SHADOW SOULS: OBAMA AND PALIN

Play this song as you read this article. It will be the soundtrack for your journey.



“Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naively projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection.”

-- Carl Jung


THE SHADOW SOULS


The psychologist Carl Jung developed a theory of something he called the “Shadow Aspect.” It’s an unconscious aspect of the self that we repress and then project onto someone else as a criticism of their differences from us. Usually it is some dark aspect of humanity and we use it to justify our hatred of another person or group. In a sense, it’s like a photographic negative of who we are, something that we despise, but that is actually a part of our being. Our mirror opposite.

Jung felt that when we repress this dark aspect of ourselves it manifests itself in the world at large, coming to life, so to speak, in the form of some enemy or rival.

I couldn’t help but be struck by this notion in noting the response of many “progressives” to the candidacy of Sarah Palin. For months I watched people indulge in cult-like devotion to Senator Barack Obama. This was not a devotion to his policies, particularly given that those policies were not terribly different from those of his democratic rivals. It was a devotion to some image or concept of what Obama represents.

Many people are justifiably angry about the last eight years of the “W” administration. These people feel we’ve lost our way both politically and morally. I wholly agree with such criticism.

However, many critics go much further. They see the behavior of the conservatives in America as a dark and dangerous “other” that needs to be vanquished. They see conservatives as ideologues who will accept any activity from their leader as long as he’s their leader and follows an right-wing ideological framework.

Yet, in many ways, this is a mirror reflection of their own behavior, their own blind hero-worship and ideological devotion, but rather from the left rather than the right.

To fight off their own demons and to hopefully slay their enemy, they have projected an image onto someone that seems to know what they want and what they have been looking for. He is someone who is “handsome,” “charming,” and “charismatic.” He is Senator Barack Obama.

At times when people speak of Obama, it sounds as if they’re talking about a lover of theirs or even a messiah. Though many perceive of him that way, they are loathe to admit it (certainly not to themselves).

Some, however, are willing to be open:

“Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino… We're talking about it; we're getting involved, we're tuning in and turning out in numbers we haven't seen in ages. My musician friends and I are writing songs to inspire people and couples all over America are making love again and shouting "yes we can" as they climax!”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lili-haydn/why-obama-is-like-a-deser_b_89285.html

Okay. Now, if you’re at a point in your life where you shout political slogans during sex, there’s something deeply wrong with you. You don’t need a political leader, you need a psychologist. Still, this is far from the only example hat Obama is a representational image rather than a flesh-and-blood candidate of issues and policies.

For some he is a “Lightworker”:

“Many spiritually advanced people I know… identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL?

For still others, he is “God-like”:

“I’m taking a special look at Barack Obama because he’s a lot closer to a Jesus-type than the other candidates, by quite a bit. What if God decided to incarnate as men preaching “hope and change.” And what if we didn’t recognize them, because we are so dull, and let them slip away, not availing ourselves of the opportunity to be led by God!”
http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2008/03/31/opinion/letters/doc47f0586a2ff1b441328510.txt

And, finally, yet for many, he is “The One”:

“`I do believe I do today we have the answer to Miss Pittman's question – it's a question that the entire nation is asking – is he the one?’ Winfrey said. `South Carolina – I do believe he's the one.’
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7281.html

This is only a very small sample of these types of things that have been written and said about him. The above quotes and articles are not anomalies.

To be sure, Obama has been skilled at manipulating these sorts of feelings. Those who argue that he has no complicity in these projections are dead wrong:

"We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

“Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that… this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Beautiful words, though no less calculated.

With such hunger on the part of voters and such skilled and mellifluous speeches on the part of Obama, he became something larger than a politician in the eyes of many of his supporters.

Barack Obama is a brilliant man and a brilliant politician, but I think any sane person knows (I hope) that he is not a God-like Lightworker, a desert lover or “The One.” However, the fact that he has engendered these types of responses is reflective of, I think, the subconscious of those who feel (and write) these things.

