*

Election  Night  2008

by Brian Hassett

Early morning in the Universe  –  sunrise over a New America.

I arose from the floor of a Harlem hotspot dreaming of something way bigger than me.  And right off the mat, the Election Morning Ritual of tea & subtlety, pacing & breathing, and dreaming in the bright new light of it.

And there’s the widescreen of Barack & Michelle & their girls walking into the polling booth in Chicago and taking their time to burn in the memories of casting their historic ballots.

And all over New York you could hear doors slamming on apartments and taxis and trains as young and old, black and white went through their daily rituals — and today’s quite singular one.

I realized we were getting Obama as President, at least as Veep to Hillary, back on Super Bowl Saturday in January when I first watched will.i.am’s “Yes, We Can” video (here).  It had just been uploaded the night before, and I watched it early in the jingle-jangle morning and just lost it — couldn’t watch it without getting choked up for weeks afterwards.  It was so obvious then that he was ours — America’s, the world’s, right now’s.  Somehow it felt more ancient than futuristic, more traditional than trendy, more Rushmore than YouTube.  And it was good.

But of course there was still a helluva race ahead — first the primary against Hillary and then the general against McCain, and it did look close a couple of times, but especially starting that Monday of the Lehman Brothers collapse and McCain “suspending” his campaign and stumbling around like Henry Fonda in the woods in On Golden Pond, followed by Colin Powell coming out on Meet The Press, you knew who was going to win.  In fact, I was able to post the final election results on this here site on Halloween, a full four days before election day — and was 99.5% accurate.

I spent the afternoon getting all gussied up in black velvet tails and Ben Franklin knickers with knee-high socks topped off with a top hat, accented with colorful Obama buttons, and everything underneath my waving homemade Obama pennant flag with a little red & white Canadian one on top.  All I needed was a clanging bell and some rolled parchment.

Heading into the Election Night, for the first time in my life I was the most popular person in Harlem!  Looking like a “Hear-ye, hear-ye!” town crier from the American Revolution, I was carrying Obama’s flag into battle — lighting up faces of people who still haven’t come close to learning English.  Shopkeepers were waving, and mothers were pointing me out to their small children.  Passing pedestrians were either breaking into huge smiles or full-out hollering, “Obama!”  It was dusk on the final day of The Nightmare From Texas, and minorities may have been happier than anyone that the lying war sap’s reign of error was ending.

Riding the subway through Harlem in black velvet regalia — facing beaming white smiles from dark African faces, shining and sharing across the aisle like Washington will soon be if  all goes according to plan.  A little boy beside me is admiring my buttons, and finally says in the cutest voice, “All Barack!”  So I reach in my bag and find a button for him just before he gets off.  And some guy’s watching me do this, and he pulls out his keys from his pocket and wound off and his little Obama key-chain and handed it to me across the subway car.  It’s the coolest thing and I’ll cherish it forever.  And so I looked in my bag and found another button and handed it across to him.  And there was some guy standing nearby smiling as he watched all this go down, and the guy I just gave the button to handed it to him.  A crowd got on right after that and we all got separated — but within seconds all us strangers had just given each other something for nothing.  America was changing right before our eyes.

Then I’m off, flying between the towers of Midtown, when suddenly a-ha, a “Vote Here –>” sign for a polling station, and, decked head-to-toe in Obama, I enter most illegally and go beaming around.  Poll site day-workers are smiling back huge hugs, and then I spot the ancient New York State steel levered polling machine and go over to open the curtains and have a good gander –

but Nooooo — The Big Bossman spots me and nearly football tackles me the heck outta there!  So there I was;  Tossed back into the Manhattan rush-hour of snappy suits and swinging briefcases, big ego scowls and some big-hearted smiles.

And then ah into the ah of the Election Plazah at Barackefeller Center!  People.  All beaming faces.  Lights.  A red, white & blue skyscraper.  Broadcast trucks.  Giant screens.  And rows of flags waving wide and high in tonight’s heavy winds of change.

There’s lots of people, but it’s not crowded.  And NBC had once again laid out the red carpet.  Well, actually it was blue.  And plush and thick, from one end of the plaza to the other — “Election Night 2008″ woven into the ground that democracy’s participants were walking on.  And not just Americans, but thousands and millions who came here from foreign countries, like me — because “America” is so much a part of so many.

And meanwhile, I’m getting photographed more than I ever have in my life.  Plus, they’ve got somebody dressed up like donkey and somebody like an elephant, and for an hour the three of us become the most in-demand trio in New York.  And on top of that, the inside of my coat is lined with buttons that I’m selling.  Which I never even mentioned to anyone, but people kind of figured it out.  All I kept saying was, “Vote Socialist!  Vote Obama!”

And a couple times I actually get challenged about being an interferring Canadian, but I quickly bounce ‘em back with ol’ Christopher Columbus and Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton as pretty cool un-Americans.  And if that don’t shut ‘em, I drop Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie and Madeline Albright.  And if that don’t do it, John Lennon, Neil Young and Charlie Chaplin usually does.  You can be American from wherever you’re born.

