Am exhausted. Am exhilarated. Am still curiously very nervous, like maybe this is all a dream and soon a hurricane of pregnant chads will come plummeting out of the sky. So here is my letter to our new President Elect:
Dear Obama,
For all the jaded cynicism our generation is famous for, I don't think any one of us can deny the amazing leaps in equality that that 106 year old woman has seen over her lifetime. And perhaps for the first time in my adult life I see the opportunity to make sure the next century brings even more hope and prosperity. I don't care if it's dumb to be optimistic. Obama isn't a singular savior and of course he's going to need help, but I think we need to start believing that together we can move towards positive, lasting change. If we have even a lingering shred of reverence for the ideals of real democracy, of the American dream, then I don't think we have any other choice.
Oh god I can't believe it's 5 am. Guess this isn't a dream after all.
xox,
H
Posts
I guess we'll find out soon if the Obama is a politician... or a man.
ReplyDeleteI know this isn't at all the point, but... are you playing the guitar topless there?
ReplyDeleteMoving sentiments,fine lyrics, great voice.
ReplyDeleteVery nicely done, Hannah!
ReplyDeleteThis is terrific, Hannah! And you have a beautiful voice :) Are you naked? If so, that makes it even better!!!!! :)
ReplyDeleteHmm, nice one Hannah, people from White House should invite u to perform at the W House during welcoming reception party of your new President...so he will well-reminded of his promises..anyway..thats cool but just dont perform there topless like in ur video here..otherwise the new president will forgot all his visions...
ReplyDeleteI got a video unavailable message. I guess I'll check back later.
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ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4bZw9FmXZ4 if video is broken... pesky blogbugs
ReplyDeleteOK, now I saw it. Great song. And I love the fact that you sang it while nekkid.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree. I think it's pretty lame when people say they won't support him because he's just a guy and there's no guarantee he'll be any different from the rest. What losers.
ReplyDelete"Don't get shot" - This is my biggest fear too. And I'm not even American.
Nice song. I'm sure many people feel the same way. But are our expectations of Obama just too much? Hopefully he will live up to his promises.
ReplyDeleteAnyway you should post it on YouTube and see what happens.
Gord. gordspoetryfactory
I like it:) Put the YouTube link on Making Light's blog. Hope you get some views from it!
ReplyDeleteGreat one there :) I liked it.
ReplyDeleteHannah,
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome. What a sweet song.
On a side note, I think you're a beautiful woman. I'm married so don't take this as anything other than a compliment. I think people should be able to still give compliments.
Cheers,
David
somehow i have always managed to put on a shirt before playing a musical instrument.
ReplyDeleteperhaps you don't know what you're missin'.
ReplyDeleteHannah,
ReplyDeleteFirst the song is awesome! I cannot sum it up any better. I don't know if you follow my blog or not, but I do occasionally talk politics. I admit to having been back and forth on Obama all year.
Your song pretty much sums up my sentiments. Now we get to find out who he really is and we shall see if he is Change We Need or just the same old same old repackaged.
I'm holding out for the former.
Stay inpspired!
Ray
Hey Hannah,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting on my blog and for sharing your song. I love it! Nice job and way to sum things up.
Keep in touch!
Noelle
Wesleyan & UCLA grad (BA, MBA, respectively) living in Panama in UIGEA exile LOL. I was glad you re-posted on Diane Tomlinson's thread at our blog. I get the sense that this is open, intellectual unbiased space, but I'll be upfront so nothing's missing. I'm not going to save the world. I'm 47 and I've always made my living moving money. I'm a financier, investor, trader, money-manager, and professional gambler. At heart, I believe in peace and social justice, but I'm not under any self-delusions.
ReplyDeleteI'm very pleased that for once the American majority made the smart choice. I think that aside from Obama's overwhelming superiority to McCain as a thinker and leader, his being the first Black president is very important and will no matter what happens have an effect on sanding down the coarser racism in the American culture. It might even have some mitigating effect on the systemic racism in the culture. I'll never know. I'm not an American anymore. It's very important that the first Black president is a Democrat.
My dad, however, had a saying about the New York Mets and the Democratic Party: they always break your heart.
The old man's wise, I have to admit.
