Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
2:35 Andrew Therriault

Matt Glassman is a poker and bridge enthusiast and a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute. He has his own podcast, Congress, Two Beers In, that provides a fun insider’s perspective on the the latest political happenings. His previous Thinking Poker appearances are Episode 191, Episode 195, Episode 200, Episode 217, and Episode 235. We highly recommend that you follow Matt on Twitter.

We interviewed Danny Sprung on Episode 194.

Brad’s previous appearance was Episode 150. Support the Bay Area Urban Debate League!

Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
8:24 Strategy
18:17 Brad Willis

Reading and Listening Recommendations

Tyler Childers
John Moreland
Turnpike Troubadors
Blake Mills
Americana Music Festival
Chris Stapleton
Margot Price
Julius Goat Bubbles
David Joy
Ron Rash
George Singleton
Scott Gould
Martin Harris Obsessica
Jackpot

Matt’s previous episodes (before and after the 2016 election, and once as a guest host filling in for Andrew) are among our most popular, and we’re excited to have him back! For more great insight from Matt, be sure to follow him on Twitter, listen to his podcast, and subscribe to his newsletter.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
3:00 Strategy
16:12 Matt Glassman

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello and Welcome
4:12 – Andrew Thierrault
72:00 – Strategy

Strategy

$150 NLH WSOP Circuit event at the Bike, Dec 2015.

Near the end of level 8 (300/600 + 75 ante), I was UTG 8-handed with about a starting stack (10.7k) I raise to 1500 with Jd Jc. Folds around to BB, who calls.

With 3.9k in the pot, flop comes Kh 8d 4h. Villain checks, I check.

Still with 3.9k in the pot, turn is another 4, and Villain checks again. I bet 2k, Villain raises to 5k, I call.

With 13.9k in the pot, river is a third 4, and Villain checks once more. Hero?

We’ve got a great strategy segment, but the interview is really about trying to make sense of the current political situation in America, using frames of reference that poker players will understand. Were the polls wrong, or did Trump just run good? How might Trump govern? What do we as citizens do now? And what does this all mean for online poker?

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
6:43 – Strategy
33:31 – Matt Glassman

Strategy

$1/$3 NLHE

Hero ($1200) dealt KcJc on button. 3 limpers ahead. Hero Raises to $20. BB ($120) and CO ($900) call. $60 in pot.

Flop comes 9cQh2c. Check around to hero. Hero bets $35. BB raises to $105. CO folds. Hero?

How could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection? Coretta and I talked the matter over for several days and finally agreed that arms were no solution. We decided then to get rid of the one weapon we owned….

I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.

It’s not really so surprising that any random home in 1950s Alabama would have a gun in it, and I suppose my surprise is a good example of my failure to apply Bayesian reasoning to the question of whether MLK would have owned a gun.

King never says whether self-defense was a motive for acquiring a gun in the first place (the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to explain it is probably further evidence that was commonplace), and if you read this passage carefully, he isn’t saying that he felt safer after he got rid of the gun. To my reading anyway, he’s simply saying that, probably in no small part because of his religious beliefs, he chose not to concern himself with his personal safety, which is certainly a theme that shows up elsewhere in King’s writing and speeches.

In no small part because of my frustration with this country’s current political mood, I decided to turn to my “hero” for advice and inspiration by reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s worth noting here that this is not an autobiography in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it’s a narrative pieced together by a King scholar from King’s own words, in consultation with his family.

Nevertheless, it’s an excellent book that had approximately the inspirational and though-provoking effect that I hoped it would. This is the first in a series of blog posts reflecting on some of the passages that were most eye-opening for me.

This first is really something that struck me a few years ago when I visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum, but it’s a point that King drives home as well. Although I learned about the Montgomery Bus Boycott in school, I didn’t fully appreciate what it entailed. Because taking the bus played approximatly no role in my suburban upbringing, I didn’t have the context to appreciate exactly what it meant for 40,000 people – most of them poor – to go more than a year without using the public bus system.