It reflects a need on the part of his followers to find someone to lead them out of the wilderness. It reflects their need to vanquish the demons of the last eight years. It is also indicative of an angry mass consciousness which has created a Manichean narrative which requires characters of evil to parallel it’s characters of good.

If you have a hero, if you have “The One,” then you must have a villain— “The Other.” Initially, that villain was Senator Hillary Clinton. She became characterized as something of a cross between “the other woman” and Medusa.

She was excoriated as all that is wrong with politics from “triangulating” political strategy to deranged narcissism. She was pilloried with every historical prejudice towards dangerous women. She was likened to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. It was said that her campaign was racist and cynical. It was written that she didn’t concede properly and that she didn’t properly “embrace” him at the Democratic Convention.

Again, if you doubt the extent of this characterization, please see:

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/02/hillary-sexism-watch.html

In short, she was the dark and dangerous female “other” who threatened the ascendancy of “The One.” As Joseph Campbell wrote in The Hero With A Thousand Faces:

“The testings of the hero, which were preliminary to his ultimate experience and deed, were symbolical of those crises of realization by means of which his consciousness came to be amplified and made capable of enduring the full possession of the mother-destroyer.”

Well, The One prevailed. But then something happened. The Shadow had not been destroyed, only sublimated. The extremes of idolization and the depths of misogyny which combined to lead Obama to victory produced its mirror image in a new rival— Governor Sarah Palin.

Who is this woman? Who is this cipher from the Alaskan tundra? She is Obama’s mirror. She is Obama’s Shadow Self. She is the very embodiment of those superficial aspects which make Obama popular, while at the same time representing the opposite of the that for which he stands politically and the very demons which his supports hungered for him to slay.

The Cult of Obama engendered the Shadow of Palin.

Let’s be clear. I do not believe that Palin possesses the intellectual depth of Obama. (In contrast to Hillary Clinton, who is brilliant in her own right.) What she possesses are telegenic, biographical and ideological attributes for the right similar to those which excited the left about Obama.

The similarities are striking.

Her youth is the counterpoint to Obama’s. She’s 44. He’s 47.

She’s a former beauty queen and TV sports reporter. Obama is routinely complimented on his movie star good looks.

She is a former high school basketball star who led her team to the state championship while playing with a stress fracture. Obama played on a high school basketball team that won the state championship and was known for his tenacious playing style.

Palin had been governor of Alaska for less than two years before being nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Obama had been in the Senate barely two years before he began his candidacy for president.

Her biography as an Alaskan outdoorswoman and mother of five have captivated her Republican base. Obama’s biography as the son of a Kenyan immigrant and a white woman from Kansas transfixed his supporters.

She is a hard right-wing ideologue. Obama is seen as a champion of liberal/progressive causes.

And let us not forget, she is a “she.” As a woman, she represents that for which so many of Obama’s supporters (both male and female) have reacted to so strangely and stridently— the female interloper in a political world dominated by men.

What is most tragic to me about the Palin ascendancy is that it exposes that aspect of the “Obama Nation” for which I have been critical— It’s cult-like nature. So crazed and invested in destruction, demonizing and idolization have many of his supporters been that, to me, in some strange and cosmic way, they sowed the seeds of a true progressive’s potential undoing.

In this year when there is the real and tantalizing possibility that a progressive agenda led by Obama will take hold of the White House, it would be a crime if the extreme nature of many of his supporters turns out to be the political and cosmic undoing of much-needed change in the political agenda.

The Cult of Obama. The Shadow of Palin.

Let us not be shocked that the one has engendered the other.

THOUGHTS ON THE DARK KNIGHT

If Hitler had made superhero movies, the Dark Knight is what they would’ve looked like. A veritable orgy of misogyny, racism and random violence, this disjointed and psychotic cinematic creation is a window into the conflicted subconscious of the American mind.

