Election Options

[rnicron]

Spenc? dont care.
But honestly, I really dont care that obama won. and I'm not moving to ireland just yet, I'd like to. But not because obama is the prez. :)

yeah, it's me.

i just find it annoying. everyone on facebook says they're moving to canada/australia/out of the us and it's just getting old. i don't know why it bothers me so much, it's just getting damn annoying with everyone bitching.

[Gigi]

^ Yeah. Isn't it insulting to your country, to move because you don't agree with who THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA CHOSE? You're slapping democracy across the face.

btw for those of you who are moving, don't come to Canada. Please.

[brooklyneast05]

it's too bad the people won't really move

[Tung]

I wanna move to Canada, and you know why! :D

[rnicron]

it's too bad the people won't really move

for real. i'm tired of all the people on facebook updating their status every 2 seconds. and we were ignorant for voting for him? ha.

[brooklyneast05]

I'm pretty damn conservative too, at least economically/politically (minus personal liberty issues, liberalll). Anywho, I can't say him winning really pisses me off as much as I thought it might. I voted McCain, but seeing the reaction from everyone, especially world-wide, I can't help but be happy for the country. I really, really hope, that the rest of the world starts to hate us less. Seems like the cool thing to do has been hate America for the longest time.

Anywho, I hope for the best :D

i'm surprised you voted for mccain...


but yeah, i don't see how seeing the response around the world could not make someone happy. it's a boost for the US, we're still really fucked over right now. it raises moral, which is worth quite a bit imo


the people acting like this is the worst thing to ever happen the country needa shut the fuck up, because i don't believe they truly believe that's true. if obama was the worst person int he world, he wouldn't be where he is right now.

[sixfive]

Well, it was McCain, Obama, or Barr. I changed my mind at the last minute from Barr to McCain, because on the offchance that McCain won, I wanted him to have more support than just wining by a very small margin. Either way, guess that's a moot point now huh :D

[DoubleJ]

Even if he counts pickup basketball and regular-guy sports talk among his favorite down-time pursuits, Barack Obama will not be the first man to walk into the White House with an affection for the games people play.

But the president-elect will be the first whose ascension to the nation's highest office was inspired in part by the barriers cleared between the lines of athletic competition.

This isn't about Obama's call for a college football playoff tournament, or his lessons learned under a tough-love high school coach, or his willingness to humor the prominent sportscasters and sportswriters who ask for a few minutes of his time.

It's about the African-American athletes, coaches and executives who have used their very public forum to shatter stereotypes and project lasting images of leadership, dignity and grace.

Obama would've never gotten the chance to defeat John McCain without the parade of pioneers that came before him, and so many of those pioneers used sports to erect a bridge between separate and unequal sides of a segregated society.

Television was their weapon of mass construction, building a case for Obama long before the presidency was a flicker in his eye. White families that had little contact with black families, that had never had an African-American guest for dinner, suddenly had successful African-Americans in their living rooms three or four nights a week.

"For decades many white people never lived around black people, never came in contact with black people, never had their children do sleepovers and play dates with black children," said Newsday columnist Shaun Powell, author of "Souled Out?," a terrific book on the legacy of black athletes.

"But then all of a sudden you have white fans rooting for Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell and Gale Sayers and then Michael Jordan. Sports was the only arena where blacks were allowed to be on equal ground, and it opened the doors to all facets of society."

Powell called Joe Louis "the first black athlete white people let their sons cheer for," even as Louis was denied service at all the finest restaurants and hotels. Though hardly the Nazi sympathizer some made him out to be, Max Schmeling proved to be the rare antagonist who could unite black and white in America.

But the seminal moment along the racial divide in sport and society unfolded on April 15, 1947, before 26,623 witnesses inside Ebbets Field. During pregame ceremonies that day, Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca stood next to Jackie Robinson on the first-base line. Some friends later asked Branca if he was concerned about getting hit with an assassin's wayward bullet.

Jackie Robinson paved the way for more than just athletes.

"I think Jackie accomplished more for black people than Martin Luther King did," Branca told me more than once.

As major-league baseball's first black player, Robinson weathered unfathomable abuse from fans, opponents, even some teammates. Some Dodgers signed a petition in an attempt to keep him off the team. One such Dodger, Bobby Bragan of Alabama, would make this concession:

"Where I grew up, blacks went out the back door. So on our first train trip, I wouldn't go near Jackie. On our second train trip, after Dixie (Walker) and (Eddie) Stanky and me got to know him, after we saw he was the best player we had, we were fighting to get inside his dining car."

Decades later, Bragan would run a foundation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that offered scholarships to kids in need, many of them black. "Look at what Jackie did to my life," Bragan once told me.

Larry Doby quietly made the same impact in the American League. Althea Gibson came along in tennis, and her generosity of spirit was later matched by the great Arthur Ashe.

Muhammad Ali used his fists and his voice to become one of the planet's most recognizable and influential men. Doug Williams beat John Elway in the Super Bowl, dispelling the absurd myth that black athletes didn't possess the leadership qualities required in a quarterback and allowing for a day when NFL teams draft black quarterbacks without a second thought.

