Second wind
McCain may be better rested for the general election, but he is, after all, 71, and likely will have less gas than Obama or Clinton
Sometimes, though, they can cloud our vision. I keep hearing that the protracted primary match between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton means that Republican John McCain will be in a better position, rested, ready, while whichever Democrat ultimately wins will be tired after a tough playoff fight.
That may be true for college basketball teams. But McCain isn't just sitting around, tossing cards into a hat. He's campaigning hard whether the Dems are going at each other or not. He's also 71, which means that Obama, 46, or Clinton, 60, will have to be real tired to be as tired as he will be.
Though a civil rights pioneer, she did not get the sendoff that, say, Rosa Parks did. Nowhere near.
Loving was an 18-year-old bride on July 11, 1958, asleep with her husband Richard, when the Caroline County sheriff and two deputies walked into her bedroom in the middle of the night and shined a flashlight in their faces.
"What are you doing in bed with this lady?" Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks asked Richard Loving.
"I'm his wife," Mildred Loving said.
That made them criminals in Virginia in 1958, because she was black, and her husband, white. They were arrested and sentenced to a year in prison, the sentence suspended provided they leave Virginia and never come back, at least not as a couple.
Loving lived with the stigma for five years. But she missed her family back home, and in 1963, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, she began a lawsuit that ended in 1967 in the U.S. Supreme Court, which threw out the last laws in the United States that prevented interracial marriage.
Three thoughts:
First, perhaps one reason Loving's death was downplayed is that interracial marriage is far more accepted in American society as a whole than in the black community, a segment of which still sees interracial marriage as a kind of betrayal. Loving won the right to do something the black community frowns upon.
Second, the argument used against Loving -- her act was against nature -- is the exact argument used against gay marriage today.
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents," Circuit Judge Leon Bazile said at their sentencing. "And but for the interference with His arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages."
Many African Americans, good churchgoing folk, hate to see their situation compared with that of gays because, in their view, race is a God-given fact, while homosexuality is a sinful choice, an attitude disproved both by science and common sense.
Third, the Virginia laws that the 1967 Supreme Court ruling overturned were 305 years old, having been first enacted in 1662. That's a long time, yet half a century later so much has changed, and the world that newlywed Mildred Loving faced is alien and largely forgotten. Those who say our nation hasn't made progress are ignoring how it once was.
Truth is, I was never much of a Sinatra fan -- I know that will kill any respect that some readers have for me, but it's so. I really didn't begin to appreciate Sinatra until I read a wonderful book by my pal Bill Zehme, The Way You Wear Your Hat, an homage to Sinatra and primer of all things wonderful about him.
There was also a fact I dug out while writing his obit. In the fall of 1945, 800 white students at Froebel High School in Gary walked out, demanding that the school bar black students. Sinatra flew to Gary, at his own expense, and made an impassioned speech to a hall packed with 5,000 students and parents.
"Why should you have two groups fighting each other, anyway?" Sinatra said. "You don't know what you're missing, not being friends, playing together, visiting each other's families, sticking up for each other. Other kids in other centers don't have things like you have. Educational advantages, especially. You're throwing them away."
It was an incredibly moving, articulate speech -- he pointed out that race hatred was the core of the freshly defeated Nazi philosophy.
"Don't let it happen here," he pleaded. "I implore you to return to school. This is a bad deal, kids."
That alone is worth a stamp.
Speaking of that speech -- the kids who walked out in 1945 must be around 80 now. More than a few must have memories of Sinatra's appearance. I'd love to hear them.
I can be reached at Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago, IL 60654. Sinatra's extraordinary visit to Gary deserves an in-depth examination.
A lawyer opened the door of his BMW, when suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it off completely. When the police arrived, the lawyer was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW.
"Officer, look what they've done to my Beemer!" he whined.
"You lawyers are so materialistic, you make me sick!" retorted the officer, "You're so worried about your stupid BMW that you didn't even notice that your left arm was ripped off!"
"Oh my God," replied the lawyer, finally noticing the bloody left shoulder where his arm once was. "Where's my Rolex!"