The movie begins promisingly with an excellent heist sequence in which we are introduced to the Joker. The heist is tightly written and edited, with each step to its conclusion played out masterfully. Our introduction to the Joker is powerful and startling. Heath Ledger clearly channeled some inner demons to create this version of the famous supervillain. While Cesar Romero’s joker was a kook and Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a sinister jester, Ledger’s joker is a deranged sociopath—and barely funny at all. Watching Ledger we see the heart of anarchical sadism. And this is the first glimpse into The Dark Knight’s window of the American subconscious.

The portrayal of the Joker as a villain is reflective of our American sense of what constitutes the height of criminal danger at any given moment. In the 1960’s Romero’s joker was a gangster-prankster. He knocked off banks and pulled a few corny gags. He was the incarnation of the nation’s hippies, poking fun at American culture and challenging some of it’s tenets. To the modern eye, it’s an almost quaint notion of simple danger to the social order.

Nicholson’s Joker was very much the product of the 1980s. He was Ivan Boesky, slick and cool, dark in humor and looking for the big score. He didn’t represent a threat to the social order so much as a financial “player” who felt it was his right to break all the rules if it meant he could get all the toys and stand atop that order.

Ledger’s Joker is a beast of another color. His danger is chaos, anarchy, total destruction. He’s not looking to challenge the social order so much as he’s looking to obliterate it. He is after destruction for destruction’s sake. He’s the kind of man that would kill you just to see the look on your face when you die. This is a terrorist in the definitive sense; there is no ideology behind his terror, only terror itself.

And what of the Batman? Well, he’s certainly no straight-laced parody of a do-gooder played completely for laughs as he was in the 1960s TV series. He isn’t the ironic, quirky Michael Keaton Batman. This Batman is a humorless vigilante, a rich guy with a weird fetish for bodysuits and bad guys.

The Dark Knight is essentially a series of action sequences interspersed with supposedly deep dialogue which more or less tells us what we should think the movie is about. The plot involves Batman trying to stop an Asian crime boss, Lau, battle The Joker, and resolve a love triangle among District Attorney Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes (the apparent female love interest) and Bruce Wayne, who is, of course, Batman’s alter-ego. As if that’s not enough, Harvey Dent becomes yet another supervillian, Two-faced.

The movies seems to actually be three films in one and none of them are satisfactory. These story cycles render The Dark Knight far too long in run time. Over and over, I kept hoping it would end just so I could use the restroom.

The story of the Asian villain completely disappeared at one point only two reappear out of thin air, very briefly towards the end. The “love triangle” is hardly engrossing (especially since it hardly seemed believable). Only the story of The Joker is the least bit interesting and only because Heath Ledger is so demonic as to be disturbing.

An actual discussion of the plot or the plot points is completely pointless since what is supposedly a plot is really an excuse to get the viewer to more scenes of trucks crashing or buildings exploding or Batman fighting people in the strange spasmodic way he fights in the movie.

No, more fascinating frankly is that for which the plot is used as a vehicle: Fascist notions of (false) manliness and it’s role in the state.



Throughout the film, Batman is faced with situations where he must take unlawful use of force to defend the citizens of Gotham city. The situations are set up so that we, supposedly, see that Batman has no choice to take power into his own hands to stop the forces of evil, much like a dictator or excessive president would to stop threats to the state. We’re meant to see that sometimes a powerful man must bend the rules of law to preserve the rules of law. I would argue that the very bending of them destroys them rather than preserves them.

Any republic that uses extremism in defense of liberty is a republic in name only. A nation is only as strong as its citizenry and legislation. When we allow strong men to unilaterally decide what is best for us, we become no better than those we are fighting. When Batman is “forced” in The Dark Knight to eavesdrop on the cell phones of all citizens (even though he relinquishes that power), the filmmakers are telling us that, sometimes, the “strong hand” of the state is good for us.

How fascist and how false.

Even more galling is how the film treats race and gender within the context of the story. Women and people of color serve as foils to show us how powerful and masculine the male leads are. (All I could think of after watching The Dark Knight was the old Saturday Night Live skit, Miles Copperthwiate, which features the character of Captain Ned, commander of the ship The Raging Queen.