Organizing the boycott required, first, communicating, largely without the benefit of mass communication technology such as TV and radio, with tens of thousands of individuals, and secondly, finding ways for all of these people to get to work. The African-American community of Montgomery basically had to create its own mass communications and transit systems, from scratch, in just a few weeks, and they had to contend with active attempts by the city government to shut them down. The city, for instance, began enforcing a law requiring taxi drivers to charge a fare, complicating the boycotters ability to carpool. There were also attempts to spread false information about the boycott being cancelled. As King puts it, “The [Montgomery Improvement Association] had worked out in a few nights a transportation problem that the bus company had grappled with for many years.”

King goes on to relate an inspiring story:

[S]o profoundly had the spirit of the protest become a part of the people’s lives that sometimes they even preferred to walk when a ride was available. The act of walking, for many, had become of symbolic importance. Once a pool driver stopped beside an elderly woman who was trudging along with obvious difficulty.”

“Jump in, Grandmother,” he said. “You don’t need to walk.”

She waved him on. “I’m not walking for myself,” she explained. “I’m walking for my children and my grandchildren.” And she continued toward home on foot.

For more awesome and articulate insights, follow Matt on Twitter. The book Matt mentioned during the interview is Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy by Jonathan Rausch.

It’s not so much that I thought these were all bad ideas, although I did – it’s that it didn’t seem to matter, to anyone, whether they were bad ideas. There was this grinding inevitability to it, like “Of course we’re going to invade someone,” “Of course we’re going to massively expand the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” “Of course we’re going to make a big show of attacking ‘terrorists'”. The question of whether or not these measures were likely to be effective for their stated purpose, though raised, always seemed beside the point. They were simply going to happen. Congress, famously, enacted the Patriot Act without ever really giving its members a chance to read it.

It was obvious to me and I think many people at the time that, once adopted, these measures wouldn’t just go away. When would we ever be able to declare victory in a war on terror? When has the government ever said, “OK, the need for us to have that authority has passed, here are your rights back”?

Now, 15 years later, there seems little danger that the attacks of September 11 will be forgotten. What I fear is being forgotten is what America and the world looked like on September 10, 2001. Warrantless eavesdropping, the Transportation Security Administration, Guantanamo Bay, and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new normal, exactly as their critics predicted that they would. It feels like a “12 Monkeys” scenario, where we knew exactly what was going to happen but were powerless to stop it.

Even now, there’s no end in sight. With Obama has proving unable or unwilling, how can there be any hope that either of the current frontrunners for the presidency will step up where he did not? And after another eight years, well, the nail will really be in the coffin then.

All of that said, and as much as I deplore so much of what the Bush Administration did in the aftermath of September 11th, I did express some gratitude, yesterday, that at least Donald Trump wasn’t in charge. Here’s hoping we can steer clear of that catastrophe which, though far from inevitable, is still much too imminent for my comfort.

I’ve read a lot of commentary on Olivier Busquet and Dan Colman’s t-shirts from the EPT Barcelona Super High Roller final table, and I was fortunate enough to discuss the issue at length with Olivier himself as well as with the always-thought-provoking Nate Meyvis on Episode 92 of our podcast.

Olivier conceded that he and Dan didn’t choose the best topic for breaking the ice, and I am sympathetic to the argument that they didn’t choose the best forum either, but I nonetheless respect the attempt and am deeply troubled by those who would assert that politics has no place in poker. These critics paint politics either as a matter of mere opinion to which everyone is entitled or, worse, a hobby or niche interest that people can reasonably choose to just not care about.

When politics is narrowly construed as liberal vs conservative, Obama vs Romney, then I can understand why many people see little point in engaging with it. But politics is much bigger than that: it’s about all sorts of decisions, made (or not made) by a variety of people in many different positions of authority, some far away but some as near as the brush stand. No one is an expert on all of these topics, and very few are experts on any of them, so there’s no sense in saying that only experts have the right to speak on them.

Professional Poker Players Are Not Rodeo Clowns

Robbie Strazynski claims that “Recreational poker players turn to poker for a break from everything else going on in the world. They also watch poker on television to see POKER, not politics.” Setting aside the impossibility of this warrantless assertion being true of all of the millions of recreational poker players in the world, Strazynski seems to believe that this is a good thing and that the role of the professional poker player is to provide this distraction.

