November 08

November is an interesting month in America, because it's the transition time between Halloween and Thanksgiving: we prepare for the month by having little kids dressing up like monsters and the dead; we start the month with them gorging themselves on the candy we've given them (bribing the fearsome beasts to give us another year's lease on life); and we end the month with a huge home festival, where the in-laws and grand-parents all come over, the womenfolk go prettily berserk to get the cooking right while the menfolk suck down beer and watch the game -- the kids, maybe, cruise the internet pretending to be God-knows-who, or start on their Christmas wish-lists -- and, finally, we eat until we're sick.

But *this* November is particularly important in America, because we'll be choosing either the first black U.S. president or the first woman U.S. vice-president: and a woman vice president who stands a statistical one-in-three chance of being made president, if old John McCain is elected and, God forbid, doesn't survive his term.

I recently saw the Oliver Stone movie, W. (a life misunderestimated), and it made me profoundly glad that I live a lifestyle where I don't have to worry about Oliver Stone making movies about me. It's not what you'd call a fair movie: it's not fair to the President, and it's not fair to the audience: but it is a very good movie.

The movie is very convincing: you never mistake the star, Josh Brolin, for the President, but you recognize him as the President; and likewise the other leaders of our country. There's good and bad in all of them, not sharply divided but all mixed together in that way people have: but what's remarkable is how smaller-than-life they all are.

If hating George Bush is your thing, you should know it's not really possible to hate any of them after watching this movie; but it's also not possible to put them on a pedestal, had you been so inclined. They all come across as human: not profoundly human, in an O-the- Humanity way, but frankly human, in the way one of your co-workers is.

And to those who have a deep and abiding anger at what George Bush has done to this country, the movie has a kind of reply: unspoken, but I think made very clear. It's very well done.

--Back during the primaries, when it looked like we'd end up with Hillary, Obama, or McCain, I was telling people, "Look: it almost doesn't matter. We can relax. No matter *who* we get as President, they'll be better than Bush. They're all sane, rational people; they've all got experience."

That was before Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin seems to me like a bigger, better W waiting to happen all over again: more W than W, in fact. On YouTube you can see that Matt Damon, of all people, was asked about her recently: he got to the heart of the matter more than any media commentators I've seen.

Those are the stakes being played for this November: November '08 in America will determine the future course of this country, and frankly that means, to a great extent, of the world: in deeper and more profound ways than I can fathom. Let's hope, then, that the transition from the Day of the Dead to the Day of Thanks goes smoothly.