Above ship, Captain Ned liked to make macho pronouncements about how he ran “a man’s ship,” and how they did “manly things” on it. At night, below deck, he preferred to spend his time attempting to “comfort” the small boy, Miles.)



What we get is racism and sexism used as some sort of bizarre signifier of manliness.

I’ve tried to think of the last time I saw a film where the leading lady got blown to pieces by a bomb. Let me see.. um… Oh. Never.

The destruction of Rachel Dawes is an apt metaphor for the essence of the gender outlook of this would-be oeuvre. The film establishes Dawes as the contemporary stock character of the "Independent Woman," yet though we are supposed to view her as having some internal power, she's little more than window dressing for Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent. Yet even that aspect doesn't work as her character is written with so little to make her interesting or charismatic, that it's hard to figure out what these guys see in her. (Which I think is what the filmmakers wanted, since it's clear that we're really supposed to be focusing on the boys.) This is no fault of Maggie Gyllenhaal, the actress who plays Dawes. She's shown herself to be a fine actress in many films, but even her talents could not overcome this thankless role.

And what does she (as her character) get for her efforts? Blown apart by a bomb. "Good-bye `Uppity Woman,'" say our creators.

Then there's Detective Anna Ramirez, played by Monique Curnen, our lone woman of color in the movie. She's established as a sort of a butch lady cop, another female interloper in a man’s world. And what do our filmmakers tell us about the nature of this butch woman of color? What are we to think of this lone representative of a large segment of our population? Well, we find out that she’s not just a bossy butch lady cop—she’s also corrupt! Yes, our butch little Anna isn't just a mannish woman intruding in a Captain Ned manly world, she's also a crooked intruder. I guess this is supposed to what happens when you let a “skirt” in men's spaces. Anna, in our lovely story, is partially responsible for the death of Harvey Dent's love, Rachel Dawes. Yeah, let those women kill each other.

And what does Anna get for her intrusion? She gets decked by Harvey Dent (as the supervillain Two-face). That's right. A guy decks a woman in a mainstream movie and the script is written in a way that we're supposed to cheer it. You go, boys!

Finally, we have the throwaway arm candy women (or, clearly from the filmmaker's point of view, “bimbos”). There is the blonde Russian ballerina who spouts vapid analyses, and later is mocked by Alfred the Butler when she wants him to put suntan lotion on her back. (Now I think the world of Michael Caine as an actor, and he's excellent as Alfred, but only in The Dark Knight could you be expected to believe that a 70-year-old man wouldn't want to rub suntan lotion on a beautiful young woman's back.) We also get treated to a lovely exchange between mob boss Maroni (played by Eric Roberts) where he tells his lucky lady to shut up (for the viewers’ laughs, of course).

Pretty girls are to be seen and not heard-- or in The Dark Knight world, preferably not seen at all.

And what of our "little minority friends"?

Look, when your film’s main crime boss is, Lau, an Asian man, and he’s shown to be inscrutable, duplicitous and craven, I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re playing on hateful stereotypes. In an age when Asian nations are on the rise as world powers in every aspect of global, dusting off racial stereotypes from the 1930s seem more than a little retro. Not only does the character of Lau get the “Charlie Chan” award for the Most Ridiculous Asian Stereotype, he even gets to be humiliated by being dragged by his feet from his office and essentially hogtied to a plane by the caped crusader.

Holy throwback, Batman!

But they didn’t stop there. What would a contemporary action movie be without it’s obligatory tortured dichotomous view of the contemporary black man? There are the "good ones"-- you know, the kind who aren't too threatening, are always deferential, and with an easy smile and a full laugh. Then there are the bad ones-- youthful, physically imposing, unwilling to tip their cap. Well, they are here for your Jim Crow days viewing pleasure.

We have the always brilliant Morgan Freeman cast as Lucius Fox. This gifted actor seems to have been cast in what seems to be a reprisal of his role in Driving Miss Daisy, only this time it's Driving Mr. Wayne. Now to be honest, his character is not all that bad. He's smart, elegant, honorable. It's just that this character is the typical white-haired (or sometimes bald-headed-- but always old) "Magical Negro" who exists to help redeem mainstream the hero. And he's almost always contrasted to the "dangerous" black man. (Probably so they can dismiss any arguments of racism. “Hey, what do you mean? We have a good black guy in our movie!”)

