I think by now it’s safe to say one thing about President Obama: He doesn’t like confrontation. But he also said he wanted to be a transformational president, in the mold of Reagan and Roosevelt (perhaps tellingly, he only cited Reagan. But Reagan was the Bizarro Roosevelt, so…). The problem is, if history’s any guide, transformational presidents not only have to be confrontational, they have to LOVE being confrontational. Take, for example, this video that’s been making the rounds of the Internet all day:

Transformational presidents, in times of crisis, have one thing in common: they use the bully pulpit to call out the people or institutions who caused the crisis, and don’t shy away from portraying them not as good-natured people who simply disagree on how to make America a better place, but as enemies of the people. Reagan said government was the problem and went after it with a meat cleaver… and ushered in thirty years of deregulation. Roosevelt said Wall Street plutocrats and war profiteers were the enemies, and he prosecuted them… and ushered in forty years of progressive economics and the creation of the social safety net.

Lincoln… Lincoln was the Toyota Prius of transformational presidents. Half transformational, half caretaker. He identified anti-federalism as the enemy, and turned a country in which people once considered themselves primarily Virginians, or New Yorkers, or Georgians; into one in which people considered themselves to be Americans. But on the other hand, he failed to identify racists as the enemy (he was, after all, a product of his era) and while slavery ended, we still suffered 100 more years of Jim Crow laws.

When a president is reluctant to identify an enemy in times of crisis – or worse yet, when he identifies the enemy but then fails to go after that enemy with all the powers at his disposal – he creates an enemy-vacuum. And voter anger abhors a vacuum. In the absence of an enemy, in the eyes of the voters, he becomes the enemy. Ford. Carter. Bush I. Perhaps, Obama. I’m sure both Obama’s supporters and his detractors wish he’d show some of Roosevelt’s, or Reagan’s, backbone. Americans respect strong presidents, even when they disagree with them.

On the other hand, there’s one crucial difference between 1936 and 2011: Nobody would ever have portrayed Roosevelt’s cheerful, caustic, dismissive attacks on Republicans as evidence he’s an uppity, angry black man.

To paraphrase Politico, in a few days, the President’s going to give a speech proposing either bold jobs programs the Republican House will block, or timid, ineffectual programs the Republican House will block. Meanwhile, in the alternate universe where Democrats still have testosterone, President Obama will be giving a speech that goes something like this:

Today, President Obama finally released his long-form birth certificate to prove he’s an American. In other words, the country finally released long-form certification that we continue to be a nation plagued by racist assholes. Millions of Americans (45% of Republicans, according to a recent poll) just can’t accept that a black man is a true American.

No amount of proof is enough to squash a conspiracy theory, because conspiracy theories aren’t about facts; they’re about people refusing to accept that history’s moved on and left them or their worldview in the dust. The facts are always, always incidental. The people who clung to their Obama-is-an-Other fantasy (also known as “Fox News Viewers”) will now simply refuse to believe their own eyes. For example…

(culled from the reader responses to the release of the certificate…)

“It’s a Certificate of birth… Not a Birth Certificate which has the seal, mothers finger print and baby’s feet prints… Certificate of birth, easily forged… Birth Certificate, cannot be forged…I hope they do a chemical analysis on the paper and ink.”
-heydad614

“To the best of my knowledge, that green “crossthatch” paper didn’t exist in 1961. Had a white sheet of paper been place on the copier screen, then copied using that green paper, you’d see a white sheet of paper copied onto that larger green crossthatch paper. If someone has information to the contrary, as in, when exactly that style of paper came into being and when it became a standard for State’s to use it for birth certificate, vehicle titles…as well as banks to use it (for checks), I’m all ears. And eyes.”
-Rod Vanger

“His mother’s mother, his grandmother stated that she went to Kenya for his birth. Remember, you don’t have to be born in the USA to be an Illinois State Senator. Just so happens she didn’t live long enough to see the election and explain why she could possibily be mistaken as to where her grandson was born. Yup, people forge documents all the time and money and power get really good documents. This isn’t over. Where did he say he was born on the college forms that he filed. That is where the investigation should go. If he falsified the forms to get Federal Grant or Scholarahip monies then he would be guilty of Fraud. Trump must go after those forms next. “A person who has nothing to hide hides nothing”.”
-sunkgleska

