Here’s a cool map of poll closing times on Election Day.
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Vote 2008
Election Day 2008
For political junkies, a presidential Election Day is like Christmas. It’s like the Superbowl for sports fans; it’s like the Tony Awards for the gays.
This is it.
As we’ve gotten closer to today, I’ve measured the days like I usually do when I anticipate big events:
The election is in 23 days… what was I doing 23 days ago?
The election is in 15 days… what was I doing 15 days ago?
The first polls close in 47 hours… what was I doing 47 hours ago?
Ever since the last presidential debate, my emotions have gone from optimism, to fear and anxiety, back to optimism, and finally to giddiness. I kept waiting for something bad to happen. I kept waiting for the polls to tighten. As the day got closer, I kept thinking, What are they holding back? and, Is [event X] going to be the thing that turns people back toward McCain? This past weekend I could focus on almost nothing else but the election.
It’s been 12 years since we’ve had a presidential election that did not appear to be a tossup. The last time the presidential candidates actually spoke on Election Night was in 1996 — Clinton vs. Dole.
The next two election nights gave me agita. I’m not sure which was worse — 2000 or 2004. The first was nerve-wracking; the second was just depressing.
And now it’s 2008, and I feel hopeful about a presidential election for the first time in years.
And this got me unexpectedly choked up.
I don’t want to jinx it… but tonight should be one for the history books.
President-elect Barack Obama
He did it.
No words.
I can’t describe how great I feel.
Blue Florida
Among all the excitement, something might be lost: Obama won Florida.
To see Florida colored in blue on the electoral map — it’s so cathartic. It helps heal the wound that Democrats have felt for the last eight years.
Obama’s Victory Speech
This was the part of Obama’s victory speech that made the tears start flowing from my eyes.
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.
And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.
Yes we can.
Lincoln Memorial Rededication
A few weeks ago, the New Yorker ran an article about the Lincoln Memorial and how the role of Abraham Lincoln in the American memory has changed over time. Next year is Lincoln’s bicentennial, and the Lincoln Memorial will be rededicated in the spring. The piece ends this way:
In 1909, the Reverend L. H. Magee, the pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Springfield, Illinois, voiced his disgust at the exclusion of blacks from the town’s centennial dinner, but he imagined that by the time of the bicentennial, in 2009, racial prejudice would be “relegated to the dark days of ‘Salem witchcraft.’ †Next year’s Lincoln commemorations in Washington will include the reopening of Ford’s Theatre, restored for performances for the second time since 1893, when its interior collapsed, killing twenty-two people. Congress will convene in a joint session on February 12th, and on May 30th the still new President will rededicate the Lincoln Memorial. The look and the emphasis of the occasion will have changed—measurably, for certain; astoundingly, perhaps—in the fourscore and seven years since 1922.
So President Obama will speak at the Lincoln Memorial next May. It will be stirring.
Four Years Ago
Four years ago in the New York Times:
The Democratic Party emerged from this week’s election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance.
Democrats said President Bush’s defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes had left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008. …
At this very early date, party officials said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator, is best positioned to win the presidential nomination. But Democrats and some Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was open to caricature by Republicans as the type of candidate that this election suggested was so damaging to the Democratic Party: a Northeastern, secular liberal.
In addition to Mrs. Clinton, two Democrats from this year — Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was Mr. Kerry’s running mate, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor — are likely to move to wield influence, and perhaps run for president themselves.
Both men are burdened by their own losses this year. And in one disadvantage for Mr. Edwards, several party officials said there would likely be renewed hesitancy to run a member of Congress for the presidency, given the success the White House had undercutting Mr. Kerry’s credibility with votes he had cast.
This also appeared in the Times — a few days earlier.
It’s amazing what can happen in just four years.
On Prop 8
I haven’t written about Prop 8 yet.
Nothing can dim my utter euphoria at the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, which will have much greater consequences for our country and the world than the passage of Prop 8. But Prop 8’s passage is very disappointing nonetheless.
Still, all is not lost. California’s gay couples will still have the option of domestic partnerships that approximate marriage in all but name. This is not ideal, but ain’t beanbag. Same-sex couples can get married in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and probably next year in New Jersey. New York recognizes same-sex marriage, as long as the marriage is performed elsewhere.
