As millions gather around televisions and radios to witness the Obama inaugural ceremonies, we should remember the first celebration of Obama's election as US president.
That would be the spontaneous and informal bursts of joy and relief breaking out all over America, and the world, upon the network television announcement shortly before 11 pm that Obama-Biden had clinched the necessary majority of electoral votes to win.
A number of people I spoke with in New York said they could not remember experiencing anything like the collective, heartfelt expressions of euphoria: The cheers, applause, dancing, group hugs, whooping and cheering, curb-side partying, strangers high-fiving, puffing victory cigars down sidewalk strolls and all-around champagne-popping involving everyone in sight, into the wee-hours of the morning. The comparison that sprang to my mind, as it no doubt did to many others', was V-J Day, the end of World War II.
That August afternoon in 1945 I was not around to see personally, taking my memory of the auspicious eruption of from the black-and-white photos of the history books: sailors dancing-in the-streets, that famous Eisenstaedt shot of an amorous couple, sailor and nurse, kissing in the avenue.
But I was lucky enough to have been immersed in a virtual repeat of that day on November 4th, 2008.
Author Jean-Louis Bourgeois remarked: "The defeat of Japan marking the end of World War II became V-J Day. Similarly, Obama's electoral triumph could be called V-O [V-Obama] day."
"V-O Day marks the perceived end of two contemporary wars: the end of the war of the Bush administration and its allies to steal from the American people, and the end of the struggle by Black Americans to win what for hundreds of years had been deemed the exclusive domain of whites, the highest office in the land."
It appeared to me that the nation's media, TV radio and print included, did its level best to actively ignore and elide reporting upon this ubiquitous, grassroots, emotional upsurge. A gaping hole in "the first draft of history." This is the second reason why the Obama festivities demand a place in the historical record: to document the media's shocking (yes, that is the right word), Orwellian omission and erasure of what was before the eyes and ears of so many millions of people that night, across the country. And to explain to us why they did so.
The morning of November 5th, CNN showed a brief clip of one such celebration, a group of young people with arms outstretched toward the sky, daisy-chain dancing in Santa Cruz, California. There was no discernible audio and the quality was dim, grainy and discontinuous, like a bad webcam link. CNN's American Morning anchorwoman spoke over the video as it played, the entire clip was under 30 seconds and there were no close shots or interviews of the celebrants. And the relatively small, university town of Santa Cruz has the reputation of being a liberal/progressive enclave, and a place where the young and free-spirited predominate. Hence CNN's selection of this out-of-the-way locale as its token little showpiece of the un-aired profound and massive, millions-strong national paroxysm the night before.
There were video clips shown on CNN and other channels of indoor group applause and hugs, of all-black gatherings before a TV set where it was understood that a sympathetic crowd had assembled for the purpose of watching the returns come in unanimous hope of a McCain defeat. The reaction footage was pre-selected to send camera crews to stereotypically Black areas, such as Harlem or inner-city Philadelphia. In so doing, the networks excluded people from seeing and hearing the real depth, diversity and broadness of Obama's national support: in truth, far more Obama voters were white than black. And it seemed obvious that a sweeping majority of voters, of whatever race or ethnicity, were sick to death of Bush policies and the Republicans.
The following evening, November 5th, the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 show had its voiceover tell us, narrating clips of indoors Obama support gatherings, that "people are celebrating in ordinary places." That meticulously worded little snippet of misleading vaguerie was the extent of CNN's primetime viewing coverage, or anti-coverage, of the amazing, epic mass phenomenon that had taken place everywhere less than 24 hours earlier, and in whose afterglow, millions, or billions of humanity were still basking.