“He should show it he has had three years to have one made up!!!!!!!!!!!!”
-dissmayed

“So, now the question remains, why did Obama pay over $2 Million, in legal fees, to prevent his birth certificate from seeing the light of day, only to now release it (over two years after the election), or did he? Is this a real birth certificate? What about the university and health records?”
-Wolfman Jones

“Why would they refer to him as African as his race …. and his mother as cauc. ? Something isn’t right here… African is not a Race!! Also his mother was 17 when she became pregnant with Obama… many of us were led to believe she met Obama Senior while in college…. hummm…. like I said something just isn’t right….”
-goway

“It only took 2+ years for him to produce one at all. Now EITHER this is the real one and it took Trump hasseling him about it for him to finally produce it OR it is NOT a real one but it took 2+ years for his people to figure out a way to get him a Long Form. Now in this case, as my Grandfather used to say ” If it walks like a Duck, looks like a Duck, and sounds like a Duck…its a Duck” Now if you look at the Certificate it may look like a real one next to a real one. But if you look at the situation, at the context of it, the timing of the release and how long it took you could say its a fake one. The FACT is, it should have never been an issue. Every other President before him both Democrat and Republican PROVIDED it up front*, as well as their educational records, and tax records. This President has gotten away with concealing SO MUCH FOR SO LONG. If there wasn’t a problem why would he conceal it? Its a simple question.”
-tazer357 (*Darrin’s note: no, they didn’t, because nobody ever thought to ask a caucasian president to prove he was an American)

“And one is to believe that a person would spend a few mill on lawyers to dodge the issue of simply whipping this mint copy of “live birth”, not a birth certificate, out of their sock drawer? Perhaps the anti tea party Buttbama loving groupies need to further their education. It’s all bogus.”
-kevinbecham

“it’s a fake!!!!
i’ve seen obamas family picture (in an email) and they do not give BC’s to monkeys!!!!”
-rwalden

There are two slightly less bat-shit insane groups of conspiracy theorists: the kind who accept the facts, but then concoct a NEW conspiracy theory to explain why they were duped into believing the original conspiracy theory… and the kind who simply try to change the subject and hope you forget they ever mentioned it in the first place. Sometimes you get people who do both:

“So basically, just like I already knew, this was hidden for no other purpose than to deliberately cause controversy so Obama could use it to demean & dismiss those that oppose him. He could have done this when McCain was made to show his in 2008, instead he used it in typical Saul Alinsky style. The question is not WHERE he was born but WHY has he hidden all of his personal information?

He is a liar, a rac ist, a Mar xist, Social ist, Commun ist, pick one. He just attended “Easter” services at a church where the B L A C K “pastor” is another Jerimiah Wright, lots of coverage of that huh?
-paintinc56

(sigh)

This is the kind of sad chapter in our history that the “racism is all behind us” crowd will be working overtime to forget. Which is why I propose turning it into a national holiday. Henceforth, Americans will celebrate April 27 as “Black-President-Had-to-Prove-He-Was-an-American-Day.” Some of us will hang our heads in lingering resentment, racists will gleefully and ironically barbecue, and all of us will eventually use it as just another excuse to take off work for a day. And Hallmark will clean up.

For those of you who didn’t catch me on “Conan” last Friday, here’s the interview. I look a lot darker and taller on TV. It’s in black and white ’cause basic cable doesn’t have the budget for color.

To order:

Get the ARTIST’S EDITION, which comes stamped, numbered, and autographed, with an original sketch by Darrin Bell on the title page. Only 200 Artist’s Editions will be sold (only 150 left!), after which no books bought through the Candorville online store will contain a sketch by Darrin Bell:

AUTOGRAPHED – $30
(s&h included)

OR, if you’re allergic to autographs and just want the standard edition (or an e-book), order here:

PAPERBACK: $19.95

E-BOOK: $3.99

You can also complete your collection by getting the first THREE Candorville books!

Nate Dogg’s dead. People are eulogizing him as the man who, more than most, shaped the sound of Nineties hip-hop. He collaborated with just about everyone from Snoop Dogg (no relation) to Erykah Badu. His smooth-as-silk voice will live on in the iTunes libraries of every Gen-Xer until our generation’s last light saber dims. It’s a real mark of character when a man can sing as soulfully about carjacking, womanizing, drug abuse, and cold-blooded murder… as other men do about love and romance. So today, our character playlist is missing a track, and we’ll never replace it. Because Apple doesn’t let you replace missing tracks you’ve already bought, unless you buy them again. But I digress.

