The End of An Inspiration

When he was first elected or even before, The One Who Promised Change has generated much fanfare. Being the very first self-identified Black president, we saw it as some kind of a milestone and a signifier of change. More so than having Will.I.Am writing a campaign song for the candidate, I regard having Obama on the cover of Spiderman an endorsement from the younger generation of the whole nation and it got me fantasizing about the start of a brand new era. Reality will prove that change requires hard work and some sort of headstrongness.

In the past 2 years, Obama has demonstrated that he is willing to work for progress, unfortunately he lacks the willfulness of W. He spent to much efforts on unifying the two parties and bridging the gap but through endless negotiation, the right unified to go against his every notion and due to his skin color, the Tea Party was born to question his origins and motives along with Fox News. Obama seems to be too willing to compromise his goals in order to appear cordial.

Regardless that the accomplishments of the administration is numerous, none of them are big ticket items and none of them are openly publicized perhaps because stamping the Obama name on them will create controversy and conspiracy theories will come out of Fox News. Americans are going on their daily life not knowing what exactly were being done. In a time that most families experience tax cuts, people are marching out in the name of "Tax Enough Already". While Health Care Reform is a major milestone, the independent public option had been chopped through negotiations and the major provisions won't take effect until 2014-16. The right has managed to make "Obamacare" sounds like it's something sinister. Either there's disconnect between the government and the people or the White House needs much better PR people.

On the GLBT issues front, absolutely no progress were made. If due to some reason, the administration has to end tomorrow, nothing would have been accomplished: ENDA is in effect selectively, gay marriage is available in a handful of States, gay adoption is illegal in a handful of States, anti-bullying law is not there. And even Obama has said he is a fierce advocate for the LGBT community and that he strongly opposes DADT, his administration has filed for an appeal and even though DADT has been overturned for 7 days, it is back for being the law of the land. Because if it's not done the "proper way", you rather destroy it and do it over again, which makes his It Gets Better video quite disingenuous.



Not to undermine a semi-heartfelt unofficial address from the president on LGBT issues which is unprecedented, the best it is for us gay folks is still not full equality and he has the power to change things around. How can you tell teenagers that it gets better while keeping DADT in the works? What's more unfortunate is that this ordeal happens right before the election and this whole kerfuffle is bound to make members of LGBT community quite angry. It's not like by preventing gay soldiers to serve in the army, voters from the right will start to vote for the left. All it's going to accomplish now is that the gay and lesbians will be less likely to go to vote. It's bound to be a tough election this year. Don't the Democrats have a strategist? With all the inspiration and enthusiasm squashed out, I wonder if anyone would want to draw the president into comic books anymore.