¡Obamanos!

I didn’t have much time today to truly indulge in the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. I watched with some of my coworkers on a flat screen TV in the break room at our office as Obama took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address. But I couldn’t really soak it in until I got home and turned on the TV to catch just a tiny slice of the exhaustive recap of the day’s events and coverage of the evening’s inaugural parties.

As it approaches midnight, I can say it was a good day. It left me feeling uplifted and hopeful, despite all the lousy economic and foreign conflict news. We’ve turned a page, not only on the awful, illegal and corrupt Bush administration, but on an entire ugly chapter in our nation’s history. A black man was sworn in as president today. Even last year at this time, I couldn’t have imagined we’d be able to say such a thing so soon. Obama’s ascension to the presidency makes me proud. I voted for him, putting aside some initial reservations that had nothing to do with the color of his skin. For me his race wasn’t even a consideration, and I think that’s true for many other people as well. In this case the non-factor was as important as all the other factors in making history.

As I watched Obama’s speech, my impression was that he wasn’t speaking to the millions massed on the mall in front of him, or even the hundreds of millions watching on TV. He was speaking to history. Watching the dissections of the speech tonight, I think I was half-right. Unlike a lot of people I know, I’ve never been blown away by Obama’s oratory. He can deliver a good speech, for sure, but I think a certain amount of the praise being directed his way is rooted in the reality that the most recent president was a functional illiterate who understood even less about grammar and sentence construction than he did about warfare and foreign policy.

We have, in a sense, been crawling through a rhetorical desert these past eight years. Obama is offering us a glass of water, but to us that glass looks like a swimming pool.

I felt today’s speech meandered, hitting a lot of themes and using a lot of code dressed up in rhetorical flourish. Reflecting further over a bottle of Lagunitas Brewing Brown Shugga and the tones of the Dixie Chicks and Muddy Waters, it occurs to me that hitting a lot of themes and using code and flashy imagery is what inaugural addresses are historically about. With some notable exceptions they are speeches to history, not to people.

Reading through the speech again, I think many of the words were right. It was a better mix of plain speaking and lofty ideas than I remember as I stood there next to the reception desk. The speech itself wasn’t great. What made it great, and what will make it great for generations, was the man delivering it, and the circumstances surrounding its delivery. Watching Obama take the oath of office, and the reaction of the flag-waving millions, did bring a lump to my throat. That’s history, bubba, a real “where-were-you-when?” moment – the second in three months involving the same guy. I was moved.

I did snort-laugh when Obama thanked George W. Bush for his “service to our nation.” A few of my colleagues turned around, but I didn’t care. Thanking Bush for his service is like thanking Bernard Madoff for being a careful steward of your finances, or Jeffrey Dahmer for watching the kids. Some might say that latter comparison is too harsh for a man who, after all, did spend eight years of his life as president, and who appears to have aged much more than those eight years. Regardless, Bush’s era came to an appropriate close, amid two wars—one illegal, a crumbling constitution, the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression and everywhere the destructive signs of unchecked greed and hubris that started before Bush took office but that he and his ilk fostered. Obama got his digs in, though. His subtlety will be debated, but among my friends the appropriateness of his comments will not.

“… we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

“Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

“We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations.”

The camera cut to Bush at one point, and I’m pretty sure he was wincing. I saw on the news that when Bush landed in Texas, before Obama had even finished walking the parade route from the Capitol to the White House, he proclaimed his return to the Lone Star State and vowed never again to leave. Too bad for Texas, but the rest of America hopes he keeps that promise.

Tomorrow Obama will wake up and confront the ugly mess before him. Generally I believe he grasps the difficulties ahead. Sometimes, though, I wonder. Take this line from the inaugural speech: “Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.”

