Good news

My soul sister is fond of telling a story about the winter and spring of 1993. We were sharing a place and working boring McJobs, and I'd often pick up the San Francisco Examiner to read on my BART commute home. (Back in those days, the Ex was a real newspaper. Not a good one, mind you, but at least a real one.)

We were lefties (still are) and Ronald Reagan had been elected President when we were in Fourth Grade, so often I would get home waving the newspaper. “Look,” I'd say, pointing to a story about something the new Clinton administration was doing, “there's good news.”

The honeymoon didn't last, but it was a heady time. Certainly the Recent Unpleasantness makes that era look like a garden of roses, in retrospect.

She's been telling that story a lot, since it looks like we really will see a Democrat in the White House again. It won't look like the parallel universe in which Al Gore is President or like Google Good News, but still ... what's the word ... ?