Wed - May 14, 2008
WE GO BACK TO WEST VIRGINIA
to follow-up.
Interesting email last night from a regular TWM
reader who, in response to yesterday's post about Tony Norman's
self-righteous, ahistorical insult to West Virginia voters, admits to being
long troubled by the assumptions made about Appalachia. Here's the key
paragraph:
I have checked out West Virginia -- time and again -- and can tell you that there is, no doubt, a certain, tacit racism that informs some of the vote. Much of it, though, is a distrust of anyone they sense is condescending to them, and Obama gives off that aura. Tuesday's vote was an extension of the phenomenon that has turned West Virginia into a Republican state in the last two presidential elections: with economic issues mooted by a permanent recession that has turned its youth into emigrants and its unions into ghosts, the state's remaining, older voters make their decisions on social issues that turn on guns and religiously informed values.
Here, just to clarify a couple of points from yesterday, is the relevant part of my response to the email:
I do not, of course, dispute the presence of racism either tacit or overt in West Virginia. Just as I do not dispute its presence in Pennsylvania or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. But I sure as hell dispute that West Virginia's preference for Hillary is a boiling up of the Confederate rebel yell, and that Pennsylvania's preference for Hillary was the bubbling up of a slack-jawed, lobotomized populace. Mr. Norman has been out front on both of those claims, and I still can't decide whether I'm amused or disgusted by them. I suppose it depends on the day.
Or the post.
I have checked out West Virginia -- time and again -- and can tell you that there is, no doubt, a certain, tacit racism that informs some of the vote. Much of it, though, is a distrust of anyone they sense is condescending to them, and Obama gives off that aura. Tuesday's vote was an extension of the phenomenon that has turned West Virginia into a Republican state in the last two presidential elections: with economic issues mooted by a permanent recession that has turned its youth into emigrants and its unions into ghosts, the state's remaining, older voters make their decisions on social issues that turn on guns and religiously informed values.
Here, just to clarify a couple of points from yesterday, is the relevant part of my response to the email:
I do not, of course, dispute the presence of racism either tacit or overt in West Virginia. Just as I do not dispute its presence in Pennsylvania or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. But I sure as hell dispute that West Virginia's preference for Hillary is a boiling up of the Confederate rebel yell, and that Pennsylvania's preference for Hillary was the bubbling up of a slack-jawed, lobotomized populace. Mr. Norman has been out front on both of those claims, and I still can't decide whether I'm amused or disgusted by them. I suppose it depends on the day.
Or the post.
Posted at 10:22 AM
Tue - May 13, 2008
BARACK GOES TO WEST VIRGINIA
to pander. at least a little
bit.
While we're on the subject of cheap political
points...
You will also remember, I'm sure, that one of the (few) things I like(d) and respect(ed) and admire(d) about Senator Obamais was his steadfast refusal to pander to the all
the rabbling, quasi-patriotic bullies out there, his firm belief that love of
country resides in your head and in your heart, in your civic actions and public
policies, not at the end of your flag pole and certainly not atop the pin on
your lapel. And yet there he was yesterday at the Charleston Civic
Center, making some of those same, excellent points to a crowd of (presumably)
non-racist Appalachians, while wearing a flag pin on his
lapel.
How disappointing. If not especially surprising.
You can bet we'll see a whole lot more of those sorts of -- I'll be kind -- compromises as the general election draws nearer.
You know, the kind that carry the untoward, distinctive aroma of politics as usual.
You will also remember, I'm sure, that one of the (few) things I like(d) and respect(ed) and admire(d) about Senator Obama
How disappointing. If not especially surprising.
You can bet we'll see a whole lot more of those sorts of -- I'll be kind -- compromises as the general election draws nearer.
You know, the kind that carry the untoward, distinctive aroma of politics as usual.
Posted at 11:25 AM
TONY GOES TO WEST VIRGINIA
to condescend. a lot.
You will remember, I'm sure, that in the wake of
the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the editorial board of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette declared
anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton an idiot and quite possibly a racist. At
the time, I
was certain that I spied -- among other, equally heavy hands -- the
ham fists and unctuous words of PG columnist and editorial board member
Tony Norman. So you will imagine my lack of surprise when, on the eve of the
West Virginia Primary, I opened up the PG and saw even more
proof of my theorem:
With the presumptive Democratic nominee running 30 points behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia, the sound we're most likely to hear when the polls close in Appalachia tonight is the Confederate rebel yell boiling up from the swamps of time.
We'll set aside, for now, the questions of when swamps boil, how a yell boils, and what a boiling yell sounds like. And we'll even ignore that Appalachia -- which is hardly synonymous with West Virginia, since the region extends from Georgia to New York state and the Appalachian mountains stretch from Georgia through New England all the way to Canada -- is almost certainly a code-word for Land of the White Trash Hillbilly Racists. But we can not ignore the ahistorical silliness.
You would think someone so seemingly well-versed in -- or at least so willingly haunted by -- the ghosts of the Confederacy would know that West Virginia seceded from the Confederate State of Virginia in 1861, then joined the Union in 1863, when it ratified constitutional assurances of abolition and was thus officially recognized as a state. You would also think that someone so eager to cast aspersions and condescensions upon the sons and daughters of that state's 20,000 or so Confederate soldiers would know that West Virginia provided an equal number of soldiers to the Union. (They all, presumably, have moved to more sophisticated states; if any remain, they will no doubt be voting for Obama.)
But, hey, who cares about rhetorical or historical accuracy when there are cheap political points to be made and even cheaper, self-righteous insults to be hurled? What's a little contempt or dishonor among Appalachian plebes?
With the presumptive Democratic nominee running 30 points behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia, the sound we're most likely to hear when the polls close in Appalachia tonight is the Confederate rebel yell boiling up from the swamps of time.
We'll set aside, for now, the questions of when swamps boil, how a yell boils, and what a boiling yell sounds like. And we'll even ignore that Appalachia -- which is hardly synonymous with West Virginia, since the region extends from Georgia to New York state and the Appalachian mountains stretch from Georgia through New England all the way to Canada -- is almost certainly a code-word for Land of the White Trash Hillbilly Racists. But we can not ignore the ahistorical silliness.
You would think someone so seemingly well-versed in -- or at least so willingly haunted by -- the ghosts of the Confederacy would know that West Virginia seceded from the Confederate State of Virginia in 1861, then joined the Union in 1863, when it ratified constitutional assurances of abolition and was thus officially recognized as a state. You would also think that someone so eager to cast aspersions and condescensions upon the sons and daughters of that state's 20,000 or so Confederate soldiers would know that West Virginia provided an equal number of soldiers to the Union. (They all, presumably, have moved to more sophisticated states; if any remain, they will no doubt be voting for Obama.)
But, hey, who cares about rhetorical or historical accuracy when there are cheap political points to be made and even cheaper, self-righteous insults to be hurled? What's a little contempt or dishonor among Appalachian plebes?
Posted at 11:15 AM
Wed - May 7, 2008
WE WANT TO FOLLOW THE RULES
except when we don't.
You know, this is the kind of crap that makes my
head explode...
[From a memo (An Update on the Race for Delegates) sent to the Superdelegatessent by Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. Emphases mine:]
...Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.
The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record, repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.
We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be...
I could highlight the presumption (that onerous first sentence, most of the first two paragraphs, and the transition to the last sentence). Or criticize the condescension (like a broken record...ad nauseum...alternative reality). Or even complain about the grammar (it should be were somehow, Mr. Plouffe, not was).
But all I really want to do is note the incredible irony -- by which I mean, duplicity; by which I mean, hypocrisy -- of a campaign that crows about playing by the rules and then, two paragraphs later, argues that the rules shouldn't apply, and that following the rules will be a very bad thing indeed. You know, as long as doing so may hurt Senator Obama.
It would be funny, were it not so infuriating. Maddening, were it not so sickening. And surprising, were it not so typical.
Last night in his North Carolina victory speech, Senator Obama lamented that John McCain's plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election. He warned of attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain. He said that the real question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.
Your campaign manager's memo to the Supers, like many other things we've seen and heard these past few months, gives us a pretty good idea, Senator. And you know what? It may sound different, but it sure does look -- and smell -- the same.
[From a memo (An Update on the Race for Delegates) sent to the Superdelegatessent by Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. Emphases mine:]
...Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.
The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record, repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.
We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be...
I could highlight the presumption (that onerous first sentence, most of the first two paragraphs, and the transition to the last sentence). Or criticize the condescension (like a broken record...ad nauseum...alternative reality). Or even complain about the grammar (it should be were somehow, Mr. Plouffe, not was).
But all I really want to do is note the incredible irony -- by which I mean, duplicity; by which I mean, hypocrisy -- of a campaign that crows about playing by the rules and then, two paragraphs later, argues that the rules shouldn't apply, and that following the rules will be a very bad thing indeed. You know, as long as doing so may hurt Senator Obama.
It would be funny, were it not so infuriating. Maddening, were it not so sickening. And surprising, were it not so typical.
Last night in his North Carolina victory speech, Senator Obama lamented that John McCain's plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election. He warned of attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain. He said that the real question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.
Your campaign manager's memo to the Supers, like many other things we've seen and heard these past few months, gives us a pretty good idea, Senator. And you know what? It may sound different, but it sure does look -- and smell -- the same.
Posted at 01:51 PM
Mon - May 5, 2008
AN OLD KIND OF STATISTICS
not a new kind of politics.
With a tip of the hat and a tilt of the axis to
Chadwick Matlin (great name) over at Slate.com, I offer here my own, slightly
souped-up graphic to illustrate the creative -- by which I mean, phony;
by which I mean, unprofessional; by which I mean, unethical --
graphing strategy they were, until about an hour ago, using on the
BarackObama.com ResultsCenter
page:
The first bar graph is the one they had been using before Mr. Matlin's piece (charitably titled Obama's Fuzzy Delelgate Math; it should have been called Obama's Bullshit Delegate Graph) appeared at 5:35 this afternoon. The second bar graph illustrates the correct proportion that Senator Clinton's 1,611 delegates should have filled. It's a considerable difference. And so a considerable ginning of both the image and the relative strength of the numbers.
Now. The Obama Camp deserves some credit for correcting the image so quickly. (You know, the kind of credit deserved by a teenager who, caught in a lie, admits the truth instead of just lying again.) But it deserves far more blame, and at least a little bit of scorn, for producing and posting the image in the first place. It's a simple case of Stats 101. Or Graphic Communication 101. Or Ethics 101. (Hell, my BusComm sophomores knew better by the third week of class.) You don't tweak or twist or fudge or otherwise knowingly misrepresent proportions on a graph. Not when you want to be honest and forthright about the data. And especially not when you claim to possess the ethical and intellectual high ground.