Um, sure it has. Shortcuts and settling for less—that’s why we have the schlocky suburban wastelands polluting our urban fringes, that’s why we prefer to lay down ribbons of asphalt in service to the ubiquitous automobile rather than laying down rail lines or planning more bus routes and it’s why greedmongers and wing-tip hustlers like Bernie Madoff have dominated the headlines of late. There are more of them to come, not all of them outright criminals like Madoff, but all of them accountable for serving themselves above anyone else. I predict many more of them will choose suicide instead of facing up to what they’ve done. That’s how these people are—when things are going well they are the masters of the universe. When fortunes turn they are revealed to have no character and no guts. Fuck them … the trouble being of course that they’ve already fucked us.

At any rate, I was writing about Obama and the inauguration. For one day, anyway, I felt hope and change were possible, and embodied in one man. I thought, maybe we can begin to undo the damage of the past eight years. Obama can never live up to the expectations the world has put on him. In that respect he is doomed to fail before he even starts. But I think if he goes down, Obama will go down swinging, and in the end that may be his most inspirational act. It may be the thing that drives the rest of us on.

I know this: With all due respect to Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks, tonight I am proud to say the President of the United States is from Illinois.

The Motorcyclist in Winter

They say only motorcyclists know why dogs stick their heads out of car windows. Now that the cold and snow of winter have descended upon the Great Lakes, that sensation of the wind buffeting my face and roaring past my ears seems miles away in any direction. All I’m left with is the memory of the throbbing engine shaking my body and spitting out its fat staccato notes to reverberate off whatever’s nearby—concrete medians, cars, trees, glass storefronts.

The bike sits alone in the garage now, narrow black wires leading from the battery and engine to a small black box, which in turn is plugged into an outlet via a 25-foot orange extension cord. A green light on the box indicates the battery is fully charged. A little red light in the shape of a tiny key blinks regularly, like a heartbeat monitor, from the darkness of the speedometer, the only other sign that the bike is still alive. Looking at the bike there in that condition is like watching a lion stare silently out of its cage in a northern zoo; both the bike and the lion are confined and neither is happy about it, but only the lion has a chance to express its displeasure, or possibly change the situation. The bike, and its rider, must wait.

The rider, though, carries memories of better times. This is my first winter as a motorcycle owner and rider. I knew the cold was coming, and with it ice, snow and road salt dust. I not-so-secretly hoped for the odd 40-degree, dry weekend here and there during the winter. It wouldn’t take much, I thought, to justify a quick afternoon ride if the conditions were right: no snow piled up and melting along the streets, no icy patches, no cold rain and no salt dust coating the pavement. So far that combination of factors has proved elusive. Now another round of snow and single-digit temperatures is forecast. It might be March before bike and rider leave the garage together.

I was not prepared for the symptoms of riding withdrawal. They include red eyes from obsessive internet searching during business hours for videos of people riding their motorcycles, itchy legs, reflexive twitching of the right hand and repetitive squeezing of the left hand, exhaustion due to sleep deprivation caused by late-night monitoring of motorcycle chat rooms, hoarseness from screaming at the TV during the weather segment and hypothermia from long hours spent in the unheated garage staring at the bike.

Twice I have sat bolt-upright in the dark silence before dawn, awakened by a nightmare of rolling the bike out and discovering flat spots on the tires because I didn’t move it often enough during the winter. This, even though I’ve moved it several times since my last ride in November.

The motorcycle rider in winter is not a healthy or sane person. The daily disappointment of scanning seven- and 10-day weather forecasts, searching for some glimpse of riding weather in the future, and seeing nothing, takes a toll. As I have become more agitated, some of my senses have become heightened. The sound of snowfall keeps me up at night now. Also, I have found myself lowering my standards. Forty degrees as an acceptable minimum riding temperature slipped to 35, then to 30. Now I think with a long-sleeve Under Armor shirt, a wool sweater, a winter parka, long underwear, two pairs of wool socks, heated gloves, a neck cover and a full-face helmet, I could probably last an hour or so in 25-degree weather. And if I didn’t make it, what the hell? I’d die having scratched the itch one last time. They’d find me on the shoulder of a curvy road somewhere, kickstand down, lying beside the bike, a smile frozen on my blue face.

Ah, bizarre fantasies tonight. What came over me, imagining a thing like that? I would never get off the bike for chrissake.