And waving my colorful homemade flag was doing the trick!  It was like a freakin’ antenna pulling in the channels.  Friends were tuning in from all over.  Philip the Iraq war reporter with his big pro camera weaves in documenting the stories of regular people in the eye of history.  And here’s Levi, the online LitKicks disturber, happily dancing through the crowd like it’s an outdoor Dead show.  And there’s the Jimmy Carter staffer Zoe waving from her comfortable perch, soaking in the immensity of it all.

And friendships are being made instantaneously all over the plaza, conversations starting without introductions.  It was a family reunion and we all knew each other.  And even though it was early it felt pretty late, with everybody already a little giddy, a little silly, a little too happy — and it didn’t matter to anyone.

And of all excellent things they were actually handing out plastic beer mugs!  Or maybe they were coffee mugs, but I figured they’d work way better for beer.  So, I copped several for the crew, and off dee-do.

It was getting time to plant the flag and hold the fort.  There are two main giant screens:  one for NBC, and one for MSNBC, which has been my network of choice since it came on the air about 10 years ago.  And to boot, it’s their side of 30 Rock that’s completely bathed in Democratic blue and turns out to be the naturally livelier side of the grand plazoo all night.  So, I promptly claim n maintain the center screen-front fort-site!

There’s a six-inch high curb running across the battlefield a perfect distance from the screen and it makes the best forward line I can think of.  Next, I’m lookin for SOUND — where some half-deaf old people can hear what’s being said even while crazy New Yorkers are screaming in joy.  And right along the curb line directly in front of the MSNBC screen, there’s a nice big Bose speaker on a stand, squared off by barricade stantions.  So that becomes our solid right flank;  and I’m holding down the front curb-line;  and our left flank is held by Gina Gershon’s sister and a wall of her girlfriends who haven’t moved in an hour.  ”We’re solid.”  “We’re bull’s-eye center.”  “It’s a go, General.”

We had our private box at the theater  – once we had our perimeter secured, there was a buffer of about 50 people deep in every direction around us – and we could just GO! And lemmi tell ya, nobody’s burners were on “medium”!

And as I keep waving my Canadian–Obama flag, along comes Winnipeg-Manhattan guitarist brother Terry;  and Paul, who I only just met but who’s been a friend for life;  and Anna, Philip’s pregnant wife blessing her child who’ll be born around the same time as the next President in January.  And here comes Ralph the producer, and Brad the net oracle, and Anne the global adventurer.  And then comes somebody holding up a giant Obama yard sign as they’re dancing and weaving through the crowd, and as the sign floats closer, sure enough, underneath it all is Nadette, an actress friend of nearly 30 years bringing suburbian lawns into this uber-urban plaza.

And from our private box we could easily make runs to the deli which you could almost see from our “seats”.  The only trick was getting back through the outer ring of the scene — excuse-me-ing through the tight outer strata of late-comers and non-insiders, then weaving through the gentler inner rings of patriots to our secret center where we had enough room to dance.

And dance we did.  Along came four cute girls from England who’d flown over just for this moment and were as funny as that other Fab Four who flew over here.  Or the flowing French poet who’d also flown in just for this.  Or the gorgeous Kim Basinger with the flower in her long blond hair.  Or the Canadians who kept appearing all night from Vancouver and Montreal and Toronto and Edmonton.  It was like all the Americans who materialized in Ontario when we were registering people to vote with Democrats Abroad.  In fact, as the night comically revealed itself, our encampment became surrounded by Canadians — typically too shy to say anything, but when they saw my flag came and stood near and felt safe.  I became the freakin’ Canadian Consulate at Barackefeller Center on Election Night.

As Zoe & I are making what we thought at the time was the final beer run of the night at about 7:40, and we bump into this group of four Midwestern couples in their 40s and 50s leaving the scene.  Of course we start talking and they mention they’re heading out to get something to eat, to which I say, “Are you fuckin’ crazy?!  The big moment is coming right up and you’re gonna be staring down at a tuna sandwich?!”  They all laugh as I give ‘em hell, Harry.  So, Zoe & I hit the deli, and sure enough a minute later the whole crew of ‘em come in and say, “You convinced us.”  And they just grabbed some road grub and headed back into Democracy’s mosh pit.

Another wonderful thing about the scene was the diversity of people.  Besides there being every conceivable shade of pigmentation from the darkest African blacks to translucent northern whites, there was also every body type, age, and orientation.  There were turbans and ball caps, piercings and wheelchairs, suits and sandals.  It was America, and it was the world.

I was talking to this bunch of Jamaicans and we were all laughing and beaming and “Yesing,” and their accents were so damn thick I understood not a word they said the entire time!  Except “Obama.”  Yet we were totally communicating for a good long time — our faces and hearts knowing what the other was saying all along.

And I’ll tell ya, there’s been a buncha times I wished John Lennon was here, but oh boy, none more than while we’re talkin’ bout a revolution, well, you know.  And how this was the world playing out that he and so many other visionary men of peace have shared through sermons or songs or non-violent stands.  This was the dream — and it has manifested and is dancing and cheering and wired.