Also, it’s ridiculously easy to change the California constitution. As attitudes on marriage equality continue to progress, same-sex marriage in California is more likely to become permanently legal. We’ll just have to continue to fight, that’s all.
Gay rights groups have filed lawsuits against Prop 8. I don’t think this is a good idea. Not only is it awful public relations, but it will probably lose.
The reason civil unions and domestic partnerships are not good enough, and will never be good enough, is because of the intangible advantage marriage brings: social respect. There are tangible advantages to marriage as well, such as: while everyone knows what marriage is, civil unions and domestic partnerships are harder to explain to the hospital administrator when you need to visit your partner there. But in a large part, this is about the respect that equality brings.
The defeat of Prop 8 shows that we don’t have enough respect yet. (And the irony that black Californians voted 70-30 in favor of Prop 8 is painful.) Which comes first: respect, or the right to marriage? Or does one reinforce the other?
Time is on our side. It will take longer to achieve success than we thought.
But time is on our side.
Finally, Dale Carpenter has written the best thing I’ve seen so far about all this.
One Day Later
I woke up this morning and it hit me all over again: Barack Obama is the President-elect of the United States.
I can’t get over how wonderful it feels.
I keep having to remind myself that it’s not just the end of a campaign, but a new beginning of something else. We’ve just concluded a two-year epic saga, in which one of the main characters was Barack Obama. But it’s not like getting to the last page of a book, where you put it down and never think about it again. No — we’re at just the beginning! This has all been just prelude! It’s like we’ve just finished The Hobbit and we’re about to start reading The Lord of the Rings.
When I’ve hoped and thought about Barack Obama being president recently, it’s not just the Big Idea of it, but the little images that have come into my mind:
- President Obama giving the State of the Union every year, with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi standing behind him.
- President Obama walking across the White House Lawn to Marine One, then turning around to give a salute before ascending the steps of the helicopter.
- President Obama and the leader of another country sitting together in fancy chairs in the Oval Office, while photographers click away.
- TV reporters referring to him as “the President,” without even having to use his real name. “The President announced today…” or, “Norah O’Donnell, NBC News, with the President.”
Really, I feel like we’re at the beginning of a remake of The West Wing.
And I love this article about the new First Family.
Obama will make mistakes. He has difficult decisions ahead. Our country’s in the toilet. And day-to-day governance is messy, with its daily news cycles, the messy legislative process, wins and losses, Washington sniping, political roundtables on TV. Poetry gives way to prose. In the euphoria of his election and inauguration, Bill Clinton talked about changing the culture of Washington. So did George W. Bush. It never happened.
There will be times I disagree with President Obama, get annoyed at him, disappointed in him. There will be times when the public does as well.
But this is an extraordinary man. And if things are even a smidgen better than they’ve been for the last eight years, we’re in luck.
On Tuesday night, as Obama was speaking in Chicago, I turned to Matt and said, “We’ll finally have a president again who knows how to speak.”
That alone is reason to rejoice.
Gay Marriage: No Brick Wall
Charles Kaiser writes today about why the same-sex marriage movement has not hit a brick wall, as the New York Times claimed this morning. The one point on which I disagree with him is New York. Although the Democrats have finally won a majority in the state senate, it’s not clear we’ll have a Democratic majority leader, because it’s only a one-vote majority and there are some rogue Democratic senators, like Ruben DÃaz:
Mr. DÃaz, a Pentecostal minister, has long been one of the most socially conservative voices in the Senate. He continued to say on Wednesday that he could not support as leader any lawmaker who would help make gay marriage become law, even if it were his own son, Assemblyman Ruben DÃaz Jr.
“I would not support anybody, Malcolm Smith, my son Ruben DÃaz Jr., anybody who supports that,†he said.
This makes me mad, but we’ll see what happens.
Obama and Gay Voters?
Obama did worse than Kerry among gay voters? What the hell?
[Update: I think Homer makes an excellent point. Very small sample size of gay voters, which might have led to inaccurate results.]
Cecil Stoughton
Cecil Stoughton, the photographer who took this iconic photograph of LBJ being sworn into the presidency on an airplane, died on Monday.
