Jarrett-Carter.com

You have to respect the contributions of folks like Jesse Jackson and Cornel West. They paved the way, set the tone, and any other term you can come up with to say “they did it first.”

But doing it first usually doesn’t translate to doing it best, and that’s the situation we currently have with these trailblazers questioning the incoming leadership of Barack Obama.

Just a few days ago, Jesse Jackson cautioned a church congregation in Baltimore about symbolism and substance, recognizing Obama’s victory as a momentous moment, but not a moment to overshadow the long trail ahead.

This morning, Dr. Cornel West was a guest on Democracy Now!, criticizing Obama’s cabinet appointments and names that are being raised as potential appointees. Dr. West went so far as to liken himself a modern Frederick Douglas that will put pressure on the modern day Abraham Lincoln.

Frederick Douglas? Really?

There’s no secret about how much this means to folks, but the Golden Days crew is going to have to fall back a little. Everyone can acknowledge and understand that an Obama presidency is not going to be the people’s revolution. The promise of such a movement got him elected, but the bottom line is that broke families and greedy corporations don’t exactly translate into grassroots heaven.

And while a bottom-up movement is the so-called back bone of American history, now is not the time for such hopeful ambitions. Maybe in eight, but certainly not four years. What needs to happen now is jobs, housing and international diplomacy.

Of course it would be nice if corporations and government suddenly got the notion to stop screwing people over, but that’s been the common practice for too many years. You can’t expect a boon of middle class prosperity when the middle class has been expertly complacent for the last eight years under a system designed for the ultra-rich.

And if we’re lucky, the country will be open to an inclusive discussion about moral responsibility, legal equity, and educational value.

Barack Obama was packaged and sold as the answer to all of our problems. For black folks, he was and is the face of cultural ascension. That advertising will only be as faulty as we make it, because if we remain stagnant in communities and believing the hype delivered by Dr. West and Rev. Jackson, the ideal of self-improvement that Obama expertly rode into the White House will be lost in a four-year hail storm of scrutiny.

It’s a classic case of Old School vs. New School, with the new face of African-American leadership staring down upon the shoulders of those who lifted him up. Both sides have something to offer for the good of the country and the people, but one side has more to lose than the other. Old school has been criticized and ostracized for the better part of 40 years. 2008 and beyond will be their golden years for sticking it to the man, cooling their march-burned heels, and publicly lamenting how generations lost the hope.

Unfortunately, the New School has to shoulder their expectations, along with managing the delicate hopes of a country just getting used to knowing that black folks can want the same things they want without brandishing guns or a cranking up a boombox while asking for them.

Come January 20, school will be in session for everyone.

I could see if Lindsay Lohan was like 89 years old and was responding to a question on how George Wallace would feel about Barack Obama being the first black president in U.S. history. But to be a young starlet who can afford people to tell her that this is not politically correct, well, let’s just go to the video.

Most of us will not be shocked that she said it, but that neither she, nor the interviewer, caught that as an  extremely ignorant statement. Just shows that the more we try not to see color, the more blinded we are by it.

Maybe not loves, I doubt if he even likes him just from being a FOX News pundit. But he respected the moment of Barack Obama’s election enough to repudiate this asinine remarks from Ralph “Mr. Irrelevant” Nader during this interview.

Disbelief is a much more powerful feeling than hope. To want something so bad that when you finally get it, you can’t believe that you received it, much less deserved it.

America has voted a black man into office. And not a black man that could be tossed out on his butt as a slap at affirmative action, but a black man that can get the job done. A black man that has the academic pedigree and an affable nature that has transcended years of distrust between the races.

Yes Lord, we trust Barack Obama.

I don’t know what it was like to be at the March on Washington, or at Jackie Robinson’s first game, or to march for something that wasn’t anywhere close to agreeable to white folks. But I’ve seen what America can do, what it is willing to sacrifice to make something go right when it recognizes it has been wrong for too long. For the very first time, I wholeheartedly believe in this country.

