Lena, this reminded me of a Home-Ec teacher I had in high school, a young woman who was probably not yet 30 when she tried to teach me to bake a cake. She was DETERMINED never to get a wrinkle, so she tried never to smile or raise her eyebrows, and blinked only when absolutely necessary. When she spoke, she barely moved her lips. When she laughed, she kept her lips tight, like she was blowing little puffs of air through a straw. Her make-up was always flawless, and she was a pretty woman, but she was the creepiest pretty thing I ever saw, more mannequin than person. I think she would have been breathtakingly gorgeous if she had ever allowed herself to crack a smile. I imagine her now practically embalmed in Botox.

Racism absolutely does exist in every ethnic group. And phrases like “lily white” are every bit as disturbing as “black as night.” We’ve been conditioned in recent years to react strongly to the second, but I find them both equally cringe-worthy. I lived in the South for several years some time ago, and news reports of “reverse discrimination” (e.g., when a white person filed an EEOC complaint because a purportedly less-qualified black person got a promotion) always struck me as absurd. Isn’t tolerance the “reverse” of discrimination?

…And let’s not forget all the lovely rhetoric in the billion and a half anonymous e-mails forwarded ad-nauseum “from a friend who wouldn’t lie to me” adding to the noise. I don’t know what’s worse — the people who write that stuff, the ones who believe it, or the ones who keep forwarding it. There was spam from both sides, to be sure, but I seemed to get a lot more of the “red” ones. Maybe I have too many friends who fear for my immortal blue soul. That, or I need a better spam blocker.

I’ll never understand why the Catholic Church would promote the election of a Republican over a Democrat using “pro-life” as the sole basis of their argument. The Church is allegedly against war, the death penalty, the torture of prisoners, etc., yet conveniently neglects to address how these practices honor life, or how these considerations should figure into the votes of American Catholics. But here’s the real kicker: in this country, it’s one citizen, one vote — not one Pope, 20 million votes. If and when the Pope decides to become an American, I will enthusiastically support his right to vote any way he wants. In the meantime, he has no more say in this matter than the Ayatollah, the Dalai Lama, all the rabbis in Israel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or whoever’s in charge of the Hare Krishnas. (Are there still Hare Krishnas? Where did they go?)

Learning about the “real” Barrack Obama from a book like ObamaNation is a little like learning about the “real” Jews by reading Mein Kampf. What of those of us who formed our opinions based on what we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears? I watched both conventions live, just like everybody else, without needing Hannity or Katie Couric to act as interpreters for me. Same goes for extended and unnarrated coverage of various stump speeches on C-SPAN, and the debates on channels where they didn’t gauge real-time audience reaction on a graph line on the screen. I have no stomach for Kool-Aid, the red or the blue kind. We abdicate responsibility for our own destinies when we let others dictate what our opinions should be.

I never quite understood why they kept calling Todd the First Dude. Wouldn’t he have been the Second Dude? Also, will the fancy underwear be donated to charity as well? If so, eww.

A couple of hundred years ago, when Hillary and Obama both announced that they would run for president, I thought, “How extraordinary… For the first time in our history, we have not one but TWO candidates who are not white men.” That certainly got my attention, but not my immediate blind endorsement of either one. I was just happy that there was finally a fairer representation of the true composition of this country’s wonderfully diverse population. By the time spring rolled around this year, I was disillusioned enough with everybody that I seriously considered staying home on election day, for the first time in my adult life. Hillary’s campaign had become all about her winning, not about what this country needed. Obama had spent too much time fighting off Hillary and not enough time telling me something other than, “Vote for me, for not her.” And every time I saw McCain, he looked like he was wandering around looking for some soft place to take a nap. Along come the conventions. Finally, something I could relate to coming from Obama. Maybe I wouldn’t stay home after all. Immediately following that, McCain announces that he has chosen a woman, the governor of Alaska (whoever the heck she was), and once again I sat up and took notice. “A woman… wow. He could win this,” I thought. Then, of course, she spoke. I didn’t stay home on election day, and I stood in bewildered awe of the long lines of people who didn’t stay home, either. Every generation should experience an election as earth-shaking as this one. I don’t know if this election helped or hurt women. What I know for sure is that it woke up all Americans, it shook us up, all of us — those of us who’ve felt beaten nearly to death over the past eight years, and those of us who wanted the beatings to continue. In future elections, as in this one, I won’t vote for the candidate who has the most ovaries, or the one with the most appealing amount of melanin. I’ll vote for the one who best reminds me that I’ve had the unbelievably great fortune of having been born in America, and that with my vote, I honor that gift. No other election in my lifetime has done that for me. Not until this one.

>> “She was the first brunette blond joke.” [heh-heh!]

Try this, Newzie: press and hold the CONTROL and SHIFT keys, then press + (plus sign). Every time you do that, it increases the size of the type on your screen without affecting how the rest of us see your comments. That might help us all!

Hi Irish, No one was more surprised than me. Dad said he had a long talk with his priest, who was equally appalled by the behavior those of their fellow parishioners who mounted ugly attacks against anyone who hinted at their support of the Democratic candidates, people who went so far as to shout at my parents’ 5- and 7-year-old grandchildren before Mass last Sunday that their Grandma and Grandpa were bound for hell if they voted for “the Muslim”, “the baby killer” and “the terrorist.” “How is that a good example of decent Christian behavior?” My father asked. “It is not,” said the priest. I’m proud of my parents for voting their conscience and not caving to that hateful mentality. They are still unabashedly pro-life, but deemed Obama to be the man of greater decency, a better example for their grandchildren. They’re happy to be judged by their God, not those parishioners, when the time comes. By the way, the Republican position is not pro-life, it is anti-abortion. When they become anti-death penalty, then we can call them pro-life.

I love that imagery. Re: over-65 whites, a tough nut to crack, no doubt, but not impossible. My parents — both in their 70s, Florida residents, and conservative Catholics to boot — were not only big Obama supporters but part of his army of volunteers. Over the past couple of months, every time I talked to them, Dad would say, “This election is going to kill me! Do you think he’ll win? Do you? It’s going to kill me if he doesn’t!” while Mom bemoaned her lost opportunity to vote for Hillary. She supported Obama a bit grudgingly at first, but then became his number one fan. The best part was when Dad had to cut some of our phone calls short. “I love you, sweetheart, but I gotta go load another pile of old people into the van and make sure they register to vote.” The county where they live voted mostly republican, but it was by no means a landslide. When I saw their state turn blue I called them up right away and screamed, “THANK YOU, FLORIDA!!” Old people are funny.

Kudos to WOW for suggesting adoption from a rescue organization! I fostered then adopted the sweetest little guy a couple of years ago from Metropolitan Maltese Rescue in NYC. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. There are hundreds of rescue organizations all over the country, with pure breed and “no breed” doggies of all ages, from puppies to seniors, many of whom are surrendered by loving owners who can no longer care for them because of circumstances beyond their control (illness, age, foreclosure, relocation, arrival of new babies…). I’ll never “buy” another dog again.

I’ve been wondering that, too. Does anyone know what happens to any surplus campaign contributions that might exist once the election is over?

When I saw all those people begin to gather outside the White House last night, I said, “Oh, look. They’ve come to help the Bushes pack.”

We’re all “his people.” We are Americans.