Beautiful, Steve! I sure do appreciate your presence here. You've always brought a touch of rationality when the crowd starts wigging out. But, here you are, getting a little farklempt. Loved it.

I admire the way you think and the way you write -- so much so that you were the first person I "followed."
So it is with respect that I ask you to have some sympathy, if not empathy, for the tennis "biddies" of America. They are despondently aware that they are anachronisms; nonetheless, they are still somewhat baffled by the discrepancy between the expectations for women of the era (and perhaps geography) in which they were raised, and their current status as bait for ridicule. Some of the women you observed this week looked shell-shocked to you for the reasons you cite: because they bought the party line of their parents and marital partners. But some of them looked forlorn because they have devoted decades to diligently playing a part that wasted their native gifts in favor of doing what they perceived as properly supporting their men, their community and their demographic. Perhaps you missed the few of them who looked stressed because, as Bslev suggested in another post, they were secret Obama supporters whose only satisfaction was to be found in the privacy of the voting booth. For them, the current task is harder. Privately, pleased, they must nonetheless, echo the party line in public. Otherwise, their endless role goes on.
There are those of us who could have ended up in their unenviable shoes, who were mercifully saved from their fate by "misfortune."
Just sayin'.

Yes, it hits us at the most amazing times. I find myself waking up in a state of semi-disbelief but with mixture of feeling I'm now "safe."

Thanks, Steve, for a wonderful post!

I had the same reaction when I heard Singh do the lead-in, except I was safely at home.

Lakshmi Singh is so good to listen to. I like her. You said:

Week after week, they come to this busy restaurant during the lunch hour in their horrifically expensive, repulsively skimpy tennis outfits and blather endlessly away about nothing long after their meals are finished, haughtily ignoring the people with actual jobs (did I mention it turns out I have one?) walking around with their trays of food and looking in vain for an empty table.

Love this post, NCSteve, I want you to know you've made my evening. This is a class of women that I detest with a red hot passion. Yikes! And they seem to be such a fixture in certain parts of VA too, particularly in the mid and southern parts of this state and apparently in your state too. Yes, I do believe there is a stunned silence within their psyches and in their country clubs. Yay, I say!!! I'm so happy Obama won VA that I cannot cannot help being happy. Also, Warner won. I canvassed for both. I feel so happy.

quiet, humane wisdom. Thanks NCsteve

Rec'd here too.

I had my own "President-elect Obama" moment; not nearly as dramatic: I was was pulling into a parking parking at work the other morning when I heard the hourly news come on the radio.

I merely shouted "YEAH"!

I'm at the point where I giddily await the first "President Elect Obama" every time I turn on the news. Just truly glorious. The best part is that in a just over 2 months, we get to hear a long series of newscasters and commentators referring to "President Obama".

I would love to have been a fly on the wall at Wednesday afternoon country club lunches across the land. I can't even begin to imagine.

Not tooting my own horn or bragging about my presience, because, this week, I've, most ironically, discovered the difference between belief and hope. Turns out, all these things I believed, were merely hope. I know this because on Thursday afternoon, the first full day after I recovered from Tuesday, I was driving to the aforementioned lunch date and heard these words on the radio:

I hear that. I've spent 7 years telling people Americans are better than they seem to be. Having my faith in Americans justified has been humbling. I really did believe in us and we delivered.

But who delivered is instructive - those women's lives really are over in ways nobody gets yet - this country is going to be run not by them, but by a coalition of Hispanics and African Americans and us - the internet. We did this and we make is possible for the Democrats to continue to hold power and make gains - it's a new day for real. It just hasn't come quite together yet to hit some people - but it will. This is huge change.

All right, a quick response to all who have jumped to the defense of the tennis biddies because my description of them triggers their sexism and or classism detectors.

My contempt is not easily earned, nor is it frivilously bestowed. My job has put me into close contact with the rich, the powerful and the country club Republicans of this town for close to two decades now. Having been born into predominately Republican families (albeit a Republicanism handed down to them since the Civil War) I know better than to prejudge. In working with, and for, them, I have found that many of them are decent people, concerned, by their lights, for the country and for their fellow man. Many of the rich ones give genrously of their time and their money for causes which, if not necessarily the ones I would choose, are nonetheless ones which do good. I likewise have found myself feeling great compassion for many of the women in this class who were raised to be ornaments and who find themselves unfulfilled and unequipped to find fulfillment when they get older. All too often, they seem to have been hit with a case of ennui in their thirties that led directly to long term drinking problems, and I feel great compassion for them and for their families.

Likewise, I often find myself wincing when people who throw around words like "rethug" and "repug" because I know that many rich Republicans are decent, well-intentioned people, although many are hopelessly blinkered by having been born into privilege and can no more understand the reality of what it means to be poor than I can understand the idea of snacking on of fish eggs.

That's not these women, nor is it their husbands. They are worth about as much of your kind regard and defense as Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart. And actually, that's being grossly unfair to Martha.