A [Bleeping] White Christmas

Merry Christmas from the shivering, snow-weary, frozen heart of America.

Complaining about the snow and cold in Chicago this year doesn’t carry the usual cachet. It seems everyone is frozen. My parents have 16 inches of snow outside their home in Portland, Ore., which diminishes the amount of carping I can do about the foot outside here. I do have a situation that I bet they don’t, however. My car’s tires are frozen to the ground. When I parked on the street a couple of days ago it was wet and slushy. Then the temperature plunged to zero and everything that was slush became solid ice. The car is frozen in place. And the defroster fan has stopped working.

But inside it’s warm and cozy, and I can sit and reflect on the year gone by. There were more ups than downs, and higher highs than the lowest lows. That’s a change from recent years. Everyone I worked with at HedgeWorld got laid off, leaving just me and an uncertain future. However some good things have come out of that upheaval. It jarred me out of a kind of professional trance and motivated me to branch out. I’ve been doing more writing.

A good friend, Aaron, who also lost his job earlier this year, and I are considering writing a book about journalism in the 21st Century. I’d started thinking about that after we got news of the HedgeWorld layoffs. He’d been thinking about it too, and our ideas seem to mesh.

A book that Aaron suggested I read, Betsy Lerner’s “The Forest for the Trees” has me thinking not only about the journalism book, but about a novel.

I’ve also been having some stimulating e-conversations with my old college journalism teacher, Rick Seifert, about online community journalism. So, professionally there are a lot of interesting possibilities in the coming year, and for the first time in many years I find myself looking at genuinely interesting and realistic goals.

Personally it’s been another challenging year in many ways, but it’s ending on a very positive note. I feel it’s been a year of moving forward on many fronts, rather than treading water or regressing.

I’ve spent much of the day relaxing, exchanging Christmas greetings with friends and loved ones, considering my overall good fortune and trying not to think about the creeping entropy I see all around. It’s been happening for months but over the past couple of days I seem to have become particularly attuned to it. Part of a gutter fell off the other day, yielding to the weight of the snow and ice that filled it. There’s the aforementioned frozen car and the problem with the defrost fan. My sinuses are bone dry with the cold and I feel like I’m getting a cold all the time. I feel like I can hear cavities growing in my head and that any day all my teeth are going to fall out. And beyond the physical, I am slowly filling with dread about the likelihood of social and economic disorder in the New Year.

No matter what economic corner you peer around, there is chaos and fear. Politically our best hope for “change” has been brought low, at least for now, by pervasive corruption and the blind greed of a megalomaniacal state governor. Indeed it seems many of our critical systems—especially political, financial and commercial—have been exposed as either questionable or outright frauds and their leaders as a parade of hacks and traveling medicine salesmen.

But that’s not very Christmas-y, is it? And maybe it’s not as bad as all that, anyway. I just need to adjust my thinking. For instance, that’s not ice coated slush-snow out there, it’s a soft white blanket, tucking us in for the winter. Rod Blagojevich isn’t corrupt, just a misunderstood entrepreneur.

There, I feel better. Don’t you?

Seriously, though, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

The Chicago Way

Recently I’ve been engaged in a back-and-forth email chat with some college chums and a former college journalism teacher about a whole host of topics: the future of the media, the nature of information and education, overpopulation and other social topics. You can follow the whole string here, at Rick Seifert’s Red Electric blog.

Yesterday I brought up Rod Blagojevich’s indictment as an aside and today one of the participants commented that during the presidential campaign, there was a yearning for “a little less Harvard Law, a little more Chicago political machine….” This struck a chord with me.

I love Chicago; I have since I moved here in 1997. I read Mike Royko’s Boss before I moved here and thought I understood a little about corruption’s history here. I was even excited to work as a reporter here, and imagined myself breaking big stories on the Machine and winning all sorts of awards.

