Within Reason

At the grocery store recently an elderly black woman was in front of me. She was reading aloud the headlines – something about Barak Obama. “I’m gonna vote for that man!” she said.

“What’s he preachin’?” her equally elderly friend replied.

“Lawdy, child, that don’t matter. There’s gonna be a black man in the White House and I’m gonna live long enough ta see it. I wish my daddy was alive.”

I was troubled by this and I support Obama. He’s my candidate of choice for a myriad of reasons I can rattle off fairly quickly. None of them include the color of his skin.

Later in the day I journeyed to Barnes & Noble to buy my son a book for school, ironically, To Kill a Mockingbird. Again in a check out line I overheard a conversation this time between an older clerk and a man only slightly older than I am – so in his mid-fifties, I guess.

“I have so much trouble with these computers,” the clerk said, in a slightly faded, but still distinguishable, Irish brogue.

Her customer, the man, replied, “Well then you have something in common with John McCain. He can’t use a computer either.”

I mumbled under my breath that this was perhaps not a quality I would look for in a president and the man spun around. He glared at Ian with his long hair and faded army jacket. If looks could kill…

Then he turned his attention to me and said, “McCain and Palin are the best people for the job.”

Now I knew I should have just remained mute, I queried, “Why so?”

“My son, he lives up here in Wallisa, and he says that Sarah Palin’s a right good neighbor and that’s good enough for me. Oughta be good enough for you too.”

The Irish clerk busied herself looking for a bag.

“Well, silly me. I thought I would consider where these men stand on foreign and domestic policy, nationalized healthcare, our failing education system…”

He interrupted me, “You ain’t a-gonna vote for no black man, are you? He’s black! Ev’rybody knows they ain’t as smart!”

“Here you go, sir, a bag for your books.” The clerk looked concerned.

“It ain’t a book, it’s a Bible.” I could hear him capitalize it. He turned to me, “I’ll pray for you ma’am, the whole country needs prayers.”

“Indeed we do,” I replied, but I likely thought so for very different reasons. And our idea of God is likely very different. We are a nation so dependent on the sound bite that we forget to follow the story through and gather facts for ourselves. These people will vote. They think their views are reasonable. They will have no clear idea what the issues are and will be mystified when things don’t work out the way they want them to.

He walked way mumbling about the terrible state our country was in and how he just didn’t understand why people couldn’t uphold the American way. Is it just me that sees these as very frightening experiences?

Be well informed. Vote.