After the Dance…
By Pat Racimora on January 21, 2009 at 6:30 PM in Current Affairs
When I saw this lovely photograph in the New York Times I immediately conjured up the warm memory of my mother reading Cinderella to me. President Obama’s life story has some Cinderella in it.
Yet, when I was a kid I was also puzzled when Mom closed the book after the last page. I wondered what happened after the fancy ball and after the glass slipper was a match with her tiny foot.
Will Cinderella be stuck with what she was doing before, only more of it?
Does Cinderella even know how to clean a whole palace?
Would the Fairy Godmother hang around to get her out of new troubles, or did she finish that job by just getting the unlikely young woman in the door?
Alas, there is no “happy-ever-after” to greet Obama when the dance is over. No Fairy Godmother to make Iraq go away and our economy flourish. Our kingdom is in deep doo doo. The inside of the palace is filthy, the serfs are hurting, and Barbarians are at the gates.
Enter the unknown zone that the fairy tale never finished.























