This campaign has been incredibly hideous, so I was thrilled to catch the annual Al Smith memorial dinner on tv last night.

The Al Smith dinner is a New York tradition, where politicians and the media lay off the harsh jabs and exchange anger for laughter for one night of the campaign season. Both Bush and Kerry were not invited in 2004. This year, Obama and McCain both brought the house down.

McCain had me cracking up! I was so happy to see this John McCain again, the man I loved in his regular Letterman and Daily Show appearances, who wasn’t afraid to make fun of himself (or Hillary!) and compliment his opponent.

In case you missed McCain’s words of praise for Senator Obama, he said this:

“Political opponents can have a little trouble in seeing the best in each other, but I’ve had a few glimpses of this man at his best, and I admire his great skill, energy and determination. There was a time when a mere invitation of an African-American citizen to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. Today is a world away from the crude and prideful bigotry of that time, and good riddance. I can’t wish my opponent luck, but I do wish him well.”

Purely on a superficial note, Barack was very handsome in white tie. And his jokes were equally hilarious! I was LMAO when he went at Giuliani.

At the end of his speech, Obama closed with compliments to McCain:

““But I’ve said before and I think it bears repeating, that there are very few of us who have served this country with the same dedication and honor and distinction as Senator McCain. No matter what divisions or differences or arguments we’re having right now, we ultimately belong to something bigger and more lasting than a political party. We belong to a community. We share a country. We are all children of God.”

It was a beautiful thing to witness amidst all of this ugliness. And an important reminder – whoever wins this election on November 5 needs to unite us all despite our differences. Witnessing these powerful political figures set aside their partisanship and emotion to celebrate each other with humor and seemingly genuine warmth was wonderful. It’s remarkable. Now if only we who vote for them could all do the same.

I’ll be back to beauty next week, bellas. Promise! Happy weekend to all!

Wow. I am amazed by the internet, the speed of information, and the speed of entrepreneurship.

The debate was just last night, and already online hustlers have run away with the two taglines of the evening — “That One,” as John McCain grumpily referred to Barack Obama, and “my friends,” which McCain said an astonishing 22 times (good grief, imagine if you were playing a drinking game!).

Not even 24 hours, and look at how many That One and “Not John McCain’s Friend” teeshirts are up for sale!

I found these on Vote for That One, That One 08, and of course, good ol Cafepress.

Seen any funny political entrepreneurship lately? What’d you think about the debate?

I wear it every day and obsess over my favorite kind, but even this beauty blogger knows that this isn’t the time to be talking about lipstick.

I don’t care if it’s a pitbull or a pig or whatever kind of animal metaphor our political candidates are using here. And it doesn’t really matter to me who said the stupid phrase first — what bothers me the most is that this whole Drudged up lipstick hubbub — just like the Oprah thing — seems to me, to be a blatantly obvious distraction from the real issues that this country needs to focus on.

And from a gander at the headlines today, it’s working brilliantly.

Instead of lipstick, I’d like to hear the candidates address their solutions for the issues we’re not talking about. The 800 pound gorillas in the room, like mounting poverty. Like the terrifying rate of job losses. Like the plight of our soldiers when they return home from war. Some fine young men and women are returning home haunted by their experiences, and broken in body and mind. I just saw on the news today that the suicide rate of active duty soldiers is set to exceed the rate among the general US population. That hasn’t happened since Vietnam. That’s all kinds of sad and scary. Can we talk about how we’re going to help our troops, both now and later?

On the eve of September 11, can we talk about finding the terrorists responsible for the attack in the first place? Seven years later, and the official White House response to not finding Osama Bin Laden, is “This is not the movies. We don’t have super powers.” Can we talk about why resources aren’t being used more wisely to that end? Can we talk about the economy, education, health care, and dealing with this ongoing war on drugs that’s only succeeding in breaking the prison system?

We’ve got 56 days until the election. Can the politicians on either side of the divide lay off the trivial BS like lipstick, and talk about something real?

I know I’m not the only political news-observer who woke up in a cloud of gloom this morning. Apparently the voters in Pennsylvania see something I don’t, in HRC. I have tried really hard to not allow the swelling, souring personal feelings inside me color my political coverage on this blog. I do have strong views about each candidate, but I also am aware that not everyone shares them. And at the end of it all, I want to keep the tone of Afrobella as positive as possible. I want readers of all creeds, races, and candidate choices to enjoy Afrobella, and to feel welcome here. I know how off-putting political grandstanding can be.

But…

Having said that, this great New York Times editorial, titled The Low Road to Victory, says everything I feel this morning, but more eloquently:

“The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it. Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.”

Bellas, fellas — how do you feel? What would you like to see change in the campaign, as we head towards Indiana and North Carolina? I personally hope that the politics of fear and pandering take a backseat to actually addressing the issues that are facing this country.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — I find Michelle Obama to be absolutely fascinating. I realize that not everyone sees her the same way — where I see the modern Jackie Kennedy, others see Omarosa, as I’ve heard her naysayers call her. Right now I’m watching the woman I sincerely hope will be the first lady of this country on the Colbert Report, and I’m taken with her grace, class and elegance. So is Stephen, apparently — he told her she’s a “very good looking woman,” and serenaded her with Nat King Cole’s L-O-V-E. Charming.

I’ll post a clip as soon as one pops up on YouTube. I just flipped channels and lucked into seeing this, so keep an eye out for the rerun tomorrow evening at… when is that, 7:30? 8? Check your local listings.

The depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as “elitists” based upon Barack’s recent, admittedly-awkwardly-phrased statement about embittered rural blue collar workers is laughable to me, and I think she shrugged it off admirably tonight with a joke about the number of silver spoons she had in her mouth, as she grew up on the south side of Chicago.

To shine more of a light on the formative experiences of Michelle Obama, read on — the homegirl Nichelle of Anovelista sent me this amazing article about Michelle Obama’s freshman year at Princeton, written by Brian Feagans. It’s about Catherine Donnelly, whose mother, Alice Brown, initially requested for her daughter switch dorms because she didn’t want her to have a black roommate.

“”I told them we weren’t used to living with black people — Catherine is from the South,” Brown said. “They probably thought I was crazy.”

Today both Donnelly, an Atlanta attorney, and Brown, a retired schoolteacher living in the North Carolina mountains, look back at that time with regret. Like many Americans, they’ve built new perceptions of race on top of a foundation cracked by prejudices past — and present. Yet they rarely speak of the subject.

She’s that roommate from a quarter century ago.”

It’s an absolutely amazing article, underscores how long the shadow of Jim Crow-era thinking is, and ends with the kind of revelatory sentiment that Mike Huckabee also expressed, kind of. Kind of.

“The story of race in America is one of generations: what’s passed on, what isn’t and the friction between the two.

Brown quit smoking in 1996. She’s still working on the other.”

It’s like smoking. Well doesn’t that little addition just stick in the craw.

I’d love to know your views on the recent issues in the campaign, bellas. Did you catch Michelle on Colbert? Do you think Barack should appear as well, to court the “Colbert bump?”

** the photo is from this great Chicago Magazine article, First Lady in Waiting.