A side note: Doctors want to replace both of Prince’s hips… Nate Dogg’s dead… That means both the Eighties AND the Nineties are now officially over (I’ll miss my parachute pants). Those of you who want the ’00s to last forever had better chip in and get Miley Cyrus some multivitamins.

A year ago today, I sat in the Best Buy parking lot in Pinole – nervous as hell and excited beyond belief – waiting to meet an old friend. It had been sixteen years since I’d seen her or even heard her voice; and back then I was barely out of my teens. I was toned, skinny, and looked like Prince. Now… I was mumblety-five; I was soft, stocky, and looked like Prince’s UPS-deliveryman.

There we were, sixteen years ago, saying goodbye on a busy sidewalk outside of a cafe in Berkeley. Here I was, sixteen years later, sitting in a lonely parking lot in the driver’s seat of a white Chevy Malibu I’d rented from Enterprise. The interior was dark slate, and leather. I unfastened my seatbelt. I slid my hands outward and down along the smooth steering wheel, and through the windshield I watched the tree in front of me sway in the wind. I breathed in the new car smell, and exhaled slowly as I carefully planned how my friend would catch me off guard when she arrived:

She would pull up next to my car and see me beside it, like a cowboy beside his mighty steed. I would be reclining on my right arm, on the ledge in front of the car. My right leg would be draped over the ledge. My left would be drawn in toward me. I’d be casually rubbing a leaf between my left thumb and forefinger. I would be lost in deep, soulful thought as the wind-blown tree spoke to me. She would surprise me; I would snap out of it, stand, and rise from the ledge to face her only after she’d emerged from her car and was two-point-five feet away from me.

No. Too “Twilight.”

I would be INSIDE Best Buy, in the DVD aisle, holding a Beyoncé CD.

I got out of the car. I walked into Best Buy to scope out the surroundings. I found my spot, the spot where she would first see me. I stood there and in my mind, I practiced. She would see me from behind after winding her way through Best Buy’s maze of aisles, building her anticipation with every twist and turn. I would wait until I heard her say my name… then I would slowly give her a half-turn, cock my head 45 degrees, grin, and simply say “Hello.” Our eyes would say the rest.

That’s it. That’s the one. I walked back out into the wind, and back to the car. I opened the door, and slipped into it, melting into the driver’s seat. She texted just then, saying she’d be there in ten minutes. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, and deeply. I tried to clear my head. That’s when my mind drifted…

I was lucky to be sitting in that parking lot. Or maybe this parking lot was the reason I was lucky. The day before, I’d driven 400 miles from LA, on the Five freeway. The Five is notorious for sudden storms and fog banks that cause the occasional 50-car pileup, the more frequent FEAR of a 50-car pileup, and the equally-frequent need for new underpants. The day I drove up, I was lucky; I barely escaped all three.

I was driving somewhere south of Kettleman City, where I was hoping to stop for an In-n-Out cheeseburger. I never got that burger. I saw something black on the horizon. In fact, it WAS the horizon. It seemed to roll down the western mountains, across the ribbon of asphalt that cut through the farms ahead, and all the way east, past the power lines and across the distant plains. I knew a Five Storm when I saw one. And I’ll be damned if I was going to drive through the looming maelstrom, possibly to my death, with Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” blasting on my stereo.

The good thing about this rental, its stereo had an auxiliary port. I pulled my iPhone out of my right pocket and plugged the auxiliary cable into the headphone jack. Just then, a rickety pickup truck barreled past me in the fast lane, with a fluttering tarp barely covering several suitcases and a bike. It almost veered into my lane twice before it passed me. I shouted “Fu…” before realizing I wasn’t really all that angry and deciding to save my profanities for the oncoming storm. I slid the iPhone’s slider to unlock it, and launched the iPod app. I scrolled through the songs until I found Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries. I bumped it up as loud as it could go.

Then the Jew in me decided he didn’t want the last thing he may hear in this life to be one of Hitler’s favorite tunes. So I switched it to Shuggie Otis’s “Freedom Flight.”

