Other thoughts

I didn’t get back to my room in time to hear any of the other speakers tonight, so I hope my ReplayTV will be there waiting with them for me when I get home. The local evening news here is flush with excitement about Barack Obama, who is a candidate for the Senate from Illinois and was also a speaker tonight. I hope to hear him. In the meantime, two phrases that I don’t want to forget from Teresa Heinz Kerry’s speech. She said, among other things, that “freedom is sanctified by those who have lived it, and those who have died for it,” and that America should lead by “showing the face not of its fears but of our hopes.” That she would use a term like “ sanctified” and also that she could speak of hope even in the midst of fear touched all sorts of religious resonance for me. That may not at all have been what she was trying to do, but it is what her words awoke in me.

No matter what the pundits are saying, I found her speech powerful and important. I liked the gravity with which she spoke and the issues she saw as central (the environment being key). I can't help suspecting that the pundits' disdain and disrespect indeed further strengthens the argument that women are still not taken seriously in our political culture in the ways we ought to be.