He hitched a ride with a state trooper and made it to Love Field before Air Force One took off. He learned afterward that police officers on the tarmac, seeing his car hurtling toward the plane and fearing another attack, nearly fired on him. Mr. Stoughton climbed into the plane, the only photographer on board. He switched the color film in his Hasselblad camera for a roll of black and white: the wire services could not handle color.
The swearing-in began, and Mr. Stoughton, standing on a couch at the back of the plane, pressed the shutter. Nothing happened. He jiggled his camera — jiggled it hard. It came to life.
He took about 20 shots of the ceremony. He was so close to Jacqueline Kennedy that her bloodstained skirt did not appear in the finished photo. Continuing to shoot, he captured a wrenching image of the Johnsons consoling her, her eyes downcast, dark hair obscuring half her face.
New Yorker Obama 2004
In the spring of 2004, Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Evanston, Illinois, told me a funny story about startling President Bush during a visit to the White House. She was wearing a big, blue “OBAMA†button. This was in the early days of Barack Obama’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. Bush “jumped back, almost literally,†Schakowsky said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’â€
– from the New Yorker
Brains are Back
Michael Hirsh writes:
What Obama’s election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one’s enemy and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind. And for this reason as much as any, perhaps I can renew my pride in being an American.
Virgil Goode Riddance
One election result that makes me really happy: Virgil Goode, the conservative Republican congressman who represents the Virginia district that includes Charlottesville, where I went to school, appears to have been defeated by Democrat Tom Periello in a very close race.
Virgil Goode raised a fuss two years ago when Keith Ellison, a House member who is a Muslim, used a Koran in the ceremonial re-enactment of his swearing-in. (All members of the House are officially sworn in together, without the use of any religious text, but apparently they have ceremonial re-enactments in which they can use a Bible or whatever they want.)
At the time, Goode issued a statement that read in part:
When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. …I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.
In addition to being bigoted, the statement is also a non sequitur. Ellison is not an immigrant; according to Wikipedia, his family has been in America since 1742, and he was born and raised a Roman Catholic before converting to Islam.
I am so happy to see Goode go.
Dahlia Lithwick writes about the race here. And here are two of Periello’s ads that are particularly funny.
Two-Celebrity Commute
I had a two-celebrity commute this morning.
First, there was a man walking several feet in front of me on the way to my regular subway entrance. He kept clearing his throat and humming to himself. We both walked down the stairs and swiped our Metrocards through the turnstiles, and then I realized he was Boyd Gaines, currently starring opposite Patti Lupone in Gypsy as Herbie. He stopped at the kiosk on the subway platform, bought something, and then continued down to the very end of the platform, where he could get on the first car. I wonder if he lives near me?
(Incidentally, the first time I saw Boyd Gaines perform on Broadway was in The Heidi Chronicles, when I was a teenager. But I will always think of him as Mark Royer, the husband of Valerie Bertinelli’s TV character Barbara Cooper on One Day at a Time.)
The subway soon came, and a little bit later I switched from the local to the express. I managed to get a seat, and I pulled out my book and started reading. On the periphery of my awareness I heard two sibilant male voices, but I was too absorbed in my book. Finally, at Times Square, the train stopped and I looked up just in time to see Jack McBrayer, 30 Rock‘s Kenneth the Page, saying goodbye to someone and getting off the train.
He is such a big ball of cuteness.
I never see any famous people on my morning commute, so it was weird to see two of them. And yeah, Boyd Gaines and Jack McBrayer don’t necessarily count as celebrities, but “two-celebrity commute” sounds better than “two-well-known-performer commute.”
Also, according to the Oracle of Bacon, they are two degrees of separation from each other.
HIMYM on Daily Beast
How I Met Your Mother: The Best Show Nobody’s Watching.
(Except Matt and I. It’s one of my faves.)
Preconditions
Best line about Obama’s visit to the White House yesterday:
“I can’t believe Obama is already sitting down with an unpopular, aggressive world leader without preconditions.”
Prop 8: Who Donated
Via Homer, here’s a searchable database of people who donated money for or against Prop 8. I’m not in there for some reason (nor are Homer or his friends). But I did come across several familiar names: T.R. Knight, Tony Kushner, Alan Alda, Anne Hathaway, Jeff Whitty, and others.