Eleven years later I’m on my second tour in Chicago, after having served three interim years in New York. While in New York, I read Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, in which I learned a little about Tammany Hall and corruption in another big city. But FDR and Fiorello LaGuardia, and even to an extent Robert Moses, helped break Tammany Hall. Certainly there is still corruption in New York. However, Chicago exists today as if Tammany Hall had never been interrupted, as this Slate.com article suggests.

The Chicago Way isn’t cute and there’s nothing nuanced or romantic about it. At its dark heart it is cronyism, money and power. That’s it. The Chicago Way isn’t about “getting things done” for the sake of getting them done; it’s about getting them done so that someone, preferably an entire network of people, benefit personally. If you’re not in the network, any benefit to you is ancillary and perhaps not even intended.

Anyway, all of that is a typically long-winded way of introducing my response to my college friend:

You're far from alone in your Machine thinking. I recall quite a bit of nudging and winking among the national media and pundits during the election about how Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Axelrod were going to bring a little sharp-elbowed Chicago politics to Washington; you know, get things done "The Chicago Way." Make no mistake: Rod Blagojevich, while a fully a creature of his own making, learned from the masters of the Chicago Way. Mike Royko, in his book "Boss" about the first Mayor Daley (that would be Richard J.) suggested that the Chicago motto "Urbs in Horto," or City in a Garden, should instead be "Ubi est Mea?" or "Where is Mine?" And the first Mayor Daley was also famous for saying about city job seekers visiting his 11th Ward offices, "We don't want nobody nobody sent."

The cocktail party stories about Chicago politics are rooted in a much more difficult truth about corruption here. Axelrod is up to his neck in Chicago politics, and so is Emanuel. Obama himself was helped along by Machine hacks like Emil Jones, and has endorsed the likes of the current Mayor Daley (Richard M.) and the nitwit Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and Rod Blagojevich. My hope is that Obama will use the strength of his own brand to elevate himself above those roots and lift Axelrod and Emanuel up with him. I think he will, and I think he will leave the Machine behind. Richard J. Daley refused to run for president, although some thought he should, so the closest the Machine has ever come to having a candidate of its own making in the White House was John Kennedy. Once in power, Kennedy took Daley's calls, but certainly didn't give "da Mare" everything he wanted. But what the hell? Politics is a pay-to-play business, and some people can pay more and play harder than others. If the Bush/Rove reign has taught us anything it's that attaining the highest office in the land doesn't automatically filter out petty political provincialism.

A good site to poke around for another perspective on "The Chicago Way" is the Beachwood Reporter, run by a former Tribune reporter.

'Hey Blago … f--- you!'

I consider myself a pretty jaded person, for good or ill. I’m leery of panhandlers, I think even friends and family will take advantage of you from time to time if they think it’s in their own personal best interest and I don’t believe most of what politicians say.

But this Rod Blagojevich thing has me flummoxed. The sheer scope of the sociopathic behavior at work here is stunning. Even as the Illinois governor knew he was the target of a federal corruption probe, he sought the ouster of Chicago Tribune editorial board members and brazenly offered Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder.

The man who once boasted of his testicular virility seems instead to have been suffering from an acute case of procto-cerebralism. In addition to visiting the Tribune’s web site and checking out the federal complaint, also read this Blago profile from the February 2008 Chicago Magazine.

You could wait a lifetime and not encounter an antihero like Blagojevich anywhere in fiction, let alone in real life. I mean, Eliot Spitzer is probably thinking about Blagojevich, “Damn, that dude’s fucked up.” Seriously, Blagojevich was until recently considering making a run for president in 2016.

And, as it turns out, Blago’s better half, Patty, is just as into family values. Hey, the family that says “fuck you” to the world together stays together, or at least serves its prison sentences concurrently.

The worst part is, this helmet-haired dunce sold out his office, the state and the people of Illinois for what amounts to a few hundred thousand bucks. So let me put it in terms Mr. Blagojevich can understand:

Fuck you, Governor.

Earn It.

I keep having to slap myself when I hear the words “president-elect Barack Obama.” It’s hard to believe. Tuesday night was like some kind of breakthrough therapy session in which I discovered I don’t have to stay in this abusive presidential relationship I’ve suffered through for the past eight years. I can demand better. We can demand better.