That dangerous black man in this film is the character of Gambol, played by Michael Jai White. He's got muscles on top of muscles. He brutish. He snarls. He's arrogant. He needs a comeuppance! And boy does he get one. He and his two black bodyguards, get beaten down and then thrown on all fours and made to fight for their lives at the feet of The Joker.

Yes, it’s a manly ship that Captain Batman runs in Gotham!

Finally, let me just say something here: I don’t want to hear any sort of malarkey from the ant-p.c., sexist, xenophobic apologists who will say that none of these things actually mean what I say they do. People who write for a living don’t just throw things on the page for the heck of it. They use character and scene structure to make a point.

Now, sure, sure, I know you'll say, "Hey, it's just a coincidence that in the Dark Knight all strong women get killed, all beautiful women get mocked, all men of color are humiliated or shown as lackeys! Come on! Stop reading into things!"

Well, let me say this to you:

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it must be…

The Dark Knight!

I don’t care how many billions of dollars this film makes. It’s a pile of fascist shite and belongs on a cinematic dung heap.

Put that in your fanboy pipe and smoke it.

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY 2008

THE LINES OF THE NATION

California Presidential Primary 2008

I'll begin at the place where it ended.

I covered the 2008 California presidential primary from a unique vantage point, interviewing voters at three separate polling places in Los Angeles and speaking with dozens of people from a variety of backgrounds moments after they'd cast their vote. I was gathering my notes at a diner in Burbank that specializes in Creole and Cajun cooking. Its New Orleans theme made me think back to Hurricane Katrina.

That terrible act of nature and its devastation still reverberates in the national subconscious. Its effect exposed lines of disunity in this great land of "E Pluribus Unum"; black/white and rich/poor. They are lines that have been cut bloody and deep into our nation's soul over countless decades. They are not the only lines that separate us.

What I saw on Election Day 2008 during the California primary made it clear to me that the identity matrix of American life had become even more muddled, if no less stark.

The campaigns of Obama and Clinton both tout the unifying aspect of their historic candidacies. The Obama candidacy, we are told, represents the notion of going beyond the American racial divide that has been painful, hateful and intractable. We are told that he represents something "post-racial"-- a new way of looking at and beyond ourselves. Electing Hillary Clinton, it is said, will break the "glass ceiling" of sexism that has existed for centuries in both overt and subtle forms in this country and around the world.

I believe that Americans wish to embrace both kinds of historical changes. I believe in the genuineness and openness of the American spirit. Yet, I also believe that are elements working beneath this embrace of inclusion that are uncomfortable for people to admit or accept.

For all the talk of "unity" and for all the pretty words that people voting said with respect to going past divides, looking beyond their own DNA, they were still hunkering down into old demographic lines and choosing, by and large, as much based on who they are as what they said.

ELECTION DAY

I had started out early on Tuesday afternoon. The hour of choice was at hand. A sense of transition and transcendence was clear, and everyone with whom I spoke felt it. Whatever happened, this year, this time, they believed something would be different. Whether that would be true remained to be seen, but there was no doubt that the birth pains of political change were resounding in the womb of the republic.

No one voting seemed to be going indifferently through the motions. They were excited. They were energized. I had never seen anything like it.

It was less like a political primary than an athletic contest-- a prizefight or baseball playoffs. People weren't picking a candidate, they were choosing a champion, a person who would represent their personal hopes and beliefs against an unknown adversary in the big political championship in November.

I wanted to interview a wide variety of the Los Angeles demographic in order to make a range of voices heard, so I visited polling locations in Valley Village, Sherman Oaks and Los Feliz. Each location had a different neighborhood feel and, within each, people of different backgrounds would be represented.