I've said it before (and before, and before, and before), and I'll say it again: new kind of politics, my ass.
The first bar graph is the one they had been using before Mr. Matlin's piece (charitably titled Obama's Fuzzy Delelgate Math; it should have been called Obama's Bullshit Delegate Graph) appeared at 5:35 this afternoon. The second bar graph illustrates the correct proportion that Senator Clinton's 1,611 delegates should have filled. It's a considerable difference. And so a considerable ginning of both the image and the relative strength of the numbers.
Now. The Obama Camp deserves some credit for correcting the image so quickly. (You know, the kind of credit deserved by a teenager who, caught in a lie, admits the truth instead of just lying again.) But it deserves far more blame, and at least a little bit of scorn, for producing and posting the image in the first place. It's a simple case of Stats 101. Or Graphic Communication 101. Or Ethics 101. (Hell, my BusComm sophomores knew better by the third week of class.) You don't tweak or twist or fudge or otherwise knowingly misrepresent proportions on a graph. Not when you want to be honest and forthright about the data. And especially not when you claim to possess the ethical and intellectual high ground.
I've said it before (and before, and before, and before), and I'll say it again: new kind of politics, my ass.
Posted at 08:40 PM
Wed - April 30, 2008
TWO WRIGHTS STILL MAKE A WRONG
or, why that lunatic egomaniac still
matters.
Before we move on to even more controversial matters, let's talk once
more about the star-crossed, now-mercifully-divorced relationship between
Senator Breath of Fresh Air and Reverend
Race-Baiter.
First, let's give credit where it's due: despite an over-reliance on his favorite vowel and at least a couple of slippery equivocations -- more on those in a moment -- Senator Obama yesterday wisely dispensed with the emotional aloofness and rhetorical sleight-of-hand that have so far characterized his remarks about Reverend Wright and, avoiding the airy rationalizations (a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice) of his wildly overpraised (if occasionally dissected) More Perfect Union speech, got right down to business:
When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that's what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
That's well-said and well-crafted. It hits right at the dark heart of Wright's paranoid absurdities, exposes them to the lights of sense and reason, and does not attempt to do anything but heap upon them the scorn they so richly deserve. It is precisely what he should have done last month: rather than teeter on an oratorical tightrope as he did in Philadelphia, Senator Obama went underground in Winston-Salem and stopped playing co-dependent to his former pastor's whack addiction. He did the same thing in the Q&A a few minutes later:
I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.
From a candidate and a campaign that have repeatedly addressed political "distractions" with little more than rhetorical dissertations, this felt, finally, like one of those much-vaunted, little-delivered breaths of fresh air. It took a lot more hot air and a few personal attacks to provoke it, but the result was refreshing nonetheless.
Less refreshing was Senator Obama's claim that he hadn't heard Reverend Wright's AIDS comments until Monday...
Q: Have you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?
BO: I had not. ... And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS... then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
...when they were, in fact, a matter of public record (and video infamy) weeks ago. They emerged, after all, long before the Philadelphia speech in which they were not addressed or even acknowledged. Does Senator Obama expect us to believe that, in all of the earlier eruptions over Reverend Wright's comments, he had never once heard, not even from his own aides, that Reverend Race-Baiter made those accusations? And if we do believe it -- which I don't -- then what does that say about Senator Obama's ability be informed on even the most simple and sensational of cultural matters? I mean, it's not like Bush and Brown and Chertoff failing to know about the evacuees at the New Orleans Convention Center, but neither is it a reassurance that Senator Obama will know even the most obvious facts of the problems to which he must respond.
Which leads us, finally, to why Senator Obama's Better Late Than Never Remarks yesterday still qualify as a Too Little Too Late Response today. It leads us to why the Reverend Wright, in all his loony, egomaniacal vainglory, still matters today just as he has mattered all along: because of what he suggests about the judgment of a man who, lacking enough experience or accomplishment to make his case, has repeatedly told us to trust his judgment.
And yet there he was yesterday, in the second paragraph of his opening statement, admitting that he may have erred in his (twenty years) of judgment of Reverend Wright:
And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.
If you don't well know a man who, in your own words, has been like family to [you,] a man who officiated [your] wedding and baptized [your] children and strengthened [your] faith and was a part of your life for the past twenty years, then who or what do you know well? What does that say, in the end, about your ability to see and to judge and to divine the true heart of a person, the true power of a moment, the true importance of an issue? If your judgment has been that intimately and consistently wrong for the last twenty years, how can you expect us to trust it for the next four? And how can you expect us to believe that you will not, as our current president so often has, be swayed by the thoughts and mistakes and sometimes even rank incompetencies (or, in this case, lunacies) of the men and women in your administration to whom you turn for counsel?
The closest Senator Obama comes to an answer, and it is hardly a reassuring one, appears earlier in the paragraph:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.
That is fair enough. And almost certainly true. But surely that change did not occurr just this week. Or month. Or year. Surely that change occurred, as all metamorphoses do, in distinct stages, with marked and obvious differences, with such sight and sound and occasional, irrational fury that someone whose great judgment, whose acute ability to assess a situation and divine a solution, is repeatedly being touted as Oval-Office-worthy, would have noticed, and then duly reacted, sometime between 1988 and the day before yesterday.
First, let's give credit where it's due: despite an over-reliance on his favorite vowel and at least a couple of slippery equivocations -- more on those in a moment -- Senator Obama yesterday wisely dispensed with the emotional aloofness and rhetorical sleight-of-hand that have so far characterized his remarks about Reverend Wright and, avoiding the airy rationalizations (a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice) of his wildly overpraised (if occasionally dissected) More Perfect Union speech, got right down to business:
When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that's what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
That's well-said and well-crafted. It hits right at the dark heart of Wright's paranoid absurdities, exposes them to the lights of sense and reason, and does not attempt to do anything but heap upon them the scorn they so richly deserve. It is precisely what he should have done last month: rather than teeter on an oratorical tightrope as he did in Philadelphia, Senator Obama went underground in Winston-Salem and stopped playing co-dependent to his former pastor's whack addiction. He did the same thing in the Q&A a few minutes later:
I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.
From a candidate and a campaign that have repeatedly addressed political "distractions" with little more than rhetorical dissertations, this felt, finally, like one of those much-vaunted, little-delivered breaths of fresh air. It took a lot more hot air and a few personal attacks to provoke it, but the result was refreshing nonetheless.
Less refreshing was Senator Obama's claim that he hadn't heard Reverend Wright's AIDS comments until Monday...
Q: Have you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?
BO: I had not. ... And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS... then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
...when they were, in fact, a matter of public record (and video infamy) weeks ago. They emerged, after all, long before the Philadelphia speech in which they were not addressed or even acknowledged. Does Senator Obama expect us to believe that, in all of the earlier eruptions over Reverend Wright's comments, he had never once heard, not even from his own aides, that Reverend Race-Baiter made those accusations? And if we do believe it -- which I don't -- then what does that say about Senator Obama's ability be informed on even the most simple and sensational of cultural matters? I mean, it's not like Bush and Brown and Chertoff failing to know about the evacuees at the New Orleans Convention Center, but neither is it a reassurance that Senator Obama will know even the most obvious facts of the problems to which he must respond.
Which leads us, finally, to why Senator Obama's Better Late Than Never Remarks yesterday still qualify as a Too Little Too Late Response today. It leads us to why the Reverend Wright, in all his loony, egomaniacal vainglory, still matters today just as he has mattered all along: because of what he suggests about the judgment of a man who, lacking enough experience or accomplishment to make his case, has repeatedly told us to trust his judgment.
And yet there he was yesterday, in the second paragraph of his opening statement, admitting that he may have erred in his (twenty years) of judgment of Reverend Wright:
And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.
If you don't well know a man who, in your own words, has been like family to [you,] a man who officiated [your] wedding and baptized [your] children and strengthened [your] faith and was a part of your life for the past twenty years, then who or what do you know well? What does that say, in the end, about your ability to see and to judge and to divine the true heart of a person, the true power of a moment, the true importance of an issue? If your judgment has been that intimately and consistently wrong for the last twenty years, how can you expect us to trust it for the next four? And how can you expect us to believe that you will not, as our current president so often has, be swayed by the thoughts and mistakes and sometimes even rank incompetencies (or, in this case, lunacies) of the men and women in your administration to whom you turn for counsel?
The closest Senator Obama comes to an answer, and it is hardly a reassuring one, appears earlier in the paragraph:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.
That is fair enough. And almost certainly true. But surely that change did not occurr just this week. Or month. Or year. Surely that change occurred, as all metamorphoses do, in distinct stages, with marked and obvious differences, with such sight and sound and occasional, irrational fury that someone whose great judgment, whose acute ability to assess a situation and divine a solution, is repeatedly being touted as Oval-Office-worthy, would have noticed, and then duly reacted, sometime between 1988 and the day before yesterday.
Posted at 10:15 AM
Tue - April 22, 2008
Sun - April 20, 2008
MUDDY WATERS
and murky bottoms.
Great headline at CNN.com this
afternoon:
Obama, Clinton take mudslinging break, attack negative ads
That just about says it all. Except, of course, that one of them keeps claiming to rise above that sort of thing.
Which is sort of like a Schuylkill River walleye claiming to live above the waterline.
Obama, Clinton take mudslinging break, attack negative ads
That just about says it all. Except, of course, that one of them keeps claiming to rise above that sort of thing.
Which is sort of like a Schuylkill River walleye claiming to live above the waterline.
Posted at 04:30 PM
DOWNBOUND TRAIN
or, riding the forked-tongue
express.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: New kind of
politics, my ass.
Here's Slate's John Dickerson, riding the Hypocrisy Train through Pennsylvania with Senator Breath of Fresh Air:
DOWNINGTON, Pa.— At the next train stop, I'm going to stand behind Senator Obama when he speaks. When he's decrying the trivial distractions in politics, I think he may be crossing his fingers behind his back.
As the Senator's campaign train wound from one speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics to the next speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics, his campaign hosted a conference call to engage in the practice the candidate was busy denouncing...
...Obama campaign aides scheduled the call to talk about Hillary Clinton's fantastical story about her breakneck race to shelter under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia. You might think this would be the last story the Obama campaign would be pushing, because in Wednesday's debate the Senator mistakenly suggested his campaign had only discussed the issue because reporters had brought it up, not because they were trying to take advantage of Clinton's extended work of fiction. To push the story again now would make Obama look even more insincere about that claim...