It’s like tonight had gone into sudden-death overtime where you couldn’t leave because it could be called and be over at any moment!  The best part of course was when the Dems scored points by winning a state — and a cheer went up as far as you could hear, echoing through the canyons of our spines.  And for every Kentucky or Mississippi there was a playful boo, then we laughed out loud at our own silliness.

And as each state was called, just like in ‘04, NBC had these two giant tapestries, one Dem blue & the other Republican red, that were being pulled up the side of 30 Rock, one foot for each electoral vote won.  Except this time the blue side was climbing much higher than the red one.  

Although my predictions for the Presidential winner, electoral college numbers, percentage split, and Senate and House seats were all Dead on or close damn to it — the one thing I (joyously) didn’t get right was the time the news organizations would project a winner.  I knew it could come at 8, and if not then, at 9 for sure.  “There’s no way we’re not going to know before 10.”  But all those hours came and went with nothing.

Here’s an obvious conspiracy for those who enjoy those sort of things:   There was obviously collusion between the networks to all hold off their Presidential projections until 11PM.  They obviously didn’t coincidentally all make the “call” at exactly the same time.  They coulda called it a week ago, or anytime all night . . .  but what the heck, the whole county was riveted until the match was sparked and the emotional fireworks set off.  No matter when you tuned in or arrived at your election night gathering, by 11:00 you’d been on the edge of your seat for a while.  Or, the edge of your curb, as the case may be.

There was a clock on the bottom of the screen — and although it was obvious to some of us what was going to happen when it struck 11:00:00, most in the crowd didn’t know it was coming.

But after hours of good-vibe build-up, the clock ticked eleven and the screen tocked Barack — and the voices and the spirits and the hands shot up, fingers splaying, eyes blazing, thousands jumping, people hugging, falling into another, high-fiving hands so fast you never see the arms, screaming, tear-soaked faces like thousands of brand new parents – but no romantic midnight New Year’s Eve couples kissing — for just a moment there was something even bigger than one loved one.

Some people were frozen in Buddha-still calmness, others were bent over crying and shaking.  People were hanging out windows, flashbulbs were flashing from every direction, horns honking over everything, girls screaming like Beatlemania, it all swirling into a roaring, deafening tornado, tossing us side to side, but hardly anyone falling down.  And the cheering kept going — there was no person telling us to simmer down so the show could resume.  Talking heads were yammering away on movie screens and the speakers were still blaring but we were all chanting “O – ba – ma”  or “Yes we can” so loud nobody heard a word.  And after one wave of peak cheering would begin to subside, another would start out of nowhere and everyone would raise their voices and arms again for no reason except the joy of it, the beyond-beliefness of everything — as new layers of what just happened were rolling through people’s hearts and minds and out their faces.

For some it was a tearful release of exhaustion after sleepless nights for days or weeks or months — defenses down, fatigued openness, sleep-deprivation delirium.  And for others it was such a sweet gentle smile of serenity.  . . . “Finally.”

But so-sadly, with the networks calling it at 11:00 — that was the exact time of the last elevator to The Top of The Rock rooftop so there was no way to kiss the sky as well as all the pretty girls in the plaza.

After a prolonged evening of anticipation, the dominoes fell quickly.  I lost any sense of time at this point, but it seemed like right after the projection, John McCain was walking out to give his concession speech.  As I expected, he was huge and gracious — his best speech since I-dunno-when.  Poor old guy got waylaid somewhere, off into the Rovian practices of kill n torture what you don’t like and ask questions later (See, also: Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Clelland, Kerry, Bush-McCain 2000, etc., etc.)

Everybody was in a “boo-McCain” spirit, but I knew he was better than what we’d seen in this campaign.  So every time he said something particularly gracious, I’d yell, “Alight!  Give it up for John McCain!”  And nobody would.  The crowd had followed my every cue all night — when to clap, cheer, laughing at my one-liners — as Zoe said, “You had those people eating out of your hand,”  — but when it came to giving props to the distinguished gentlemen from Arizona, I had zero pull.  

And geez I just gotta say — in politics, your opponent is your enemy only until you win; and the moment it’s over, you become colleagues again.  You compete as hard as you can, or “vigorously” as Obama wonderfully called it;  then we all work together.  Done.

So, immediately after McCain finishes his concessionary congratulatory comments to the new President-elect, the world was transported via Marshall McLuhan stacks of amped televisions to the massive gathering in historic Grant Park in Chicago where Democratic supporters had their heads bashed in by billyclubs in 1968 – and had them blown off by words in 2008.

And once again, Obama Presents a beautiful stage, with a classic row of flags like those waving around the Washington Monuments and this Barackefeller rink in New York City.

