Thanks, Obama

The Ironic Cherry reads...

Thanks, Obama:

My Hopey, Changey

White House Years

by David Litt

(A SPEECHWRITER'S MEMOIR)

This is a hopey, changey kind of book.  It comes out just when we need the smiles, the chuckles, and yes, the hope.

David Litt began campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008.  From there he moved on to speechwriting for the President.  He began at the bottom, and takes us along on his wild, bumpy, sometimes scary, sometimes hilarious ride.  It is partly about his growing up, partly about the maturing of Obama's presidency, and partly about the transformation of America.

The personal anecdotes are hysterically funny; he is brutally honest about the workings of the West Wing and also about himself.  He doesn't let himself get too carried away with his own importance, but he doesn't mind telling us when he feels damn good about his accomplishments.  His periodic meetings with President Obama are priceless, and tell us as much about the President as about Litt.

It turns out that it is a wonderful review of Obama's eight years, just as we are sometimes feeling as if they didn't actually happen.  He takes us from the campaigns to the fights over Obamacare and the budget.  We witness presidential approval ratings sink as he struggles to first work with and then hold back a Congress determined to do damage to his promises to the American people, and then we watch them skyrocket when, in 2015, he decides it is time to do his work with or without Congress.

We also get behind the scenes of the amazing Correspondents' Dinner speeches, and the moods of the writers and the President as they are developed, including the critical edit the day before the Bin Laden raid.  And the "bucket" list.  And of course, the development of the skit with "Luther, Obama's Anger Translator."

And then there was that week in June of 2015, with two great Supreme Court victories and the horrific shooting at the Mother Emanuel Church here in Charleston.  And Barack Obama gave a moving and eloquent speech, ending with him singing Amazing Grace.

Litt says, "In less than two days, Barack Obama had secured his place in history....  I now lived in a country where health care was a right and not a privilege; where you could marry who you loved; where a black president could go to the heart of the old Confederacy and take all of us, every color and creed, to church."

And around about that time in Litt's book, he brought me back around from despair to hope.  Because, as we saw in last week's election, when women, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslim and transgender Americans ran for office against hate and bigotry and won, Obama's legacy can't be erased.  The American people have come together to prove that we stand for liberty and justice.  We will continue to fight for the gun legislation that Obama was unable to see in his terms in office, and for the women and minorities that are being victimized by the current administration.

Or, as POTUS says, "We haven't won every battle.  We've still got a lot more work to do.  But when the cynics told us we couldn't change our country for the better, they were wrong."

Thanks, David Litt, for reminding us of that.

Taking a Deep (Cleansing) Breath

I was a bit depressed last night, after having checked in on the three local newscasts to see what they had to say about Bannon's creep into South Carolina last night.  It is not so much what they said, but the fact that he was here, infecting our air and our youth, that had me down.  There was a great peaceful protest, and it was well-covered by the media.  But still.

And then I woke up.  The sun was shining bright and the air was crisper than I like it, and clear.  And I realized what had been wrong about my assessment of last night's events.

Bannon wasn't talking about taking back the country anymore, so much as taking back the republican party.  It was young, naive republicans that had invited him to speak.  In light of the Women's Movement, Indivisible, and Tuesday's election results, they are worried.  They are worried about their identity and their place.  They are so worried that they are turning to the loudest voice in the room for the answer.  We should be glad about that.

Remember Karl Rove?  Otherwise known as "Bush's Brain?"  Wasn't so long ago that he had us cowering in fear of his power.  True, they did horrible things to our democracy while in power, but these days we are seeing Bush as a softer, gentler version of Trump, someone who could be stupid but laugh at himself as well.  And Rove?  Rove is one of the vocal anti-Trumpers.  And Bush junior and senior supported Hillary.  Who could have seen that coming?

So we all need to calm down.  If one of Bannon's goals is to scare the shit out of his -- and I do mean "his" -- opponents, he is doing it in an attempt to ward off failure, not merely to assure success.  More than Rove to Bush, Bannon is Trump's alter ego, the guy in control that has a brain.  But, as did Rove, he has become so entangled in the need for his own victory that he is going to fail to see what will turn Americans against him.  He is going to make faulty assumptions about his infallibility, and he is going to assume that Americans care more about him than about ourselves, our families, and the future of our democracy.

He is going to assume that we are all stupid, and willing to be led.  But he is wrong.

In the light of day, it is indeed comical to reflect on the republican patsies who are running for governor showing up last night for the purpose of seeking his favor.  It was sad to see our young republicans looking to him for solutions.  But make no mistake:  if they do buy Bannon's sales pitch, they may in fact take back the republican party, but Americans will walk away, in droves.