That’s certainly not how I see myself, and Busquet also took issue with Strazynski’s assertion that, “Professional poker players play the game to make a living; not to make a statement, political or otherwise.”

Personally I’ve found studying poker to be extremely valuable to me in my decision-making and my general outlook on life away from the poker table. I’ve learned to think more clearly and rationally about certain things, had thousands of lessons in accepting with equanimity that which I cannot control, and become more familiar with mental biases to which all humans are prone.

I’m not delusional; I realize that people read this blog and listen to the podcast first and foremost for entertainment. Nonetheless, I hope that I present poker in a way that highlights the many positive habits of mind it can cultivate. And though I try not to go overboard about it, I don’t think I’ve been shy about overtly political posts. Sometimes they’ve dealt with policies directly related to poker and casinos, other times they’ve used poker as a frame for thinking about other political issues.

No Politics At the Table?

Many of Busquet and Colman’s critics invoke a supposed injunction against discussing politics at the table. Strazynski repeatedly emphasizes that he is all for political discussion on poker blogs, etc., and Victoria Coren claims that, “No politics or religion at the table” is “an old, old unwritten rule of poker.”  That’s never been my experience, and even if that has been a tradition in some circles, it doesn’t follow that that’s how it should be.

Many people, myself included, would argue that television’s ability to serve as a mindless distraction is its worst and most insidious quality. I support televising poker, but I don’t support catering to the lowest common denominator in order to make poker programming more appealing to a particular subset of the viewing public.

One of the other arguments against political discussion at the table is that it can be a divisive, polarizing topic that undermines camaraderie. Then again the same could be said of sports, and that’s certainly a popular topic of conversation.

I agree that poker’s ability to get people of different ages, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and nationalities sitting together around a table is a remarkable thing. It seems a waste, though, to bring these people together and then insist that their conversations remain tepid and apolitical. Why should they not discuss weighty subjects on which they may disagree? Disagreement does not have to mean contentiousness, and besides poker tables often turn contentious for reasons that have nothing to do with politics.

Political “opinion” also isn’t (or shouldn’t be, anyway) an opinion in the same way that my favorite color is an opinion. Politics ought to be a debate, and people ought to actively investigate positions that they don’t fully understand but are not inclined to agree with. Being open to hearing out the opinions of others, and learning to express your own opinions in ways that make them appealing to people who don’t already agree with you, are important skills that are rapidly eroding in the age of the internet.

As Rob King says, “I am of the view that politics is a major part of everyday life. I was raised in a political household where politics were part of the daily discussion at the dinner table. I really can’t understand why people are afraid of talking about such politics more. It’s as though people are unaware that political decisions impact the average person’s life in a massive way.”

It’s certainly common for players to discuss poker-related politics, such as a change in rake structure, minimum or maximum buy-in, or other policies at the room where they are playing. They may also discuss policies at competing poker rooms, live vs online poker, or legislation likely to affect poker and gambling. Obviously the UIGEA and the Black Friday indictments were both common topics of discussion at brick & mortar poker rooms.

More to Come

I realize that I’ve stacked the deck here by drawing on examples that have a clear and direct relation to poker. In the second part of this post, though, I’m going to look at a few examples that bridge the gap between niche interest for poker players and broader political issues. These are topics that in my opinion ought to be discussed much more than they are in the poker world.

Their execution may have been imperfect at best, but rather than chastising Busquet and Colman for not doing their part to anesthetize television viewers, we ought to take the opportunity to discuss what is the proper relationship between poker and politics.

This tournament has a unique structure. It is a multi-day tournament, and each player is assigned to either Group A or Group B. At the start of play today, Day 2, you will take over the stack of someone who played yesterday, as will everyone else who plays today. So not everyone will start with the same number of chips. The stack that you inherit will be determined by the group to which you are assigned. Players in Group A will inherit stacks played by other Group A players from Day 1, and it will be the same for Group B. You are assigned to Group B.

Shortly after the start of play, a pattern becomes apparent: almost all of the biggest stacks are in Group A, and almost all of the shortest stacks are in Group B. Everyone in Group A says nevermind that, let’s just play. You and some of the other people in Group B try to object, but the tournament administrators threaten to disqualify you without refund. This is no gaming review board to whom you can appeal. Finally you decide you might as well just do your best with the chips you have.

