21 March 2008
 
Sweet Home

The Leningrad Cowboys

It is Good Friday, and it is damned good to be home again, though I will never get over the quality of the air in San Diego, and the way the light illuminates the hills and makes the world seem pristine and new.
 
The campaign is headed in the direction I thought it might. My former boss Governor Richardson is going to come out for Barack Obama later today, and things seem to be falling into place for him to join the ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee.
 
I think the speech on race did it for Bill. I am still processing the impact, and a little reluctant to comment. It is dangerous country in which to venture, and all my hackles are up as I type. Better people than me have gone on the rocks attempting to describe the problem, and it is much easier to ignore the whole thing.
 
That is just one of the reasons why the Obama phenomenon is so powerful, and carries such emotion.
 
I think it wounds Hillary again, she who represents her own constituency for those who have been systematically dis-enfranchised. Senator Obama looked Presidential once more as he condemned words of hate, and yet stood by the man who married him, and who baptized his children.
 
He balanced the burden of blame, revealing that his white Grandmother had expressed expressions of fear about encountering black men on the street, thus establishing equivalency in intolerance. I had to scratch my head over that, since I am not sure it is exactly the same. I know there is nothing new under the sun, and in rhetoric, sometimes it is metaphor that is more important than strict truth.
 
But the words sounded a lot like what Rev. Jesse Jackson said back in 1996, when he was quoted as saying “There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
 
Rev. Jackson may have more in common with the senator's grandmother than one would think, but John Kennedy did not write the books that carried his name, either. Like JFK, there was an awful lot to like in the way Senator Obama carries himself.
 
I found myself mumbling “racism, or misogyny,” which is worse?
 
It was only looking across the bay from the Convention center to see the great gray bulk of the aircraft carrier that consoled me that not all of my value system is up for revision. There must be a sovereign state in which we can worry about these social issues, and there are those who would prefer to impose their ways upon us, if they could, even as we attempt to impose our values elsewhere.
 
I was near that point when the robot melts down, muttering two impossible logical contradictions. I was doing my presence mission with Kevin at the display booth on the convention floor. In a lull- and there are many on the convention floor- asked me if I had seen the latest amazing video on youtube.
 
One of the other vendors was showing is to highlight the quality of their hardened digital video display systems.
 
“No way,” I said. “It is hard enough to stay on top of the e-mail back in DC and still stand around here looking pretty. What was it?”
 
Kevin smiled. “It is a Russian band called the Leningrad Cowboys doing Lynyrd Skynyrd's anthem “Sweet Home Alabama.” They are backed up by the Red Army Choir.”
 
Boggled by the possibility, I had to go over two aisles and join the knot of people to watch for myself, though you do not have to go that far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UuFJoexdlU

I am not sure if I will ever be the same. This is an expression of soft power that transcends anything I have ever experienced. It may be that America is past the zenith of its military power, but it is a very tall hill on which we stood and a very long way down into the valley.
 
Back at the booth, we marveled at how the world has changed. Kevin is young enough that the idea of the Red Army singing “March Slav” in counterpoint to lyrics about Governor Wallace just seemed a little goofy. For me it was something profoundly disorienting.
 
He was contemplating getting out of Business Formal and into Business Casual, since the conference was winding down, and we were mostly seeing the bottom-feeders who prey on the edges of these trade shows.
 
The problem was that Kevin did not bring much in the way of the low-end of the business wardrobe. He was pretty much back into baggy shorts, t-shirt and ballcap, and the words on the t-shirt might not reflect the corporate ethos.
 
“You only have to reflect ethos so many hours a day,” I said. “I may take off my clip-on bow tie, which is my statement about the way I think privately while conforming publicly.
 
Kevin is African American, by the way, though in the context of what we were doing means absolutely nothing at all.
 
Talking about what was appropriate booth-wear, he said it was funny the way people react. He had been out the night before. When he helped our comrade Jeff get back from the convention merry-making out in the Gaslight District near the hotel, he was relieved of the responsibility of seeing that Jeff was safely deposited somewhere near his room.
 
He needed to relieve himself before going upstairs, and dressed in business casual lite, entered the lobby men's room to take care of business.
 
Two security guys approached him as he stood at the urinal, very close, and challenged him as he did his business as to his status as a hotel guest.
 
Jeff is a wiry little guy of Irish extraction. He roused from his hangover over on the tall stool where he sat and said he should have turned and pissed on their shoes.
 
Kevin laughed, but I did not think it was so funny, and it had something to do with why Senator Obama's minister was saying something that is perfectly true to some people and utterly repellent to others.
 
Kevin's treatment may be based in the odds, just as Rev. Jackson's observation was, and nothing personal. Still, it must burn in a way that would make the most reasonable of us resent the system.
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com