It should be noted that what follows is really only about the Democratic primary. It is about the choice between Obama and Clinton. Though I spoke to numerous people, I only met one Republican voter. Clearly, in Los Angeles, the "Red-breasted GOP" was as rare a sighting as a California Condor at a shooting range.

THREE LOCATIONS

Sherman Oaks is one of the more affluent areas of Los Angeles and, judging by the cars they drove and how they were dressed, most people I met fit that profile. There was a steady stream of voters going in and out of the polling place. They were mostly white and the majority were women. This gender pattern would hold true throughout the day at each location.

A house in Sherman Oaks.

The voting took place at the Sherman Oaks Women's Club on Kester Ave, a somewhat small '60s-style meeting place tucked off a corner near a freeway. The area was bucolic, despite its proximity to traffic, like a sparsely traveled side street passed over by suburban sprawl. The verdant surroundings, bright sunlight and cookie-cutter building from the days of the Brady Bunch made me feel as if I were off to a PTA meeting.

The Valley Village area.

At the Chandler Convalescent Hospital in Valley Village on Laurel Canyon Boulevard the scene was different. It was not nearly as active as the Sherman Oaks location and most of the people that I met were Latino or working class. Inside the convalescent facility, the elderly sat listlessly in wheelchairs outside a mostly empty room where voting was held. Their eyes were blank. I tried to imagine the vibrancy and life that had once been there and wondered if they were aware at all about today's primary and the historical changes at hand.

Los Feliz.

The final location was in Los Feliz, the polling location where I voted. It was Fire Station #35 on Hillhurst Ave., an unpretentious building on a somewhat pretentious block. Los Feliz is a trendy neighborhood and I expected the voters to skew young, which they did. There was a greater variety of voters of different ethnic backgrounds than at the other locations. Here, too, the majority of voters were female.

THE VOTERS -- THEIR CHOICES

Contrasting Symbols

People were surprisingly eager to talk about whom they voted for and why. I was amazed at how open most people were and how willing they were to go into detail about what motivated them to cast their ballot.

Obama and Clinton supporters expressed their preferences in different ways. The Obama supporters were more euphoric or ecstatic about their candidate. There was an idealism about what they liked, and their support for him was always spoken of in terms "hope," "change," and "newness." They talked more about the possibilities he represented as a person, rather than his positions as a candidate. The Clinton supporters were almost angrily defiant about their support for her. Though they emphasized her background and experience and the stances she had made on various issues, they did this in such a way that it felt as if they had something to prove. And to some, she too, was the candidate of "change."

If the Obama supporters were more buoyant in their support of their candidate, they were far less charitable to his opponent than Clinton supporters were to hers. Many were downright disdainful of Clinton. A strong "Stop Clinton" or "Anti-Hillary" component existed for many. Clinton supporters, by contrast, often offered that they would support Obama if Clinton were not the nominee. I found only one Obama supporter who said the same about Clinton.

The most poignant and positive examples from each side were expressed by two women at different locations.

I spoke to a young African-American woman in her early 20s in Los Feliz. She was on crutches and had paid for a cab to come to the polling place. I felt almost guilty for stopping her as she made her way back to her ride. The beauty of her words captured the spirit of ecstatic conviction that many supporters have for Obama's message. She repeated the word "hope" over and over. "Hope, hope, hope," she said and continued, "Even if things get botched, with Obama there will still be hope." It was this sense that Obama could make a difference, not just politically, but socially and culturally, that resonated so deeply with many of his supporters. In these uncertain times, he appears as a light of hope to many.

To some who support Clinton, she represents the same kind of possibility and engenders the same kind of faith. A woman I spoke to at the Laurel Canyon polling place conveyed this sort of idealism. She was in her 30s, white, dressed in jogging suit. She wore dark glasses and her blonde hair was pulled back. She told me that she had never voted before. When I asked her why, she said that she had felt "disenfranchised" as a woman because of the scarcity of viable female candidates for major offices. She said that a woman running for president made her "want to vote." She felt that Clinton's policies would be, "Beneficial to women, children, mothers, and especially single mothers." Her voice trembled as she spoke. Her passion and faith were clear.