You manage to survive the day, though you are still short stacked, as of course are the majority of Group B players, though a few have played well, gotten lucky, and accumulated big stacks. On Day 3, another Group B player inherits your chips, and you explain the situation to him.

He and the other Group B players are outraged, and they organize a mass protest. Today’s administrators (they are mostly different people from either Day 2 or Day 1) are more sympathetic. They look into it and find out that there was systematic cheating. The dealers on Day 1, with the knowledge of the administrators, were deliberately cold-decking Group B players, helping the Group A players accumulate big stacks at the expense of Group B.

There is no dispute about this point. Everyone including the current administrators and Group A players admits that it happened.

However, they still don’t want to do anything about it. “We are going to run a fair tournament today,” the administrators promise. “The rules will apply equally to everyone, and everyone will have a fair shot. All you need is a chip and a chair. But stacks will stay the way that they are.”

“It’s not our fault,” say the Group A players. “The rules say we inherit stacks from yesterday’s Group A players, so that’s what we’re going to do. We aren’t the ones who cheated, why should we be punished? It wasn’t even the Day 2 players who cheated. By now it’s impossible to tell which chips were won fairly and which weren’t. We can’t sort it all out. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Look, there were Group A players who started Day 2 with big stacks and lost it all, and there were Group B players who started short and have big stacks now. If you play well, it doesn’t matter how many chips you start with, anyone can win.”

Sound fair? This is roughly the problem I have with people who say that slavery was in the past, racial discrimination was in the past, we have a level playing field now, so let’s just ignore it and get on with the game. Even if you think there is a perfectly level playing field in modern day America, a point that I would dispute, there’s still a case for government action to remedy inequality caused by indisputable crimes and inequities in the past.

The tricky part, of course, is coming up with what exactly that action should be. Every proposal I’m aware of (affirmative action, reparations, etc.) is flawed in some way. Yet it’s not sufficient to say, “that proposal is flawed, we can’t do that,” without offering some alternative of your own. The status quo is also deeply flawed. If you’re ready to admit that and participate genuinely in the search for an equitable solution to a problem that none of us asked for but all of us face, then by all means, criticize away. But those who criticize proposed solutions without offering any reasonable suggestions of their own, or who question the very need for a solution, come across as desperately trying to cling to advantages they didn’t earn, just like the players in Group A.

“Don’t insult me with those ridiculous claims like “the money is for education!” Money is fungible, and education is already a high-priority budget item. Money raised from slot machines and earmarked for education is simply money that would otherwise have been diverted from some other budget item. The disingenuousness of this claim is jaw-dropping, and it’s even more appalling to me how many people fall for and parrot it.”

I didn’t know the intricacies of the state’s education funding policies, but I knew enough to smell the smoke being blown up my ass. An editorial in today’s Baltimore Sun says essentially the same thing in more detail:

“The level of state spending on education is determined by a variety of state laws, most notably the 2002 Bridge to Excellence Act, better known as the Thornton Law. Neither the original 2007 slots legislation nor the gambling expansion bill passed this year change the formulas that determine how much the state sends to each county or how much each county is required to spend on its schools. The money from gambling does not come in on top of the Thornton-mandated spending. It just allows general tax revenues that would otherwise have been spent on the schools to go somewhere else. Theoretically, the state could use the slots money to increase total education funding, but it has never done so.”

It continues to disgust me that Governor O’Malley, the real-life inspiration for The Wire‘s Tommy Carcetti, makes such a disingenuous argument.

Equally disgusting is the current debate over amending the state’s casino policy to permit a sixth casino, table games, and a massive reduction in the tax on casino profits. I was in Maryland between my Europe trip and the WSOP main event, so I had a chance to see and hear the omnipresent ads both for and against the proposed change. The cynicism was jaw-dropping.

Naturally both campaigns are bankrolled by competing casino interests, but the ads make no substantive arguments about casino gambling specifically. Both make roughly the same incoherent claims about “jobs” and “schools”, issues that are only tangentially related to a decision that will have huge implications for the state and its residents.

