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• Tuesday, August 26, 2008 08:49 AM

  My Okie grandma loves Michelle Obama.

  Hello:

  I live in Wichita, Kansas. Last night after the convention broadcast, my 85-year-old (white) grandmother, who grew up in small-town Oklahoma during the Depression, called me to gush over Mrs. Obama's speech. She was impressed with everything from the content of the text to the speaker's easy eloquence -- not to mention the adorable Obama children.

  My grandmother is not a racist, necessarily, but is a product of her times in that she still distrusts immigrants (thanks most recently to her TV boyfriend Lou Dobbs), and even though she has always been wonderful to my friends of different ethnic backgrounds and skin tones, she continues to cling to the notion that people of different colors shouldn't marry (because it's hard on the kids), as well as antiquated notions about how black people sure are athletic & good dancers, etc.

  A couple months ago she told me she had misgivings about the Democratic Party (of which she is a lifelong member) running a black man and a woman as its leading presidential candidates. The people in her circle, mostly senior citizens, spent a lot of time discussing which would be most (or least) electable, and they feared the Dems were ready to hand over another election to the hated GOP.

  But now, with the convention in swing, it's interesting to hear the optimism in my grandmother's voice over the phone. If Barack Obama can top his wife in his speech tomorrow night, I think a lot of old-timers will feel a lot more secure about the man himself and the party's chances for victory in November.

  —aircap Read aircap's other letters
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