Is this election really about hate?

I do not know one woman who doesn't love the movie, Sleepless in Seattle, or writer Nora Ephron, yet her opinion piece yesterday in the Huffington Post made some of her readers go bonkers.

"This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women.  And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men."

She wrote this about the Pennsylvania primary and joked that it was a mistake to take them for granted as those of us who had dated white men knew just how undependable they were.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/white-men_b_97669.html

Even though it seemed obvious to me that this was written tongue-in-cheek, many of her 1330 commenters (as of this evening) did not agree. 

I had planned on forwarding the post to my daughter and several friends, all of whom are married to white men, but I hesitated.  Certainly I am not above a little good-natured male-bashing, but had Nora inadvertently attacked the sacred?  Are things so bad in this country and are we so frightened of the future, that we have even lost our sense of humor?  If so, that is the most tragic victim of the Bush years.

Admittedly I had become a George W. Bush and Dick Cheney hater.  I tried not to, as I would rather love everybody, but when oil should be about $28 a barrel and it is over $119 today, we have been mugged by a couple of heartless banditos. 

The tired old arguments emanating from my representatives that impeachments would waste valuable time no longer resonate well with me either.  As I imagined those shredding machines operating twenty-four hours a day and the justice department officials continued to defy Congress, I shook my head in disgust. 

Over the last eight years I had become angry, disillusioned and hostile.  I had quit social groups, service clubs, stopped going to church and dropped friends over our political differences.  I couldn't stand to see one more rich SOB bragging as they doled out 'charity' for the poor kids or collected food for the 'hungry'.  Then they went home and voted their pocketbooks for tax cuts and lesser school money and slashed health care funding as people's pensions dissipated and they lost their employment as they became too expensive under the group insurance.

People down on their luck appreciate help, but what they really want is JOBS and real opportunity. Bush's presidency has helped those two 'legally' emigrate to Mexico, Canada, India and other parts of Asia.  Just ask Pittsburg.

It infuriated me as our Civic Leaders held auctions and fundraisers at $150 a participant before they solicited donations and showed everybody how great they were by raising all this money.  The rest of us even gave them awards for their philanthropy, but most of it wouldn't be needed, I thought, if they hadn't elected an idiot.  As I saw fewer families come into my office able to participate in the American Dream of buying a home, it seemed as if these seemingly well-meaning conservatives had elected Satan and then re-elected him to try to prove they didn't totally muck things up royally the first time.

Then Barack Obama began his ascent and I donated a few measly dollars to his campaign.  It felt like wasted money, candidly, as I didn't believe a black man or white woman could become president.  After all, 43 of the last 43 presidents have been white men with only one Roman Catholic thrown into the mix.  I had been sorry I didn't give more to Kerry and Gore but thought,  what we really need is a Newbie who isn't obligated to anyone but the American people.   

Never in a million years did I think Obama would make it all the way.  After all, this country has been selling hate, selfishness, meanness, death, war, fear and terror for the last eight years, and Barack is offering hope, unity, diplomacy, shared sacrifice and peace.

Obama now has two million names in his database and over a million individual donors.  Friends, that is not a campaign.  That is a movement and it is making history.

Obama has managed to remind some of us that we are all Americans and if we let one of us suffer, all of us do.