Le maudit Mo D.

revelation

I just had a revelation that I'd like to enumerate here on my blerg.

I was going for a walk and thinking to myself, "man, I am a total WHITE PERSON as described on stuffwhitepeoplelike.com." I'm walking through my up-and-coming neighborhood with my iPod listening to an interview with Ira Glass! Then I'm going to do improv and have a meeting on the topic of my class reunion at a prestigious east coast college! I may have gone to high school in C-Juana, but I washed that away long ago. I'm a upper-middle-class white person....POR VIDA!

So I'm listening to Ira talk about narrative, and what he feels makes a narrative compelling enough to be aired on TAL. And it occurs to me that Ira Glass is a hero of my people. He's soft-spoken, Jewish, thinky, glasses-wearing, and went to Brown. And he entertains my people in this really specific way: he gets to us emotionally. He makes us think, and hits us in our tender little hearts.

I think if you grew up in a manner that lacked anything threatening, you are predisposed to relate to Ira and the narrative he peddles. What I mean is, if you grew up with parents who had money in a prosperous community and you never had to question if you basic needs would be met, or if you never personally had to take care of them yourself; if all you had to do is excel in school and violin and drama and soccer and if college was the big prize for doing little else than making your parents look good, and your life has had a minimum of major obstacles or instances where you were threatened or unsafe; if you had parents who were perpetual guardians of your well-being, then what develops is a primacy of the emotional life. Your feelings take on this urgency, because since you're not being shot at or being robbed of your dignity at a shitty low-paying job or the welfare line, there are no external demons, so your demons come from within. And I"m not even talking major demons. I'm talking minor demons. Why am I here demons? Existential demons. So much of my Smith education was spent sitting in classrooms with women who contributed to academic discourse with sentences that began "I feel..." And they felt justified in doing so! Feelings are important, especially to women, and trespassing against another's feelings was akin to treason.

It got me thinking that this is why a presidential candidate as odious as George W. Bush would never appeal to my demographic. Although he grew up more cushy than I did, he learned to pander to people who, for whatever reason, value physical security above emotional security. Feeling physically guarded beyond "holy shit I'm a woman I might get raped" is a muscle I've never had to develop, so my voting habits do not reflect that.

Which brings me to Obama. Obama says pretty things, smart things. Rhetorically, he's a member of my tribe. He soothes our weary souls.

Should Obama secure the Democratic nomination, he'd do well to select Ira Glass as his running mate.

This post is dedicated to my pal Swilkes on the momentous occasion of her 30th birthday.

Posted by Zerd at March 9, 2008 03:41 PM