Tuesdays victories across the country proved that the majority of Americans reject hate.  We are not so terrified of change that we will sign on to harm innocents because they are different than us.

The Women's March said it all.  We are all in this together, and united we do not need to be afraid.  We come together for each of us, and coming together we will defend American values.

The counter-protesters in Charlottesville tell that story as well.  There are more of us than there are of Bannon's paranoid haters.  We will show up.  And our power will be in our numbers, and our message.  Eight weeks after the initial rally, there was a second rally.  Forty white nationalists showed up, stayed for ten minutes, and went home.

So let us all be proud of our power, and our purpose.  Keep showing up.  And continue to stand together.

Women Hauling Off

At my tennis clinic, the instructor told a relatively new player to just haul off, hit the ball as hard as you can.  Then she explained that men and boys had no problem doing that; she never had to tell them to let go and hit it as hard as they can.  Women and girls were more tentative, so she would tell us not to worry about getting it right, but to just wallop it.  It worked.  The young woman hit some amazing shots after that advice.

I recently went to the Charleston launch party for Emerge America, a wonderful group created to encourage and assist women to step up and run for office.  I was told that whereas men will get involved confident that they can do a better job than others, extremely competent women all too often hold back because they don't feel competent enough to run for office.

I admire women who have great confidence.  I grew up in a blue collar family with an immigrant father.  As the oldest, even as a girl, my parents had high hopes for me.  They thought, as smart as I was, I should become a teacher.  They didn't tell me about it, but I heard that they were proud of me for going to college, but it was rough going.  And yet, I did make it through, and ended up getting all the way through to a Ph.D.  My father's reaction when I told him I was going back to school for a doctorate could best be described as confused derision.  "You already went to school.  Why do you have to go back?"

In a nutshell, my relationship with my father began with him telling me, as a child, how smart I was.  And then, when I began to have opinions that were different from his, I became someone who "thought I was so smart."  So, no confidence building there.

Hillary Rodham Clinton had a father who could not imagine her not being able to do anything a man could do, and do it better.  Same for Elizabeth Warren.  Women who grew up with fathers who saw them as equal to men, and able to compete and excel tend to do that.  Here in my later years, when I catch myself criticizing myself or worrying over some social anxiety or other nonsense, I mutter, "Thanks, Dad," and then get on with it.

But those insecurities that most women incorporate from childhood are reinforced in society:  lower pay, sexual stereotypes and harassment, lower expectations despite greater responsibility, and so many more subtle social forces.  The attack on reproductive rights is one of the more critical fronts intended to keep women from having the same control over their lives as have men.

The good news is, the backlash is here.

I am thrilled at the generation of younger women who are moving women forward today.  They have been, over the years, more visible in the arts, in the media, in finance and in politics.  But the Women's March on January 21 was the explosion that caused us to look around and see that we were the ones that would change the sad course that history had been taking.  We were the ones that weren't getting tangled up in questionable arguments and slippery slopes.  United, we stood for everyone.

So, as the 2018 midterms approach, thousands of women across the country are stepping up.  And groups like Emerge America and WREN -- Women's Rights and Empowerment Network -- are there to help.  Because we know what the country needs, but may not have the tools to get through the man-made maze of red tape to get there.

You won't be surprised to hear that women attempting to run for office experience a bias that excludes, ignores or minimizes their candidacy.  In a South Carolina special election primary a few short months ago, an older white businessman ran against a young black woman.  People from in and out of state eagerly signed up to help in his campaign, some fairly big names with the national party, bombarding Facebook and email in-boxes.  The State ran an article headlined:  "In SC Congress Race, Goldman Sachs Executive Faces Student."  The "student" was a woman who had spent six years in the military, working as a paralegal in an Army JAG legal affairs office.  Hard to imagine a headline written for a man that did not include "military veteran."

And yet, with little to no help from state or national party, she ended the primary with 22 percent of the vote.

I am also discerning a subtle and dangerous pattern as people enter 2018 races.  A woman enters a race.  Then, seeing no great risk, a man jumps in.  And then more well-known men jump in to support him.  And then the woman gets ignored or minimized.

Gods, I hope I am wrong.  But I am writing today to alert all you women and the men who are strong and confident enough to support us, because we will need to be aware of the biases and fight harder to be heard as we run for office.  When we see something like that ridiculous headline in The State, or a primary being held as though the male candidate's win was a given, we need to not just speak up, but yell.  We need to support the great and talented women that have stepped up with all we've got.

We need to "haul off."