And as the soul-speaker soars, the Barock Center New York crowd is cheering like we’re at the greatest Central Park concert ever.  Except there’s no rock star.  There’s not even a person.  Just “two big screens and a politician.”   And we’re peaking all over the city, all over the country, all over the world in a synchronized riot of joy.  This is not just an American story, not just a black story, not just a Democrat’s or young person’s story, nor just an immigrant’s story or this story — it’s all of us — all North America, Africa, Europe — dancing as one, in more ways than one.  It’s every underdog, every book-reader & book-writer, every neighbor, every one with hope in whatever language they speak — this Rose smells as sweet tonight.

And Obama’s calmly asking for our collective help, our common good.  It gets so quiet you only hear the people sobbing in the crowd of thousands.  Complete breakdowns.  Some couples now hugging like they didn’t at the New Year’s Moment — because now one of them is shaking and crying.  We see the soon-to-be-famous tears from Jesse and Oprah, but seeing them for real glistening in the Barockefeller Lights on the cheeks of both women and men, old and young, white and black, red-eyed and helpless, weeping uncontrollably, and there wasn’t an unblurry eye in the house.

“This is our time to reaffirm that fundamental truth, that out of many, we are one;  that while we breathe, we hope.  And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:  Yes, we can.”

And your cells and limbs harmonize with the words, and you’re “Yes!”  And Joe Biden walks out, and that gem finally kicks in – “Oh my god!  Joe freakin’ Biden is Vice President!!”

And as the guests began to leave, I stayed and shook hands or winked into their dazey eyes or stood for a picture next to their ear-to-ear smile as they passed from the plaza womb out to the new world of New York tonight where strangers were stopping strangers just to shake their hand.

As we were leaving the light and into the night, my final image was of the giant blue column still climbing up 30 Rock, and the whole plaza bright and glowing . . . like it should be.

Meanwhile the streets were all a half-hour-after-midnight on New Year’s Eve — laughter echoing through every canyon, girls holding hands and skipping down the sidewalk, old shopkeepers watching everything from their doorways.

Terry and I whirl around the corner onto Sixth Avenue and Boom!  Right into the Midwestern crew we talked into staying at 8:00!  And it was now a whole lot more than a few hours later.  The well-put-together folks we’d met were now red-faced and joyous with their glasses listing crookedly, their hair a shambles, shirt-tails flapping, just a puddled mess they were, and as soon as they saw me rounding the corner they dropped their bags and ran over with giant bear-hugs of joy, thanking me most profusely for encouraging them to stay.  And the leader goes, “Hey, wait a minute,” and rushes back to his bags, and another guy says with a beam, “You’re gonna get something nice.”  And sure enough he comes back with this high-end print of an almost 3-D painting of Obama & Biden that will beam tonight from my walls forever.

And after a boatful of giant hugs, off they sailed into the glistening New York Sea at night as Terry & I floated on down the Avenue of The Americas, following The Great Invisible Forces to . . . . Times Square.

And as we whoosh around the corner into Times Square’s trash & vaudeville – the barricaded streets, shut-down sidewalks, yellow police tape everywhere, battalions of uniforms, and eight lanes of traffic racing through the center of it!  The massive crowd has dissolved down to a nice loud throng — so we fit right in! – bolting directly to the center island — the core of the core – ground-to-sky screens all around — Obama’s ears 8 Miles High — a constant roar — traffic, different speakers blasting different speakers, and a very high cheers-per-second ratio.

cue:  ”Dancing In The Streets” — loud.  [Phil Lesh & Friends, NYC, Nov. 6th, 2008 recommended]

And my Canadian flag’s immediately attracting a flood of delirious Canucks, some from the city I just left, some from places I never heard of.  And again it’s the celebrity flash-flash of my town crier top-hat n tails hailing in the news in Times Square routine.

All heck’s broken loose — for a moment it seems like old New York — people having a good time and no one interfering.  “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” is being belted out by an ensemble well beyond any concerns over harmony.  There’s a thousand Lady Libertys with one arm raised holding torches of camera-phones broadcasting beacons of freedom’s light to the rest of the world.  It’s the first time New York’s been like this since the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in game 7 at Madison Sq. Garden, when all the cars on Seventh Avenue were caught in the human flood, and the streets for blocks around became an instant street party — and you could walk up the avenue between rows of cars high-fiving both drivers and passengers from their open windows.

It was like that all through Times Square, except it seemed every car was coming from an Obama party, not just arriving at one!  It wasn’t random drivers caught up in some random New York street party, but every person in the city was in on it.  Or at least every person who was awake and outside.  The few Republicans here were long since safe behind their security systems, and anyone who was alive for the last few hours couldn’t help hearing and seeing and feeling the emotional and literal fireworks shooting off of every streetcorner in New York.

It was Fourth of July.  It was Beatlemania screams still echoing outside Ed Sullivan’s Paramount Theater.  Not only was every car smiling like a cartoon, and every driver too, but there was a person sticking out of every sunroof that went by — and people leaning out the side windows to high-five the Times Squarers as they drove through the piazza.  And if you weren’t honking your horn enough and got stuck at a light, brothers reached in your open window and honked it for you.  And not only were people chanting as they marched, a fire truck went by honking out “O – ba – ma” on his horn in time with the crowd, and the young Irish cops were doing stand-up routines for the crowds and working the passers-by like the best street comedians.

