In James Brooks’ hit film comedy, “As
good as it gets” (1997), Helen Hunt,
playing a single mother of an asthmat-
ic boy being neglected by the American
medical establishment, receives an en-
dowment covering all of the medical ex-
penses necessary to transform her son
into a soccer star within a week. But,
suspecting that this gift comes with
carnal expectations attached, she turns
to Shirley Knight, her mother, to fret
that maybe she should reject it. “No,”
she flatly declares. “This isn’t a pair
of stockings, this isn’t a string of
pearls. This you do not give back.”
I find myself unable to imagine that
Joseph Biden could have foreseen that a
prospective running mate, often seen but
"somehow" blocked in her quest for the
Presidential nomination that he won by
attrition, would be revealed as a soccer
star within hours of being presented with
his favor. How oblivious the presumptions
so often are, at the foundation of our ex-
pertise, we need hardly note in this moment
of Donald Trump. Yet suddenly the campaign
that might already be seen as straight, but
which no one pretended might see very far,
finds itself carried aloft on a wave of ju-
bilation not seen since the conquest of
Vicksburg.
Look here. People are affected. That very
night one could feel the country, stand up.
Stephen Colbert found Jon Batiste, composing
a song, "for Kamala." Those who were able to
squeeze into the donation sites of the Democ-
ratic National Committee, managed to deposit
$48 million there in those hours. Personal
ties, political commitments, alumni networks,
lately moribund in the moment of Donald Trump,
sprang to giddiest life — and all without the
least forewarning. There was pandemonium at
the corner of Castro and Market, without a
word from Dionysus. This selection is not
a pair of stockings; it’s not even a pair of
Bernie’s fishnets. Alas, it isn’t pearls of
Elizabeth Warren. It's the ore of our ground,
not of our statues. This is our birth.
No tentative “connection with the future,” the
cliché of the day — or light at the end of a
tunnel, Kamala Harris declares the truth of
this very day, that only an unyielding maze
of sordid, illegitimate structures could con-
ceal. Nor could it be lost in the confetti,
this revelation was ultimately forced upon
powerfully reluctant beneficiaries. But it's
done, and what one feels is the pace at which
such power can shift.
done, and what one feels is the pace at which
such power can shift.
ii Joshua Lott
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