Calhouns Can(n)ons

Tradition! Tradition!

It’s nice to see, with this “change” election, that the Tribune is still up to their old tricks: Headline for the LOCSD winners, “Kelly, Ochylisky back county plan for Los Osos,” like the other CSD candidates didn’t? Yep, same old spin. To the winners of the CSD, congratulations! You have my deepest sympathies. For the poor citizens of Los Osos, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed. And to all the candidates who ran, my thanks.

Tradition! Tradition!

As of this morning, the Gay Marriage Initiative was still not called, though I won’t hold my breath. Irony of ironies, the Tribune reports that “blacks strongly voted for the ban,” which is sad. Black people, who know first hand the evil done when some citizens are treated to second class status, nevertheless voted to keep some of their fellow citizens in those second class, back of the bus seats. That’s really too bad.

The L.A. Times reported that while polling seemed to favor the No vote, “Perhaps more powerfully, the Proposition 8 campaign also seized on the issue of education, arguing in a series of advertisements and mailers that children would be subjected to a pro-gay curriculum if the measure was not approved.” Never mind that Superintendent of Schools, Jack O’Connell, went on the air to say that was a lie. Waste of time because one can never underestimate the power of the big lie. Or hypocrisy either. Or fear, or ignorance, or bigotry. Mix all those in with religion, and it’s always a step backward.

And not answered in many of the ads is this: Don’t all the religious groups financing the Yes on 8 campaign believe that lying is a sin?

Yet to be seen is what now happens to the thousands of gay couples who are legally married. Will the state force them to get “divorced?” Will they be kept in some legal museum somewhere? Will we end up with three classes of citizens? Straight Marrieds, Gay Marrieds and Constitutionally Not Allowed To Marry Gay Folks? Will somebody sue in federal court? Is that where this is all headed?

UnTradition! UnTradition!

Chickens now get a better shake than gay folks. Hmm, fairer, more humane treatment for chickens, but back of the bus to gay people. Hmmmm. One step forward, one back. Wait, that IS Tradition! Tradition!


Tradition! Tradition!

American voters changed leaders as they are allowed to do every few years and did so very traditionally -- without tanks in the streets. But this time, it was a time for Untradition: For the first time, a U.S. president who isn’t a white male. Amazing.

Some notes:

--Obama’s daughter’s will now get a new puppy when they move into the White House. Let’s hope they set a tradition and adopt one from a local animal shelter?

--At the McCain’s modest sized farewell rally, McCain mentioned Obama and his crowd BOOOOOOED. Obama mentioned McCain at his enormous rally and his crowd applauded. That spoke volumes about character and karmic wheels. McCain’s farewell address seemed a return to the old McCain, the man before he sold his soul to Karl Rove in his lust for the White House. Had the “old” McCain not sold his soul, it’s just possible he could have won. Irony again.

--The ghost of Martin Luther King was evoked in Obama’s speech, talk of mountaintops and rising and falling as one nation. Yes we can. It was a strange déjà vu of John Kennedy’s election, the same young man with his young family, the same young crowds turning out to vote for the first time, the call to a new generation, a falling away of the old BOOOOOOOers, the old, ugly divisive politics slipping away into the past, the clarion call and challenge to the nation to look forward together. Much work to be done, many sacrifices to be made, but to be made together.

What also kept going through my mind was this: When we, as a nation, look back on this period, how can we possibly ever explain George Bush and all that he stands for? For eight years this nation clung so ferociously to it’s self-created dead zone, sleep walking while our elected officials made torture official, dismissed the rule of law and the courts and “disappeared” suspects into the black hole of Guantanamo, where even their appointed Navy lawyers quit in protest, wiretapped citizens, incompetently bungled saving a flooded city, created a culture of branding the loyal opposition as traitors, promoted and protected their cronies while they made off with the silverware and through it all, this country repeatedly said, Yes! Yes! More! More!

How can that possibly be explained? Or at the very least, understood as the danger signal it was. America is not and has never been an exceptional shining city on the hill. Its ideals are veneer thin and its people as easily corrupted as any other nation. It too can be turned into dangerous waters. We ignore that at our peril.