I talked to one of the officers in charge who said there’d been no problems at all over the entire city all night.

Nice, eh?

New York, I love ya!  So much like the blackout night five years ago  — happy positive vibes emitting from everywhere.  It was Woodstock without the mud.  It was a sunrise without the hangover.  It was a White House without a Bush.

And word filters up that Union Square was overflowing with people, and St. Marks Place in the East Village has broken into a spontaneous street-long block-party, and it was clear this was not going to be over anytime soon. 

And it was so gawdamn global – the giant screens were flashing crowds of people in Paris and London and Rome and Rio and Sydney and Toronto and hot-damn, summer in the city!  The back of my neck feelin’ all goosebumpy.

It was great that we were not dancing just cuz it was some date on a calendar, but because of something worked for by people the world over — and because of all the changes this will bring, from the smallest of human exchanges to the speeches of kings — it’s “a transformation of civilization” as Neil Young is currently singing it — it’s the hundredth monkey cracking the cocoanut for milk — an evolutionary step in our species — a turning-point that’ll be taught long after we’re gone.

And it’s happening now.  If you can read this, you’ve got your invitation.  We are the cells that are multiplying.  We are the lucky ones that make it across the river to The Promised Land.  This is a moment all people will wish they lived through.  And that this is even bigger for the world than it is for America.

It is our time, as he kept saying.

Live it or lose it, as I keep saying.

= = = = = = = = = = =

And wonderfully P.S.

A night later, a bunch of us went to the best band goin’, to my ears, Phil Lesh & Friends, and at the beginning of the show, the 68 year old bandleader came out and Dedicated the show – something I’ve never seen any GD member ever do  . . .

Phil:  ”Two days ago, we lived through and participated in a turning point in history, as important as anything that we’ve seen in our lives. And I bet everybody in this room was a part of that in some way. So, I want to dedicate this show tonight to that uniquely American spirit, which was just thrown up, at the perfect moment, with this man, and this movement, and these people.  So, here’s to you!”

Followed by chants of, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” at an underground Grateful Dead concert in the core of Manhattan!   

*

*

See, also:  the Election Night 2004 story

= = = = = = = =

by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com

“Keep your smile on and it’ll light your way.”  BH

                                                                         * 

It was a really magic night!  Until the nightmare. 

Couldn’t sleep the night before  –  up at 6 AM watching the camera follow Don Imus into his polling station with a long line of people out the door waiting to vote, and him saying, “I’ve Never seen it like this!” 

There’s reports of record-breaking turnout in every county in the land.  I dash over to the school at some low point in the news hour cycle and vote by pulling the giant rickety lever on NYS’s Depression-era voting machines for the Green Party.  I’m a strategic voter and knew Kerry was karrying the state by double-digits, so I try to get the Green’s numbers up. 

By noon, JFK’s headquarters is giddy and almost dancing, and Bush’s is heads-down and dour.  All the pundits are pundificating about what went wrong for Bush.  The wee Shrub himself stumbles out of his voting booth looking as shell‑shocked as his mother watching King George the First collapse in that great debate in ‘92.  And the Little One’s babbling even more incoherently than usual  –  he Knows it isn’t going his way.

This was obviously Our day!  And the world was changing for the better!

The phone’s ringin’ off the hook, people stopping by.  The “liberal” TV media are curling tiny smiles and radiating subtle shades of giddiness.  Networks were monitoring exit polls, and they weren’t reporting them over the air, but the results were in their faces. 

And there were parties everywhere.  NBC was outside Rockefeller Center.  CNN at Times Square.  Senator Chuck Schumer at the Grand Hyatt.  A thousand email invites to places like The Bowery Poetry Club and Crobar hosting serious election-party all-nighters. 

Got to Rock Center by 6 and it felt like warm-ups on New Year’s Eve  –  everybody out with a smile, some rushing towards home with a big beam on, others waiting for the other ball to drop.  As you entered the processional mall of the Rockefeller Cloister there was an almost beatific calm of joyous confidence.  NBC, God bless ‘em, had built this “Democracy Plaza,” a giant Disneyland playground for fans of democracy  –  towers with giant TV screens and concert speakers blaring NBC and MSNBC, three different broadcast studios behind walls of glass  –  reflecting the faux transparency of the election they’re covering  –  citizens and freedom-of-the-press merging in an open orgy  –  with Oval Office Fantasyland displays you could walk through, and a giant map of the nation on the skating rink below to be colored in as the states are won. 

As I arrive, I see Tom Brokaw through the window sitting down in his chair for his final election night coverage, the only guy on the air in Nebraska or wherever he was when Kennedy was shot, and now signing-off his career with JFK II.  I see my favorite player in the pundits league, Tim Russert, coming right towards me thru the crowd!  He’s got his frowning don’t-mess-with-me scowl on, like he’s trying to scare off any space intruders, but I just go, “No way!” and give him this big smile, as in, “Stop it, Mr. Serious, this is gonna be a great night!” and tell him so, and he drops his scowl and smiles for just a second, winks, and says “Thanks!”

