natural resistance
BY MARY O’BRIEN
Campaign Echoes
Hopes rise and fall on who will lead
I
remember my fi rst entry into a discussion
of presidential politics. I was 6 years old in
1952 when Adlai Stevenson was running
for president against Dwight Eisenhower. This
was at the height of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s
investigations and such un-thoughtful fi lms as
Red Menace and John Wayne’s Big Jim McClain.
My father, a United Presbyterian minister, was a
Republican at the time, but very much liked Adlai’s
intellectual and social perspective and humor and
planned to vote Democratic that year. After church one day, as Dad was talking
with several members, somehow the presidential election came up. I joined
into the conversation, gravely reporting to the church group that although
my father was registered Republican, he was going to vote Communist in
November. Somehow he got out of that one. (It was only years later that Dad
did lose a pastoral job as a result of his support for fair housing in then-all-white
Whittier, Calif.)
Fast-forward 24 years to 1976 and my 4-year-old son Josh’s fi rst entry into a
discussion of presidential politics. It was summer, and Josh, I, my husband, O’B,
and 2-year old Zeke were at the Los Angeles County Fair. We were watching
some Balkan folk dancers on an outdoors stage. Suddenly the music was cut
off, the dancers were shooed off the stage and a phalanx of Secret Service
agents took up positions across the back wall of the stage, facing the audience.
In a minute we learned that Jimmy Carter, running for president against Gerald
Ford, was going to give a stump speech.
“Why did the dancers stop?” Josh asked.
We explained that they left the stage so that Jimmy Carter, who was hoping
to become president of the United States, could come on stage.
Josh: “Is he going to dance, too?”
O’B: “Well, sort of.”
O’B put Josh on his shoulders so he could see Jimmy, and everyone
proceeded to listen to a 20-minute talk. I fi gured Josh was probably paying
most attention to the tops of people’s heads while on O’B’s shoulders. But, no.
He apparently had listened to every one of Jimmy’s sentences, because as soon
as Jimmy fi nished, Josh noted with enthusiasm, “If he becomes president, he’s
going to have a lot of things to do!”
O’B assured Josh that Jimmy probably wouldn’t do everything he had
promised.
T
welve years later it is 1988, and I encounter my fi rst indigenous
Australian discussion of a U.S. presidential campaign. O’B, Josh,
Zeke and I are in a small, crowded campground near Cairns on the
northeastern coast of Australia. Perhaps a dozen or more Aboriginal people
live in the campground in small trailers. Fourteen-year-old Zeke is laid up with
a severe sunburn from a few hours of snorkeling without a shirt. The evening
is warm, and we’re lying outside our tent, on top of our sleeping bags. Several
of the Aboriginal men and women are talking excitedly about Jesse Jackson’s
presidential candidacy.
“Do you think he can win?” one asks. The others aren’t sure, but they’re
hopeful, and they discuss it for a while longer. This was touching. Seven
thousand and eighty-six miles from Eugene, and feelings are rising and falling
on a U.S. presidential campaign.
I think back on these stories spanning 36 years and their echoes in this
year’s campaign. A John Wayne/Big Jim McClain-type candidate. The ever-
present Secret Service. The stumping, the dancing and the promising. An
African-American candidate and a woman candidate. And surely some 6-year
olds entering their fi rst presidential discussions.
2008. My once-sunburned-snorkler son Zeke is volunteering for the fi rst
time in a presidential campaign. Before the California primary he was knocking
on doors in an African-American neighborhood in Oakland, delivering fl yers and
urging folks to vote for Obama. A resident walking in the street was suspicious
of why Zeke was carefully searching for particular address numbers.
“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” he demanded.
“I’m encouraging people to vote for a presidential candidate in two days,”
Zeke responded.
“Oh. OK,” he said. And then: “I hope that black man wins.”
Mary O’Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
4 MARCH 13, 2008
EUGENE WEEKLY
letters
TO THE EDITOR
ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP
I sympathize with the authors of “Inside
Baseball” (Viewpoint, 3/6) about tearing
down neat old buildings. Eugene defi nitely
has a knack for tearing down neat old things.
The sadder thing is that too often they
replace them with crap. The courthouse is
a great example as is the downtown mall
killing a vibrant cityscape. Now we’re
on the verge of losing Civic Stadium and
McArthur Court — two venues with so
much history and personality and unique
odors. The problem is, these two buildings
no longer serve their purpose.
As exciting as it is, McArthur Court
is a very uncomfortable place to watch a
basketball game, especially if you have
to go to the bathroom and/or are sitting
behind a pillar. Civic Stadium, I have on
good authority, is terribly diffi cult and
expensive to maintain even to its current
dilapidated condition. And I’ve heard the
bathrooms are worse than at Mac Court.
So I say, tear down these old bastions if
you must, Eugene. All hail new toilets and
unobstructed sightlines, easy exit in case
of fi re, and concession stands that pass
the health department. But please, please,
please, don’t replace them with crap!
Paul Roth
Springfi eld
TIME TO RUBBLE
When I started reading the Viewpoint
(3/6), I thought we were nearing the end of
civilization as we know it. Then I realized
that the writers were talking about sports
stadiums.
In fretting about the new UO/Ems
stadium they wrote “It eviscerates our
connection to legends of the past and
demolishes our shared history.” Oh my!
About the new basketball arena they
worry “we lose not only a building, but
also a vital connection to teams of the past,
our communal moments of heartache and
celebration. All of it gone.”
Get a grip, guys.
Civic Stadium and Mac Court are aging,
ugly, deteriorating, rat-infested eyesores.
Just because they are old does not make
them special. I attend games at Civic, and
we are season ticket holders at Mac Court.
I can’t wait for their replacements. They
have both outlived their usefulness to the
teams and the community.
And who says new facilities have
to be uninspiring? Tell the Baltimore
Orioles or the Colorado Rockies that their
new facilities are bland. Tell the Seattle
Mariners or Seahawks that new stadiums
somehow kill the connection to the past.
What a bunch of hooey!
Anyone who pays attention knows that
the UO builds terrifi c sports facilities. The
new basketball arena and the new baseball
stadium will be fi rst-rate additions to our
community.
Life will go on long after Civic Stadium
and Mac Court are rubble. Go Ducks!
Randy Kolb
Eugene
FISH THE PIT
Regarding the perpetual pit across
from the library downtown, why don’t we
fi ll it with water, stock it with trout, plant
grass sod and shrubbery around the edge,
install benches and hold a couple of fi shing
derbies for the kiddies?
Terry Heintz
Eugene
CLUELESS AD
Track Town USA has shown itself to be
a real throwback to the era of its origins,
the 1960s. Their latest TV ad promoting the
Olympic Trials consists of the words “The
Whole World Is Watching” fl ashed over and
over to the canned audio of some protesting
demonstrators somewhere chanting those
words. The use of this iconography to sell
a sporting event is obscene. I’m guessing
that the originators are clueless as to what’s
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