It’s ironic (or perhaps fitting, for a casino bill) that this supposedly pro-education claim actually aims at hoodwinking gullible citizens who lack the financial literacy and/or critical thinking skills to understand how ridiculous it is. And it’s telling that the bill’s supporters have no better leg to stand-on than a bald-faced lie.

I don’t much care for Sandra Bullock, but she’s exactly as good as everyone says she is as the loving, no-nonsense matriarch of a wealthy Southern family. And the movie in general is pretty much what you’d expect: cutesy, saccharine, uplifting, and formulaic. It’s good for what it is though, with a remarkable story, quick pace, witty dialogue, and genuinely likable characters.

As for the film’s racial politics, I can’t say that I entirely agree with most of the critiques I’ve seen, though I do have a few of my own. A. O. Scott’s review for the New York Times encapsulates the most common criticism of Blind Side:

To the extent that Michael represents a social problem (or maybe a whole bunch of them, including poverty, drug addiction and family dysfunction), the solution depicted is individual, charitable and, at least implicitly, faith based.

The fundamental problem with this critiques is that it expects entirely too much from a movie and from an individual. Granted there is a temptation to read more into it, but The Blind Side is a small movie about one person and one family. It is not a polemic, and it is not an overtly political documentary. It does not explicitly advocate anything. It simply tells the story of one extraordinary woman who welcomed a complete stranger into her home and loved and cared him as her own son.

I don’t think the film has to be interpreted as a statement about either the causes or or the solutions to social problems like poverty and drug-addiction, though I would certainly disagree with anyone who maintains that private charity is a sufficient solution. Granted, The Blind Side is all but silent regarding the circumstances of Michael’s youth and the complex web of forces, both social and individual, that dooms so many young men to the violent death that Bullock’s character, Leigh Anne Tuohy, realizes, via internal monologue voiceover, could easily have been the fate of her adopted son. But I don’t think that every artist who touches on a theme like poverty is obligated to explore every facet of the problem and offer a solution, and in fact I think all but the best art does well to steer clear of such overt politicism.

I also don’t think that Tuohy’s behavior is charity, precisely. Charity is fundamentally an economic relationship, not an emotional one. The vast majority of charitable dollars given in the US are donated in a disconnected way. People give money either directly to a panhandler they barely know and will probably never see again, or indirectly through a large organization that pools and distributes their money, again almost always to people they do not know and will never meet. Motivations for charity are varied and complex. They usually include good will, but they rarely include love, at least not the kind of emotional, interpersonal love that a mother has for a son.

This is the real limitation of charity, the reason why the critics rightfully consider it an insufficient solution. People will give enough to alleviate immediate suffering, but rarely enough to prevent future suffering or change underlying conditions. It is all well and good for the relatively wealthy to give their excess, to give what they have above and beyond what they feel they need, but few are willing to sacrifice for strangers in the ways that they would for their own children.

This is the remarkable thing that Leigh Anne Tuohy did, and while it is not a large-scale solution, it is as much as many individuals can accomplish and more than most, critics of The Blind Side included, will ever do. Private action is absolutely not a substitute for government action and institutional change, but too many people use their inability to accomplish the latter as an excuse not to attempt the former.

My own problem with the Blind Side is that it makes everything look so easy. This is both an artistic problem and a political one. As a film, Blind Side lacked conflict. I’m struggling to remember a single problem that occurred that wasn’t resolved within minutes of its introduction, and I couldn’t tell you what the central conflict of the film was supposed to be.

This is a political problem because Michael is too easy. He is a perfect son, easy to get along with and unfailingly polite and lovable from the moment the Tuohy’s take him in. Michael is easy to love, and this is what makes The Blind Side‘s message about the power of love so fundamentally weak. There are plenty of endangered children who have as much potential as Michael, who are as deserving of love and opportunity as Michael, but who are not such easy children. They fight, they steal, they use drugs, they join gangs. They need loving, caring adults in their lives at least as much as a “gentle giant” like Michael does, but they have far more trouble finding the support that they need.

