No doubt about it, electing the first black man as President of the United States is a historic occasion. Symbolically, it represents the attainment of full citizen status by a former slave-race. Directly, it suggests that American racism is either dying or simply too weak to affect matters of such importance.
But we all know this. In “Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know,” Jon Swaine of the London Telegraph tells us a few less known, and less obvious, facts about our new President. Some notable entries:
• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
In other words, he is a geek. America has elected its first geek President.
I’m certain an argument could be made that Obama is not the first geek - Jefferson springs to mind when one is considering geekiness. But it’s a long stretch of lawyers and jocks between Thomas J. and the current soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief. I know some will want to place Jimmy Carter in there, and it’s true that Carter has a huge brain full of history and science, but geekiness is about more than just intelligence. Carter’s obsessions (if his interests can be called obsessions) are decidedly mainstream and not within the realm of geekdom.
The only thing that’s missing to complete the geek portrait of our President is to know which Star Trek he prefers. Something tells me he’s a fan of every series, but that his serious love is reserved for the original cast.
“The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”
That was from General Colin Powell, who, maybe for the first time in his life, is learning what it feels like to be a real “stand-up guy.”
(For those who have forgotten history, the original commercial, a beer-selling thing which drove us all to the brink of insanity many years ago, may be viewed here.)
The down side of ritual is you have to do it all the time. A routine can be comforting and it can be dull to tears. The same thing over and over. Repeition dulls the wits. Variety sharpens the mind.
Long days of summer are tedious like that, the sun omnipresent from morning til night, the sun staying present until four hours before midnight, and rising again before six, eight mere hours of night, barely enough to cool the sidewalks and soothe the mind. You could dream a lifetime in those eight hours but for the heat of the day, residing and abiding, radiating up from the sun-baked sidewalks, emanating out from the glass and steel of the city.
The signs of autumn have thankfully begun to peek around the remaining corners of summer. Long days are shrinking to someting more reasonable, a good chunk of night in which to negotiate those things which cannot be done under the watchful eye of the staring sun.
I have ridden out to the end of day and return now to tell you about it. Sunset is right on my heels and the moon ain’t far behind. Every woman and child had best run indoors, and every man grab his best weapon. There’s a storm coming, and a hard rain to follow.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.