An underground moment

I really had to track down the Obama headquarters to get a button and wear it the last 24 hours that it mattered, i.e. today. Heading up the east side it attracted subtle looks from the white people who live over there, non-committal in that New York way. It took a trip up the island to my neighborhood past Harlem and Washington Heights to get a rise out of anybody. There, a black kid jazzed me and mocked the button, saying Obama was going to be creamed by Hillary, his obvious favorite. ‘You’re going to loooooooose!’ were his exact words.

To recap: the middle-aged white guy wears the Obama button, and the black teenager is ready to do battle for the Caucasian lady from the suburbs. It’s superficial, of course, but it says something about the state of racial politics in our city. I say hooray.