Progress is not a Transitive Verb
Can someone please tell Sarah Palin that progress is not a transitive verb?
And then, can we never ever hear from her again?
Savage vs. Perkins
Below, Dan Savage and Tony Perkins argue about Prop 8. (Via Andrew Sullivan.) I’m not a fan of people raising their voices and interrupting each other on TV, but Savage is great here with his cogent one-liners. This one’s my favorite:
Perkins: “Boy, you can’t get a word in edgewise here.”
Savage: “Well, you stripped me of my rights and I interrupt you. Who’s really suffering here?”
Savage blogs, “And, yes, I did interrupt Tony Perkins—quite a lot. I’ve been on TV with Mr. Perkins before, and his MO is never shut up, and run out the clock, and interrupt. And I just wasn’t having it tonight.”
Go Dan.
Straight Ally of Gay Marriage
It’s easy, if you’re straight, to file away the gay marriage issue in a little folder in your mind, to render it, essentially, inessential. It can fall into the category of “bones you throw the religious right because things could be so much worse.†Or “things that would be great in a perfect world.†Or “what’s the big deal?†because you don’t actually get what a big deal it is to be able to get married when you’ve never had to consider the alternative.
Speed-the-Plow, Billy Eliot
I’ve seen three Broadway shows in previews lately and wasn’t really into any of them: the revival of Speed-the-Plow, Billy Elliot, and Shrek. Speed-the-Plow and Billy Elliot have since opened to great reviews, the latter this morning. (Shrek is still in previews.)
I’m wondering what’s wrong with me. I always doubt myself when I disagree with the general opinion of a show. Did the productions improve before opening night? Or, would I have enjoyed Speed-the-Plow and Billy Elliot if I hadn’t been sitting in the second-to-last row of the balcony?
I really wonder about the seating issue. Do better seats make for a better evaluation of a show? I’m sure that’s one reason why theater critics get great seats (at least, I assume they get great seats). If you sit too far away, do you appreciate a show less? On the other hand, changing your seat can’t change a show’s problems.
There was one number in Billy Eliot, called “Solidarity,” that I thought was really terrific. Another, “Grandma’s Song,” was touching and funny. But I found much of the show treacly; the actor who played Billy at the performance I saw, David Alvarez (there are three actors who alternate the role), greatly irritated me; and the score was too pop-driven and inconsistent. Maybe I’d enjoy the score more on repeated listenings.
As for Speed-the-Plow, I loved all three performers — Jeremy Piven, Raul Esparza, and Elisabeth Moss. But the plot seemed predictable and didn’t enlighten me in any way.
And again — for both of these shows, we were at the back of the balcony. Maybe better seats would have helped.
Shows I have enjoyed recently: Road Show, Equus. I even kinda liked 13.
Join the Impact
If you haven’t heard, tomorrow there will be a simultaneous nationwide protest against the antigay measures that were passed in four states last week. Prop 8 in California, Prop 102 in Arizona, and Prop 2 of Florida all banned same-sex marriage, and Arkansas banned unmarried couples from adopting children (a measure aimed at same-sex couples).
The protests will be at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time, 1:30 pm Eastern. Go here to find a protest site in your state. Matt and I are planning to go to the protest at City Hall in Manhattan.
Keith Olbermann on Same-Sex Marriage
Alex remarked that I didn’t post video of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” about Prop 8 from Monday night. So in case you didn’t see it, here it is:
Night Photos
Photos of nighttime. Some of these are beautiful.
50-State Gays
We wound up not going to the protest yesterday after all. Matt woke up sick yesterday morning and I didn’t want to go by myself. (And what illustrates couplehood more than looking after your sick partner?) But I’ve looked at a bunch of the photos and reports: see here and here. Andrew Sullivan yesterday was a clearinghouse as well.
I’m pretty sure this was the first coordinated coast-to-coast gay rights protest we’ve ever had in this country. There were events in all 50 states, plus D.C. and internationally. And this was crucial. Because it’s not just the protests in the big cities that were important — NY, DC, SF, LA — where crowds of a few thousand could gather. The smaller groups in the smaller places were important, too, and maybe even more important than in the places where we march all the time.
