When I wrote about the flap over Barack Obama’s characterization of small towns, I referred to the Brinkley documentary to illustrate my points regarding small towns and how my experience as a resident of small town corresponded with and reflected the remarks attributed to Obama.  I searched the internet in vain for a link to a reference of Brinkley’s documentary.  Yesterday, like a Usain Bolt out of the blue, I received a copy of that documentary on DVD from my brother.  It had been over 40 years since I watched the initial broadcast of Brinkley’s controversial opus on TV so I was eager to compare my recollections of the incidents to the actual broadcast.  Part of me is inclined to believe that what I have has been edited, as my sense is that some references were more stark than what I viewed on the DVD; however, I must add that at the time I felt the whole episode was rather like The Emperor’s New Clothes with a number of Salemites prancing about brazenly naked, metaphorically speaking, of course!  Those who were foolish then remain so now–time doesn’t heal recorded folly.  Those whose eloquence was notable then, seemed even more timely and impressive now.

In an the run up to the presidential election of 1964, the most persistent and important dilemma that the residents of Salem faced was race/civil rights followed by the economy and foreign policy issues, notably the increasing involvement in Vietnam.  Last night, more than 40 years after my sleepy little south Jersey home town was awakened by a bunch of outsiders whom the town folk adamantly believed duped them into speaking their minds about nearly everything and recorded their answers for posterity, the first person of color was chosen as the nominee from the Democratic Party to run for the office of  president of the United States.  At a time when Martin Luther King’s voice soared over the masses in Washington, DC, evoking the imagery of an healed and uplifted Republic, by the application of the principles upon which it was founded to all of its citizens regardless of race, color, or creed, the citizens of Salem were engaged in a similar struggle, unable to muster either King’s eloquence or vision.  The grist of over 4 decades seems to have been milled finely enough for us to dare to abide by the precepts of our Republic; yet, the nagging specter of race slips along the edges of conversation, inveighs implicitly in closed circles, and may be protected by the privacy of the voting booth.  Each viewing of Brinkley’s documentary increases my own sense of  ambivalence:  Obama’s selection as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president as well as Hillary Clinton’s valiant bid to win that same office is evidence of democracy in action at its finest, but it is sobering when I look back to 1964 and consider how the political, social, and economic landscape remain fundamentally the same.  I had hoped that when I had ejected the DVD from its player that I would only recognize images from the past, sadly, I have seen some of these faces alive and well among us today.  Let us hope that Yes we can will not be a forgotten or infamous campaign shibboleth trotted out by historians on some future news program to illustrate the folly of idealism or how political expediency will always lack the courage to defend the ideals of democracy.  Perhaps we can just doesn’t cut it as a national ring tone!

At first the rawness chafed by the town’s less than gracious performance seemed as if it would never heal. But, after a while, like most small towns, the embarrassment dissolved into whispers and finally fell back into the torpor which probably accounted for some of the indiscretions in the first place. Grace Metalious had burst onto the popular literary scene only five years earlier with her steamy expose of small town hypocrisy and sexual mores with her novel Peyton Place so it seemed a natural progression for small town parochialism to leap to conclusions drawn from popular fiction: a neighbor published a novel shortly after the town’s national humiliation aptly titled, This Cesspool Called Life.

The town’s Emperor’s New Clothes experience went the way of all flesh, my apologies to Samuel Butler, and time, the soporific that it can often be, drew down the curtain of ire and indignation that had awakened the community, and it returned again to its unconscious slumber. Small towns or small groups are often characterized by the barriers they erect to wall themselves off from forces they consider dangerous or which, threaten their status quo. Tradition, values, religion become ingrained and stale from lack of exposure; they lose that elan of vitality that the persistence of creative tension ensures. There are times when great virtue stands out, but more often virtue is compromised by the stagnant urgency to eradicate change or novelty, particularly if the health of the community depends upon the scrutiny of regular self-examination.

45 years later, my hometown still exists, some residents might quickly add that it is much diminished from the status it enjoyed only a generation ago. Some businesses and manufacturing operations have closed down completely while others have been reduced to skeletal organizations that no longer reflect their former robustness when a they were among the primary employers for the town’s populace. Property taxes have skyrocketed to offset the void left by the exodus of flourishing enterprises. Many of the once proud historic residences that lined the main street are abandoned, or inhabited by street people while others have been used as a dump and are now filled with trash and refuse. The downward spiral that indicates a loss of vitality and creativity is often compounded by the growing antipathy of residents of a town or members of any similar organization and the resentment that builds from the belief that the root causes of decline are wholly external to the town or organization itself. A tendency to cling to the familiar, to distrust or demonize the unfamiliar, the unknown, or anything that appears to be different grows as the spiral tightens. The circling of the wagons into a we-they dichotomy is region independent: similar, if not identical responses will not be out of place in the north, east, south, or west. I don’t doubt there are many towns or organizations, which do not succumb to a sort of vicious entropy; however, if we are honest, those of us who have lived in or were raised in a small town, know full well that Barack Obama’s words captured the spirit and sentiments often spoken by the residents of those forgotten towns living on the edge of a time they fear they will never recover.