This contrasting passion of both supporters was clearest during an encounter at the Los Feliz location.

I was speaking to a young African-American man who was almost serene as he talked about Obama's messages of hope and change. Out of nowhere, a woman ran up to me. She was in her 30s, her dark hair cascading around her face, and she was insistent on stating her support for Clinton to someone, anyone. She probably assumed I was a reporter and wanted to make sure that, whomever I was, her opinion would be on the record.

She was fiery about her standard-bearer. She told me that she was supporting Clinton because Clinton "had incredible experience, traveled to dozens of countries and is passionate about the issues." Then, quickly, she disappeared into the night.

Later, a woman in her 30s, Latina, stated that she had voted for Clinton because she wanted to see "a strong woman get elected." Shortly after she walked away, two other women, both Latina, one in her 40s, the other in her 20s, told me that they had both voted for Clinton because "She represents change."

A young man that I spoke to at the Sherman Oaks location was clear and eloquent about what drew him to Obama. He was in his early 20s, white, and he was sitting next to a car covered with Obama signs. His demeanor made it seem as if he were protecting a shrine. When I approached him, he told me that it was important that young people were "excited" by Obama and that this excitement was a component of his choice. He said he liked the fact that Obama was "younger" and "post-racial." "He represents change, not only for America, but for America's image to the world," he told me. He felt that an Obama presidency would alter positively how both friend and foe viewed the U.S. He was "change, something different," he said earnestly.

When talk turned to Clinton, his tone altered. I could see in his face that he could barely hide his distaste for her. The Manichaean duality of fervor for Obama and dislike of Clinton among Obama supporters was almost always evident.

He said she was too "polished and politicized" and that "McCain would represent more of a change than Hillary would." He called her the "establishment candidate" in comparison to the senator from Arizona. It was a pretty astounding statement given the historic nature of a woman running for the highest office in the land which, till now, has been the exclusive domain of men. It was also odd given the fact that McCain has been on the national political scene even longer than Clinton.

At the Los Feliz location, a young man in his 20s, originally from Canada, didn't mince words about his feelings towards Clinton and why he chose Obama. He said that he "liked Obama's message," but he was voting for him mainly because he wanted to "stop Hillary."

Most Clinton partisans, by contrast, expressed support for Obama as well. At the Sherman Oaks location, one woman, a Clinton supporter, said that she liked both candidates and that choosing between the two was like "Sophie's Choice." At the same location, another woman told me that she hoped that the two candidates would combine forces in November. She said that the combination of the two of them would make "a powerful ticket" in the general election.

EPILOGUE

By the time I had finished interviewing people, it had gotten dark and there was a bit of a chill in the air. It felt like November already.

What I took away from all this was that something deeper than competing political philosophies is at play. For all intents and purposes, the positions of the two candidates on the issues are mostly the same. Moreover, in terms of history, either a black or a woman president would break barriers, were that the chief concern.

What really separated supporters were the categories of race and gender. The manner in which they manifested themselves were subtle but salient. I doubt that any of the people with whom I spoke would agree with that-- and they certainly wouldn't admit to it-- but when the pattern plays out obviously before one's eyes (and is borne out in exit polls throughout the nation), it's hard to come to any other conclusion about what, at least in part, affected a voter's choice.

It cannot be overlooked that the bulk of Clinton's support was female. Women, particularly white women, supported Clinton strongly, as did most Latinos. Men, with the exception of Latino males, were entirely for Obama, as were African-Americans.

The men who supported Obama consistently stated that they considered Clinton to be the past, the establishment, or polarizing. They never overtly made gender an issue, but when lines break in such a way, it's hard to ignore whether that was a component for them or not. To call a woman running for president the "past" is, quite simply, astounding, irrespective of what her surname is. It seemed too easy an out for them. Certainly the Clintons had had their time in the '90s, but to brush off so easily the historic component of gender in Hillary Clinton's candidacy was telling.

The women supporting Clinton gave the impression that they felt that Clinton's qualities and abilities were being overlooked or overshadowed because of her gender and were angry because of it. For them, her femaleness as well as her background, were both important and motivating.