...On his train tour Saturday, Senator Obama continued to condemn the petty distractions that keep Americans from focusing on real issues. He decried Clinton's "tactics of Washington," in which she attacks him with every possible weapon. "She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying. The buffet is coming at me…when we get involved in the constant distractions the petty tit for tat politics…that may be good for the television ratings, but that's not good for you."
While the candidate was denouncing the distractions, his aides were promoting them. Three veterans of the Bosnia conflict joined for a conference call to explain just how crucial this particular distraction was, and why we should ignore Senator Obama's guidance and get obsessed with this issue.
Major General Walter Stewart explained that because Clinton had fabricated on the issue of sniper fire, Clinton would not be able to perform the traditional ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier who, he averred, was undoubtedly killed by sniper fire. "She will lack the moral authority to lay the wreath on Memorial Day," he said. She would also be unable to honor the veterans remembered on the Vietnam memorial because many of them had also been killed by sniper fire. Captain Aaron Clevenstine offered a variation on this theme: "As someone who trained snipers, I take offense to the notion that she was under sniper fire." Michael Kotyk, a retired veteran of the Navy broadened the significance of Clinton's yarn: "We've had 8 years of dishonor. We need honor. If you're going to tell stories then you're not displaying honor."
Shortly after the conference call ended, Senator Obama's train pulled into Downington and he worked the crowd into a frenzy denouncing the scourge of petty distracting attack politics.
In the end, I have to agree with Mr. Kotyk: if you're telling stories -- about what you weren't doing in Bosnia, or about what you are doing in your campaign -- you're not displaying honor. You're just another phony, hypocritical candidate playing politics as usual. No matter how often, or how loudly, you and your apologists proclaim otherwise.
Here's Slate's John Dickerson, riding the Hypocrisy Train through Pennsylvania with Senator Breath of Fresh Air:
DOWNINGTON, Pa.— At the next train stop, I'm going to stand behind Senator Obama when he speaks. When he's decrying the trivial distractions in politics, I think he may be crossing his fingers behind his back.
As the Senator's campaign train wound from one speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics to the next speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics, his campaign hosted a conference call to engage in the practice the candidate was busy denouncing...
...Obama campaign aides scheduled the call to talk about Hillary Clinton's fantastical story about her breakneck race to shelter under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia. You might think this would be the last story the Obama campaign would be pushing, because in Wednesday's debate the Senator mistakenly suggested his campaign had only discussed the issue because reporters had brought it up, not because they were trying to take advantage of Clinton's extended work of fiction. To push the story again now would make Obama look even more insincere about that claim...
...On his train tour Saturday, Senator Obama continued to condemn the petty distractions that keep Americans from focusing on real issues. He decried Clinton's "tactics of Washington," in which she attacks him with every possible weapon. "She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying. The buffet is coming at me…when we get involved in the constant distractions the petty tit for tat politics…that may be good for the television ratings, but that's not good for you."
While the candidate was denouncing the distractions, his aides were promoting them. Three veterans of the Bosnia conflict joined for a conference call to explain just how crucial this particular distraction was, and why we should ignore Senator Obama's guidance and get obsessed with this issue.
Major General Walter Stewart explained that because Clinton had fabricated on the issue of sniper fire, Clinton would not be able to perform the traditional ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier who, he averred, was undoubtedly killed by sniper fire. "She will lack the moral authority to lay the wreath on Memorial Day," he said. She would also be unable to honor the veterans remembered on the Vietnam memorial because many of them had also been killed by sniper fire. Captain Aaron Clevenstine offered a variation on this theme: "As someone who trained snipers, I take offense to the notion that she was under sniper fire." Michael Kotyk, a retired veteran of the Navy broadened the significance of Clinton's yarn: "We've had 8 years of dishonor. We need honor. If you're going to tell stories then you're not displaying honor."
Shortly after the conference call ended, Senator Obama's train pulled into Downington and he worked the crowd into a frenzy denouncing the scourge of petty distracting attack politics.
In the end, I have to agree with Mr. Kotyk: if you're telling stories -- about what you weren't doing in Bosnia, or about what you are doing in your campaign -- you're not displaying honor. You're just another phony, hypocritical candidate playing politics as usual. No matter how often, or how loudly, you and your apologists proclaim otherwise.
Posted at 10:42 AM
Sat - April 19, 2008
ONE OF THE GOOD QUESTIONS
and one of the not-so-good
answers.
I am, as you have by now long discerned, no fan of
Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid. This does not, of course -- the
logical fallacies of many irrational emailers notwithstanding -- make me a fan
of Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. But there are moments when the
difference between them, when the gap between both their popular perceptions and
their actual performances, is so striking that it makes me wonder if anyone
really is paying attention to details.
In the aftermath of the aftermath of Wednesday night's debate, when so many people are so busy talking about the "bad" questions -- just as an aside: if asking them for 45 minutes was so despicable and harmful to democracy, isn't talking about them for 48 hours a hell of a lot more so? -- I think it's instructive to consider both candidates' responses to one of the "good" questions, a little Mideast foreign policy number about Iran, Israel, and the nuclear tensions between.
What you will see, if you are look fairly and think critically, is the difference between someone trying to bluff his way through a job interview for which he is either scared or ill-prepared -- speaking in haughty principles and great, sweeping generalities, hoping upon hope that the interviewer does not notice or care that he hasn't actually answered the question -- and someone who, with abundant clarity and focus, is able to answer the question and explain the answer not just because she has crammed for the interview, but because she has mastered the material...
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Iran continues to pursue a nuclear option. Those weapons, if they got them, would probably pose the greatest threat to Israel. During the Cold War, it was the United States' policy to extend deterrence to our NATO allies. An attack on Great Britain would be treated as if it were an attack on the United States. Should it be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack on the United States?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, our first step should be to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians, and that has to be one of our top priorities. And I will make it one of our top priorities when I'm president of the United States.
I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons. I believe that that includes direct talks with the Iranians where we are laying out very clearly for them, here are the issues that we find unacceptable, not only development of nuclear weapons but also funding terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their anti-Israel rhetoric and threats towards Israel. I believe that we can offer them carrots and sticks, but we've got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is.
Now, my belief is that they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons, and that would include any threats directed at Israel or any of our allies in the region.
Six sentences. 188 words. But still no answer to a question that could have been answered in one of each.
Two vague promises. Three broad beliefs. And the undeniable air of someone who has been prepped and sound-bited for a question like this but who, for whatever reason or reasons, either fears or refuses to answer.
Stephanopoulos asked about an Iranian attack on Israel. 175 words into Obama's answer, and a full 53 words after talking about carrots and sticks, he finally (and vaguely) talks about any threats to Israel.
This is straight talk? This is a different kind of politics? This is a guy who makes the tough calls and is ready to lead with his extraordinary global vision?
Stephanopoulos, perhaps because he was out of lapel-pin questions, pressed Obama in a follow-up...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you would extend our deterrent to Israel?
SENATOR OBAMA: As I've said before, I think it is very important that Iran understands that an attack on Israel is an attack on our strongest ally in the region, one that we -- one whose security we consider paramount, and that -- that would be an act of aggression that we -- that I would -- that I would consider an attack that is unacceptable, and the United States would take appropriate action.
Notice that he still doesn't answer the question. Notice that, while claiming in his first answer that we've got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is, he can neither directly engages nor makes even remotely, vaguely clear what his posture would be. Notice that the great orator hems, haws, stumbles, repeats, pauses, and then ends with two of the great weasel words in the political candidates' lexicon: unacceptable, and appropriate.
There is much more to dislike, and perhaps even to fear, in this answer. But we'll get to that after we hear Senator Clinton's answer...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Clinton, would you?
SENATOR CLINTON: Well, in fact, George, I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region.
I'll interrupt here, if only to note that by the end of her second sentence, she has expanded the scope of the question, answered it directly, and done both without even the slightest hesitation or equivocation. You can differ with her answer and disagree with her policy, but by God, you know what they are.
You know, we are at a very dangerous point with Iran. The Bush policy has failed. Iran has not been deterred. They continue to try to not only obtain the fissile material for nuclear weapons but they are intent upon and using their efforts to intimidate the region and to have their way when it comes to the support of terrorism in Lebanon and elsewhere.
And I think that this is an opportunity, with skillful diplomacy, for the United States to go to the region and enlist the region in a security agreement vis-a-vis Iran. It would give us three tools we don't now have.
Number one, we've got to begin diplomatic engagement with Iran, and we want the region and the world to understand how serious we are about it. And I would begin those discussions at a low level. I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today he made light of 9/11 and said he's not even sure it happened and that people actually died. He's not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House. But I would have a diplomatic process that would engage him.
And secondly, we've got to deter other countries from feeling that they have to acquire nuclear weapons. You can't go to the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or UAE and others who have a legitimate concern about Iran and say: Well, don't acquire these weapons to defend yourself unless you're also willing to say we will provide a deterrent backup and we will let the Iranians know that, yes, an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation, but so would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under this security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions.
And finally we cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power. And this administration has failed in our efforts to convince the rest of the world that that is a danger, not only to us and not just to Israel but to the region and beyond.
Therefore we have got to have this process that reaches out, beyond even who we would put under the security umbrella, to get the rest of the world on our side to try to impose the kind of sanctions and diplomatic efforts that might prevent this from occurring.
Again: you may differ with the policy or disagree with the tactics, and you'll certainly want to know some more details down the road, but Senator Clinton unloaded 450 words of clarity and context and even some occasional nuance, all in stark contrast to Senator Obama's 260 words of evading and meandering and even some occasional stumbling.
Now. I noted above that there was much more to dislike about Senator Obama's two-part non-answer. I could expound upon that here myself, but I'll leave it to a TWM reader -- who, just for the record, is neither Jewish nor closely tied in any other way to Israel -- who emailed late Wednesday night, after watching the debate, and expressed some considerable outrage on this very point:
I am a believer in democracy, and one who is capable of recognizing that, with whatever inherent flaws might come of being a democracy under constant threat of attack, Israel exists as a western-style democracy in a sea of extremist theocracy and plutocracy that is the Middle East. It is, in short, an emblem of the ideals we as a nation hold to be universal -- as in the words "self-evident" in our foundation documents. A nation's commitment to protecting a fellow democracy, unto the sword if need be, is a measure of that nation's commitment to its core principles. And someone who wants to lead that nation should be able to answer a question about standing by such an ally without a circuitous answer. Sometimes the correct answer is "yes." And sometimes the more expansive version of that answer ought to be no more than "hell, yes."
