The Week That Was (Oh, what a week!)

Last week around this time I was feeling a strange combination of elation and crapdom (yes, that is an emotion, the one you feel when your body decides to betray you temporarily by being sick on the happiest day of the year). I was in the middle of an Oracle Financials Training Session, and my body was quickly letting me know that I in fact was about to be sicker than I've been in as long as I can remember. As the lady droned on and on and on about iProcurement, I could not get "Proud to be an American" out of my head despite my abhorrence of overly-indulgent patriotic songs, and kept thinking that instead of wasting my time in class, I wanted to jump around Stanford hugging every person I met.

Last year, I watched "American Idol" with my parents, and every time Kristy Lee Cook came on and butchered the hell out of every "Proud to be an American/America the Beautiful/Yankee Doodle Dandy" rendition possible, I nearly puked. And now, this was me; cynic and critic, belting out this propaganda anthem full blast in my own head, even letting it escape out loud every now and then, and giggling to myself like a crazy person. I would have felt embarrassed if everyone coming into and out of the office was not also having similar issues, keeping Joker-sized grins plastered on their faces, and spontaneously breaking out in conversation that had clearly started in their head and was being voiced mid-thought.

The country had a new President-Elect, and the excitement was palpable. When our Director called us in for an emergency meeting and broke down in front of his staff when he confessed that he in fact had never felt more proud to be an American, I couldn't believe that someone who's had such a long career at the forefront of political thought was compelled to spontaneously share these feelings. I was also reassured, as young people need be by their wiser elders, that California and the United States will one day, and one day soon, do right by all - so that all of the boys, girls, men, and women living under this great American umbrella can share the same rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. James Baldwin once wrote, "Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality." Prop 8 passing definitely says more about the people who voted for it than about the people whom it immediately effects. At this moment in time, I feel both disheartened that Prop 8 passed, but also hopeful because I know it won't last long until my friends won't have to feel like their own state sees them as second class citizens.

Last Tuesday night, having the experience of the last two presidential elections behind me, I thought the counting would go on all night. So, M and I went grocery shopping. Shocker! We came back and within minutes, Barack Obama had officially and by a huge margin gained enough electoral votes to cast no doubt that he would indeed be the next President of the United States of America. John McCain's speech that followed was the first time in months that I heard McCain's own voice. It did not surprise me when the crowd boo'ed at Obama's name (it also did not surprise me that the folks in Chicago cheered and clapped when Obama mentioned McCain), and it kind of freaked me out that most of the people in the Phoenix crowd were middle-aged white folk. I mean, seriously-- almost everyone was over 45 and white. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the hundreds of thousands of people huddled together, laughing, crying, chanting, were children, teenagers, college kids, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, middle aged, elderly, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, mixed, all colors and ages and creeds, which encapsulates what America is and has prided itself in being - the cultural, racial, ethnic, religious melting pot of this world.

The images of Jesse Jackson crying I have to say were pretty priceless, and I remember thinking, I wish James Baldwin was alive to see this! I wish DuBois could see this! I do think that John McCain made too much of the "African-American" issue when talking about Barack Obama in his concession speech, but at the same time, he reminded us that people whom we know remember a time when they could not go to the same school, or eat at the same restaurants, or walk on the same piece of street, as white kids. The fact that these memories are not historic memories but actual memories makes this election monumental, but I think that the nation and the world agrees that Obama being black is not the sole or even the main reason why he is perceived with such enthusiasm and anticipation.

My entire adult life has been spent with George W. Bush being the President of the U.S. The 2004 election was the first one in which I could legally vote after becoming a citizen. I remember when my roommates and I volunteered to cater a John Kerry fundraiser in L.A. (note to self- where IS that shirt?!) we all whole-heartedly believed Kerry would win over Bush, no doubt about it. I cast my vote and thought, "Now I am truly an American citizen." Four years later, I am feeling an interesting and hard to explain emotion. I was not born here, and thus will always harbor patriotic love for my home country. And for as long as I've lived here, I've always been happy to live here, and proud. Every time I drove through a particular part of the 5S Fwy in Anaheim, I got an irrational feeling of love and pride for California, and as the plane was about to touch down at LAX, each time I nearly teared up with excitement to be "home." But over the last 8 eight years, it really has become "uncool" to be an American in many parts of the world, because we are seen as bullies instead of liberators, as arrogant instead of accomplished, as ignorant instead of leaders in science. Last week, I actually felt like I was an American, part of the millions of people who went out and voted however they felt was best. But there is always that "adopted" American feeling to it. It's almost like I can see it from both sides - judging the U.S. from a foreigner's point of view, and defending the country from the insider perspective. Again I turn to James Baldwin, who once wrote, "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." I think he was completely right in this, and this is the sentiment that I think so many Americans ignore in their blind patriotism. To truly be proud of your country, I think you should judge it with high standards, because you expect great things from it. If you take everything a country does blindly, you face a great risk of allowing that country to become an oppressor without boundaries. That is why I think all those Republican allegations that "they" are the "real" America and that Obama and the Democratic party aren't proud of America were so ludicrous. Don't parents chide their children so that the kids might learn to be better people? Anyways, now I am going off topic, which was initially this strange feeling of being an American, and an outsider, and feeling optimistic that in the next few years the U.S. can make its citizens even more proud to call themselves American than they have been in recent years.

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Moving on from the elections, last week also brought more ups and downs in the Stockmarket, which has people all on edge. I can't believe that literally in a few days, people's entire retirement 401k money is gone!! I guess I am really lucky to have a looo-ooo-oong time to go until I retire!!! But on a positive side, gas is down to under $2.40, which is unbelievable considering it was nearly double just a few weeks ago!!

On a more personal note, M's parents came up for a weekend visit, and M and I had a movie date ("Changeling," which I give 4 stars, but don't recommend to anyone with small children because it will make you SO SO SAD and paranoid). I also bought a really fun hat! Having headed to the mall in search of black, flat shoes with an ankle strap, I returned home sans shoes, but with a super cute brown bowl hat. And yes, I did finish Taltos, a remarkable letdown by Anne Rice. I am now onto George Eliot's Middlemarch because I need to clean my mental palate, so to speak, after Taltos, but I think I might put that aside for some McEwan.

As for the moment at hand, tonight I am very excited about the Country Music Awards!! I think Kenny Chesney and Sugarland will perform, so I am very happy. A few weeks ago, when the VMA's aired on MTV, I had a quarter-life crisis when I realized that besides Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, I had no idea who the majority of the performers were. I didn't know the songs, I didn't know the singers' names, I felt like an old biddy!! That was when I started listening to more hip hop in the car to make up for my exclusive country habits, and now I feel more confident about my contemporary culture knowledge, but I'm still 100% sure that I will know most of the people at the CMA's, because that's just the country bumpkin I've become.