I took a few pictures of the storm. I texted them to a friend, and added “If I don’t make it, tell the world my story.” I put the phone down, rolled up the windows, gripped the soft leather steering wheel, and said a prayer. Then I picked the phone back up and texted “…But leave out the part about how I was taking pictures and texting while driving.”

I pulled up close behind the truck so I could follow it through the storm once it turned on its lights, but it pulled away from me. It must’ve disappeared into the void going around ninety. So I decelerated until a group of about a half dozen cars and trucks passed me, right before the Buttonwillow exit. Then I sped up to tail them. Surely one of them would turn on its lights and lead me through the storm.

Not a single car turned on its lights. Luckily, I had saved all my profanities for just this moment. Rain started pouring onto the car as if from a huge celestial bucket. I plunged into the black. The world disappeared. I could hear my own pulse over the music. My speedometer showed 55mph, but it felt and looked like I was standing still in space. There was almost no light at all, and my headlights only made it worse. I lost the truck ahead of me. I imagined Obi Wan saying “Use the Force, Darrin.”

For eleven colon-cleansing minutes, I followed what my intuition, not my eyes, told me was the ghostly image of a large truck ahead of me. I was certain I would not make it to the other side, either because I’d run off the road, or run into a slower car that I’d have no way of seeing. I don’t know what was tighter, my steering-wheel-grip, or my internal organs (which all felt like they were tied in a knot). It was too much. It was never-ending. It was raining harder and getting darker every minute. At last I panicked, and raised my foot off the accelerator. I prepared to coast until the speedometer read 25, and then gently drift to the right until I left the pavement, hoping I would slowly roll to a stop in a ditch without a car hitting me from behind. But I was certain I wasn’t going to make it.

Just then, just as I was certain I would die, something changed. My certainty reversed itself. I grew certain I would live, because… I still had to meet my old friend. She was waiting for me. My story couldn’t end before that happened. It would be unsatisfying, and the Great Editor in the Sky would send it back for a rewrite. Maybe it was that, maybe it was the crescendo of “Freedom Flight,” or maybe it was both… but whatever it was, a deep, abiding calm overcame me. I exhaled. I loosened my grip on the wheel. My spleen untied itself. I accelerated again and drove straight and steady. I followed the ghost through the darkness. And I smiled. A minute or so later, the world came back, and the vicious Five Storm withered and shrunk until it lived only in my rearview mirror. And then it was gone.

That night, at a friend’s 39th birthday party in Daly City, we all got very drunk on home-made sangria and tequila shots and I told everyone about the storm, as if it had been a grizzly bear I’d fended off with my bare hands. As I drifted to sleep on a blanket on the floor after everyone else had left, I spread out, laid as flat as I could, stared at the ceiling, and drank in the stillness and the quiet of the dark room.

The next day — a year ago today — I sat in the car that brought me through, in the Best Buy parking lot planning how my old friend would catch me off guard. I had it worked out to the last detail. She said she’d be there in ten. In seven, I’d leave the car, walk into Best Buy, and assume the position. But I could relax for a few minutes. I could enjoy the rustling leaves of the tree and the new car smell and the soft leather seats for a few minutes. I closed my eyes. I thought of the storm. I thought of “Freedom Flight.” I thought of the smile. The thumping of rain on my windshield and roof. The ghostly truck I’d followed. …And I fell asleep.

I woke up when I sensed something big next to me. It was a tan-colored minivan, and my friend was in the driver’s seat talking on her cell phone, and looking at me, with a look that was either confusion, or mild disappointment. My face was puffy and I had a seatbelt indentation on my left cheek. My eyes would only open halfway. And I’m pretty sure I was drooling, because my head was back, my mouth was wide open, and there was a damp spot on my shirt.

That’s when I realized I had some saved-up profanities left over.

I collected myself, opened the door, and walked around the van, hesitating behind it for a moment to try and pat my shirt dry. Then I walked up to my friend, and hugged her. I hugged her extra tight, and a little longer than I otherwise would have. Because when all was dark and the world was gone, and I thought the storm was the last thing I would ever know of this earth, the simple fact that she was waiting for me on the other side was all I needed to keep going.

A year ago today, I was ecstatic just to be alive. And I knew exactly what good friends were for. I don’t ever want to forget that feeling.