Snaps

Last night, as I was looking through the daily photo dump from the various wire photographers, I found an inordinate amount of great pictures from Barack Obama's rally at Legends Field in Tampa, Florida, yesterday. Loved this shot of him getting off the plane, his tie caught in the wind:


…and this snap of hands reaching to touch Obama's (his is the one with the black watchband):


And there were some terrific shots of Obama and Hillary Clinton together, reminiscent of the pictures from Unity:


This picture of a woman moved to tears watching Clinton and Obama take the stage is just great:


And I laughed at a goofy pic of Obama being given a Mickey Mouse cap at the beginning of the day, then blubbed at the pic of him lonesomely walking up the stairs of his place as he left to visit his ailing grandmother:


But my favorite picture of the day, in a day with many fine pictures, was this one of a little boy holding a flag and standing beside someone wearing a shirt emblazoned with Obama's image:


Something about the image of that wee chap, with his sticky-out ears like Obama's and his solemn expression, just compels and moves me utterly.

It's so fucking trite to say we do things for "the children," and I yawn and moan and roll my eyes when the candidates invoke children and families and children and families and children and families over and over until I want to vom. But when I look at that picture, I think about all the horrible shit that McCain and Palin and all their nasty surrogates and degenerate supporters have been throwing at Obama, and I think about the racism watch, and I think, "That's who it's for. Right there." That boy, and his sisters and brothers and friends and cousins and classmates.

It's not for myself that I want to leave the world a little bit better than I found it, after all.

I like that picture. It whispers to me of progress to come.