{"id":1477,"date":"2012-01-24T01:21:34","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T06:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2013-03-06T16:16:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T21:16:40","slug":"the-gentleman-or-the-abyss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1477","title":{"rendered":"The Gentleman or the Abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I went to the Apollo to see the Prez. Let me repeat that because there’s something magical and ridiculously unlikely in that sentence.\u00a0 Obama, is, of course, the first sitting president to ever come to the Apollo.\u00a0 Ten or fifteen years ago, Harlem was much less safe and chic than it is today, and a presidential visit to the theater would have been unthinkable.\u00a0 But then, to paraphrase Tom Tomorrow<\/a>, if Dr. Who had landed in 2001 and announced that in 2008 America would elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, it wouldn’t be the time travel part that would sound crazy.<\/p>\n

Today 125th street has tour buses and chain stores, but still the feeling of history, and the Apollo is<\/em> history.\u00a0 Tickets were reasonably priced, starting at $100, far less than a Broadway show or a concert.\u00a0 This was not a big donor crowd, just enthusiastic constituents, still proud of their President though some may have been a little disappointed that he hasn’t always been as forceful as we’d hoped.\u00a0 (As someone said to me recently, “I still love the President. I’m just not in love<\/em> with him anymore.)<\/p>\n

Our politically savvy cousin (a former campaign manager for a sitting senator) who accompanied us, reviewed the President’s speech as a “incoherent, but exciting.”\u00a0 Obama was trying out different things, honing his message for the coming election. He was in training.<\/p>\n

The speech reminded me of why we had expected so much.\u00a0 He hit the right populist notes, sounding like Jimmy Stewart in the never released Capra sequel, President Smith Runs for Re-election<\/em>. He talked about the economic mess he inherited, how hard it will be to pull ourselves out, the need for the same rules to apply to everyone, and that we are all in this together. He talked about the good that government can<\/em> do and referenced social security as well as health care reform.\u00a0 He mentioned the GI bill, which his grandfather had used to go to college after the war.\u00a0 My father also went to school on the GI bill.\u00a0 In his case to attended optometry school at Columbia, although\u00a0 before the war he’d\u00a0 gotten a bachelor’s degree at City College (also in Harlem, USA), which back then didn’t charge tuition.\u00a0 Imagine that!\u00a0 A free university education.\u00a0 What a country we once were back when that socialist FDR was in charge.<\/p>\n

Obama talked about his opponents and how much the republicans had changed, referencing both Lincoln who created the Internal Revenue Service and Teddy (Bust the Trust) \u00a0Roosevelt.<\/p>\n

But the moment that would be immortalized on YouTube was when he first came out, after the Reverend Al Green, and he began to sing Let’s Stay Together<\/em>.\u00a0 The crowd went wild.\u00a0 Obama beamed that big smile, the one that inspired crazy Pam Geller <\/a>to speculate that Malcolm X was his biological father (my absolute favorite conspiracy theory, not only for its absurdity and physical impossibility, but because I kind of wish, if only<\/em>.)\u00a0\u00a0 At the time, I just enjoyed the moment.\u00a0 It only hit me hours later that of course the singing was staged.<\/p>\n

When the stakes are this high, nothing is left to chance.\u00a0 I can imagine Obama with his advisers planning the marathon of his New York night — three dinners and a show.\u00a0 I could see him being told that the entertainment would include Al Green, prompting an impromptu song burst, followed by one of the bright not-so-young men saying, “You’ve got to do that!”<\/p>\n

I accept that he is after all a politician, an incumbent running for re-election in a tough economy. The line that has haunted me since Thursday wasn’t the musical interlude, it was when he said that this is not the same Republican party he ran against in 2008, that back then he ran against an opponent “who agreed that we should ban torture, believed in climate change, [and] had worked on immigration reform.”<\/p>\n

Here’s what it comes down to. On one side are the republican candidates left standing. There’s\u00a0 Romney, a rich man who can joke about betting $10,000, and about his being “unemployed,”\u00a0 then turn earnest about corporations’ being people.\u00a0 If he didn’t actually exist, Stephen Colbert would have had to invent him.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s Gingrich who doesn’t just pander to racists, he incites them while playing the victim. And Santorum is still in the race, a man openly disdainful of science, education and contraception.\u00a0 Here are people advocating policies that would rid us of even the small safety net that exists, who would happily gut social security, rescind health care reform, destroy public education and leave an economy in shambles, men who talk about limiting government while advocating its entry into our bedrooms.<\/p>\n

Before the show, as we waited on<\/em> line (this being New York) <\/a>that cold winter’s night.\u00a0 Across the street, there were the usual motley band of protesters, occupy Wall Street types with signs about corporations and Guantanomo, proclaiming their status as part of the 99%.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course this was an event for<\/em> the 99%.\u00a0 Ironically, many of us had probably at least visited<\/em> Zuccotti Park.\u00a0 While some will argue that there isn’t much difference between the parties, at this point that’s unaffordable nihilism.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe Obama is too “centrist” for some or too much of a gentleman when times call for a street fighter, but we are all standing on a precipice and it’s either him or the abyss.<\/p>\n