Jordan proved that the black athlete could transcend race and become a commercial attraction with staggering appeal to a white consumer base. While reinforcing the point, Tiger Woods emerged as the most popular figure in the history of a sport with a shameful exclusionary past, a sport that went 28 years after Robinson's debut at Ebbets Field before it delivered a black player to the Masters.

Coaches left their footprint on the nation's consciousness, too. When Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith met in the Super Bowl as the first two African-American coaches to get there, a message was sent to the colleges and high schools that had never seriously considered a black man to run their programs.

Dungy and Smith weren't just successful leaders at a time when the NFL needed its Rooney Rule to ensure that teams interviewed candidates of all colors; they were black coaches whose best players (Peyton Manning and Brian Urlacher) were white stars thriving under their watch.

On the management front, Jerry Reese, the great-grandson of a sharecropper, rose out of a backwoods childhood of gutting farm animals and chopping cotton to become the general manager of the New York Giants. He got the job on the Martin Luther King holiday, spoke of his need to succeed for the sake of young black executives, and then shaped the roster that beat the unbeaten Patriots in the Super Bowl.

The scene of Doug Williams marching the Lombardi Trophy to Reese's podium was as profound as the upset itself.

"Jerry came up the hard way," said Reese's predecessor, Ernie Accorsi. "He's allowing a lot of African-American kids to dream the dream."

Nobody has breathed life into that dream that quite like Barack Obama, the most charismatic president-elect since John F. Kennedy. Plenty of great public figures outside of the athletic arena helped pave Obama's way.

Frederick Douglass. Booker T. Washington. King. Rosa Parks. Thurgood Marshall. Colin Powell.

But scores of dignified African-American sportsmen from Jesse Owens, gold-medal sprinter, to Joe Dumars, championship player and executive, played a significant role in leading America -- very slowly but very surely -- to Obama's victory speech in Chicago.

"Sports broke down a lot of ignorance and a lot of walls," said Shaun Powell, the columnist and author. "Eventually, people realized it's not such a bad thing having a black man with a Harvard degree running your company."

Or having a black man with a Harvard degree running your country.

This is an excellent article from Ian O'Connor. Haven't had the chance to read it through, but the bits I have read seem to be really good.

[brooklyneast05]

sweep sweep

[DoubleJ]

Honestly though it really hasn't hit me. I agree with what one of my friends said...."It will hit me on January 20th." I mean I understand the magnitude, but it just hasn't hit me yet.

[sixfive]

Yeah dudes, two nights ago they were tlaking to McCain/Obama about college football. McCain's response was WAYYY more dull than Obama's. Obama was like, "I think they need to get rid of the BCS and just have a straight up playoff," while McCain was like "wahh they need to crack down on steroids, and paying players under the table, etc etc." McCain did redeem himself later on that night, though. When asked about the possibility of him being president, he said "I COULD GO ALLL THE WAYYY!"

[brooklyneast05]

click to enlarge

swag

[sixfive]

You don't have permission to access /issue0810/images/callie/24.jpg on this server.

[brooklyneast05]

does that mean it doesn't show up

[*paperplane*]

yes

[misoshiru]

yeah. it doesn't show up.

[brooklyneast05]

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0810/images/callie/24.jpg

[*paperplane*]

nope

[hi-C]

This is the one time I'm happy to live so close to DC. INAUGURATION CAMPOUT, FTW!

[brooklyneast05]

OK tiddly-winks IT

FUCK

[hi-C]

I love the new censors.


Seriously, no sarcasm.

[Melissa]

hm, it's all here: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0810/callie-bp.html

i dont think they allow hotlinking lol.

[brooklyneast05]

hm, it's all here: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0810/callie-bp.html

i dont think they allow hotlinking lol.

those bitches

yeah just keep hitting show more images at the bottom. those pictures are really good

[LittleMissSunshi...]

does it really matter that obama won? i mean some of you guys voted for bush again, and look where our country is now. why don't you guys admit to that? like for real, is it really because obama is black or he's making taxes higher? some people just wanted effing change.. and they're taking a stand now. obama just happens to be the one who's the first to make that change as a democrate. like do you really want the same person doing the same thing and just make our economy go down?

look i'm underage, i didn't vote. and i wasn't for obama nor mccain. but you guys have to see the positive things.. not the negative. stop your bitching, suck it up.. cause you guys either complain that gas prices are too high/ things are to expensive or you want to move because obama is president. don't complain cause you let our economy go down (talking to those who voted for bush again, and wanted mccain to win) in reality you just have to suck it up, who knows our country will become good again.. untill then you really need to stop acting like babies.

[Tramatize]

does it really matter that obama won? i mean some of you guys voted for bush again, and look where our country is now. why don't you guys admit to that? like for real, is it really because obama is black or he's making taxes higher? some people just wanted effing change.. and they're taking a stand now. obama just happens to be the one who's the first to make that change as a democrate. like do you really want the same person doing the same thing and just make our economy go down?

look i'm underage, i didn't vote. and i wasn't for obama nor mccain. but you guys have to see the positive things.. not the negative. stop your bitching, suck it up.. cause you guys either complain that gas prices are too high/ things are to expensive or you want to move because obama is president. don't complain cause you let our economy go down (talking to those who voted for bush again, and wanted mccain to win) in reality you just have to suck it up, who knows our country will become good again.. untill then you really need to stop acting like babies.

Amen