Black folks won’t give their feelings any names, because there’s far too many of them to describe right now. But the one you likely won’t hear but should know that we feel is patriotism, because there’s no way we could’ve done this alone. White, Latino, Asian, African and all kinds of brothers and sisters had faith in him - in us - that we wouldn’t mess this up. They had faith that everything he was promising was something worth fighting for, worth turning away from fear for, and worth believing in.

I can barely believe I’m typing this.

If you don’t feel like Superman today, something is wrong. Something inside of me is telling me that I CAN make a million dollars blogging. I can be the best husband in the world. I can help people. And I don’t have to worry about self-doubt anymore.

Because I’ve seen something happen that, by design, was never supposed to. The American political machine was not constructed for the minority to be the majority. It wasn’t built to accommodate those who believe in the best values and principles of its citizenry, and it wasn’t fueled by the prospect of government truly belonging to us.

Yet, here we are.

It’s ours.

It feels glorious.

This must be a dreary day for those who live their lives in cynicism.

Here you have a day about defying odds, realizing hope, and changing things from the every other angle but the one right in front of you. So many people have spent so much time in their intellectual capacity, breaking down odds and analyzing meaning, that today will likely throw them into a funk.

Because most of the country, and the world for that matter, is taking today to invest a few happy feelings.

You remember those feelings from childhood, anxiousness, wonder, excitement. All of the feelings you began to push back when you grew up and realized truths about how people lie, how life doesn’t always give you what you want, and that evil sometimes does win.

I have many friends, present and former, who live their lives like this. They get so caught up in why hope is an exercise in futility, that their greatest sense of aspiration falls prey to cycnicism. Of course, there is some validation to trusting nothing; black folks have gotten pretty far by being more careful than a cat on the kitchen counter.

And at the beginning of this campaign, it was our natural reaction to be afraid and less than optimistic. What else has this country afforded us the opportunity to be? It was all good when sports and music welcomed us with open arms, and even when we started creeping around government with our Ron Browns, Colin Powells and Condoleeza Rices, nobody thought that it would get this far. Especially not us.

But then we had a Barack Obama come around and let us all know that fear did not have to be an option. Yeah, we’ve heard it through the years, but he was calm when he said it. He was eloquent in the way he said it, and from all appearances, he believed it.

So we believed it.

We believed that we could vote for him and not worry about protecting him from assassination with a lack of voting. We believed that one vote could make a difference, and that we did have a little money to give to the campaign.

And that makes cynic sick, because their entire premise of existence rests on the regular human reaction of overstanding. No black man has ever been president, so why would the country change now? No one has ever raised that much money, so how could he raise it now?

Things are so messed up now, they can’t possibly be fixed.

But one thing cynics don’t and usually can’t count on, is when people eventually get annoyed with their doomsday prophesying. Sometimes, it feels good to live without hearing about how close we are to death.  Sometimes, believing does work. Maybe not for the numbers, or for that argument, or even for that job application, but sometimes, your woman does stick around. Your dad is nice to you one afternoon.

And the best candidate for the job gets the job.

So, I hope the cynics are going to be okay this evening. Hopefully, all of those brain waves don’t drag them under and drown them in “how did this happen?” Maybe we’ll all get lucky, and those cynics use their energy to question why change took so long in the first place.

Everybody keeps talking about John McCain and Sarah Palin are mavericks, but I can’t think of an action that more defines the term than commandeering primetime television.

There’s no need to get into how emotionally gripping, poignant and genuine the broadcast was, but just the fact that Obama had the balls to do it. Charisma aside, nobody raised more money than this candidate, nobody has generated more interest, and no one has been this consistent.

So why not share it with the world?

Why not push it in the faces of undecided voters, middle-class Republicans who confuse moral stability with political acuity, and people who just want to be contrary? Show everybody that this guy is presidential material, and even if you don’t like his race, his beliefs or his approach, you can at least acknowledge that he sounds sensible enough to go in a more positive direction than we are currently headed.

You think McCain wouldn’t have done the same thing if he raised enough money? You think Republicans would be as active in trying to suppress voting if it wasn’t necessary?