Obama's answer has far less the air of John F. Kennedy than the stale aroma of Jimmy Carter -- a man of essential decency but a fatal weakness when it came to understanding that sometimes things really are worth fighting for.
If the man won't stand by Israel, to whom will he stand up?
An awfully good question. One to which we still do not have an answer. And one to which, with the distraction of all this talk about distractions, (almost) no one has paid any attention.
In the aftermath of the aftermath of Wednesday night's debate, when so many people are so busy talking about the "bad" questions -- just as an aside: if asking them for 45 minutes was so despicable and harmful to democracy, isn't talking about them for 48 hours a hell of a lot more so? -- I think it's instructive to consider both candidates' responses to one of the "good" questions, a little Mideast foreign policy number about Iran, Israel, and the nuclear tensions between.
What you will see, if you are look fairly and think critically, is the difference between someone trying to bluff his way through a job interview for which he is either scared or ill-prepared -- speaking in haughty principles and great, sweeping generalities, hoping upon hope that the interviewer does not notice or care that he hasn't actually answered the question -- and someone who, with abundant clarity and focus, is able to answer the question and explain the answer not just because she has crammed for the interview, but because she has mastered the material...
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Iran continues to pursue a nuclear option. Those weapons, if they got them, would probably pose the greatest threat to Israel. During the Cold War, it was the United States' policy to extend deterrence to our NATO allies. An attack on Great Britain would be treated as if it were an attack on the United States. Should it be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack on the United States?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, our first step should be to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians, and that has to be one of our top priorities. And I will make it one of our top priorities when I'm president of the United States.
I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons. I believe that that includes direct talks with the Iranians where we are laying out very clearly for them, here are the issues that we find unacceptable, not only development of nuclear weapons but also funding terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their anti-Israel rhetoric and threats towards Israel. I believe that we can offer them carrots and sticks, but we've got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is.
Now, my belief is that they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons, and that would include any threats directed at Israel or any of our allies in the region.
Six sentences. 188 words. But still no answer to a question that could have been answered in one of each.
Two vague promises. Three broad beliefs. And the undeniable air of someone who has been prepped and sound-bited for a question like this but who, for whatever reason or reasons, either fears or refuses to answer.
Stephanopoulos asked about an Iranian attack on Israel. 175 words into Obama's answer, and a full 53 words after talking about carrots and sticks, he finally (and vaguely) talks about any threats to Israel.
This is straight talk? This is a different kind of politics? This is a guy who makes the tough calls and is ready to lead with his extraordinary global vision?
Stephanopoulos, perhaps because he was out of lapel-pin questions, pressed Obama in a follow-up...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you would extend our deterrent to Israel?
SENATOR OBAMA: As I've said before, I think it is very important that Iran understands that an attack on Israel is an attack on our strongest ally in the region, one that we -- one whose security we consider paramount, and that -- that would be an act of aggression that we -- that I would -- that I would consider an attack that is unacceptable, and the United States would take appropriate action.
Notice that he still doesn't answer the question. Notice that, while claiming in his first answer that we've got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is, he can neither directly engages nor makes even remotely, vaguely clear what his posture would be. Notice that the great orator hems, haws, stumbles, repeats, pauses, and then ends with two of the great weasel words in the political candidates' lexicon: unacceptable, and appropriate.
There is much more to dislike, and perhaps even to fear, in this answer. But we'll get to that after we hear Senator Clinton's answer...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Clinton, would you?
SENATOR CLINTON: Well, in fact, George, I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region.
I'll interrupt here, if only to note that by the end of her second sentence, she has expanded the scope of the question, answered it directly, and done both without even the slightest hesitation or equivocation. You can differ with her answer and disagree with her policy, but by God, you know what they are.
You know, we are at a very dangerous point with Iran. The Bush policy has failed. Iran has not been deterred. They continue to try to not only obtain the fissile material for nuclear weapons but they are intent upon and using their efforts to intimidate the region and to have their way when it comes to the support of terrorism in Lebanon and elsewhere.
And I think that this is an opportunity, with skillful diplomacy, for the United States to go to the region and enlist the region in a security agreement vis-a-vis Iran. It would give us three tools we don't now have.
Number one, we've got to begin diplomatic engagement with Iran, and we want the region and the world to understand how serious we are about it. And I would begin those discussions at a low level. I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today he made light of 9/11 and said he's not even sure it happened and that people actually died. He's not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House. But I would have a diplomatic process that would engage him.
And secondly, we've got to deter other countries from feeling that they have to acquire nuclear weapons. You can't go to the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or UAE and others who have a legitimate concern about Iran and say: Well, don't acquire these weapons to defend yourself unless you're also willing to say we will provide a deterrent backup and we will let the Iranians know that, yes, an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation, but so would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under this security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions.
And finally we cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power. And this administration has failed in our efforts to convince the rest of the world that that is a danger, not only to us and not just to Israel but to the region and beyond.
Therefore we have got to have this process that reaches out, beyond even who we would put under the security umbrella, to get the rest of the world on our side to try to impose the kind of sanctions and diplomatic efforts that might prevent this from occurring.
Again: you may differ with the policy or disagree with the tactics, and you'll certainly want to know some more details down the road, but Senator Clinton unloaded 450 words of clarity and context and even some occasional nuance, all in stark contrast to Senator Obama's 260 words of evading and meandering and even some occasional stumbling.
Now. I noted above that there was much more to dislike about Senator Obama's two-part non-answer. I could expound upon that here myself, but I'll leave it to a TWM reader -- who, just for the record, is neither Jewish nor closely tied in any other way to Israel -- who emailed late Wednesday night, after watching the debate, and expressed some considerable outrage on this very point:
I am a believer in democracy, and one who is capable of recognizing that, with whatever inherent flaws might come of being a democracy under constant threat of attack, Israel exists as a western-style democracy in a sea of extremist theocracy and plutocracy that is the Middle East. It is, in short, an emblem of the ideals we as a nation hold to be universal -- as in the words "self-evident" in our foundation documents. A nation's commitment to protecting a fellow democracy, unto the sword if need be, is a measure of that nation's commitment to its core principles. And someone who wants to lead that nation should be able to answer a question about standing by such an ally without a circuitous answer. Sometimes the correct answer is "yes." And sometimes the more expansive version of that answer ought to be no more than "hell, yes."
Obama's answer has far less the air of John F. Kennedy than the stale aroma of Jimmy Carter -- a man of essential decency but a fatal weakness when it came to understanding that sometimes things really are worth fighting for.
If the man won't stand by Israel, to whom will he stand up?
An awfully good question. One to which we still do not have an answer. And one to which, with the distraction of all this talk about distractions, (almost) no one has paid any attention.
Posted at 10:27 AM
Wed - April 16, 2008
I KNOW WHAT I SEE
when i look in his eyes.
If the two dozen or so emails that just appeared in
my inbox are any indication, a lot of TWM readers are suddenly interested in
hearing more about Bruce Springsteen. Since I'm always happy to oblige, even
when I'm limited by certain self-imposed moratoria, I will suggest that Bruce,
who has in the past made some occasional poor judgments -- see Phillips,
Julianne; Kerry, John; and Touch, Human -- seems to have forgotten, or at
least willfully ignored, the lesson of one of his greatest and most painfully honest
songs:
So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes
Is that you, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?
So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes
Is that you, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?
Posted at 12:03 PM
Mon - April 14, 2008
I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO
but i'm keeping my word in
pennsylvania.
And it's killing
me.
Of all the weeks -- of all the bitter weeks -- to declare a moratorium...
Of all the weeks -- of all the bitter weeks -- to declare a moratorium...
Posted at 07:32 AM
Thu - April 10, 2008
THE PLOT THINS
the races thicken.
Interesting reading at Slate.com today: John Dickerson's
piece about how John McCain is ready to go where Republicans fear
to tread. In other words: to inner cities, heavily African-American
sections of the South, and poor sections of Appalachia. But also, it turns out:
to audiences not hand-picked, pre-screened, or guaranteed to love and coddle and
stroke his fragile ego. He'll be engaging -- or so we're told -- in unfiltered,
freewheeling town-hall meetings where attendees will be able to ask him anything
they want. Mark Salter, McCain's top advisor, says people will be free to
praise, chastise, and argue with
him.
Sounds good. Sounds even better when you consider what a stark contrast it is to the workings and shelterings and President-in-the-rhetorical-bubble-ings of George W. Bush. Or, for that matter, the prefabbed presidential campaign rallies of Barack Obama. And of Hillary Clinton. And of everyone, it seems, but Chelsea Clinton.
It should be fascinating to watch, not only to observe the fireworks and to gauge McCain's most (in)famous competing instincts -- authenticity, and anger -- in front of that most rare of political commodities: the honest-to-goodness, real-live, common-man-and-woman audience. And all the more so because it's intended to, among other things, draw a stark contrast between Maverick John and Smooth Talkin' Barack:
The McCain tour also aims to draw a contrast with Barack Obama. (They already assume he's going to win the nomination.) The GOP's attack will boil down to the accusation that Obama is a big phony. The Democrat gives them an opening: Obama talks about how he goes in front of hostile audiences, but he doesn't really do it much. He heralds his bipartisan appeal and talent for bringing people together, but his track record on these fronts is thin. He talks about how his administration will put its negotiations over policy on C-SPAN, but he has run a conventionally conservative campaign, keeping press access relatively low. When his top economic aide (and former Slate contributor), Austan Goolsbee, got into trouble, the campaign hid him under a bushel rather than offering him to reporters to answer questions. "Obama talks about doing these things," says a McCain aide, "he just doesn't do them." With big acts of accessibility and reaching out beyond his party ranks, McCain hopes to show as well as tell that Obama's promises to do the same are empty.
When you consider that attempt to draw a stark contrast with another piece of interesting reading today -- the Associated Press national poll numbers that show McCain pulling dead-even with both Senator Breath of Fresh Air and Senator Sniper Fire -- and you have all the makings of an interesting month indeed.
Between this stuff and the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it's all the drama we could possibly want. Or take.
Sounds good. Sounds even better when you consider what a stark contrast it is to the workings and shelterings and President-in-the-rhetorical-bubble-ings of George W. Bush. Or, for that matter, the prefabbed presidential campaign rallies of Barack Obama. And of Hillary Clinton. And of everyone, it seems, but Chelsea Clinton.