Most people who know me know I wasn’t a big Obama supporter in the beginning. I liked John Edwards. So much for that judgment. But I think Obama grew into his campaign as the season went on and as his campaign expanded. His little grassroots movement evolved into a presidential campaign and Obama evolved into a presidential candidate.

Some of my perspective is no doubt based on the fact that he became the only choice on the Democratic side, and I intended to vote Democratic all along. But watching Obama conduct himself on the campaign trail and in the debates with the tirelessly angry John McCain, Obama became presidential. And watching him Tuesday night, I was proud to have voted for him, proud to have volunteered for his campaign and proud that he will be our president.

Pride in a president … it’s going to take a while to get used to that. I thought Bill Clinton was a good president, but I can’t say I was proud he was the president. I mean, Monica Lewinsky? Really? George W. Bush, the president for the past eight years, has been one of the worst in U.S. history, a nearly illiterate rube with a religious imperialist mind and a penchant for violence. So essentially for the past 16 years (in my book, anyway) pride in a president has been something unknown to me.

Now, Obama has a chance to make us all proud. The important ingredients appear to be there: He seems thoughtful, articulate, confident, diplomatic and cool under pressure. Roughly 65.4 million other people think so, too, or at least hope so. And so for myself and all of them, I have one request of the new president:

Earn it.

There’s a lot of hard work ahead. From a pragmatic standpoint, Obama has to put in place an administration that can devise solutions to the country’s myriad economic and foreign policy problems and, just as importantly, get those solutions implemented. On a more idealistic note, Obama can use his gift for oratory and the power of his office to rally the nation and bring people together behind concrete proposals. For without workable solutions, rallies are meaningless and without broad buy-in from the public, solutions won’t work.

Twice this fall I gave Obama my time, driving to Iowa with friends to knock on doors and build his base of support. That work made seeing Iowa turn blue on Election Night that much more gratifying. But I gave Obama something more valuable than my time this election. I gave him my vote. And as historic as his election is, by itself it’s not enough.

How does he earn it? By rejecting the kind of political cronyism to which we’ve all become accustomed; by seeking common ground instead of emphasizing differences; by always doing what he thinks is best for the country and not appeasing special interests; and by reaching out to the rest of the world rather than building walls to “protect” us from it. That would make for a good start, anyway.

On Inauguration Day Obama would do well to say he understands the hope many have placed with him, but that it’s only partly up to him to fulfill that great hope. Some kind of John F. Kennedy-esque reference to how we’re all in this together and that government is here to pull with you, not for you would, I think, set the correct tone for the next four years. Selfishly I’d also like to see proposals to reconstitute a nationwide passenger rail network and rebuild our urban infrastructure. Those would be solid long-term investments that would put people to work and go a lot further toward restoring our economy than one-time bailouts for financial firms and automakers.

But I’m getting ahead here. Obama hasn’t even taken office yet. We have a two and a half more months to watch and wait.

No doubt for some—including those who bought into the “Obama is a Socialist” nonsense—Jan. 20 is looming like a root canal. They can’t fathom the idea of a Democrat in the White House and don’t know what to make of a man who uses polysyllabic words. They don’t trust a man from the city, much less one from Chicago. They are probably dreading the next four years, and maybe they should be. The future is no place for people who cling to the fears and old ideas of the past.

For my part, it’s nice to be on the other side of that equation for once—actually looking forward to a new president, a new beginning. Looking ahead to a future of hope.

Getting on the Bike

By almost any objective measure the “gold standard” of writing about what it’s like to ride a motorcycle is Hunter S. Thompson’s 1965 essay, “Midnight on the Coast Highway.” I am still a novice at this riding thing, having only started this past April. I took the Rider’s Edge new rider course at the end of April, the DMV test in May and on June 7 cautiously rode home on my new Harley-Davidson XL 1200 Custom.