The country has never seen such mastery of political mobilization. Years from now, classes will be taught about maximizing ground-roots support and engagement. So let Obama have this one night. Besides, if you don’t like it, you’ll have four years to get used to it.

Between picking Sarah Palin, “that one,” and incessantly blinking during debates, John McCain has done all in his power to lose this election. And that’s not very surprising considering that his party is making him the mouthpiece for values and policies he does not support.

What’s surprising is that so many people are trying to blow it on his behalf. And that the people trying to blow it for him are getting caught out there in the media.

We knew about the old lady who thought Barack Obama was an Arab, but now we’ve got a McCain supporter crying wolf on being assaulted by an Obama supporter. Even Crystal Mangum knows enough not to tie herself up with the Obama campaign.

And then, John McCain’s brother is calling 911 because he doesn’t like sitting in traffic? And they think Obama is an elitist? Have you seen the George Washington bridge?

Face it. Nobody really wants this guy to win. Even the people that think he’s on a mission from God to save America have to wonder how much God approves of predatory lending practices, which are popularly aligned with shady Republican economic policies.

Just throw it, John. Nobody will be mad for getting out of the way of an historical freight train. Besides, concession can’t be any worse than what you and your supporters have done up to this point.

I always knew he had it in him, like many other Republicans around the country. For so long, many held Gen. Colin Powell in the vein of a sellout or a Uncle Tom because of his public political affiliation.

But when its all on the line between a country having hope and a country falling into despair, who else could you count on but Powell to come through with an eloquent and logical take on what this election means?

After all, he is a hero.

And don’t let that affiliation fool you. I’ve long believed that that his Republican views were more morally motivated than politically. If he happened to get paid off of them in the interim, more power to him.

He may not be down for gay marriage, he may not be down for abortion, and he might not even be down for gun control. But affirmative action and support for Barack Obama is more than enough from CP.

We’ll work on him about the rest of the stuff.

I’ll admit, I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of days regarding black popular culture. Between starting my second year of graduate school and getting a new job, things have been kind of hectic on the homefront.

Not to mention the fact that I’ve got like 39 other blogs that need tending to.

So maybe I’ve just been away from the T.V. too long, and Rev. Al Sharpton has been spitting game that I haven’t heard about. Between the Republicans trying to call Sarah Palin a pig on the low, and Kwame Kilpatrick surpassing Kwame Brown as the most despised man named Kwame in America, I figured Rev. Sharpton would be front and center on these hot button issues.

If you’ve seen my boy, tell him I’m looking for him. I’ve come to rely on his blustery brand of rhetoric, dipped in thick and rising sermonic tones, and served hot over pissed off conservative analysis. He’s got a lot to talk about these days, and while I may be out of the loop, I could sure use a dose of that Civil Rights stuff.

For all of the bluster and intimidation tactics, the cool/relax of Sen. Barack Obama in his interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on tonight’s “The O’Reilly Factor” proved a whole new side of Obama’s campaign, and a general futility on O’Reilly’s part.

O’Reilly tried to cut him off several times, he tried to box him in on pumped up issues of terrorism and foreign unrest, but Obama is a student of the Republican playbook, and it shined through in the interview.

The most strking element of the interview was Obama’s admission that the military surge in Iraq was “successful beyond our wildest dreams.” That statement could rub some liberal supporters the wrong way, but his classification of success as a reduction in violence was a good recovery. Obama wwent onto to say that while the surge has reduced violence, it has not encouraged Iraq’s independence from American military presence or American financial support, critical aspects of the American exit strategy.

Obama masterfully countered O’Reilly’s attempts at lumping religious and geographic sects together as targets in the “war on terror,” reaffirmed his commitment to national security and his support of the military forces, and even got a little snippy on ol’ Bill, on O’Reilly’s premise of diplomacy hypothetically failing, a scenario to which Obama tersely responded, “Everything is hypothetical.”

Too smooth. Can’t wait for part two. But here’s part one in case you missed it.