It’s certainly unfair to compare a mainstream Hollywood production to a great American novel, but I’m reminded of Richard Wright’s introduction to his novel Native Son. Wright, who had previously written Black Boy, an autobiography about his own childhood experiences with poverty, racism, and hunger, chose a far more controversial protagonist for Native Son. The fictional Bigger Thomas is a thug, a thief, a murderer, and a rapist. Wright does not ask us to love him, but he does ask us to understand him and to see him as both a villain and a victim.

Wright realized, after Black Boy, that he needed to give his audience a challenge. Wright himself was too easy a young man to sympathize with. Bigger Thomas forces us to sympathize with a far less sympathetic character, and in so doing, makes a far stronger statement about the effects of racism and poverty.

The best indication that The Blind Side doesn’t advocate private charity as the be-all and end-call to social problems is that this solution is most explicitly proposed by Leigh Anne’s predictably patronizing and snobby country club friends, who seem willing enough to donate and host fundraisers if Leigh Anne is organizing a “Project for the Projects.” What these ladies lack is genuine concern of the sort that would compel them to pursue meaningful change or follow through on such an initiative. While it would have been nice to see Leigh Anne radicalized by her relationship with Michael, ready to invest her considerable resources in a larger-scale solution, her life and story are still an inspiring example of the love that is necessary to accomplish real social change.

What Leigh Anne will not accept for Michael, no parent, white or black, should accept for any child, white or black: no roof over his head, deteriorating clothes, ignorant teachers, and threats from drug dealers.  Yet these are exactly the outcomes that millions of American parents, white and black, would never tolerate for their own children but are willing enough to accept for other people’s children. Real improvements for children with troubled lives is going to require the relatively privileged to extend their circle of moral concern to include more than their immediate families, to care enough about all children, even and especially the most difficult cases, to protect and fight for them the way Leigh Anne does for Michael.

I can’t bring myself to get as excited as I feel I should be about Obama’s victory. I was pulling for him- he was in fact the first major party candidate for whom I voted in a presidential election- but neither his victory nor the historic election of America’s first black president excites me the way they have others.

It’s nothing personal about Obama. He seems to be a smart and capable candidate and who may well prove a good president. But I just can’t imagine him deserving or living up to the incredible expectations that seem to be invested in him.

His victory is being celebrated as a mandate for change, a watershed moment for liberalism in America, and a civil rights milestone. I believe it is all of these things, but not to the extent so many people seem to think.

Not in the case of the latter two, anyway. With regard to the mandate for change, I think that expectations are hopelessly high. Much was made, in the days before the election, of the hope that voters, particularly black ones, had invested in Obama. There was talk of unprecedented engagement with the political process among African-Americans and speculation about the sense of disenfranchisement that might ensue if Obama were somehow to lose.

My worry is that a similar disappointment may be experienced not only despite but because of his victory. Obama will inherit a plummeting economy, an endless war, and spiraling debt. Whether his fault or not, things are likely to get worse before they get better, especially for the least advantaged Americans. If the poor still struggle to make rent, if black Americans remain over-incarcerated and under-educated by the machinery of government, in four years, will there not be an even greater sense of disenfranchisement? Will there not be a temptation, among the many who are not living the American dream, to conclude that if not even this president can advance their interests, then they are truly and irrevocably disenfranchised by the American political process?

There is also the danger that white America will rest on its laurels as it has after every major advance in civil rights. Reconstruction amendments called for equal rights and suffrage for former slaves, yet many remained disenfranchised and in a state of near-enslavement. The Brown decision declared segregation unconstitutional, yet public schools across America remain blatantly segregated. A black man has been elected president, yet he did so at a time when there was only one black Senator (Obama himself) and two black governors (Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and David Paterson of New York, though only the former was elected to the office).

The presidency is an historic landmark in the slow march towards equality, but it is hardly the final hurdle. Black representation in the highest political offices in America mirrors that in the executive offices of corporate America or on the campuses of elite educational institutions. It is far easier to promote a few exceptional candidates (and this son of a black African father and a white woman from Kansas, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, is nothing if not exceptional) than to extend the fruits of opportunity, wealth, and success to the millions of Americans who need and deserve them.

