A woman on the radio talked about revolution
when it's already passed her by.
There's an extraordinary young man from a little town 13 miles south of here and I believe he has already changed the world.
I think we've hit a tipping point with this one, even if we can't yet articulate exactly what it comprises. But the signs are there. There is a little gas baggery on the internet, but given the magnitude of what was represented by the young man's recent announcement, gas baggery is almost completely conspicuous by its absence.
Similarly, there are no negative or even neutral reader comments appended to any of the local news stories on his announcement - I keep checking and they haven't appeared, a development which flies in the face of our well-deserved reputation for hosting a large and vocal fraction of right-wing religious fundamentalists (I use that noun loosely).
Perhaps most tellingly, no critical or derogatory memes appear to have been spawned in response to this young man. You have to remember that the vast internet community, with all of its wing-nut extremism, makes memes out of defenseless people disabled by conditions such as Downs Syndrome, for crying out loud. The wing-nuts will stop at nothing to defile and ridicule every person and public interest story that makes the news. But Michael Sam? Not a single image out there. It's as if the entire world is holding its collective breath, and holding its tongue, waiting to see what happens next.
But it has already happened. Regardless of what becomes of Mr. Sam from this point forward, the thing - whatever it really is - has already passed us by. We'll only be able to really understand it at some unknown future moment of 20/20 hindsight.
As we wait for that point on the time continuum to intersect with us, please consider devoting two of your minutes to contemplating this unusually powerful video below. If you don't watch a single other commentary on the Michael Sam situation, watch this one. Good ol' WFAA knocked it way, way out of the park (yeah, I know - wrong sport, but you get the picture). Here's the URL if you're reading this on mobile device, and the embed to follow.
Right here, right now
Watching the world wake up from history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olc5C4SXAYM
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