And predictably, no newspaper or magazine columns about this grand historical-sociological event, no New York Times or Harpers or The New Republic think-pieces, yet another media blackout as we experience on so many other happenings and occurrences. Even at the cost of embarrassingly contradictory police incident reports which, without an explanation or even mention of the real situation, are sure to have left some readers scratching their heads—e.g. a brief November 5th New York Daily News article on the arrest of a Williamsburg, Brooklyn man for disorderly conduct on Obama Victory night, describing a crowd scene, but failing to provide the readers the key contextual fact that this odd street fracas had been part of the neighborhood's young people ecstatically pouring into the streets for Obama and the defeat of McCain and the Republicans. Why else would such an unapproved mob as this coalesce out of nowhere on a Tuesday night?
Times Square, election night: a large crowd, mostly white, had amassed before the Jumbotron screen, (a similar, huge midtown gathering of hopeful strangers had assembled before a screen and lit-up, electoral vote bar graph, posted on the Rockefeller Center building facade), and the TV news cameras focused disproportionately on black faces and upon black people for reaction shots and interviews. It seemed that every effort was made to mis-portray, to give a false impression that the stunned, mass euphoria simultaneously sweeping America as a black racial and cultural phenomenon, instead of the cross-ethnic, trans-racial unifying even that it was.
I experienced first hand the spontaneous mass celebrations in Union Square Park that had young people climbing upon traffic lights and park lampposts causing weeks-long damage and removal of said utilities, and also in the blocks around Washington Square Park (the park itself, already half-wrecked and closed-off by unpopular "redesign" demolition work forced upon the community) had been sealed and closed off by NYPD police), pizza places and bars on Second Avenue in the East Village, near St. Mark's place that actually shut down the avenue and East 7th Street and had long city buses backing up the length of the cross-town block and backwards down the avenue, a beige sofa pulled out and set upon the avenue itself, people climbing up and dancing upon the rooftop of a moving MTA bus, strangers high-fiving, V-J Day style long embrace-kissing by at least three couples; reverent, rapt, tearful, transfixed gazing upon the CNN broadcast of Obama's Chicago victory speech (with gross undercount of the Chicago crowd size stated by Wolf Blitzer and weird, cutaway visual interruption of the speech to a grainy, webcam-link clip of Kenyan natives).
As a last piece of primary evidence, I submit a blog excerpt from an East Village resident, Ms. Judy Bodor; it does a fine job conveying the feel of that memorable night and the common, profound reality that the power-editors and corporate-journalists of New York City deemed not fit to print:
LETS KEEP THIS GOING
We all watched last night, we watched alone at home, in bars with friends and strangers, at work, where-ever we could.
I have to admit i didn't expect the reaction to be so overwhelming. I knew he would win, but the surge of joy that took over every last drop of air in room — F—g Hell. The walk home from the bar was like nothing I have ever experienced, fireworks, constant happy yelling, car horns, more yelling, strangers giving high-fives, the look of shock and excitement of everyone's faces.
As I stumbled in the door of my house at 1am Angus woke up..."Mummy are you okay?"
I stood on my tiptoes so he could see my face over the pillows on his bunk bed..."Yes baby, guess what...Obama won, he is our new president."
Angus still half-asleep pumped the air with happiness and said "yes yes yes" ...then rolled over and went back to sleep. When he woke this morning the first thing he said to me was "Mum, i am so excited Obama won — he is going to change the world." I hope he is right...
This has been a crappy couple of years for nearly everyone I know. Financial ruin, family illness, marriage break-ups, sick kids...it has been just one fucking shitty thing after another. Last night however made me forget all the bad crap, the stress, the knots in my stomach from constant worry, it was all gone in a second...
I want every night, every day to feel as positive as it did at midnight last night.
Can we please keep it going...
Comments (closed)
judy Bodor
2009-06-24 18:54:43
I am honored you quoted me...
It truely was an amazing night
Andrew Lovett
2009-11-24 19:05:44
Dear Mr. Barenblatt,
If you are the author of A Plague Upon Humanity, would you please tell me how your gained access to Archie Crouch's memoir? I am extremely interested in reading it.
Thank you,
Andrew M. Lovett