Getting Out The Getting-Out-The-Vote

Last week I began reading a book that I'm enjoying immensely--an autobiographical coming-of-age story about a man coming to terms with his identity and with the role of race in America. But it reads more like a novel, and the writing is poetry, and I can't seem to put it down. And in the middle of my reading, I got the rare opportunity to see the author in person.

The experience reminds me of when you hear a good joke, and then later you hear someone else tell the same joke, but this time it ends "... and that man was Bill Clinton," or "... George Bush", or some other super-celebrity. And you think, but the original joke was funny in its own right. Why do people feel the need to cheapen it by dropping some big name at the end?

That's kind of how I feel about the author of this engrossing book growing up to be the famous Barack Obama. And yet, of course, I would never have started reading it, otherwise.

It's a fascinating book, because it's very honest, having been written before Obama's political career. And it was against the backdrop of my reading that I got to see Obama himself speak at a rally in Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena. Virg and I waited in an endless line outside the Arena (which ultimately still left half the seats empty). Every time we advanced a few more feet, another volunteer would remind us that we couldn't bring any banners, that we had to remove our Barack Obama pins in order to get through the metal detectors, and that we should turn our cell phones on (the implication being so that we could prove they weren't bombs). We were probably approached by 20 such volunteers, each concerned that it might take us a good 30 minutes to unfasten our Obama buttons.

And each volunteer asked if we were registered to vote. Did they really think we had the energy to make our way downtown and stand in line in the cold to see Obama, but that ultimately we couldn't be bothered to stop by to vote at the polling place near our house? Each volunteer also asked if we were interested in volunteering for the campaign, and were pleased to learn that Virg is already a volunteer. Do they really need more volunteers? They already have 20 people to tell us to take off a campaign button. And it seemed silly that the primary job of a volunteer was to recruit more volunteers.

Waiting for the rally to begin, we watched bemused as campaign workers passed out campaign-approved banners to the people nearest the podium. At long last, Obama came out to much applause, and his speech was well written and masterfully delivered as always. We were very glad we went to hear him. But the contrast to his book was striking. Here was the author who wanted to see himself as an American, but lived in a racially divided America that could only see him as a black American and continued to place him in black communities. I can just imagine Obama chuckling to himself after addressing the sea of white faces at the Mellon Arena.

Still it seemed to me that Obama was preeching to the choir, and it was hard to imagine what purpose the rally served. When I got home, I read about Obama's own experience in attending a rally event early in his career as a community organizer in Chicago. He wrote, "To my mind the whole thing came off a bit flat, like a political convention or a TV wrestling match. Still, the crowd seemed to be enjoying itself."

Virg has been phone-banking for the Obama campaign this week. On Thursday night, she spent a couple hours calling volunteers to remind them of when they needed to come in to phone-bank. At home, sitting by myself and finishing writing recommendation letters, the phone rang. It was a volunteer from the Obama campaign. She was calling to remind Virg to come in to phone-bank on Monday. It's as if Obama has too many people lining up to campaign for him, so he creates fake work for them. As if he's organized a community of people and tricked them into thinking they're community organizers.