January 22, 2009

In My Opinion…

A different era?

By Carol Rosen
Editor

I got up early Tuesday morning to see the inauguration. I’ve been amazed at my feelings both during and since the election and wanted to see if the ceremony and/or the speech would move me to tears.

At downtown San Jose’s Fairmont Hotel, guests viewed Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in the Lobby Lounge, which is outfitted with five large TV screens and was standing room only. —Photo by Kymberli Brady

It did.

Not that it would take much; my 24-year-old still laughs at me because he remembers me crying through those emotional telephone commercials. He also claims I watch Lifetime TV only because I need a good cry. But this was different, this was history, and yes, I still cried.

I don’t think I cried for the two million people who were standing in freezing weather to get a glimpse of the new president, most of them only to see him on the huge screens around the Mall although I did feel somewhat smug as I settled in my easy chair covered by a feather quilt and fuzzy warm slippers. I gaped at the celebrities, everyone from Mohammed Ali to Steven Spielberg and from Oprah Winfrey to Ted Kennedy.

I think I cried for the flicker of hope I still dare to have even though through the years I’ve developed a strong cynicism about politicians and government.

I’m happy to see the changes his election has brought about. I grew up during the 60s, I remember watching the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream Speech.” The town I grew up in was sort of segregated. I remember as a young child visiting one of the parks and running to get a drink at a drinking fountain because I was thirsty. A very big white woman (I’m sure she’d be a bit smaller now) in a very big hat pulled me away from the fountain and said, “Honey, you can’t drink out of the fountain, that’s for colored people.”

I really didn’t know what she meant and started crying and asked my mom, “how come those colored people get to drink different water than we do?”

As I was growing, I remember seeing on TV and reading in the newspaper about people integrating schools in Mississippi and Alabama and wondering how I’d feel to be the only different person in the school. I watched people being slammed with clubs, shoved with powerful fire hoses and yelled at as they tried to peacefully march; I read about people signing people up to vote who were killed, some of them white. So it’s a great thing that our country has broken down probably the last barrier to equality. And, I think that may be part of what I cried about.

But I think maybe it was more than that. I believe this election was more than just about blacks and whites. I believe, as I said earlier, that this election is about hope and change. I think this man has stirred something in many of us—whether we are red or blue, black, white or yellow, believe in a god or are atheist—I think he manages to give us hope.

While some of us are jaded, me included, and believe that no one can do anything to elicit change, if Barack Obama is as honest as he seems to be, if he values integrity and is as smart as he appears, perhaps he can take Americans from this cynical place where we have little hope about our highly messed up national, state and citywide and individual economies and help us again believe in our country.

But as he said in his speech, he can’t do it alone. He’s just one man, although that’s all it takes to get things started. Perhaps if we all do some work together that change may happen. Perhaps we can take what we learned through the years and turn it from cynical to positive, working toward a future without the worries about war, terrorism and the economy that we have today. But he’s right, we all have to do it together.