(obligatory pre-election chatter. sorry. can’t be helped.)
Mail to my old pal, Harvey, who claims he is voting McCain and asked for ten reasons why he should go Obama:
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From: Jarett Kobek
To: His Pal Harvey
Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 3:38 PM
Subject: obama vs mccain ten reasons you stupid bastard
(IN NO ORDER OF IMPORTANCE)
#10. mccain is jacked up crazy. this statement in no way dishonors his service. dude was a jerk before he went into pow camp and came out a jerk with ptsd. search your feelings. you know it to be true.
#9. obama is an exceptionally effective communicator– lawyer, college professor– and we often forget that the roots of democracy are in the public advocacy of athens. there is a direct link between good government and effective communication.
#8. obama has a very specific kind of african-american cool; not in the sense of cool as a popularity contest, but cool like cool jazz. charlie parker, john coltrane kind of cool. this is why he never freaks out. totally useful.
#7. palin.
#6. health care. obama’s plan is weak but I suspect that with huge democractic wins in the congress, an obama presidency will push through a radical health care initiative. this will serve as a smokescreen to distract us from the fact that we are never, ever leaving iraq. it’s time that america joined the civilized world. this may upset you re: taxes, but sorry, the one thing you should your national government should do is protect you from disaster and foreign invasion. a/k/a keep you safe. health care is a big part of this and the lack of universal coverage is a huge, massive problem for US competitiveness in the global market.
#5. foreign policy. mccain’s is a 20th century vision of the cold war world– look at everything he talked about in the debates. nicuragua, panama, russia. these problems were solved poorly 30 years ago. That the war on terror is a disaster is due precisely to rumsfeld and cheney being 20th century cold warriors who could not understand a new enemy. the only way that the MAJOR ISSUES, including israel (which you know I support those jews like no other) will ever be solved is via an entirely new set of faces. cold warriors, with their skewed realpolitik, must go. asap.
#4. likelihood of full examination of bush era war crimes increases inordinately. seriously, cheney + co f’d us in the a with massive illegal tortures. abu ghraib only scratches the surface. mccain’s cowardice re: the base ensures he will be unable to facilitate appropriate reviews of the previous administration.
#3. afghanistan. this could fall under #5, but fuck off, it’s important. obama seems to understand the need for afghanistan to succeed as an independent state and also seems interested in killing bin laden. A refreshing change.
#2. obama is smart. I know that it’s a time honored american tradition to pull down our betters and be suspicious of any natural ability not connected to sports, but whatever. dude is smart and a writer. When was the last time we had a real writer in the white house? Teddy Roosevelt? (Kennedy’s shit was mad ghost written.)
#1. leaving aside the pedantic and goofy questions of whether or not obama is BLACK ENOUGH, his wife is straight up descended from slaves and his babies got that blood in their bodies. I can not think of anything better for America than to have to see and live with a normal, beautiful black family in the white house for eight years. if nothing else, this will go incredibly far towards the normalizaton of race relations. it’s almost impossible to express its full impact. I saw michelle holding hands with dude’s lily white uncle during Kerry’s speech at the convention and the most shocking thing was not that it was happening but that it was so totally, utterly normal. welcome to the 21st century.
okay. vote obama, jerk.
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BONUS FOR CALI CALI: Vote no on Prop 8. Duh.
But don’t do it solely because of hoity-toit arguments about equality or any of the scare-mongering associated with the hideously inept anti-8 campaigns. Arguments about fairness have merit, but opponents of 8 have been hella squeamish and thus operating on the same wave length as the dirrrty west Mormon-funded pro-8 ads. No one is stating a basic truth: gay marriages, individually and socially, are hugely positive and should be celebrated.
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(last politics post pre-election. promise.)