The whole place is wild!  Like being at any euphoric mass gathering of like-minded people  –  a Woodstock for voters, Mass with the Pope, the real American Super Bowl  – 

2 teams, no tomorrow, a lotta hype, dancing bears, and Las Vegas layin’ odds!  Except the winner of this gamble gets to turn its citizens into armed killers and our nation into a goose-stepping army of chest-pounding thugs.  Or not  –  as the case will obviously be! 

We were finally putting an end to this King George madness and everybody knew it!  You could see it in the faces.  Watching MSNBC prepare to go on the air, Ron Reagan Jr. was just bouncing and couldn’t stop smiling.  Across the table, Republican Joe Scarborough was ashen in shock and lost in thought.  All around there’s nothing but Kerry signs and buttons and women and Democrats and young people in a blazing rainbow of new-day joy.

Every time Kerry or a Democrat’s name is mentioned, the crowd cheers.  When Bush’s name is mentioned, one guy claps. 

“Who’s THAT guy?” and everyone laughs. 

CNN’s been hyping their Times Square broadcast for about a month, so I scooch over there before the results start coming in at 7.  If the Peacock has this goin’ on at a skating rink, the all-news network in the middle of Times Square is gonna be the center of the universe! 

As I salivate thru the tourists for the feast ahead, there’s the first subtle hint of, “This isn’t right. What’s going on?”  CNN’s Campaign Express bus is parked in the middle of Times Square . . . but nobody’s around it.  And there’s the giant Nasdaq screen, but it’s Not showing CNN.  There’s a street-level broadcast booth, but there’s only about 20 people around it.  There’s Larry King and Jeff Greenfield, but there’s no audio on the outside of the studio.  There’s kids smooshing their faces against the glass, and tourists from Kansas who just want to wave home on TV.  What happened to the election?  This is just a glass bowl of Larryfish.  And they’re barely moving!  Across the square, MTV’s plastered for 3 stories with their Choose or Lose campaign.  NBC turned Rock Center into a Democracy Disneyland.  Flags are flying all over the city – and here’s CNN with the sizzle of a stock ticker.  Watching Larry in an isolation booth adjust his pants was about as awesome as crossing the Square and watching the Times’  print dry.  So I zip back over to the November New Years Eve party. 

Weaving through the Midtown canyons, some guy was up ahead washing windows with a squeegee, with some security guard standing over him, and I’m thinking, “Ope! There’s some guy with ‘community service’!”  But as I get closer, I look through the windows he’s cleaning  –  and it’s the freakin’ Fox News broadcast booth!  And not a single person is standing outside!  Britt Doom, William Kristolmeth, and that Beetle Barnes are all sittin’ right there — and there’s not one fan at the window!  It was almost sad  –  but  . . .  not.  And so reconfirming of how the night was going!  These guys were solo at a funeral and no one was hanging with them.  Meanwhile, the Democrats were dancing in the street to Johnny B. Goode outside Radio City Music Hall! 

Back at the Rock party, the first results come in  –  they only give piddly Vermont to Kerry, but a big cheer goes up anyway.  There’s a funny little murmur of boos whenever they call a red state for Bush, and everybody laughs that we’re doing it.  It’s like the silly unflappable mood when you’re at the big home game and know your team’s gonna win tonight.  People are beaming, back-slapping, and beer drinking out of deli coffee cups  –  the new-age Guiliani-Buster.  “Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand,” I heard some Deadhead singin’ on the back of a Cadillac.  We were all together and happy.  This horrific global nightmare was finally over!  And we were all sharing the moment as one!    

With each passing half-hour, more and more people were pouring into the town square as word was Kerrying across the land.  Everyone wanted to be here.  They were calling Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Mass and all sorts of others for Kerry, even recent toss-up New Jersey.  And Republican stalwarts like Virginia and North & South Carolina were too-close-to-call!  And I thought, “My God, not only is John Kerry gonna be President, John Edwards is going to be Vice-President!  How cool is that!”  I’d met him during the primaries and he seemed like a bright straight-ahead real person even though he’s a politician and looks like he’s about 12. 

On the wall of the giant phallic Rockefeller Tower they’d rigged up (literally) two window washing rigs, draped one in red and the other in blue, and were pulleying them up the side of the building as each state’s electoral votes were determined, with this carny bell-ringing level marked at about the 27th floor reading game-over 270, and these long primary drapes streamed down to the ground forming a giant bar graph of votes like a flowing Ross Perot chart, New York skyscraper size.

The whole scene and vibe kept accelerating, faster and faster, the frenzy escalating with each state’s poll closings.  I bump into Howard Dean as he’s leaving the MSNBC booth.  He’s covered in the pancake make-up that looks so good on TV and so six-feet-under in person.  He was gonna walk by, but I say, “Hey man, I was with you in New Hampshire!” and he stops and turns and says, “Hey! Thanks!  That’s great, thank you very much,” and shakes my hand and looks me in the eye.  But he seems all worried like he’s going to lose again or something.  I wanna pump-up the TV QB, so I slap his shoulder making a poof of pancake dust cloud his head.  “This is gonna be a great night!” I say, and he’s like, “Well, . . . I sure hope so (hak hak).” 

