one heartening turnabout
I’m always happy to be genuinely surprised by a more progressive or open-minded reaction than I might’ve otherwise respected. Last year, for example, when I used the gay marriage debate as the final essay topic in my freshman composition classes at St. Joseph’s University (my alma mater, I should add), I expected to hear mixed reactions from the students, but probably 3/4 of them fully supported not just civil unions, but the full rights of marriage for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Likewise, after sweating some of the more boundary-pushing aspects of, say, Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, I was impressed that many of my students seemed relatively unphased by the visceral directness of his work (mind you, we’re just starting Burroughs now, so I might have to redact that statement).
Anyway, color me similarly surprised when Jennifer passed along this video of McCain supporters openly challenging a couple declaiming Barack Obama’s ties to not only Islam, but also communism (and selling bumper stickers doing the same), at a recent political rally. So, that’s what, a half-dozen down, and many, many more to go? Considering that the grapevine here in Cincinnati has been astir with both news of a house whose Halloween decorations include a lynched effigy of Obama and a local hardware store displaying a sign similar to the one below, I’m very glad to have more positive developments to focus on.
