November

They’re gonna kill him. You know they’re gonna get him—these white folks ain't gonna let no black man be President of their country—girl, puh-lease!

There’s one line in the ethics report from the Alaskan State Legislature, the bi-partisan (partial) censure of Governor Sarah Palin for abuse of power regarding her attempted ousting of her former brother-in-law as a state trooper, one sentence that offers Palin (and of course, McCain) a tiny ray of hope--you just know Rick Davis and company are going to leap on it and ride it for all its worth every freaking day 'til election day to put as positive a spin on this otherwise unpleasant news as possible--and I can't at this moment remember what that single line is, because...

...because I am still slowly shaking my head at the televised images of a flustered John McCain trying to calm down these angry, ignorant numbskulls--his beloved base--yelling death-to-the-infidel type insults about Obama The Terrorist Candidate (aka Obama The Terrorist Sympathizer Candidate), insults McCain himself—with mindless, eager assists from Governor Palin—has been stoking and fueling and encouraging with his bizarre, relentless, obsessive linking of Obama to William Ayers, a former 60's radical whose acts of political terror were committed when Barack Obama was all of 8 years old.

There's McCain smilingly handing his mike to a young man whose wife is expecting a child next spring, a guy who tells the senator and the audience that he is "scared" at the prospect of raising his child in an Obama (He means "Osama"--but you all got that, right?) America; there's the disheveled-looking, barely coherent woman who takes the mike to call Obama "an Arab," and there’s McCain, who right up to that moment had been smiling and nodding his head, again having to abruptly change course and "correct" yet another poor, misinformed soul. No, no, no—there’s no reason for you to be scared of an Obama Presidency; No, ma’am, no, he is not an Arab; no. And the crowd—his base—actually boos him as he labors to assure them that Obama is really a loving family man and decent guy, honest!

And as I watch all this, taking it all in, my thoughts drift back to when Barack Obama first announced his candidacy, and my friends and family and I watched in wonder as day by day his presidential campaign electrified the country, turning into first a national then global movement until finally one of my co-worker friends--who to my steadily growing annoyance had been ceaselessly shaking her head in cynical disbelief--finally said to me "Oh, girl, please. You know what's gonna happen. They're gonna get him. They're gonna do him like they did Dr. King, and Malcolm, and Medgar—they’re not gonna let no black man be President of this country! They will kill him first, you know they will!"

I’d wanted to smack that woman, right on the spot, in part because her faintly amused cynicism kept reminding me uncomfortably of my own doubts about Barack Obama's qualifications and readiness for that toughest and most exalted of jobs. What is wrong with black people, I remember thinking irritably. Do we have to be so damn negative all the time, so ready to dismiss each other’s—and our own—aspirations, hopes, excellence, dreams? Are we are own dream-killers? Why are we always so afraid to embrace the best in ourselves, and so expectant of the worst in others?

I switch the channel from MSNBC to CNN to CBS to PBS to ABC News to BBC America World News, and my friend’s bitter warnings swirl in my head as I listen to the cries and catcalls at the Republican rallies:
“I just don’t trust him!”
“He’s not one of us!”
“He’s not even American!”
“Not like us!”
"I've been reading up on him--"
“Traitor!”
“Terrorist!”
“Off with his head!”
“Bomb Obama!”

You know they’re gonna get him, girl. You know they will.