I’m thinkin, “This guy’s a worrywart!”  But I say, “This is what we were doin’ it all for!”  And he says, “Yeah, I know,” shakin his head in an agreeing yet discouraging way that said, “Boy, you’re right.  But, boy you’re wrong.” Like he knew somethin I didn’t yet.  Then he says, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” as a handler grabs him by the arm and whisks him off to his next camera. 

I start saying to people, “Say goodbye to Senator Kerry,” and a long pause as they look at me strangely.  “And Hello to President-Elect John Kerry!” and they burst into smile and we all high-five and spill beer!  It was So great!  There was no place else in the world I wanted to be.  The cell phone’s ringing with calls from all over North America  –  some people biting their nails, others in vans biting the dust from swing-states and calling for the latest update.  Then Walter calls, inviting me down to the Daily Show party at that sprawling Park Cafe party club.  Well, okay, that’s one other place I’d like to be. 

Jump in a cab headin’ downtown.  Through Times Square, past CNN, a hundred people now swarming around the curving Larryfish bowl, but it’s nothing like Rock Center.  The cab radio is calling Chuck Schumer the winner in the New York Senate race the minute after the polls close (9PM), and the Dem Senator in Colorado is beating Adolph Coors!  This is a landslide!  All is good in the universe!  . . .       . . . 

. . .     . . .       Until I step into the other world of the Daily Show party. 

Suddenly, as Dylan says, things have changed.

Giant wide-screen TVs hanging everywhere from the ceiling like bats;

– except loud music blaring instead of the news,

and no one was paying any attention

to   The   Election! 

hello? 

Grabbed a plateful of refueling salmon and stood under the lowest-hanging bat, squinting at the numbers, but it wasn’t coming into focus, and it wasn’t computing. 

I’d just been dancing in throngs of victorious new world Democrats cheering every state,

but suddenly it was the state of dismay,

America’s best political TV show’s party . . .

            didn’t even have the sound up! 

Like this was some old debate from the C-SPAN library playing in the background and not the final numbers flowing in live after years of work and only our freakin’ species in the balance!  

Bush up by 20,000 in Florida  –  “It must be just the Republican districts they’re counting so far.”

Then I look again, and he’s up by 100,000!   

Something’s wrong,

Something’s wrong,

I think back to my many years of studying elections, and immediately start drinking tequila.  

Then Virginia, and North & South Carolina all fall like saplings in a sudden storm and they’re gone. 

We’re not even close in Arkansas,

Not even close in Louisiana,

Just a hairsbreadth ahead in Wisconsin and PA. 

This isn’t right. 

Something’s wrong. 

I quickly proceed to double tequilas. 

I’d been telling people for days, “We’ll know the trend and what’s going to happen by 9:30.” 

I look at my watch. 

It’s 9:30.

I’m standing under the batscreens,

screaming

inside

that something’s not right  . . .  in  A  BIG  Way.

Can’t admit the numbers are real,

something’s gotta be wrong,

go to another screen, another network, another number, but it’s not adding up. 

Can’t move,

or see anything but exploding numbers blinding from above,

immobilized

like a bleeding soldier in the field,

I need morphine  . . . 

I need to be shot in the head. 

I slump down in one of the giant curving Copacabana booths. 

And once I’m off the glued TV screen hell I notice all these famous faces in the crowd around me, all these young actors and actresses I recognize from movies or my dreams or other parties. 

Pale and goateed Ethan Hawke drops down beside me, 

both of us stunned and staring up in open-mouthed shock at the numbers . . .

two wounded soldiers on the field of Gettysburg,

looking above for salvation, but dying inside as none comes,

limbs numb,

stomach-punched,

stripped of hope;

a blood-red tide rising,

drowning,

gasping,

nothing we can do  . . .

I’ve gotta drink this through: 

Who’s got a light? 

I know!  It’s . . . the Daily Show’s fault! 

Yeah, that’s it! 

I picture the million dancing Democrats at Rock Center and jump back in a cab uptown with visions of ferris wheels and carousals, calliopes and clowns, and everybody was dancin’, dancin’ in the street!

but as the cab rounds the corner onto 50th

a newspaper blows across the empty street in front of us. 

We coulda driven on the sidewalk. 

When I left here a few seconds ago (it seems) it was New Year’s Eve  –  and now it’s suddenly the hungover morning after  –  and it’s not even midnight. 

I stagger like a wounded cowpoke through the ghost-town tumbleweeds.  Disembodied voices echo through empty canyons like taunting demons.  The balloons had all dropped and popped, and multi-colored litter is all that’s left of the dream.  A dancing mosh-pit of war-ending democracy was now a ghoulish accident scene in the middle of the night — flashing lights, the absence of life and the sense of death, clusters of silent cops by yellow police tape and beaten blue barricades  –  and a bloody red splatter all over the white skating rink below. 

