Harry T. Cook

12/26/08

What a whiplash year 2008 has been.

For me, it began with my first-ever ophthalmologist appointment during which, at age 69. I learned glaucoma might be somewhere in my future. On the doctor’s advice, I have been sucking down Centrum Silver vitamins ever since. Early in the year, I became one among five plaintiffs in a federal First Amendment case, which, with the help and counsel of the American Civil Liberties union, we won. At issue was whether a municipality could prohibit the sounding of automobile horns in support of an antiwar protest. We called it “The Honker Case,” and until President Obama ends U.S. involvement in his predecessor’s illegal and immoral war, we will continue to honk and to encourage honking. Most of us are veterans of the 1960s protests of that other stupid war. We will not go away.

In January, Congressman Dennis Kucinich came to my church for a Sunday afternoon rally. His presence filled the nave with the usual suspects — a number of whom were among the aforementioned honkers. However quixotic Kucinich’s presidential hopes may ever have been, the people of my church will always remember the one occasion upon which such a national figure stood in its pulpit. Early in 2008, Americans came to know of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a scholar of Egyptology, a wonder worker and angel of mercy on Chicago’s south side — and, as it happened, the long-time pastor of Barack Hussein Obama. A three-second YouTube clip of Wright in mid-sermon saying “God damn America” became a rallying cry for the demagogues of the airwaves and the political defenders of George W. Bush and his misbegotten war. John McCain, to his everlasting credit, refused to damn Obama by damning Wright.

It did no good to explain that Wright was indirectly quoting more than one biblical passage depicting the biblical God as damning those who deliberately caused their fellow human beings to die. At last count some 4,200-plus American military men and women have died in the Iraq war. If that’s not damnation, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, Obama was dogged by the Wright business until he was shamed into disowning his long-time pastor. I did not respect him for that, and still don’t. Whilst all that was moving on apace, the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, once thought by many to be a slam-dunk, began its downward trajectory as the now Wright-less Obama racked up primary victory on top of primary victory — spectacularly not in New Hampshire — and went on to capture the Democratic nomination and then to win the November election.

Obama said he personified “the change we can believe in.” I’m believing, Mr. President-elect, as I have never believed before. All kinds of good luck, and ask me for anything you need. I’ll be there. McCain stumbled through a campaign during which he was slowly morphed from a guy people really liked into a snarling, unlikable scold begat by disciples of Karl Rove.

Still he had a chance because the press persisted in asking the question, “Is America ready for a black president?” Seldom was it observed that Obama was half American Caucasian and half African Kenyan, not to mention a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of its prestigious law review. McCain really blew it when people with less sense than he himself usually seemed to have pushed him into choosing the most unlikely vice-presidential nominee in recent memory: The Beauty Queen of Wasilla, Sarah Palin — she of the mangled syntax and garbled answers to questions on topics beyond her ken. That famous A-4 Skyhawk was not the only thing in McCain’s life that crashed and burned, taking him down with it.

Now, for our last act: the sub-prime mortgage crisis, foreclosures popping up like morels in a good spring, the bailout of Wall Street’s obese felines and the abandonment of the U.S. auto industry by southern Republicans in the Senate whose clear goal all along was to destroy the United Auto Workers union — maybe even with the devious complicity of the auto executives themselves. All that business before Congress eventually took on a Kabuki-theater kind of suspicious predictability. The other momentous thing that occurred in 2008 where I am personally concerned was my decision to retire from the ministry of the Episcopal Church at the end of March 2009, when I shall be 70 years, one month and 27 days old. Enough, already.

Social Security: Don’t fail me now.

 © Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.