It should be fascinating to watch, not only to observe the fireworks and to gauge McCain's most (in)famous competing instincts -- authenticity, and anger -- in front of that most rare of political commodities: the honest-to-goodness, real-live, common-man-and-woman audience. And all the more so because it's intended to, among other things, draw a stark contrast between Maverick John and Smooth Talkin' Barack:
The McCain tour also aims to draw a contrast with Barack Obama. (They already assume he's going to win the nomination.) The GOP's attack will boil down to the accusation that Obama is a big phony. The Democrat gives them an opening: Obama talks about how he goes in front of hostile audiences, but he doesn't really do it much. He heralds his bipartisan appeal and talent for bringing people together, but his track record on these fronts is thin. He talks about how his administration will put its negotiations over policy on C-SPAN, but he has run a conventionally conservative campaign, keeping press access relatively low. When his top economic aide (and former Slate contributor), Austan Goolsbee, got into trouble, the campaign hid him under a bushel rather than offering him to reporters to answer questions. "Obama talks about doing these things," says a McCain aide, "he just doesn't do them." With big acts of accessibility and reaching out beyond his party ranks, McCain hopes to show as well as tell that Obama's promises to do the same are empty.
When you consider that attempt to draw a stark contrast with another piece of interesting reading today -- the Associated Press national poll numbers that show McCain pulling dead-even with both Senator Breath of Fresh Air and Senator Sniper Fire -- and you have all the makings of an interesting month indeed.
Between this stuff and the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it's all the drama we could possibly want. Or take.
Posted at 06:52 PM
I HATE TO SAY WE TOLD YOU SO
but we told you so.
Yesterday afternoon on the Kevin Miller show,
Pittsburgh City Councilman Ricky Burgess noted that if we don't do something
about the city's failing finances, we'll go bankrupt in two or three years. Mr.
Miller told the Rev. Burgess, you sound like Mark DeSantis. The Rev.
Burgess replied that he hoped he sounded like Rick Burgess. Which, of course,
he did. But that didn't stop him from sounding like Mark DeSantis.
And the thing is, a whole lot of people are sounding like Mark DeSantis these days. Even The Boy Who Would Be Mayor, who last year hemmed and hawed and cried Garbage collection in Wilkinsburg! like some foul little Tourette's Syndrome sufferer every time Mark argued for City/County consolidation, but who now, thanks to a near-death-bed conversion in the wake of the Nordenberg report, supports it. And especially the Rev. Burgess' colleagues on City Council, some new, some old, all of whom have suddenly grown balls and backbone enough to stand up to The Boy King, but who lacked both when we needed them most -- last fall, when they all were too concerned with their own asses and their own vote totals to do what this city really needed them to do: break ranks not with their party but with the most base and crass and incompetent local official of it. They're fighting a good fight now -- and they have, along with generous contributions from the Burghosphere, set in motion a series of events that rid us of the worst mayoral spokesperson for the history of time, may also rid us of her cigar-smoking, glad-handing, knuckle-dragging husband, and could even help Pittsburghers beyond the East End and the Mexican War Street see what a corrupt little sty we have for an administration -- but they could be doing a lot more good now, and wasting a lot less time since, if they'd stood on principle then.
Reducing costs. Eliminating perks. Doing more with less. Re-evaluating the URA. Pursuing Act 47 savings recommendations. Getting serious about private interests feeding at the public trough. Holding the mayor's office accountable for insider access and old-boy politics. Restoring a sense of competence and a commitment to public service on Grant Street.
Hmm.
Remember, in his concession speech, when Mark DeSantis said, Our efforts in this campaign have made -- and will continue to make -- our city stronger?
If the past few weeks, and especially the past few days, are any indication, it looks like he was -- like we were -- right about that too.
And the thing is, a whole lot of people are sounding like Mark DeSantis these days. Even The Boy Who Would Be Mayor, who last year hemmed and hawed and cried Garbage collection in Wilkinsburg! like some foul little Tourette's Syndrome sufferer every time Mark argued for City/County consolidation, but who now, thanks to a near-death-bed conversion in the wake of the Nordenberg report, supports it. And especially the Rev. Burgess' colleagues on City Council, some new, some old, all of whom have suddenly grown balls and backbone enough to stand up to The Boy King, but who lacked both when we needed them most -- last fall, when they all were too concerned with their own asses and their own vote totals to do what this city really needed them to do: break ranks not with their party but with the most base and crass and incompetent local official of it. They're fighting a good fight now -- and they have, along with generous contributions from the Burghosphere, set in motion a series of events that rid us of the worst mayoral spokesperson for the history of time, may also rid us of her cigar-smoking, glad-handing, knuckle-dragging husband, and could even help Pittsburghers beyond the East End and the Mexican War Street see what a corrupt little sty we have for an administration -- but they could be doing a lot more good now, and wasting a lot less time since, if they'd stood on principle then.
Reducing costs. Eliminating perks. Doing more with less. Re-evaluating the URA. Pursuing Act 47 savings recommendations. Getting serious about private interests feeding at the public trough. Holding the mayor's office accountable for insider access and old-boy politics. Restoring a sense of competence and a commitment to public service on Grant Street.
Hmm.
Remember, in his concession speech, when Mark DeSantis said, Our efforts in this campaign have made -- and will continue to make -- our city stronger?
If the past few weeks, and especially the past few days, are any indication, it looks like he was -- like we were -- right about that too.
Posted at 02:16 PM
Tue - April 8, 2008
DISASSOCIATED FROM EVERYTHING
and nothing.
More required reading from Christopher Hitchens.
Every last word of it.
It seems all the more necessary and instructive today, when we read in the New York Times that 62-year-old men are being swayed in matters of great social and political and historical importance by the insights of their seven-year-old grandsons, but one day after a twenty-something former student of mine had both audacity of hype and paucity of perspective enough to write on his Facebook page: [I] would have stood alongside MLK 45 years ago. 45 years from now will you have to explain to your children why you didn't stand alongside Barack Obama?
For those two men, and for the millions more like them making the same myopic mistakes, here are the money sentences from Mr. Hitchens' final paragraph:
This is a lot sadder, and a lot more serious, than has been admitted. Four decades after the murder in Memphis of a friend of the working man—a hero who was always being denounced by the FBI for his choice of secular and socialist friends and colleagues—the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists who hope to franchise "race talk" into a fat living for themselves... Who now cares to commemorate Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or the other giants of struggle and solidarity in whose debt we live? So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.
No matter what his elementary school fan base might tell you.
It seems all the more necessary and instructive today, when we read in the New York Times that 62-year-old men are being swayed in matters of great social and political and historical importance by the insights of their seven-year-old grandsons, but one day after a twenty-something former student of mine had both audacity of hype and paucity of perspective enough to write on his Facebook page: [I] would have stood alongside MLK 45 years ago. 45 years from now will you have to explain to your children why you didn't stand alongside Barack Obama?
For those two men, and for the millions more like them making the same myopic mistakes, here are the money sentences from Mr. Hitchens' final paragraph:
This is a lot sadder, and a lot more serious, than has been admitted. Four decades after the murder in Memphis of a friend of the working man—a hero who was always being denounced by the FBI for his choice of secular and socialist friends and colleagues—the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists who hope to franchise "race talk" into a fat living for themselves... Who now cares to commemorate Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or the other giants of struggle and solidarity in whose debt we live? So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.
No matter what his elementary school fan base might tell you.
Posted at 11:25 AM
Mon - April 7, 2008
SUPERDELEGATE SUPERSERIOUS
yeah, you cried and you cried.
Alright. Let's get something straight once and for
all.
Hillary Clinton can not possibly win the Democratic nomination without the support of a whole lot of (so-called) Super Delegates. That is true. Of course, it's also true that Barack Obama can not possibly win the Democratic nomination without the support of a whole lot of those same (so-called) Super Delegates.
Now. I hate the whole idea of Super Delegates -- for truth in advertising, they should be called UnDemocratic Delegates -- almost as much as I hate the proportional delegate assignment that's gotten us to the point where we have to worry about who people like Sophie Masloff decide to vote for anyway. But the rules are the rules, and these are the rules by which a typically long-winded, short-sighted Democratic Party has agreed to play. And so play by them we must.
Which means, of course, that these (so-called) Super Delegates, the gurglings from beneath Nancy Pelosi's death mask not withstanding, are free to vote their conscience. You know, just like everyone else in the country. They don't have to worry about which candidate won the popular vote in their state, or which candidate is winning the popular vote overall, or even which candidate would, while delivering pretty speeches or dodging incoming sniper fire, be the best person to answer John McCain's phone calls at 3am. They just have to vote for the candidate they think, for whatever wise or foolish reasons they decide, would make the Democrats' best presidential candidate.
In other words, they get to do what every other voter who's come before them gets to do: size up the candidates and, based on their own personal whims and instincts and prejudices, make a gloriously informed, or deliriously uninformed, choice.
Which means, in the end, that all this talk about subverting democracy and risking a backlash and repudiating the will of the people is just so much horse -- er, donkey -- manure. No one told the people of New Hampshire that they had to vote for Barack Obama, lest they subvert Democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people in Iowa who had already voted. No one told the people in South Carolina that they had to vote for Hillary Clinton, lest they subvert democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people in New Hampshire who had already voted. And no one, the audacity of hope and temerity of faith be damned, is telling the people of Pennsylvania that they must vote for Hillary Clinton because she won in Ohio, or that they must vote for Barack Obama because he's still winning the popular vote overall, lest they subvert democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people and make either Bob Casey or Ed Rendell cry.
The much-ballyhooed (so-called) Super Delegates will, like all the caucusers and all the voters in all the states so far, finally have their chance to cast their votes and deliver their support. And to suggest that they must allow those votes to be swayed or influenced or dictated, in some or any considerable way, by the votes that happen to have been cast before theirs, is as great a subversion of democracy, and as great a repudiation of the will of those individual people, as you are ever likely to find.
After all, what could possibly be less Democratic -- or more anti-American -- than telling people that their own votes must necessarily be decided by someone else's?
Hillary Clinton can not possibly win the Democratic nomination without the support of a whole lot of (so-called) Super Delegates. That is true. Of course, it's also true that Barack Obama can not possibly win the Democratic nomination without the support of a whole lot of those same (so-called) Super Delegates.
Now. I hate the whole idea of Super Delegates -- for truth in advertising, they should be called UnDemocratic Delegates -- almost as much as I hate the proportional delegate assignment that's gotten us to the point where we have to worry about who people like Sophie Masloff decide to vote for anyway. But the rules are the rules, and these are the rules by which a typically long-winded, short-sighted Democratic Party has agreed to play. And so play by them we must.