The happy circus had turned into some upside-down Bizarro-world, a Twilight Zone where all the people have disappeared, and echoing through a canyon, when some state is called for Bush . . . a Cheer goes up from some hidden pocket of insurgents!  A cheer for godsakes!  Here!  In My city!  The Artist’s Village!  . . . of liberals, democracy, our nation’s first capital, Washington’s oath, the birth of it all, the revolutionaries, the beatniks, the spirit guides, the mystics, painters and poets, Greenwich Village and the morning New York Times, immigrants, minorities, and open-mindedness  –  the cradle that berthed be-bop and folk, that drew Lennon and Dylan and me and you  –  Clinton’s victory convention and his First Lady becoming Senator  –  FDR and Eleanor’s home for godsake!  and Moynahan and Jackie O., Walt Whitman and Mr. Poe . . .

Oh no! 

Another state’s called for Bush,

and another faint cheer washes in where angels fear to tread,

and the building-size red stripe is pulled higher up the wall, closer and closer to the 270 buzzer,

but the blood-red dye’s already cast in the ice, 

and Bush’s smirking face is on the giant screens Everywhere looking down on us like Saddam Hussein’s glower all over Baghdad,

and hidden somewhere in the haunted streets lay a pocket of his Republican Guard

cheering

right

in the middle of Manhattan! 

Someone shoot me in the head! 

I’m no longer grateful  –  I just wanna be dead! 

I wanna jump in front of a cab, but jump inside one instead.

I can put this nightmare to rest  —  if I can just go to bed; 

And dream in blue rhymes,  and never see red;  

I promise, oh lord,  if you’ll just end this dread,

That I’ll be a good person,  from this day ahead!

And I know there’s a meaning,  or so I’ve read;

That I can still carve my future  and will not be led.

                      *                           *                           *

the afternoon after: 

One time I asked Beat poet Michael McClure about the unified and driving force of his “generation,” and how that was missing today.  And he answered, like a poet, almost in a haiku: 

“Go to Texas,” is all he said.

Then a long pause.

“Find opposition.”

When it looked like Bush was going to win a few months ago, I thought, “Well, this is sure gonna be great for music!” 

From ‘68 to ‘74, when America had its former Worst President, it was one of the highpoints in creative life for most of the American arts. 

We’ve had a good start, but we’ve only got a few more years to take advantage of this war-mongering born-again chicken-hawk liar,

to channel our fire

into our art

and our lives

and be better people

and lead by example if our White House doesn’t. 

This kind of oppositional inspiration only comes around about once a generation! 

And it’s going to be a joy to collectively make the art and life-choices that matter, and stoke the fires in the smithy of our souls.

Groove forth, and thrive in the underground  –  just as our roots always have. 

peace,

Brian

BrianHassett.com

karmacoupon@gmail.com

The After-show Glow

Dressing room bear-hugging back-slapping friends dancing in the after-show glow of a standing “O” — radiant faces in the gleam of a dream, with mirrors, musicians, danger and drinks, and sparkling eyes searing with some serious flirtations.  Bright-faced pranksters in purple paint-splattered jeans weave through the poets and nail-polished players in eardrum circles pounding out the beat — it was Cassady’s licks, the sax on the side, the poetry core, the nub, the whore – to the art — “To the art!” and glasses arise, as the room’s all a’chatter with the bebop patter of double-time minds in hip-hop rhyme.  Then cruise cross the street to the 24 Diner — the table, the truth, the picture’s alive, the Beats’ a’buzz in a 10-cent dive.  Let me pose you, compose you, transpose you right here!  With lingering longings in all-night play, it’s a once-in-a-jumpstart on a new superhighway, as you pile away in a new mini-van, scrambling strangers on speakers and gear, a heart and a hearth, a lap and an ear, a hope and a prayer, a few lights you’re there!  The Chelsea Hotel’s haunted gables beckon, its balconies flutter with the rockingchair mutters of old porch-smoking authors musing in the moon-mist on their straggling children.  Up the stairs twirling, past poets and play-rights, up the stairs curling ’round road-cases of songsmiths, up the stairs swishing through the ghosts of Bohemia, to the bed-flopping sigh-gasping room with a view, with the all-access, all-beaming, all-night crew.  A purple haze dawn refires the flame, warmed by the passage of the passionate night, burning with desire for the mindful day, for the glow of the future in the other’s ray, for open window ocean-breezes cleansing the night, for sizzling fresh sunrises and being warmed by the light, for climbing the stairs and taking the chance, all alone on the roof while still at the dance, hand-in-hand sneaking ‘neath streaking skies, tenderness trembling baby-finger sighs, floating in emerald-eye oceans of bliss, kettle-drum heart-beats as soft lips kiss, alone together in a mountainous breeze, enwrapped in a life-breathing soul-hugging squeeze.

=  = = = = = = = = = = = =

by Brian Hassett

brianhassett.com

karmacoupon@gmail.com