The second—make that the nanosecond—it was out of my mouth, I knew I was in for it. A few garbled syllables on Friday night’s newscast, and I was on my way to a little more internet fame that I would have preferred.

Here’s a link to it, but first, as they say on the late night talk shows, let me set up the clip. It was just before a commercial, and Kaity and I were reading the “coming up” tease. One of the items involved a non-fatal shooting on Long Island, in which the victim was working as a babysitter. Shooting. Babysitter. Roll the clip:

There will be countless essays, columns, and blog posts in the days and weeks ahead, analyzing and deconstructing Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential race this week. We want to grasp the magnitude of it all, the surreal enormity of this change to the American political and societal landscape. Capturing it in words? Well, it’s a big job.

So let me focus here on just one cultural element of what it means to America and the world to have Barack Obama as our next president:

Cool is back.

Dear Senator Lieberman,

We’re reporting on the news tonight about your meeting earlier with majority leader Sen. Harry Reid about your future as part of the Senate’s Democratic caucus. You emerged from the meeting to say only that you would be thinking over what Reid had to say and what your options are.

Joe, I’m just guessing here. But it seems likely that the “option” Senator Reid suggested to you isn’t, as they say, anatomically possible. And, really, were you expecting it go any other way?

Barack Obama, as US President-elect, speaking during first post-election press conference after meeting with his economic advisory team, behind him are (l-r): Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and newly appointed Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Chicago, Illinois. (AP/November 7, 2008)

He made it through 19-months of a grueling campaign without ever really seeming tired. But after three days of being President-elect… and three days of finding out more about the scope and depth of the financial crisis.. I thought Barack Obama looked a little weary today at his first news conference since the election. Who could blame him? What a whiplash that has to be: the ecstasy of winning a historic presidential race, followed immediately by a fuller understanding of just how hard the job is going to be. One politico joked to me on Tuesday that the winner of the race was going to demand a recount.

Rereading my blog post of last week about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s future in the Democratic party, I’m now struck by how my assumptions in the piece were based on a Washington political paradigm that may no longer exist. Lieberman’s fate in the wake of his fervent support for defeated presidential candidate John McCain, as well as his negative attacks on Barack Obama, his own party’s candidate, has been much in discussion this week. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking—assuming, I should say again—that Lieberman would be treated as a traitor by his fellow democrats; that he would be stripped of his committee chairmanships, sent to the furthest reaches of the back bench (if he was allowed to caucus with Democrats at all), denied support for any of his legislative efforts, made to wear a big red clown nose, and perhaps even be given a wedgie.

Many Democrats across the country didn’t take long reverting to their frantic, fretting selves, after their initial euphoria following last week’s election of Barack Obama. Every unattributed tidbit being floated by or about the Obama transition team is being pored over for signs that the big-C Change Obama ran on will turn out to be of the small-c variety. A couple of the most debated issues are: whether the new president will quickly dismantle the post-9/11 security measures put in place by the Bush Administration, including torture and domestic spying; and if the Obama Administration will seek to investigate, and possibly prosecute, alleged abuses by the Bush White House.

My mother had been reading my blog, and sent this email today: “I like the funny ones much more than the political ones. (Do they have to be so long?) When did you get so political?”

I don’t mind her liking the funny ones better. It’s okay to ask about my interest in politics. But “do they have to be so long?” kind of stings a little. Whatever. Here’s a shorter, funny one, of recent random thoughts...

If Senate Majority leader Harry Reid was really serious today when he said “nobody was more angry than me” about Joe Lieberman campaigning against Barack Obama during the presidential race, he needs to go check out the liberal blogs tonight, like here and here. After Reid’s democratic caucus voted overwhelmingly to let Lieberman return to their fold with only mild punishment, he’ll be able to find lots and lots of people who seem muuuuuuuuuuuch more angry than he ever was with the Connecticut Senator.

Something changed for me today in the way I view the financial crisis. I’m sure I’m not alone; the stock market losing nearly a thousand points in 36 hours can have the effect of, as Samuel Johnson would put it, focusing the mind wonderfully. Johnson was referring to the prospect of being hanged. After today, I’m not sure I’m seeing all that much difference between the two situations.

Of course, we’ve been reporting on this collapse for over two months now, so maybe I’m a little late to the pity party. But I suspect this week, with the plummeting dow and the existential threat to the nation’s auto industry and the predictions of doom for retailers, has brought a lot of people to the realization that we are in very, very serious trouble, and heading into deeper trouble..

I had a terrific time today, delivering one of the speeches at a major autism conference in New Jersey. It was held at Kean University, and had well over a thousand people in attendance. The title of the conference was “Autism: Putting the Pieces Together" I spoke as a parent of an autistic child, and was tremendously gratified by the warm welcome and attention I received from the audience. And Kean U. was even nice enough to videotape it and give me a DVD!

So my speech will be my post tonight. I hope you get something out of it, whether you’re in the “autism community” or not. In the middle of the speech, I show a clip from the documentary directed by my wife, Lauren, called “Autism Every Day.” Then I come back and talk some more, because let’s face it, that’s what I do. I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses in the comments section. Speech can be viewed after the jump.

My household, like so many across the country, is going to be making some changes to deal with the economic crisis, and the scary future it portends. Luckily, it appears that I’m pretty much on the same page as our incoming (but sort of already) President, Barack Obama. In fact, I’m going to take ALMOST verbatim comments from his news conference statement Tuesday, and make slight tweaks so they resonate effectively with my family, and our household economy. Obama’s words come first, my customized changes will be in parenthesis.