COMM 337: Three deadline articles in The Washington Post

Out of the welter of coverage of last night's election, three articles stand out in my mind. They're not the three best. There's a lot of good stuff out there I've barely had time to look at. (Including an editorial in Springfield's State Journal-Register that notes "we’ve had an especially good seat to the making of this piece of history" and adds, "We hope Obama’s conciliatory demeanor can be a balm for a nation that has spent two years arguing itself into red-faced anger.") These three just happen to be articles I read this morning on The Washington Post's website.

The first was a historical analysis by Kevin Merida, staff writer and author of a biography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The headline:

A DAY OF TRANSFORMATION
America's History Gives Way to Its Future

Here's Merida's lede, obviously written on deadline (although I doubt the rest of the story was, and I want us to look at it in class and see where the transition might have come):

After a day of runaway lines that circled blocks, of ladies hobbling on canes and drummers rollicking on street corners, the enormous significance of Barack Obama's election finally began to sink into the landscape. The magnitude of his win suggested that the country itself might be in a gravitational pull toward a rebirth that some were slow to recognize.

Tears flowed, not only for Obama's historic achievement, but because many were happily discovering that perhaps they had underestimated possibility in America.

When the novelist Kim McLarin watched her vote being recorded at her polling station in Milton, Mass., she stood still for a moment with her 8-year-old son, Isaac.

"My heart was full. I could scarcely breathe," she said. "What I've been forced to acknowledge is there has been a shift -- it's not a sea change. But there's been a decided shift in the meaning of race. It's not an ending. It's a beginning."

What kind of beginning it is, Americans were wrestling with late into the night, some popping champagne and others burdened with unease. Would enduring strains of intolerance lose their power or gain rebellious steam? Could new hope be harnessed to create new solutions? Is America ready to pull itself together or resigned to live divided? The campaign that began for Obama 21 months ago had raised in stark terms whether America was ready for a black president. Last night's answer -- a resounding yes -- raises the next question: How much more change will America embrace?

Another story, by metro reporter Bill Turque, details
the celebrations on the streets of Washington as the returns came in.

When history landed, it was with car horns, tears, gunfire and echoes from historic corners of the city.

In a heavy drizzle shortly after midnight, several thousand people filled the barricaded segment of Pennsylvania Avenue between 15th and 17th streets in front of the White House dancing and chanting "O-ba-ma!" and "Whose house? Obama's house!" Some sang "America the Beautiful" and "Star Spangled Banner."

At 14th and U streets NW, hundreds of Sen. Barack Obama's supporters chanted, "Yes, we can!" People danced on bus shelters. Strangers hugged.

And Greg Rhett emerged from the Madison Hotel, pumping his fist as tears welled.
"Now the healing begins," said Rhett, 50, a consultant who lives in Ward 7. Now I can tell my 4-year-old you really can be whatever you want to be," he said. "We're going to get it right this time." Behind him, his wife, Candace, screamed at the top of her lungs:

"President Obama!"

The third story was from Obama's ancestral home of Kenya. Stephanie McCrummen, foreign correspondent, reported:

KOGELO, Kenya, Nov. 5 -- The news arrived in this rural village as the sun rose Wednesday, the voice of CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer drifting across a gathering of several hundred people who'd hoped for months, prayed for hours and finally stayed up all the cool night watching U.S. presidential election returns projected on a big white sheet.

More details followed, including this:

And in this dirt-road village of farmers where Obama's father grew up, the news left people hugging and dancing, hoisting the white plastic chairs they'd sat on all night. They waved palm branches or sang or just stood there as John Odihiambo did, taking it all in, tears in his eyes.

"It's like a miracle," he said, confessing to a cynicism that seemed to vanish with Obama's victory. "There was that doubt that with black-white relations in America, a black man could not be elected. But he was," said Odihiambo, a government worker who drew a parallel that many here did, between overcoming racism in the U.S. and rising above tribalism, the bane of Kenyan society. "If America can elect a black man, then why can't Kenya shun tribalism and elect anyone, regardless of tribe?"

And this at the end, which gives McCrummen kind of a different "kicker" for her story:

"It's wonderful," said [Bonaventure] Mboya, the textbook salesman, who heard the news on BBC and sent his wife a one-line text message that speaks to how personally people here took Obama's campaign: "We have done it," the message read.

"He's suggesting that the world has finally changed," Mboya said.

As Obama began to invoke the signature line of his campaign -- "yes we can" -- one last time before a sea of supporters in Chicago, a Kenyan on the other side of the world finished the speech for him.
"Twa wenza," Mboya said, offering the phrase in Swahili.