Since then I’ve put about 2,500 miles on the bike, most of those on a single trip to the mountains of Western North Carolina and back at the end of July. It was a trip my brother Gene and I had been planning for the better part of a year. The genesis of it fuzzy today, hatched as it was after many beers sometime during the winter of 2006-2007, but in general we decided it would be fun to show up at our family reunion on bikes. There were just a couple of obstacles: neither of us owned a motorcycle or had a license to ride one.

Gene had ridden for a time as a teenager, but had not sat on a motorcycle since the advent of fuel injection. I had one brief experience piloting a motorcycle, also in my teenage years. Riding my friend Spencer’s Yamaha Seca I traveled a distance of about 20 yards—down the curb-cut entrance to the gas station where he worked, across the street, over the far curb, across the sidewalk and into a clump of juniper bushes that served as a barrier between that sidewalk and the parking lot of the Abby’s Pizza. Fortunately for me, they also served as a barrier between the front wheel of the Yamaha and the front bumper of a pickup truck parked in the lot.

As it turned out I had not mastered, or even seriously contemplated, how to turn, stop, disengage the clutch or apply the brakes. I ended up spending $125 I didn’t have to buy Spencer a new set of handlebars.

Suffice it to say the Rider’s Edge course is designed for people just like me and after four days I was completely qualified to ride at 20 miles per hour in a large parking lot.

After passing the DMV course, which I took in the same parking lot where the Rider’s Edge course was offered, I went looking for a motorcycle. I knew I wanted a Harley and I knew I wanted a Sportster. After taking a cursory look at some Suzukis, Kawasakis, Hondas and Yamahas, I happened one weekend upon a Harley dealer test ride event. I proudly handed over my driver’s license, with its M-class endorsement, to the ladies in the test ride registration tent, confidently signed the waiver form and nervously waited for my turn on the 1200 Sportster Low they had available to ride. When the group of riders returned, I slung my leg over the Sporty and waited for the signal to start ‘em up. I tried to slow my racing mind so that I could remember the sequence for how to start the thing. “FINE-C,” I kept thinking over and over, which stands for Fuel, Ignition, Neutral, Engine, Choke—the correct procedure for starting a carbureted motorcycle. Of course, modern Harleys have fuel injection, so there’s no fuel petcock and no choke. So all I had to do was turn the key to “on,” make sure the bike was in neutral, flip the engine switch to “run” and hit “start.”

The Sportster is considered by Harley enthusiasts to be a “small” bike. Its engine, at 73 cubic inches (1200 cubic centimeters, hence the “1200” designation) of displacement, used to be considered big. Today most Harley models come standard with 96-cubic-inch engines (1573 cubic centimeters), and some of those are bored out to 104 cubic inches (1700 cc’s).

However “small” is a relative term when the biggest bike you’ve ever been on is one with a 500-cubic-centimeter engine. At the time it seemed like when I hit “start” the thing exploded in a cacophony of staccato blasts from the mufflers and intense shaking and vibrating such that my glasses were bouncing on my nose and the rear-view mirrors offered nothing more than a blurry idea of what was behind me.

Before I knew what was happening, the lead riders, all on Softail Customs, Road Kings, Electra Glides and Dynas, were pulling out of the lot. The rest of the ride was a white-knuckle affair. Since I had not anticipated riding that day, I did not have my helmet, gloves or jacket. My first-ever street ride was done in a fleece jacket with no helmet, no gloves and no eye protection. At 45 miles per hour, I was so terrified the wind would blow my eyeglasses off I couldn’t even find space in my mind to worry about crashing. My eyes were watering but the wind was blowing the tears back on my face. I was the last rider and badly lagged the group on the high-speed first leg of the two-mile ride. Later, when the ride entered a more residential area where I didn’t have to worry so much about wind speed, I caught up. We pulled back into the lot, I turned off the bike, thanked the organizers and went straight to my car, where I tried to bring my heart rate back under control.

But at that point I was hooked. There was no terror, only exhilaration. And all I could think about was when I’d be able to get on a bike again. I had to buy one as quickly as possible.

Next: What it’s like to ride.