Last night, I tuned into Senator Obama’s speech and now I feel galvanized. I’m young, politically minded, well-educated, blah, blah, blah.  But in all honesty, Dr. King’s speech has always been a moment of rhetorical brilliance captured on crackly celluloid. Haunting, distant; a vestige of a largely bygone era of sock hops and attack dogs. I haven’t necessarily identified on a personal level with the energy and the severity of the struggles Dr. King outlined in his oration. It’s not like racism and joblessness skipped this generation but because of the previous generation’s efforts, we have the luxury of apathy – we’re able to bury our noses in our books and later set them to the grindstone to capture the American dream from the boardroom and not the picket line.

But yesterday, that electricity was palpable as I spent most of the day trying to find a suitable viewing party (Youtubing the speech later with promoted videos of cats crying just right of Obama’s head was not the move). I ended up watching it with a teacher friend of mine as we frankly discussed the merits of the speech (“He’s still a little bit vague for me; still floating on lots of poufy rhetoric although he is getting it in”) and the night as a whole (“Look, the whole family’s wearing pink! Even his tie, it’s magenta!”).

But for one of the few times in my life I really felt history happening. It’s not just seeing the speech, it’s feeling the energy of people who otherwise wouldn’t turn on CNN being glued to the TV; Atlantic Center quiet as a ghost town as people went inside and tuned in. And being excited to come to work the next day and natter on about egghead stuff instead of the usual Media Takeout-fueled prattle. 

And then this morning word breaks that McCain has picked a virtual unknown, Sarah Palin as his VP. A female governor from Alaska (which is treated like a play-cousin of the continental American states). She’s a member of the NRA, she’s being investigated for apparently trying to fire her a deadbeat in-law and she likes to fish and hunt. CNN keeps going on about how she has a young child with down syndrome and if she has time to be vice president. Now that burns my toast. McCain has a Brady Bunch of his own and do we question his ability to run the world? Of course not.

I still don’t know enough about this woman except to say that she has everything going for her, celebrity aside, that McCain has been trying to smash about Obama (young, inexperienced, somewhat idealistic). But people are going to look and see “woman!” and Palin makes this a history-making campaign on the women’s front – a strong front to consider. Perhaps this McCain feller is more shrewd than I imagined which should make for a truly exciting race to November.