We Were Not Warned

Oh, Good Lord.

On the morning after the election, Kristin Rothballer, 36, who lives in San Francisco, kissed her female partner goodbye on the train while commuting to work. A black woman who sat down next to her turned and said she was sorry that Proposition 8, the amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, looked like it was going to pass.

“We grabbed hands,” Ms. Rothballer recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I really want to congratulate you because we have a black president and that’s amazing.’ ”

"Uh ... say, is this my stop? Oh, yes, yes, it is! You can let go of my hand now ... but yeah, black president ... awesome ... thank you, crazy white lady ..."

/runs, doesn't look back

Talk to liberals at your own risk, public transit users!

“Our conversation then almost became about the fact that we were having the conversation,” she said.

"And sometimes I need a reminder to look at my reminders! It's, like, so weird and stuff, right? Wait, what were we talking about?"

Something moved her to apologize to the black woman for slavery.

“For two strangers riding a train to Oakland to have that conversation about race, it wouldn’t have been possible if Obama hadn’t been elected,” she said. “I always felt open with my colleagues, but to say to a stranger on the train, ‘Hey, I’m sorry about slavery,’ that just doesn’t happen.”

In the run-up to the election we were told that an Obama victory would lead to socialism, black nationalism, Islamic theocracy, capitulation to Iran/Al Qaeda/Canada, on and on, ad infitinum ... but nobody, NOBODY told me it would inspire the papier-mache-puppet-doing-slam-poetry set to utter the words "Hey, I'm sorry about slavery."

More forthcoming apologies:

"Yeah, my bad for the Native American genocide."
"Totes soz dude, I blew it with the whole imperialist foreign policy thing."
"Sry 4 teh sexism." (via text message)

[I mean, that sounds ... I just want you to know this is like the first conversation of like three conversations that leads to you being a neoliberal. Like ... there's this and then in a year it's like, "Oh you know, I kinda wanna, ya know, vote for a Democrat but I hate Code Pink and I find GOOD Magazine to be insufferable" and then there's the big, "Oh I'm -- I'm reading Mickey Kaus now." -- ed.]