The euphoria was short-lived, si o no? I take the viewpoint of a Latino outsider and a Humanist Jew, though.
We begin the pre-Obama administration with quite a choice for Chief-Of-Staff. Rahm Emmanuel. I guess Joe Lieberman wasn't available. So, with one exceptionally bad appointment in the books, let's have a little look at the other people whose names have been floated by Obama as perhaps being in his administration, knowing that he's allowing Bush's choice, Robert Mueller, to remain head of the FBI: COLIN POWELL, (keeping) ROBERT GATES, and (keeping) HENRY PAULSON. The most PROGRESSIVE person he's mentioned so far is Paul Voelcker! And it's not like Voelcker is any kind of progressive. He's merely a non-idelogical economist with a strong lean to Fisherite monetary neutrality. There's your Obama LIBERAL.
I've written about this at length before but until shown otherwise I see Barack Obama the president as Barack Obama the Senator circa October 2006. That would be the guy who campaigned for the "independent" Joe Lieberman for Senate in CT, AGAINST the Democratic nominee, the anti-war Ned Lamont.
When Lieberman won, Obama (and the Clintons) were hardly finished fucking with Howard Dean. They tried to get him bounced as head of the DNC in favor of the conservative Fundamentalist Christian, Harold Ford, Jr. Dean stood his ground, beat them, and Ford had to go where he belonged, the Democratic Leadership Council. Home of Lieberman, the Clintons, and especially -- give that man a cigar -- RAHM EMMANUEL.
You went to Yale. You know who William J. Sloane Coffin (RIP) was. You know where he stood on all of this and all of these characters. Let's just say that Dr Coffin was a mentor to Howard Dean and wasn't real, real fond of Joe Lieberman and his imaginary commitment in the 1960s to the civil rights cause.
So, instead of choosing for Chief-Of-Staff a FRIEND like Eric Holder whom he'd entrusted with vetting the VP choices and who was one of the few open-minded AUSAs under Clinton, Obama picks the meanest Clintonista in the bunch. A Zionist. With war in the Middle East and South Asia. With an Israeli election 3 months off.
Did anyone had any thoughts of withdrawal of US troops from Iraq? Forget it.
Anyone like me have fantasies that Netanyahu and Livni would split the right-wing vote and allow the Labour candidate (whether Ayalon or Barak) to become PM of Israel with a peace mandate? Forget it.
I found it rather funny that the right wing in America was all bent out of shape about Obama calling him a "socialist" or a "leftist." "Socialist" is absurd on it's face because Obama like most people in the world doesn't believe in collective ownership or wealth or productive capacity. "Leftist"? Are they mad?
Here's where Obama is on some policies: in favor of the death penalty, in favor of incarcerating children with adults (250,000/yr), warrantless wiretapping of all call and internet travel for unlimited duration, mandatory sentencing, commingling of church and state, against single-payer health insurance, against the rights of two adults of the same gender to marry, and unclear on a woman's right to choose how to deal with an early stage pregnancy, unclear on the remainder of gay-rights issues, and in favor of both the Reagan "Mexico City Rule" on foreign aid, as well as the George W. Bush rule on it. That would be somewhat abstinence only and VERY VERY ABSTINENCE ONLY.
I'm not a huge fan of America's two favorite foreign leaders, Livni of Israel and Uribe of Colombia, but I'll say this for both of them. As far-right as they are considered in their own countries, they are far far more progressive on all of those issues than Barack Obama is.
So, it's not going to be more of the same, exactly. The world will give America and Obama some room to show he's different. The economic stewardship will be just fair instead of insane. In the end, you're still a lot closer in governmental style to Saudi Arabia than you are to Spain or Belgium.
Buean suerte.
Good song, good singing. Oh yeah, and a pretty good result too. On behalf of all us in the rest of the free world who for some strange reason didn't get to vote... thanks.
ReplyDeleteLOVE THIS! Thank you! Love your voice and lyrics! And I have the same hope...my friend told me once, "Never fall in love with a politician, they will always break your heart. I hope it isn't true this time!
ReplyDeleteLovely :) And may the world walk from now on towards hope and unity...one step for America one giant leap for human kind :)
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Obama, don't break my heart. Actually make both the world and our own people generally respect us once again. I'm working in the UK right now and I can't tell you how many people have told me how thrilled they are that Obama is going to be president because they truly believe he will get the world back in order. Whatever that really means.
