NYT
AS Martin Bunzl was getting on a plane in 1966, something happened that would stick in his head for the next four decades. A man taking his seat looked around and announced, loudly enough for all to hear: “Oh, geez, not a Negro stewardess.”
The remark stuck because it came at a threshold moment when culture and politics and norms of behavior were all in flux, said Dr. Bunzl, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. A few years earlier, a comment like that might have been unremarkable, and a few years later it would be intolerable. The man on the plane was shouting through an open window between worlds.
Whether the results of the Iowa caucuses on Thursday will be seen by future generations as a threshold moment of change or a footnote to a story yet unwritten is anyone’s guess, of course. The victories by Barack Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican not in the traditional mold, are tiny steps on a long road that may not lead to the White House for either man.
But there’s no doubt that for one night, in one state, Americans dramatically changed the subject. Race didn’t matter — even though Mr. Obama was an African-American running in a nearly all-white state — but talk of unity and common ground did, as Mr. Obama galvanized his supporters by promising to toss historical and political division aside.
How far rhetoric and passion can take a man, or a nation, is another question, and there’s plenty of reason to doubt we’re anywhere near a transformative era in 2008. Look around today, Dr. Bunzl and other social theorists say, and it’s easy to see nothing but cynicism, apathy, polarization and political gridlock.......
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