Here in the big cities, gays are everywhere. Straight people see us every day, or at least they know we’re here. Not so in the smaller cities and towns, where gays might congregate in hidden enclaves, such as online chat rooms or the local gay bar — getting to know each other, yes, but not visible to straight people.
For small groups of gays to protest where gays have never protested before was crucial. Straight people saw that we really are everywhere.
It was a brilliant idea, and it reminds me of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy for the Democrats that some people saw as a waste of time. By competing in places where they never had before, Democrats forced people in every state to take them seriously. Yesterday, gay people did the same. In places like Oklahoma and Arkansas we are more highly visible today than we were yesterday. Even if the mainstream straight communities in those places don’t begin to take us more seriously now, rest assured that in every town or city where there was a protest, some confused kid or closeted adult or open-minded straight person saw that group of people with their signs, and something clicked inside each of their heads.
Change happens slowly. And it will continue to take time.
But we are better off because of what happened yesterday.
Wanda Sykes Comes Out
Wanda Sykes comes out and speaks out against Prop 8:
Clinton Transition, 1992
At first it seemed to me like it was taking Obama a long time to name anyone to his cabinet. But I’ve found this old New York Times article about Bill Clinton’s presidential transition, dated November 11, 1992, eight days after his election to the presidency. It stated that Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan all waited until December to appoint any cabinet members. So I guess Obama’s on track.
The article’s also interesting for the light it sheds on the Clinton and Obama transitions:
The most striking thing about Gov. Bill Clinton since the election has been the intriguing contrast between Bill Clinton the candidate and Bill Clinton the President-elect.
The Bill Clinton the public saw during the campaign was decisive, vigorous and remarkably open, a candidate who spent up to 18 hours a day talking up his ideas in public. But President-elect Bill Clinton has been seen only rarely. He has been conspicuously deliberate in making decisions and as obsessed with holding information close to the vest as any President.
That sounds familiar, and it’s probably not unusual.
A week after Election Day the Clinton transition operation still consists of Mr. Clinton, his wife, Hillary, Vice President-elect Al Gore Jr., a few intimate friends and advisers from the campaign and a skeletal transition board that has met only twice and is still trying to work out a timetable to present to Mr. Clinton for his most important transition decisions.
By contrast, Obama’s team seems to be highly organized and meeting regularly.
George Stephanopoulos, Mr. Clinton’s director of communications and one of the very few former campaign officials with any apparent connection to Mr. Clinton these days, presents daily briefings for the public that are portraits in minimalism. Tiny shreds of information about Mr. Clinton’s activities and thoughts are padded out and embellished to make the puny sound Presidential.
OK, I just thought that was funny.
“The reason that it seems like very little is happening is because very little is happening,” said one longtime Clinton friend, who spoke only on the condition that he not be identified. “Very few decisions have been made. This is very much Bill’s style: being extremely deliberate if not slow. He wants to do things carefully and right.”
Obama at his first press conference: “And I want to move with all deliberate haste, but I want to emphasize ‘deliberate’ as well as ‘haste.'”
I guess things are moving along at a decent pace after all.
Simpsons and NYT Crossword
Did anyone catch “The Simpsons” last night? It was all about Lisa discovering a love of crossword puzzles and entering a crossword tournament. As a crossword lover, the episode hooked me. But the most amazing moment occurred at the end.
In the last few minutes, Lisa did a crossword that happened to be yesterday’s actual New York Times crossword.
And it turned out that while that puzzle was a regular themed Sunday puzzle, it also had two independent references to last night’s episode. The letters along the northwest-to-southeast diagonal, and the first letters of every clue read in order, both had special messages from Homer to Lisa that figured into the plot of the episode and were mentioned in it. Frickin’ amazing.
Also, New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and the creator of yesterday’s puzzle, Merl Reagle, both appeared in the episode.
Redshirts
Wikipedia entry on redshirts (linked in honor of the new “Star Trek” trailer released yesterday). The list of parodies is fun.
Reconstructionists Against Prop 8
A little late, but… the Reconstructionists are against Prop 8.
I grew up belonging to a Reconstructionist synagogue, and although my parents have moved onto a new one, I still consider myself part of that denomination.
