Lower Manhattanite takes the mantle of Steve Gilliard and posts an incredible essay on Obama's Iowa win :

“Hello?”, I ask.

“You watching this?”, my friend “D” asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“You think he's wearin' a vest?

A long beat from me. “Well...I'm sure he's got Secret Service protection.”

“Is he wearin' a vest to protect himself against those motherfuckers?“

“Well, if he didn't before tonight, he will be by tomorrow”, I replied.

“This is fucking insane.” he added. “He won Iowa. Iowa? Do you know how that's gonna shake certain people up?”

“D” was speaking the gut-wrenching unspoken truth—almost in a whisper. I don't know why.

“Can we just enjoy this for tonight? Just soak it in for a min-”

“I can't enjoy this shit!”, he said cutting me off. “I'm scanning the crowd for grenade-tossers and shit. You saw the Bhutto video. I can't get that shit outta my mind. There's a lotta nuts in this country, and a lotta guns, and—”

“I know, I know! Just...lemme delude myself for a few minutes and watch this thing and think positive thoughts, okay?”

“Okay.”, he said. “But you know he's gonna wake up tomorrow and say 'Ho-leeeee shit...”

Go read the whole damn thing at Pride and Palpitations [1].

I read that post just as it came out and it took me a day to digest. I couldn't understand why until I read that one passage again and I realized, that a lot of Black people in this country are afraid to support Obama because he is too good to be lost to the violence of a racist hater.

This is the first man in almost a generation that actually has the markings of a "black leader"; yet, contrary to what Michael Fauntroy claims [2], I do believe Obama is indeed the first black man to be not just considered presidential material by people on both parties.

So it saddens me to see that it's not that people like me are skeptical about the senator from Illinois. It's just that we do wonder ... is he using a vest, is he being truly protected?

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