Obama may have lost Pennsylvania, but the road to triumph for a black attorney is not easy. Just ask actor Laurence Fishburne. I mean, Thurgood Marshall. I mean... actually, they both have a lot to say on the matter.
As the polls were leaning in Clinton's favor, I decided I needed to take refuge somewhere—a cafe, a wine bar. Anyplace quiet and relaxing. I knew I would break a nerve if Clinton won PA. In my opinion, she and her horn-tooting, Harlem-loving hubby have both morphed into a couple of political snakes and I'm not happy. So ding! [Yeh, that's a bell.] I remembered Laurence Fishburne was playing Thurgood Marshall on Broadway in a play called Thurgood and I had thirty minutes to get there before curtain. I hurried down to the subway to catch that forever-moody Q-Train and of course, they made an announcement it wasn't running. I panicked. I needed this theatrical fix, bad. It was either front seats at Thurgood or a crazy-literary type black guy snapping at the first Clinton supporter he saw. Well, the stars must have been in Clinton's favor because a R-Train arrived and away to Broadway I went. I was ten minutes late of course and convinced I wouldn't get in. But the box office manager saw my desperate face and scrambled through his resources for a $180 ticket to a nearly sold-out performance. He found one. A freebie. He threw it at me and told me to get going.
Yep. I was one happy Obama-supporter. My freebie was for a nose-bleed seat, but hey, who's complaining. I was away from the torture of watching Clinton gain momentum in Pennsylvania and Laurence Fishburne, I mean Thurgood Marshall, was the revenge I needed. I'm saying: A brilliant black attorney on a public stage roll-calling his grandiose accomplishments during an era of extreme political and racial imbalance. Brown verses the Board of Education, his desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School. For a moment I forgot about Obama and his uphill battle in PA and completely surrendered to the world of Thurgood.
Fishburne was great, no doubt. He's a brilliant actor, on stage and screen. He embodied Thurgood's sense of humor, his casual authority, his youthful recklessness. But more importantly, Fishburne clearly illustrated what it was like to be a young, liberal, determined black lawyer in a time and place where to achieve that, to even step forward and say you demanded it, could very well endanger your life.
In my opinion, the play Thurgood was decent enough. It dramatized Thurgood's proudest moments as a civil rights attorney, but lacked in the personal stuff. You know, his blonde father, his drinking, his healthy taste for curvy women, the early death of his doting first wife. In my experience, it's the personal things that make good biodramas amazing. You know, shock us with what we don't know, make us fall out of love with the icon, then lure us back again.
Well, as my mom used to say, Nothing's perfect. Obama lost PA, yes. Clinton, in my opinion, bamboozled. But Fishburne as the brilliant attorney Thurgood Marshall and, of course that freebie in the nose-bleed, made my night.
