And now for something completely different

President Obama. Wow! He managed to weave elements of MLK's Mountaintop Speech and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into a victory speech that showed a sober, serious President-Elect to the American people. I've thought highly of Barack Obama since I heard his 2004 DNC speech casting aside the notion of a polarized, red state/blue state America, then later read The Audacity of Hope.

Obama's race had nothing to do with why I pressed the box next to his name yesterday, and it didn't really dawn on me until I saw enormous lines at African-American precincts and watched the spontaneous reactions to his speech last night that his election is an Historic Event in capital letters. I really don't care how it makes the United States look to the rest of the world, but, as a white Southerner who grew up in a virulently racist family, it sure is nice to know that a candidate with an African-American heritage could be elected President of the United States a relatively brief 40 years after Dr. King saw the proverbial mountaintop.