Race was rarely mentioned, and only in terms of being past the notion of it. This was also astounding and, in my honest opinion, either disingenuous or willfully obfuscating. Over the past decade we've witnessed a stark racial divide over everything from Barry Bonds to Don Imus, from to Jena 6 to hip-hop. The Internet, television, talk radio and newspapers have been ablaze with opinion about the depth and nature of racism in the country. Over the past few months, it has seemed that there is always someone being accused of racism on one side or playing "the race card" on the other. To say that, suddenly, on January 4, 2008, the date of the Iowa Caucuses, everyone woke up "post-racial" seems a bit of a stretch.

More likely, politics makes strange bedfellows, and I would suspect that some of this "post-racialism" is an ideology of convenience in the service of political positioning or gender.

Some would like to pretend that the categories of race and gender no longer exist. That if we ignore them, then the attendant discrimination that has followed throughout this nation's history will just go away. Yet those categories do exist and they will continue to exist, no matter what we might wish. For the bigotry associated with them to disappear, covering our eyes to our differences may not be the best answer as blindness has never been known to cure most maladies.

The two candidacies are clearly symbolic. Symbols are valuable and symbols inspire, but how we manifest their meaning in our lives is more important. We can refer to Obama as "post-racial," but if we only apply that term to a brilliant, eloquent and telegenic presidential candidate and forget to apply that to the man or woman of color we meet on the street or in an elevator, the "Everyday Joe" or "Everyday Jane," we won't have achieved much from his candidacy. Voting for him should not be considered absolution from guilt or a "Get Out Of Bigotry Free" pass.

Similarly, when we find that some pay more than subtle attention to gender while making choices, while others pretend that it does not matter, there is bound to be an imbalance of representation and an inaccuracy in our outlook and sensibilities on the issue. If women play "gender neutral" while men play "gender specific," it's going to be a long time before we see extensive representation in the highest offices in the land.

For some, sexism feels more "innocuous" than racism. It's the old "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" canard. Yet, we have to be honest about how politics and economics-- everything from abortion to crime to poverty-- are looked at very differently by many men and women. When there isn't balanced representation, a balance of voices are not heard on the issues. Some may think of our country as being at the forefront of equality of the sexes, but a recent study by the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 31st in terms of gender equity-- and 69th in terms of political representation for women. These are not numbers of which we can be proud.

People are still voting based on their particular demographic allegiances. What's different about this election is that the demographic alliances are different.

It is a sad fact about human beings that our rivals inspire us to act, at times, more often than our allies. Anyone who reads blog postings on various political sites on the Internet can see an example of that. It was no different in earlier eras. The Confederacy was defined as much by not being Northerners as it was by being Southern. During the Cold War, the favorite slogan was "Better Dead Than Red," not "Capitalism is Freedom." On a (somewhat) lighter level, there's an old saying that the New Englander's two favorite teams are the Red Sox and anyone who plays the Yankees-- but not in that order-- a sure case of being driven by what you hate more than by what you love. It's not cynicism, it's history.

But to be human is to hope and to believe that the arrow of history can move upward, forward. I see this hope in younger voters, voters under 30. I see it in their enthusiasm and idealism. For those under 30, some of those particular identities appear to be less restrictive. Many young people seem more open to ally themselves with those of different backgrounds. They seem more ready to accept differences, note them and move past them. I saw that during election day-- not completely or fully, but often enough to let one feel optimistic.

There is a lot of voting left to be done. Perhaps these exclusionary patterns, which were evidenced not only in California, but throughout the nation, will break down. It remains to be seen. Yet if we wish to live up to our motto of "From many come one," then we need to give careful thought to why and how we choose and to how our brother and sister citizens have chosen as well.

I know this, at any rate: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." If we are to make this country stronger and better, we must continue to search deeply within our minds and souls as we pull the lever, press the button or dip the pen in a voting booth this election day, we must not turn a blind eye to reality, no matter how unpleasant.