. And it was the whole damn song.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet–Christine was one of a bunch of writers for the Kidneys, so we couldn’t be sure that when we were laughing, it was actually her who was making us laugh. When the show was over though, she informed us that she had indeed written my favorite sketch, which was about a safe sex educator and involved some kind of cobbler covered in mayonnaise and vienna sausages which was pummeled by the Incredible Hulk (in theaters now). Good, and relieving, times.

None of which is the point of this post, which is becoming a recurring theme–I start out intending to write about something, but it takes 500 words (525, says my word count) to even get to what I’m actually attempting to get to, and those of you who have seen or read Welcome to Arroyo’s (which, by the way, is being published next year in the first critical anthology of hip-hop theater, which means I’m a pioneer of a whole effing genre, and I will soon have the documentation to prove it, thank you very much) are undoubtedly beginning to understand where the character Lelly Santiago comes from, and why she talks about sushi in such a ridiculously roundabout way, and this is also why I am not good at sketch comedy.

Ahem.

The last group of the evening (at Maude night–jeez, stay with me) was called…hmm…I can’t remember. Ah yes–Stone Cold Fox. They happened to be incredibly funny all in all, starting off with a sketch in which John McCain brags about his ability to crash airplanes, and then carrying over into a recurring sketch about the CEO of the Cadbury Egg Company and his inability to grasp the importance of Easter to his company’s bottom line. Really smart, high-quality stuff, and it got some of the best laughs of the night, even from a crowd that had been there for almost three hours at that point.

And now, here’s why I actually wanted to write this post.

So Stone Cold Fox had this one video clip that was a fake ad for, I believe, a “monkey punch-porium.” Basically, this was a place where one could pay their money and punch a monkey. Clip after clip of cute monkey popped on the screen, and a superimposed boxing glove would whack them. And you know what? The monkeys proved to be the only sacred cows (mixed animal metaphor) in the entire show. The audience did not laugh. And this audience was ready to laugh at anything. There was just that kind of silence that you only get when topical humor hits the wrong nerve with your audience, and they’re not exactly offended, but they just don’t want to follow you down that road.

I kind of wanted to yell “TOO SOON!” (as best seen when Gilbert Gottfried joked about 9/11 at Hugh Hefner’s roast right after 9/11, leading Gilbert to tell “The Aristocrats” joke, and indirectly leading to the movie of the same name), but I couldn’t think of any recent monkey punching incident that could be inspiring the reaction.

People just love their monkeys.

And yes, I wrote 931 words just to write that sentence.

Yes We Will, Part Two.

So this is the post I had intended to write when I accidentally wrote the last post instead.

I want to write about Obama.

Back in February, I said this:

So okay, it’s not a shock that I’d be voting for this guy. I’m a member of the hip-hop generation. There’s a cool ass Black dude–a Progressive cool ass Black dude–running for President? Of course he gets my vote. He’s from Chicago, he plays basketball, he owns up to his youthful indiscretions? Sign me up. And he can speak? He can speak with rhythm, with flavorful cadences, with enthusiasm and passion and accessibility? He can speak to me, directly to me, the way so many hip-hop artists and theater artists and neighborhood geniuses have spoken to me, full of confidence without bluster, swagger with compassion, spirit and spirituality and yeah, I say this without irony, love in his voice and his heart? And he’s young, he’s handsome, he’s–I can’t believe I’m saying this–electable? I’m voting. I voted. I ride for Barack.

(And again, I’ll post the original note from February here in this blog shortly.)

On some level, there’s nothing else to say. Things haven’t changed. This dude, purely on surface, is the candidate I wanted. The look, the sound of his voice, the family–it all comes pretty damn near what I’d design were I designing my ideal political candidate. But then I listen to what he says, and yo…he’s right where I want him to be. John McCain kicked off the night of speeches by tearing into Obama, commenting on his perceived lack of record in terms of reaching across the aisle to make partisan decisions. And say what you want about that discussion, school me on what the truth is there, because I honestly don’t know, but I know this: McCain almost sing-songed that part of his speech, trying to make it sound like a taunt, trying to goad a reaction out of, well, somebody, although I imagine he knows it’s unlikely to be Obama, because, for a junior statesman, that dude outclasses the old guard when it comes to campaign stump civility.

(Although I have to admit there was a little dig at McCain in Obama’s speech, and it was subtle and got a laugh. The difference, I think, was that Obama was responding to and deflecting an unprovoked criticism, and ended up looking above the fray as a result.)

But look. I’m falling into political analysis, and I’m not qualified for that. Here’s what I know:

1. I have never been more excited about a presidential candidate.

2. I have never before donated money to a presidential candidate.

3. I have never seen my friends–my non-politicized friends I’m talking here–get so excited about a candidate.

And I’m trying to be some kind of articulate somewhere in this, to really express what I’m feeling, what I felt when I listened to that speech tonight, to both those speeches tonight, and my words have left me, have run off to rest up knowing that the next what is it, five months, will provide ample opportunity and steady demand for eloquence on behalf of the first candidate I’m proud to call my candidate.

So I’ll try this.

If you dig back into the previous posts on this here blog, you’ll find A Fairy Tale. It’s the story of a little poison tree frog who feels like he might have lost his way. Our hero, the tree frog, is frozen into inaction by self-doubt, by this nagging feeling that he’s done the wrong thing with his little poison tree frog life, and he gets this feeling because he looks around him and he sees that what he’s good at–what he is–is not represented in the rest of the poison tree frog community, is not valued by the mainstream of the poison tree frog world.

Well, there’s a second chapter to that story, and it goes like this.

So as the poison tree frog is stuck, as he’s frozen, as the fear is starting to overwhelm him, and as he begins to wish he was something other than he is–BAM. Barack Obama shows up.

Just kidding.

Right as our hero the tree frog feels like he can’t be who he is anymore, he looks up at the highest branch on one of the highest trees in the whole effing forest, and there he sees another poison tree frog, and while that frog doesn’t look exactly like our hero, or sound exactly like our hero, or even share much of a background in common with our hero–he speaks our hero’s language. And no one else on such a high branch has ever felt so in line with our hero’s needs and wants and cultural aesthetic.

And our hero, for the first time in a long time, knows that it’s not enough to climb as high as he has already climbed. Because the precedent now exists. Poison Tree Frogs can go higher. He knows. He’s seen it.

And so he starts to climb.