Which means, of course, that these (so-called) Super Delegates, the gurglings from beneath Nancy Pelosi's death mask not withstanding, are free to vote their conscience. You know, just like everyone else in the country. They don't have to worry about which candidate won the popular vote in their state, or which candidate is winning the popular vote overall, or even which candidate would, while delivering pretty speeches or dodging incoming sniper fire, be the best person to answer John McCain's phone calls at 3am. They just have to vote for the candidate they think, for whatever wise or foolish reasons they decide, would make the Democrats' best presidential candidate.
In other words, they get to do what every other voter who's come before them gets to do: size up the candidates and, based on their own personal whims and instincts and prejudices, make a gloriously informed, or deliriously uninformed, choice.
Which means, in the end, that all this talk about subverting democracy and risking a backlash and repudiating the will of the people is just so much horse -- er, donkey -- manure. No one told the people of New Hampshire that they had to vote for Barack Obama, lest they subvert Democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people in Iowa who had already voted. No one told the people in South Carolina that they had to vote for Hillary Clinton, lest they subvert democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people in New Hampshire who had already voted. And no one, the audacity of hope and temerity of faith be damned, is telling the people of Pennsylvania that they must vote for Hillary Clinton because she won in Ohio, or that they must vote for Barack Obama because he's still winning the popular vote overall, lest they subvert democracy and risk a backlash and repudiate the will of the people and make either Bob Casey or Ed Rendell cry.
The much-ballyhooed (so-called) Super Delegates will, like all the caucusers and all the voters in all the states so far, finally have their chance to cast their votes and deliver their support. And to suggest that they must allow those votes to be swayed or influenced or dictated, in some or any considerable way, by the votes that happen to have been cast before theirs, is as great a subversion of democracy, and as great a repudiation of the will of those individual people, as you are ever likely to find.
After all, what could possibly be less Democratic -- or more anti-American -- than telling people that their own votes must necessarily be decided by someone else's?
Posted at 09:50 AM
Thu - April 3, 2008
THE FULL SECESSION
from a less perfect union.
Because several emailers have asked me to do this,
because the original pieces were posted in four installments across seven days,
and because it seems especially fitting on a morning when a Michelle Obama
love-fest is masquerading as front-page news in the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, I'm going to provide, here in one convenient place, the links
to all four parts of my response to, secession from, and deconstruction of
Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed A More Perfect Union
speech:
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four.
One emailer claimed I was bitter, demented, and delusional for daring to suggest that Senator Obama's speech was anything less than brave and brilliant. Another suggested my analysis of the speech should be required reading in every high school in America, and that it was a brilliant primer on how to cut through a purposefully created fog. Wherever you stand, and however you fall, you can here have ready access to every word of the original (in case like this, there's no such thing as being taken out of context at TWM), and to every word of the analysis.
Enjoy. (Or not.)
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four.
One emailer claimed I was bitter, demented, and delusional for daring to suggest that Senator Obama's speech was anything less than brave and brilliant. Another suggested my analysis of the speech should be required reading in every high school in America, and that it was a brilliant primer on how to cut through a purposefully created fog. Wherever you stand, and however you fall, you can here have ready access to every word of the original (in case like this, there's no such thing as being taken out of context at TWM), and to every word of the analysis.
Enjoy. (Or not.)
Posted at 09:11 AM
Wed - April 2, 2008
A LESS PERFECT UNION, PART FOUR
and a more fitting metaphor.
And now the political-speechifying-response
equivalent of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Not quite as
calculated, but with almost as much
carnage...
But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God...
I am never quite comfortable when someone who found God late in life -- much less with the help of a paranoid and irrational tour guide -- blusters about the strength of his faith. Of course, for that matter, I'm never quite comfortable when anyone, save a man or woman of the cloth whose job it is to do so, blusters about the strength of his faith.
Audacity of Hope? How about a little Humility of Faith?
...and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
We must work together to heal our racial wounds and become a more perfect union. This is not exactly revolutionary stuff, folks. (Though you'd never know that to hear the endless praise of the speech.) I'm pretty sure I've heard a few people, sometime, somewhere, say this before. And not when they were forced to by their own uncertainty and equivocation over the paranoia and racism of one of their close confidantes.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.
This is a good line and a good prescription. Though it would be even better if he suggested that large swaths of that community should stop being victims of its present. And of its future.
It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.
I know at least one white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling that he will not support. But other than that, hard to argue with this passage either. Which is kind of refreshing, considering there is so much to argue with in so many other places.
You know, if you look. And think.
And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children,...
Finally. A couple of clauses on fatherhood and family and personal responsibility.
But this will be all. One sentence, among almost 5,000 words, to address the single greatest failing of, and the single greatest problem now facing, the African-American community today. So much for straight talk.
...and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
And so much for getting serious and substantive in your prescriptions for an ailing community.
Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
He failed to understand a hell of a lot more than that.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
Uh, no. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is that he said stupid, paranoid, profoundly and demonstrably untrue things with all the fire and fervor of a KKK Grand Dragon trying to rile up the troops before a cross-burning.
In other words, he responded to ignorance and racism with ignorance and racism.
But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Not content simply to quote himself, now he paraphrases and alludes to and maybe even pays homage to himself too. Which is, in the end, rather fitting. Because with each passing day it becomes clearer and clearer that the only real audacity Senator Obama ever shows is for the hope of his own presidency.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people;...
A good point. Though it would have been even better if he'd noted that, for the black community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of white people. Or in the dark corners of a culture that, while it beats a Rodney King, also produces a Colin Powell. Or a Barack Obama.
...that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.
Though I (and plenty of other amazing, successful, productive black men and women) would argue that there were most certainly ladders of opportunity for previous generations, the rest of this passage is spot-on.
Though, again, I can't help but wonder: where are the similar prescriptions for the African-American community? Besides reading to their children, what, exactly, do they need to work on?
This is straight and honest talk about race? This is uniting white and black? Making one side feel guilty and giving the other a free pass? In what is supposed to be one of the great and thoughtful speeches on race in American history? Please.
I can't wait to see how he tries to unite Democrats and Republicans. Though you'll forgive me for lacking the audacity of hope that it will amount to more than guilt-tripping Republicans and there-there-ing Democrats.
It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
Amen, brother.
Though, again, I'm still trying to figure out what's so unique or historic or revolutionary about these ideas. Consider, for example, this passage:
Every child in this country deserves to grow in knowledge and character and ideals. Nothing in my view is more important to our prosperity and goodness than cultivated minds and courageous hearts. As W.E.B. DuBois said a century ago, "Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States." Education is the essential beginning, but we've got to go further. To create communities of promise, we must help people build the confidence and faith to achieve their own dreams.
You know who said that? Presidential candidate George W. Bush. In the same July 2000 speech to the NAACP during which he unveiled a phrase more artful and powerful than anything I've yet heard fall from Senator Obama's lips: the soft bigotry of low expectations.
It was a great line. In a pretty good speech that, eight years ago, from a guy who would soon turn all of these dreams into nightmares, said the same things Senator Obama is saying now. What's the difference? You tell me.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
I don't believe that scripture said anything about the spirit our politics should reflect. But then that's the problem with paraphrasing scripture and delivering the Golden Rule as if it were a golden ticket at the end of a long and winding speech: where common sense ends and clichéd sensibilities begin, it can often be hard to tell.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news.
If he really thinks the attention piled upon the O.J. trial was about race, not about class or fame or celebrity or the tawdry combinations of bloody murder and all of the above, then he's even less intellectually honest than I feared. If he doesn't really think that, then he's even more of a phony than I thought.
We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
Note, again, the mathematics of obfuscation:
Offensive, incendiary remarks, made by my spiritual advisor of twenty years, and about which I have given conflicting responses = a gaffe by some Hillary supporter = John McCain's whiteness.
Wow. That may be the most disingenuous passage in the whole speech.
We can do that.
No, we can't.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
Translation: I am the hope and the change.
Or maybe: I am the resurrection and the life.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st-century economy. Not this time.
I had no idea that Hillary Clinton and John McCain didn't want to talk about those things. Or that the only way we could possibly help our poor children is to ignore your obfuscation and your disingenuous rhetoric and vote for you, Senator. Thanks for clearing that up.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I'll give him points for craft and for rhetorical fire here, even as I deduct even more for the sheer folly and hubris of it all. Because we've talked about all of these things before. Over and over and over again. The problem has not been the lack of talking -- it's been the lack of doing. It's been the lack of political will and practical application that stalls all solutions (even the bad ones) to these problems in a kind of socio-political purgatory between happy talk and hard choices.
But forget all of that for a moment. My real objection here, as it has been all along with Senator Obama and especially with his supporters, is the notion that talking about these things is somehow different. Or that talking about talking about them, or that talking about doing something about them, or that thinking about talking about doing something about them, is somehow new and fresh and the exclusive province of Senator Breath of Fresh Air.
Senator Obama (and his wife) and all of his most fawning, uncritical supporters are like those really annoying parents-to-be who, for the nine months of their child's gestation, become so wrapped up in themselves and their experience that they speak and act (and annoy) as if they are the only people in the history of the world ever to have been expecting a child. Every detail is a drama, every moment a monument; they can not possibly conceive of a world or an experience outside their own making.
I'm at the point now where I just want to shove old speeches (like that one from candidate Bush above) and old sonogram pictures and anything else I can find right up in their smug, self-absorbed faces and scream, YOU AREN'T THE FIRST PEOPLE EVER TO RUN A CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT AND TALK ABOUT RACE OR CHANGE OR CHILDREN! GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES!
It wouldn't make a bit of difference. But it sure would feel good.
I would not be running for president if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.
And what, exactly, what that be? Talking about the issues? You running for President? Someone to feed their own narcissism?
This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
Translation: what gives me hope is that young people love me.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today — a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
Nice name dropping, Senator.
Oh, and here's one more nit to pick: he didn't actually speak there on Dr. King's birthday; he spoke six days after his birthday, on the federal holiday honoring his birthday.
There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Somebody might have told Ashley that the source of her mother's cancer were black who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally? Really?
When you're gonna go with one of these up-with-the-people stories -- and I blame Bill Clinton for all of them; he wasn't the first to use them, but he used them so damned effectively that everyone who came after him feel compelled to use them -- you must, at the very least, be sure that your Inspiration matches your Narration, and that your Straw Men match your Boogey Men.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
If there's anything I hate more -- damn you again, Bill Clinton! -- than these speech-ending tear-jerkers, it's one of these speech-ending tear-jerkers that doesn't give us enough information truly to appreciate it.
