Savor the Moment

It was profoundly moving to see Pete Seeger, along with Bruce Springsteen, sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” at the Lincoln Memorial; at 89, this is probably the closest a genuine national treasure will get to “laying his hammer down.” The rest of the concert wasn’t half bad either – hell, Bono even got to put in a plug for Palestinian freedom, after putting one in for the country that has just visited murder and mayhem upon them.

So I resolve, for the next day and a half, to set reality aside -- to “bracket” the Clintonite appointments, the toadying to Wall Street, the abject and self-defeating “bipartisanship,” even the impending escalation of the war in Afghanistan -- and to feel good that the Bush/Cheney nightmare will soon be over, and that at last we will have a capable, intelligent, eloquent and, yes, African American leader. There will be more than enough time to pick up the hammer again when Obama lets Bush and the others get away with worse than murder, and when it becomes even clearer than it already is just how meretricious his vaunted “change” will be.