Hail, Obama. I guess.

Even I'm Verklempt

I have been absent from this blog for a few weeks, after a few half-hearted attempts at an entry on rumors about whether Sarah Palin might have some recent Jewish ancestors, and one about yet another stupid comment by Jesse Jackson. I dug in briefly, and learned a few things.

First, Sarah Palin is not Jewish, not that anyone, at this point, would care if she is the reincarnation of the Vilna Gaon (who was a genius, so that particular reincarnation would be a stretch). All they care is that she and Todd catch the next snow machine back to Wasilla, post haste.

And about Jesse’s dumb comment (something to the effect that a President Obama would put an end to “Zionist” control of American foreign policy) – I just couldn’t get myself too worked up about a guy who has effectively trash-talked his way out of any meaningful role in the Obama administration.  To tell the truth, I have been sort of moping the last few weeks about the polls that correctly predicted the election of Obama.

But I no longer cared about Sarah Palin, who I thought was a disastrous choice from the moment of her selection. And I no longer cared about Jesse Jackson, who is an irrelevancy, though I must admit that seeing him tear up at Obama’s victory speech last night left me a little teary also. Yes, me, who only hours earlier had enthusiastically clicked on the McCain/Palin box on the touch-screen voting machine.

Watching both McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s victory speech, I was, as Mike Meyer’s Linda Richman character would have said, verklempt.

Yes, my team lost and the other team won. I will mope about it for another couple of weeks and then probably recover enough to pay attention to my lessons when the socialists haul me off to the reeducation camps. But, personal politics aside, I could still appreciate the grand symbolism of the moment, and the meaning of the tear in ol’ Jesse’s eye. I think that in his gracious concession perhaps even John McCain, the great-great-grandson of a Mississippi slave owner, was feeling proud of our country for the same reason that the throngs in Grant Park were.
I am disappointed because I do not believe that bigger government, greater redistribution of wealth than we already have, affirmative action, government-run health care, and other standard features of the liberal-left agenda are good for our country. I fear that we will move closer to the type of Western European social democracy that may work well in Sweden (but increasingly less well in Great Britain, France, and Germany), but won’t work here. But I won’t bore you with a more detailed recitation of the reasons why I am not, like many of my friends, family members, and Bethesda neighbors, a liberal. I’m just not.
But at the same time, I could not help but feel hopeful about some aspects of the incipient Obama presidency. The huge crowd in Chicago last night, overcome with emotion, looked like a Benneton ad. That’s good. Obama said nice things about his opponent, and reached out to the vanquished. That’s good, too. And our country’s young people, among whose number I am no longer counted, are once again enthusiastic about our future. Maybe, after I’m reeducated, I will be, too.
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Oops. I forgot the Jewish angle for this installment, except for the lame Sarah Palin isn’t Jewish bit. (But, it should be noted, my foray into Palin’s deeper geneaology revealed three generations of early 18th-century ancestors from – yes – Long Island – who were named Elias,  Arie, and Jacob deLange, a common Dutch-Jewish name. There’s always one in the woodpile.)

But let me get to matters of more contemporary importance- the Jewish Senator count. That’s always a good one for the Jewhoo crowd. There were 13 Jewish senators before the election: Feinstein, Boxer, Wyden, Coleman, Levin, Feingold, Kohl, Specter, Lautenberg, Cardin, Schumer, Lieberman, and Sanders.  Yesterday, only Lautenberg, Levin, and Coleman were up for reelection. All three appear to have won, but even if Coleman loses (the race is very close as I write), he will lose to Al Franken, another, funnier, Jew. So the Jews hold steady at 13, an overrepresentation of only about 600%. And a black man will be in the White House.  Sorry, wrong guy.  Here’s the real one.

I need to break out the Ouija board and tell my Grandma Tessie. She will be verklempt, too

—Larry Kesner