Why was he there because of Ashley? What did he mean by that? What was he really thinking?
Apparently none of those things -- you know, the real, honest, emotional complexities of the moment and of the people involved -- is really important. The only important things here are the pithiness of the tale and the emptiness of the rhetoric.
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
Indeed.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Where? In Philadelphia? In an allegedly meaningful moment of recognition that he can't even be bothered adequately to explain?
This conclusion is so weak, so ill-defined, so squishy and schmaltzy and insufferably sappy that it almost makes my head explode. It's an anecdote without end, without explanation, and without any sort of real or practical application -- not just to the point it's trying to make, but to the themes of the speech it's purporting to conclude. And yet I suppose that in that sense, as a kind of empty, feel-good, rhetorical non-sequitur, it is as fitting a conclusion for this speech, and as apt a metaphor for this campaign, as I could possibly imagine.
The Audacity of Hope? More like The Mendacity of Hype.
But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God...
I am never quite comfortable when someone who found God late in life -- much less with the help of a paranoid and irrational tour guide -- blusters about the strength of his faith. Of course, for that matter, I'm never quite comfortable when anyone, save a man or woman of the cloth whose job it is to do so, blusters about the strength of his faith.
Audacity of Hope? How about a little Humility of Faith?
...and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
We must work together to heal our racial wounds and become a more perfect union. This is not exactly revolutionary stuff, folks. (Though you'd never know that to hear the endless praise of the speech.) I'm pretty sure I've heard a few people, sometime, somewhere, say this before. And not when they were forced to by their own uncertainty and equivocation over the paranoia and racism of one of their close confidantes.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.
This is a good line and a good prescription. Though it would be even better if he suggested that large swaths of that community should stop being victims of its present. And of its future.
It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.
I know at least one white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling that he will not support. But other than that, hard to argue with this passage either. Which is kind of refreshing, considering there is so much to argue with in so many other places.
You know, if you look. And think.
And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children,...
Finally. A couple of clauses on fatherhood and family and personal responsibility.
But this will be all. One sentence, among almost 5,000 words, to address the single greatest failing of, and the single greatest problem now facing, the African-American community today. So much for straight talk.
...and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
And so much for getting serious and substantive in your prescriptions for an ailing community.
Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
He failed to understand a hell of a lot more than that.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
Uh, no. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is that he said stupid, paranoid, profoundly and demonstrably untrue things with all the fire and fervor of a KKK Grand Dragon trying to rile up the troops before a cross-burning.
In other words, he responded to ignorance and racism with ignorance and racism.
But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Not content simply to quote himself, now he paraphrases and alludes to and maybe even pays homage to himself too. Which is, in the end, rather fitting. Because with each passing day it becomes clearer and clearer that the only real audacity Senator Obama ever shows is for the hope of his own presidency.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people;...
A good point. Though it would have been even better if he'd noted that, for the black community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of white people. Or in the dark corners of a culture that, while it beats a Rodney King, also produces a Colin Powell. Or a Barack Obama.
...that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.
Though I (and plenty of other amazing, successful, productive black men and women) would argue that there were most certainly ladders of opportunity for previous generations, the rest of this passage is spot-on.
Though, again, I can't help but wonder: where are the similar prescriptions for the African-American community? Besides reading to their children, what, exactly, do they need to work on?
This is straight and honest talk about race? This is uniting white and black? Making one side feel guilty and giving the other a free pass? In what is supposed to be one of the great and thoughtful speeches on race in American history? Please.
I can't wait to see how he tries to unite Democrats and Republicans. Though you'll forgive me for lacking the audacity of hope that it will amount to more than guilt-tripping Republicans and there-there-ing Democrats.
It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
Amen, brother.
Though, again, I'm still trying to figure out what's so unique or historic or revolutionary about these ideas. Consider, for example, this passage:
Every child in this country deserves to grow in knowledge and character and ideals. Nothing in my view is more important to our prosperity and goodness than cultivated minds and courageous hearts. As W.E.B. DuBois said a century ago, "Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States." Education is the essential beginning, but we've got to go further. To create communities of promise, we must help people build the confidence and faith to achieve their own dreams.
You know who said that? Presidential candidate George W. Bush. In the same July 2000 speech to the NAACP during which he unveiled a phrase more artful and powerful than anything I've yet heard fall from Senator Obama's lips: the soft bigotry of low expectations.
It was a great line. In a pretty good speech that, eight years ago, from a guy who would soon turn all of these dreams into nightmares, said the same things Senator Obama is saying now. What's the difference? You tell me.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
I don't believe that scripture said anything about the spirit our politics should reflect. But then that's the problem with paraphrasing scripture and delivering the Golden Rule as if it were a golden ticket at the end of a long and winding speech: where common sense ends and clichéd sensibilities begin, it can often be hard to tell.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news.
If he really thinks the attention piled upon the O.J. trial was about race, not about class or fame or celebrity or the tawdry combinations of bloody murder and all of the above, then he's even less intellectually honest than I feared. If he doesn't really think that, then he's even more of a phony than I thought.
We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
Note, again, the mathematics of obfuscation:
Offensive, incendiary remarks, made by my spiritual advisor of twenty years, and about which I have given conflicting responses = a gaffe by some Hillary supporter = John McCain's whiteness.
Wow. That may be the most disingenuous passage in the whole speech.
We can do that.
No, we can't.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
Translation: I am the hope and the change.
Or maybe: I am the resurrection and the life.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st-century economy. Not this time.
I had no idea that Hillary Clinton and John McCain didn't want to talk about those things. Or that the only way we could possibly help our poor children is to ignore your obfuscation and your disingenuous rhetoric and vote for you, Senator. Thanks for clearing that up.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I'll give him points for craft and for rhetorical fire here, even as I deduct even more for the sheer folly and hubris of it all. Because we've talked about all of these things before. Over and over and over again. The problem has not been the lack of talking -- it's been the lack of doing. It's been the lack of political will and practical application that stalls all solutions (even the bad ones) to these problems in a kind of socio-political purgatory between happy talk and hard choices.
But forget all of that for a moment. My real objection here, as it has been all along with Senator Obama and especially with his supporters, is the notion that talking about these things is somehow different. Or that talking about talking about them, or that talking about doing something about them, or that thinking about talking about doing something about them, is somehow new and fresh and the exclusive province of Senator Breath of Fresh Air.
Senator Obama (and his wife) and all of his most fawning, uncritical supporters are like those really annoying parents-to-be who, for the nine months of their child's gestation, become so wrapped up in themselves and their experience that they speak and act (and annoy) as if they are the only people in the history of the world ever to have been expecting a child. Every detail is a drama, every moment a monument; they can not possibly conceive of a world or an experience outside their own making.
I'm at the point now where I just want to shove old speeches (like that one from candidate Bush above) and old sonogram pictures and anything else I can find right up in their smug, self-absorbed faces and scream, YOU AREN'T THE FIRST PEOPLE EVER TO RUN A CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT AND TALK ABOUT RACE OR CHANGE OR CHILDREN! GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES!
It wouldn't make a bit of difference. But it sure would feel good.
I would not be running for president if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.
And what, exactly, what that be? Talking about the issues? You running for President? Someone to feed their own narcissism?
This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
Translation: what gives me hope is that young people love me.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today — a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
Nice name dropping, Senator.
Oh, and here's one more nit to pick: he didn't actually speak there on Dr. King's birthday; he spoke six days after his birthday, on the federal holiday honoring his birthday.
There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Somebody might have told Ashley that the source of her mother's cancer were black who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally? Really?
When you're gonna go with one of these up-with-the-people stories -- and I blame Bill Clinton for all of them; he wasn't the first to use them, but he used them so damned effectively that everyone who came after him feel compelled to use them -- you must, at the very least, be sure that your Inspiration matches your Narration, and that your Straw Men match your Boogey Men.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
If there's anything I hate more -- damn you again, Bill Clinton! -- than these speech-ending tear-jerkers, it's one of these speech-ending tear-jerkers that doesn't give us enough information truly to appreciate it.
Why was he there because of Ashley? What did he mean by that? What was he really thinking?
Apparently none of those things -- you know, the real, honest, emotional complexities of the moment and of the people involved -- is really important. The only important things here are the pithiness of the tale and the emptiness of the rhetoric.
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
Indeed.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Where? In Philadelphia? In an allegedly meaningful moment of recognition that he can't even be bothered adequately to explain?
This conclusion is so weak, so ill-defined, so squishy and schmaltzy and insufferably sappy that it almost makes my head explode. It's an anecdote without end, without explanation, and without any sort of real or practical application -- not just to the point it's trying to make, but to the themes of the speech it's purporting to conclude. And yet I suppose that in that sense, as a kind of empty, feel-good, rhetorical non-sequitur, it is as fitting a conclusion for this speech, and as apt a metaphor for this campaign, as I could possibly imagine.
The Audacity of Hope? More like The Mendacity of Hype.
Posted at 10:26 AM
Tue - April 1, 2008
THE BUS STOPS FOR SOME BUDS
sweet barack.
I'll say this for the guy: his campaign handlers know the best chocolate -- and one of the best little towns -- in America. If anything, any time, were ever gonna make me consider voting for him, charming the ladies at the Wilbur Chocolate Factory in Lititz just might be it.
Pretty sweet, Senator. Pretty darned sweet.
Posted at 08:26 AM
Sun - March 30, 2008
A LESS PERFECT UNION, PART THREE
and a most convenient omission.
Now back to the (untold) state of the Union
speech...
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable.
I can't argue with that.
I can assure you it is not.
With this, I can. And have. And will again argue.
I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.
True. Though I would suggest that the second most politically safe thing to do, at least for this candidate, would be to deliver a great, flowery, subtly equivocating speech on the state of race in the union and let the Obamedia fawn and drool over it. Which is, of course, the political and intellectual equivalent of, when someone asks you why you own a vicious pit bull, answering, Hey, look at those pretty birdies behind the doghouse!
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
Do you see what he's doing here? If it weren't so slick, it would be really offensive.
He is, both logically and rhetorically, equating Geraldine Ferraro said to what the Rev. Wright said. He's equating the suggestion that race -- you know, the very subject that Senator Obama here uses to propel his candidacy even closer to the nomination -- has in some way helped fuel his candidacy with the suggestion that the United States government created AIDS to kill black people. He's equating an arguable, debatable, quite possibly wrong (but also, perhaps, quite valid) argument with paranoid fiction and lunatic demagoguery.
