Behold the Only Thing Greater than Yourself

Thirty-one years ago I could sit in English class at my Catholic high school and have our teacher, one of the few nuns on faculty, ask Larry, the only black kid in our class (not just the English class but our whole class of 108 students), "So, how does you family like Roots?" Even then, as a 14-year-old with little experience of the world beyond his very white part of suburban New Jersey, this seemed a horrible thing to do. Sure, then most of that was sensing the embarrassment factor, for there's no greater judge of embarrassment than a teenager. But I also sensed that this Bride of Jesus might not have taken to heart the lord's message about loving your neighbor as yourself. That my unfortunate fellow student would always have his sense of the world colored. That even in a comfy middle-class private school it wasn't easy being African-American.

Today I got to vote for an African-American man a mere two-years older than I am for President of the United States. There's hope just in that, no matter what happens.

And speaking of hope, may there by so much of it tonight there'll be enough to go around for even the people for whom despair is just what is.

Except for O'Reilly and Hannity and Coulter and Rove and that crew. Tonight is a night I want them to know their sad shit is up.