I am probably being too hard on America. During the primary, I expressed deep skepticism about America’s ability to elect a black president. Even when victory seemed inevitable, I continued to reserve doubts. “I don’t bet against racism in America,” I told friends. I am tremendously glad to be proven wrong. Truthfully, I am more genuinely proud of my country today than I have ever been.

Yet soaring speeches and tearful faces on television failed to resonate with me. I wandered the streets of Boston, feeling lost in a sea of honking horns, cheering college students, and strangers embracing. The most incredible displays of raw emotion stirred envy in me but not excitement or joy. I fear that so much of this enthusiasm will prove misguided.

The only sentiment expressed last night to which I could relate came from a long-time civil rights activist commenting briefly on NBC. This black woman had marched with Martin Luther King and been beaten half to death for the cause. Choked with emotion, she proclaimed this an historic day for America.

The anchor, who was also black, asked if she would agree that this demonstrated that the US really was an exceptional country because of its ability to change and overcome the mistakes of its past. It was exactly the sort of hyperbole that worried me.

The woman’s demeanor changed quickly and dramatically, and she seemed almost hostile as she answered, “It proves that change is possible when people work for it. It doesn’t just happen automatically, by magic. People have to work, fight, struggle, and die to make this country change.”

The anchor turned to pose the same question to a white man, who eagerly agreed. “This proves that anything is possible in America,” he declared, voice heavy with self-satisfaction. There was nothing contradictory about their statements, but when it came to subtext the two interviewees were miles apart. He almost made it sound as though the work were finished. She insisted that it was only just beginning.

Obama’s victory does demonstrate America’s extraordinary potential. Hopefully it will revive the sense of boundless possibility that has been this country’s strength and which is sorely needed now. But, as his acceptance speech made clear, it demonstrates only potential. There is a tremendous amount of work and sacrifice ahead of us before we can even begin to realize that potential. I sincerely hope that our new president proves capable not only of inspiring but of leading, and that my countrymen prove willing to follow. I am certainly more hopeful about our prospects than I have been in a long time, and for that I offer my thanks and congratulations to Barack Obama.

After the panel, there was a reception. It was a small crowd, and I was one of the only students there, certainly the least consequential person by a mile. My professor called Bill over to introduce him to me, and I began to tell him my story, “I was interested to hear about the [High School] chess team you met, because I actually coach a debate team at that same school. I’ve had similar-“

Before I finish my second sentence, Bill cuts me off, grabs my hand, says “Great to meet you,” turns his back, and goes over to talk to someone else.

So yeah, Bill Ayers is a terrorist. And a douchebag.

1. Hillary Clinton and the Glass Ceiling. Before Hillary’s speech, they did this video montage thing that was all about how she may not shattered the “glass ceiling” that restricts the opportunities available to women in America but she cracked in 1000 places or something. The insinuation was very much that she lost not because Obama was the better candidate but because he was a man and she was a woman and America is unfair. I’m generally fairly sympathetic to that kind of argument, but I don’t think it holds much water in this case given that Obama is contending with a glass ceiling of his own.

More importantly, though, this is just the wrong message for her to be sending. She lost the primariy, and her role now is to suck it up and throw her support behind Obama. McCain is proof that candidates who lose in a primary but toe the party line for the general election can still be viable candidates eight years down the road. McCain had much more legitimate grievances in light of the dirty tricks that Bush/Rove employed against him in 2000, but he swallowed his pride, fell into line, and now he’s getting his moment.

Clinton claims she is going to play ball, but it’s a stretch to say that she is throwing her support behind Obama. It’s more like a weak lob. She’s taking every opportunity to draw attention to the fact that she thinks she should have won, that she was the better candidate, and that she is only supporting Obama because that’s what’s required of her now. Of course, such “support” doesn’t really count for much when it’s accompanied by a wink and a nod designed to let everyone know that in her view, he is not the strongest possible candidate.

2. I turned on the TV today to see Biden’s speech, and there was a woman on a red-lit stage singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” with a team of background dancers behind her. I assumed this was part of the DNC Convention until I saw Simon Cowell clapping for her. I think it’s funny that the conventions have become such an act of political theater that a casual viewer can confuse them with reality television.