Just goes to show that not all religious groups want to ban same-sex marriage. Prop 8 imposes a particular religious view on practitioners of all religions.
Kitchen Porn
We were watching “Brothers & Sisters” this past Sunday — it’s one of my favorite shows; I love the whole dysfunctional-yet-loving Walker clan — and, as happens about every other episode or so, a character was cooking for a dinner party in a fabulous kitchen. Bright and airy, a spacious countertop island, farm-fresh vegetables being chopped, pots bubbling on the stove. Like something out of a magazine. Kitchen porn, I call it.
We’ve actually got a great kitchen by Manhattan standards, but I don’t cook nearly as much as I want to.
But it turns out you don’t need a great kitchen to make great food. Mark Bittman is the author of a great cookbook I own, and it turns out he has a regular ol’ crappy Manhattan kitchen.
Minnesota Recount Game
Minnesota recount: judge some sample disputed ballots on your own.
iPhone
I just ordered an iPhone.
I’d been thinking about doing this for a while. I’ve had my current cell phone for almost three years.
But that’s not why I bought an iPhone — I was getting along just fine with my current phone.
However, yesterday I was baking something, and my phone was on the kitchen counter — far enough away from the baking activity, I thought. But after I finished baking and cleaned up, I realized that my phone had somehow gotten wet. I wiped off the phone and plugged it in, and it started… vibrating. Nonstop. Even though the phone was off. It was kind of freaky.
I took out the battery. Matt and I went out for a few hours. We came back, I put the battery back in, and the phone immediately started vibrating again. After a few minutes it stopped — so I tried to charge it, but it still wouldn’t turn on.
I took out the battery and let the phone and the battery sit out overnight in case there was more moisture that needed to evaporate.
This morning I put the battery back in the phone and tried to charge it up for a few hours. Tried turning on the phone again. It still wouldn’t turn on.
So instead of buying a new battery I’ve decided to go ahead and buy the iPhone. I can afford it, and I want one. So I ordered one. Black, 16GB.
I can’t wait to get my new toy.
Prop 8 Lawsuit
A few weeks ago I wrote about the lawsuits that have been filed against Prop 8. The lawsuits made me uneasy. I wrote:
I don’t think this is a good idea. Not only is it awful public relations, but it will probably lose.
Well, I’ve changed my mind. I actually changed my mind a week or two ago. Here’s why.
First, I’ve decided that it’s not necessarily a losing proposition after all. The cramped legal reasoning I linked to on volokh.com ignores the following: if a bare majority of Californians can vote to strip a constitutionally protected right from one minority group, what’s to stop them from stripping a constitutionally protected right from another minority group? One of the points of a constitution is to prevent majorities from taking away certain rights of minority groups. Simply put: if a majority can take away your rights, then you have no rights to begin with. An unprotected right is an oxymoron.
Second, it might not be awful public relations, and even if it is, who the hell cares? If the California Supreme Court throws out Prop 8, what can the anti-marriage crowd do? The state legislature won’t ban same-sex marriage; it’s already twice passed bills to legalize it, only to be vetoed by Schwarzenegger because he said, nonsensically, that the decision should be left to the courts. There’s not going to be a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex marriage nationwide: if it couldn’t even muster the necessary 2/3 of the House and Senate under Republican control, it’s not going to happen under Democratic control. (More here. I disagree with Andrew Sullivan on this. His reader is right.)
There’s still an iffy chance of success. But it’s possible the California Supreme Court will make the right decision. I hope so.
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was nice. We went to my brother and sister-in-law’s place on the East Side, where we had twelve people. I made my first apple pie yesterday and brought it for dessert. Here it is, courtesy of my new iPhone:
Here’s the inside:
My mom went kinda crazy on the dessert-baking herself. She made a lemon polenta cake, a hazelnut chocolate mousse, a lemon meringue pie, and chocolate chip cookie peanut butter sandwiches. We also had ginger snaps, brownies, cupcakes from Crumbs, and a fruit plate. In total we had 9 desserts for 12 people. (The lemon polenta cake is behind the water pitcher.)
We left feeling stuffed. We have tons of leftovers. And tonight we’re going out for dinner.
As for the iPhone: I love it.