ReplyDeleteAs a senior enlisted member of the United States Navy and a life long republican I am one of your more unlikely Obama supporters, however, to put it mildly, I have crossed party lines, nay, jumped party lines with arms wide open to embrace this man who can lead our country and the world into the future. Hail to the Chief!
ReplyDeleteAnd Hannah? You have a new fan.
That was startlingly original, very well written (yet endearingly whimsical) and quite nicely sung.
ReplyDeleteWhile I certainly hope that Obama would be a good leader, I am nevertheless keeping my cynicism and hopes at a minimum. And I would have to agree with a lot of what Kelso's Nuts had to say.
But despite everything, as always, hope springs eternal. And one wishes that *maybe* this time, it would be different.
And just to clarify, I'm keeping my cynicism - it is the hopes that are at a minimum. :)
ReplyDeleteno degree
ReplyDeleteno aspirations aside from survival
love
There’s a crazy Indian in my head. He lives in a Hapi-headed canopic jar in my lingual g. I think he got in there way back when I was a child living in Fry Canyon, Utah. What an Ohio Shawnee medicine man was doing way out there in the badlands of Utah, I’ll never know. I was there because my dad was a uranium prospector.
ReplyDeleteBukowski had his Chinasky. I have my Sees The Stars.
“Sees The Stars” is my Desertwalker native Indian personality. His full name is “Sees The Stars Naked”, but you can call him “Sees”. He keeps pulling me out into the desert.
Sees, abandoned at birth, was raised by right wing bears. Sensing his natural instinct for sniffing out a conspiracy, they taught him “The Way of the Trap.” At age twelve, with a belt full of trapper scalps, he began to make his way in the world as “Sees The Stars”, Desertwalker of The Bear Clan.
Great video! And your blog is just amazing. How did you stumble upon the Clog?
ReplyDeleteHannah--
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful song and video!! That's for mentioning it when you visited Midlife's A Trip. Love your spirit and your blog ---
Peace
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for responding to my post about President Obama! This video is AWESOME!! I added to my (new) blog http://designatedwriter.wordpress.com/. Hopefully we can keep in touch! ;)
ReplyDeleteLol, nice song, thanks for stopping by my blog, come again.
ReplyDeleteI found you via my SIL's blog, table4five - your song and your sentiment mimic mine perfectly... except that I can't play the guitar, don't sound anywhere near as angelic, and would scorch the eyes of any who viewed me sans clothing, however shielded by hollowed hallowed musical instrument. So thank you for saying it so beautifully. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting my blog and extending an invitation to hear your song. Well, I heard the song and it was fantastic. The lyrics were witty and thoughtful and your voice is terrific. But what I like the most about it was the very real concern it conveyed: Now that we have put our faith in Barrack to lead our nation and address our problems, we really hope and pray that he follows through with everything he promised us (like universal health care, ending the war in Iraq, ect.) I have faith that he will and hope that he does.
ReplyDeleteBeing accustomed to the problems of trying to be coherent at 5 am, I do recall adding your vid to our blog but I don't remember if I left a comment congratulating you on having so perfectly and eloquently captured the combination of hope and fear that many seem to be feeling now. Please feel free to pimp your content on our site whenever you like!!
ReplyDeleteYou seem like a nice lady, but Obama WILL break your heart. Look at the "change" he has brought into his cabinet. No new faces.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...second try. Will see if this works. Firefox suppressing the word verifier thingy pop up.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - Great voice. I consider you an ambassador of Chutzpah. Way to go. Hope you write your case with us.
Kathy and the Hot Mommas Project team
Hmmm...second try. Will see if this works. Firefox suppressing the word verifier thingy pop up.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - I consider you an ambassador of Chutzpah. Way to go. Hope you write your case with us.
Kathy and the Hot Mommas Project team
Way to go Hannah...I like this blog..it inspires me to make mine better today...it's new so please bear with me....wordpress says i shouldn't place links there...what do you think about this....I'm ready to write the owner and tell him a few things or more...your feedback is appreciated....See my Obama links at twitter.
ReplyDelete