PITTSBURGH — The three young black men, dressed to the
nines, were the first in line to receive media credentials for presidential
candidate Barack Obama’s climactic Pennsylvania rally at the University of
Pittsburgh’s Peterson Events Center Monday night.
Or make that Monday afternoon, since the old military
system of hurry-up-and-wait is how it works these days for the seemingly endless
– and increasingly tense and dramatic — series of Democratic primary contests
between Obama and resurgent rival Hillary Clinton.
The day was still bright and balmy when J.C. Gamble,
Darnell Drewery, and Cornell Jones, all representing what they referred to as
“Black Tie Radio.com” – a new-media enterprise if there ever was one — showed
up at the designated glass door. But it would be getting on to 10 o’clock, with
a long line strung out behind the three men, before the building’s doors would
finally be unlocked. And even then all successfully credentialed entrants would
have to undergo single-file passage through both a metal detector and a Secret
Service screening process that would put the most cautious airline’s procedures
to shame.
A similar – though not quite as fastidious – drill had been
in effect for attendees at an afternoon rally downtown featuring Hillary Clinton
and her husband, the former president. Things have changed since the primary
season began and all it took to get to an event featuring one of the dozen or so
Democratic and Republican hopefuls was the willingness to shoulder through a
modest-sized crowd for the sake of some immodest bloviation.
With only three candidates left – Obama, Clinton, and
Republican John McCain — all of them potential and plausible claimants to be
guardians of the Free World, the public attention is keener now, the rhetoric is
sharper, and the stakes are higher.
While they, and those who fell in behind them, waited, the
trio of Gamble, Drewery, and Jones dilated on every subject under the setting
sun – on the relative merits of barbecue served up in the Pittsburgh ‘hood, for
example, vis-a-vis the heavily ballyhooed product in Memphis, where the three
had just visited during the recent week of Martin Luther King commemorations.
“I gotta tell you, it don’t compare,” said Gamble of the
fare offered by one celebrated Memphis eatery. In a more serious vein, Gamble
took credit for having started the round of boos that greeted candidate McCain’s
admission at the National Civil Rights Museum that he had originally opposed the
creation of a national holiday in King’s honor.
Regardless of whether race was an issue in the presidential
campaign before it surfaced during the South Carolina primary or whether it was
there all along, the subject – along with the associated one of historical
justice — was very much on the minds of Gamble and his friends. All of them are
keenly aware of social issues, and Jones, who serves as a chaplain in the
Pennsylvania penitentiary system, attended the annual April 4th
Foundation dinner in Memphis as a representative of The Gathering, an activist
organizatin concerned about issues of juvenile incanceration.
At one point, Drewery gave voice to a thought that
increasingly is on people’s minds. And not just Democrats. And not just blacks.
“I honestly don’t know how people are going to react if Obama doesn’t get the
nomination,” he said, and everybody was aware that, by “people,” he meant those
in the aforesaid ‘hood. The larger one that transcends the geography of
Pittsburgh. African Americans as a national group, he meant.
And then each of them described his own vision of what the
immediate voter response would be. “I think most of ’em” (there went the
generalized euphemism again) “would just stay home and not worry about voting,”
Drewery offered. “I’ll tell you what I’d do! I’d go vote for Ron Paul!” said
Gamble, indicating the Republican/libertarian heresiarch who could end up
running as an independent.
“Naw,” said Jones, reluctantly and somewhat sadly. “I’d be
there for Hillary. I couldn’t just not vote!”
Each of these three amigos spoke to a different likely
viewpoint – one that, for that matter, is not limited to a particular ethnic
group. The fact is, the rock star-like celebrity of Barack Obama and the passion
of his supporters are only partly related to his charisma, public positions, or
oratorical skill. Whether he intended to or not, the Illinois senator has come
to symbolize the near-miraculous prospect of resolving America’s antique racial
divide, that which some have called its original sin.
That feeling was what caused the deafening roar when, in
the course of introducing Obama, Theresa Heinz Kerry later spoke to the large
and diversified crowd inside of the hope of electing “the first African-American
president,” and it was a roar that, like most sound of that amplitude, is
lasting and multi-directional.
jb
Obama enthusiasts J.C. Gamble, Darnell Drewery, and Cornell Jones at the University of Pittsburgh
