The Final Word
by Bruce Bellingham

This year isn’t really coming to an end. It’s more like a crash-landing. On New Year’s Day, we’ll get out of bed, count the survivors and press on bravely.

I don’t suppose it’s a time for looking back. But I cannot resist. We have entered the airspace of Obama and have broken away from the tractor beam of Bush. Before we hang a shining star upon the highest bough, allow me to recall some of the great moments of the Bush years.

Merry Christmas to New Orleans, to the victims of Katrina. I hope they all got voodoo dolls this year for protection. It’s a wonderful city and deserved better protection than it got. I’m sure a vague memory lingers of “You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie!” That was a reference to Bush’s political pal, Michael Brown, whom Bush appointed head of FEMA. You can’t slight Georgie for not putting his friends before the national interest or of competency. That’s called loyalty … to something, certainly not the oath of office. I’m also thinking of loyal friends, such as, Harriet Miers … Alberto Gonzales … the pharmaceutical industry … that brilliant strategist Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, King of the Wild Frontier. Mission accomplished.

They all give the term fiasco new meaning.
Northside San Francisco’s Sharon Anderson ran into Gore Vidal in Los Angeles one day not long ago and asked him, “Do you think Karl Rove will ever get what’s coming to him?”
Vidal simply smiled, and intoned, “Oh, I think he and the rest of them will simply end up in the dustbin of history.”

That’s right. Tossed out, along with yesterday’s Freedom Fries.
Ah, but I don’t want to devote this space to lolling about in bitterness over the past, though that’s a particular pleasure of mine. It’s a time to look forward. We finally have a new president after an excruciating eight years. Obama appears to be as brilliant as Bush was blundering and belligerent. Obama seems to inspire, not isolate. He’s the one who doesn’t seem bitter at all. On the contrary, he’s making the effort to be conciliatory to people who treated him viciously. The election could have turned out differently. That’s too murky too contemplate.

So let’s have ourselves a merry little Christmas and celebrate other assorted holidays of our choice in our respective, downsized sort of way. Surely there’s still plenty of space in our hearts for hope. Still there’s that strange drive in some of us who’ve been badly battered this year to brush the dust from the dustbin off, and start all over again.

Bruce Bellingham also writes for the Marina Times. He pretends he’s The Christmas Curmudgeon, but we suspect that he really does like the holidays. He’s been observed year after year at the lighting ceremony at Huntington Park, looking misty-eyed when the S.F. Girls Chorus sings its carols. Be sure to ridicule this lapse into sentimentality by writing to him at bruce@northsidesf.com.