funny white man

James Wolcott writes:
[excerpts]

After watching Barack Obama's searing, soaring, grandiloquent, angel-summoning, devil-dispelling speech about race in America, a speech that had Andrew Sullivan and Chris Matthews emptying the silver drawer for superlatives, I ankled it to the elevator, headed down to the lobby, and walked with my arms outstretched toward the bus stop on the corner to hug every black person for the 104 and do my bit to close the gap of suspicion that divides us. You'd be surprised how many Upper West Siders of all persuasions aren't interested in receiving a hug from a stranger at a bus stop on a chilly day, and how many of them carry canes that they wield with striking force, even after one hugs the sidewalk and achieves the fetal position. Oh well, live and learn.

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. . . what happens if Clinton wins a wipeout in Pennsylvania after having taken Ohio? Do those gut-state victories signify nothing? It's the possible evanescent quality of Obama's appeal that worries me--I honestly have no idea how secure is his hold on Democratic voters and how much of it is a passionate infatuation that could end in an epic bout of bitter disappointment that would convert the Kos Diaries into a primal-scream clinic, with one diehard after another having to be dissuaded from flinging himself under the nearest Greyhound. I detect a scratchy, needy note of desperation beneath the Obama-ites' audacity of hope.

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