See, we both have one, he says. And he is wrong. And he is unfair. And he knows it.
Even if few people seem to care.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.
Especially because my crazy spiritual advisor has now forced me to talk about it.
We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
Is that really the mistake that Reverend Wright made? What negative did he amplify when he suggested that the government invented AIDS to kill blacks? What simplification led him to the conclusion that the USA is like one big chapter of the KKK?
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
Translation: it's not Reverend Wright's fault, and it's not mine either. It's everyone's fault.
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Translation: let's not talk about this unpleasant stuff that may hurt my candidacy.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”
Faulkner never wrote that. What he did write was, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
But hey, close enough, right?
We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
You see those birdies behind the doghouse? Well, you should have seen the big, scary birdies that used to live there. Long before that doghouse came along.
And they were big. And they were scary. But I'm not sure that, now that they're long gone, we still have to run and cower and hide from them, or use them as an excuse when our crazy pit bull goes out and bites a couple of people in the neighborhood.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
So does a hell of a lot of other things that, well, Senator Obama conveniently forgets to mention here.
Legalized discrimination — where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments — meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
Forgiving, once more, how far he is from what this speech was supposed to be about -- namely his relationship to, and his knowledge of, the irredeemable thoughts and ravings of his self-proclaimed spiritual advisor -- let's note, again, that there are plenty of other factors (by which I mean, choices) that help explain that gap too.
Perhaps Bill Cosby could explain them to us.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families — a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods — parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement — all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
What else helped create that cycle, Senator? Anything? Anything at all? Any choices or behaviors or self-imposed patterns of self-destructive behavior that you seem perfectly content not to mention?
How a speech that purports to be an honest and thorough examination of race in contemporary America, and that also purports to talk straight and true about the problems that beset both the black and white communities, can move through almost 5,000 words and never once speak the words drugs or guns or wedlock, never once utter the phrases single mothers or absent fathers, never once talk about the terrible cycle of children have children or a pervasive culture of dependency, is most surely a fake. Or a failure. Or both.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late '50s and early '60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.
So did a hell of a lot of other people who did not grow up to spout venomous untruths.
What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
So very true. But that just begs the question: if so much was right with those people, then what is wrong with Rev. Wright?
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it — those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations — those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.
That legacy was just passed on? It was handed down, like a hereditary disease, like a genetic deformity, like something they could not help and could not escape?
Tell that to all the people who did.
And then, when you're done hearing their stories, try, if only for a moment, to figure out what the difference is between them and the people standing on the street corners and languishing in the prisons. Is it luck? Chance? Fate? Or something more clear and definable -- and maybe even laudable -- that is inconvenient to mention but, in times like these, at least, convenient to forget for the sake of the (flawed) argument?
Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.
For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
Amen to that.
I would suggest that Senator Obama may even be doing that right here in this speech. Or even in other parts of his candidacy. But then I would be labeled as bad as Geraldine Ferraro. Which would make me just as bad as the Rev. Wright. And, God Damn, America, I don't want any part of that.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.
Oh, come on, Senator. They weren't surprised to hear the anger; they were surprised to hear the bullshit. The lies. And the paranoia.
That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition,...
Oh, yes, there it is. A brief mention of complicity, buried in the middle of a long passage that otherwise focuses on -- and justifies -- the righteous anger of bigots and zealots like the Rev. Wright.
...and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
Imagine if someone said we could not condemn murder without understanding the roots of a murderer's anger. Or that we could not condemn rape without understanding the roots of a rapist's anger.
Apples and oranges? Okay.
Now imagine if someone said we could not condemn white racism without understanding the roots of the racist's anger. Without wanting to lift up the hood and look deep into the soul of some lynching, cross-burning bastard.
That might be interesting. But Senator Obama doesn't do it. Watch what he does instead.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
This is a wonderful passage. For my eye and ear, it may be -- at least if you take it at face value -- the best and most honest passage in the whole speech, explaining, even as it does not excuse, the seeds and inspirations of a very real kind of latent white racism.
But we can just take it at face value. Nor can we ignore the slippery transitions that have led Senator Obama to this point. He has figured the Rev. Wright's absurdities as just another justifiable kind of black anger. Now he's gone and drawn a parallel between that black anger and this "similar" anger in the white community. Now. It's been a while since I took Honors Geometry, but I remember the transitive postulate well. And if the Rev. Wright = Black Anger, and Black Anger = White Anger, then the Rev. Wright = White Anger.
To which I am compelled to add, That Equation = Bullshit. Q.E.D.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.
So Reagan was elected thanks to festering racism? Is that what you're saying, Senator?
Just checking.
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends.
This, of course, is true. And lamentable. (Michael Dukakis, meet Willie Horton.)
But I'm not sure that it's any less lamentable when politicians' wives do it in reverse. (Lady McBama, meet those 60 Minutes cameras.)
Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
This is also true.
Just as it is true that talk show hosts and liberal commentators built entire careers exploiting ad exaggerating legitimate claims of racism (and sexism) while ignoring the many bogus and illegitimate claims of each.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.
Here, again, is a wonderful passage: honest and open about these white American resentments in ways that precious few politicians of any color ever are. And that is truly refreshing.
But. (And you knew there was gonna be a but.)
The turn here to a common enemy, to the fight against corporate America and questionable accountants and Washington insiders and the wealthy few, sounds awfully divisive for someone who's supposed to be uniting us all. It all sounds pretty standard-issue, old-school, liberal-left, class-warfare-esque for a guy who's supposed to represent a new kind of politics.
Maybe when he says he's going to bring us all together, he really means just white and black Democrats.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy...
That may be contrary to the claims of his critics, but I'm not so sure it's contrary to the claims of his rhetoric. Or of his speeches. Or of his supporters.
...— particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
This time, I didn't say it; he did. So everyone still reading and thinking about sending an email of complaint can just send one to the Senator instead.
[to be continued...]
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable.
I can't argue with that.
I can assure you it is not.
With this, I can. And have. And will again argue.
I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.
True. Though I would suggest that the second most politically safe thing to do, at least for this candidate, would be to deliver a great, flowery, subtly equivocating speech on the state of race in the union and let the Obamedia fawn and drool over it. Which is, of course, the political and intellectual equivalent of, when someone asks you why you own a vicious pit bull, answering, Hey, look at those pretty birdies behind the doghouse!
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
Do you see what he's doing here? If it weren't so slick, it would be really offensive.
He is, both logically and rhetorically, equating Geraldine Ferraro said to what the Rev. Wright said. He's equating the suggestion that race -- you know, the very subject that Senator Obama here uses to propel his candidacy even closer to the nomination -- has in some way helped fuel his candidacy with the suggestion that the United States government created AIDS to kill black people. He's equating an arguable, debatable, quite possibly wrong (but also, perhaps, quite valid) argument with paranoid fiction and lunatic demagoguery.
See, we both have one, he says. And he is wrong. And he is unfair. And he knows it.
Even if few people seem to care.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.
Especially because my crazy spiritual advisor has now forced me to talk about it.
We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
Is that really the mistake that Reverend Wright made? What negative did he amplify when he suggested that the government invented AIDS to kill blacks? What simplification led him to the conclusion that the USA is like one big chapter of the KKK?
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
Translation: it's not Reverend Wright's fault, and it's not mine either. It's everyone's fault.
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Translation: let's not talk about this unpleasant stuff that may hurt my candidacy.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”
Faulkner never wrote that. What he did write was, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
But hey, close enough, right?
We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
You see those birdies behind the doghouse? Well, you should have seen the big, scary birdies that used to live there. Long before that doghouse came along.
And they were big. And they were scary. But I'm not sure that, now that they're long gone, we still have to run and cower and hide from them, or use them as an excuse when our crazy pit bull goes out and bites a couple of people in the neighborhood.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
So does a hell of a lot of other things that, well, Senator Obama conveniently forgets to mention here.
Legalized discrimination — where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments — meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
Forgiving, once more, how far he is from what this speech was supposed to be about -- namely his relationship to, and his knowledge of, the irredeemable thoughts and ravings of his self-proclaimed spiritual advisor -- let's note, again, that there are plenty of other factors (by which I mean, choices) that help explain that gap too.
Perhaps Bill Cosby could explain them to us.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families — a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods — parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement — all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
What else helped create that cycle, Senator? Anything? Anything at all? Any choices or behaviors or self-imposed patterns of self-destructive behavior that you seem perfectly content not to mention?
How a speech that purports to be an honest and thorough examination of race in contemporary America, and that also purports to talk straight and true about the problems that beset both the black and white communities, can move through almost 5,000 words and never once speak the words drugs or guns or wedlock, never once utter the phrases single mothers or absent fathers, never once talk about the terrible cycle of children have children or a pervasive culture of dependency, is most surely a fake. Or a failure. Or both.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late '50s and early '60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.
So did a hell of a lot of other people who did not grow up to spout venomous untruths.
What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
So very true. But that just begs the question: if so much was right with those people, then what is wrong with Rev. Wright?
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it — those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations — those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future.
That legacy was just passed on? It was handed down, like a hereditary disease, like a genetic deformity, like something they could not help and could not escape?
Tell that to all the people who did.
And then, when you're done hearing their stories, try, if only for a moment, to figure out what the difference is between them and the people standing on the street corners and languishing in the prisons. Is it luck? Chance? Fate? Or something more clear and definable -- and maybe even laudable -- that is inconvenient to mention but, in times like these, at least, convenient to forget for the sake of the (flawed) argument?
Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.
For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
Amen to that.
I would suggest that Senator Obama may even be doing that right here in this speech. Or even in other parts of his candidacy. But then I would be labeled as bad as Geraldine Ferraro. Which would make me just as bad as the Rev. Wright. And, God Damn, America, I don't want any part of that.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.
Oh, come on, Senator. They weren't surprised to hear the anger; they were surprised to hear the bullshit. The lies. And the paranoia.
That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition,...
Oh, yes, there it is. A brief mention of complicity, buried in the middle of a long passage that otherwise focuses on -- and justifies -- the righteous anger of bigots and zealots like the Rev. Wright.
...and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
Imagine if someone said we could not condemn murder without understanding the roots of a murderer's anger. Or that we could not condemn rape without understanding the roots of a rapist's anger.
Apples and oranges? Okay.
Now imagine if someone said we could not condemn white racism without understanding the roots of the racist's anger. Without wanting to lift up the hood and look deep into the soul of some lynching, cross-burning bastard.
That might be interesting. But Senator Obama doesn't do it. Watch what he does instead.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
This is a wonderful passage. For my eye and ear, it may be -- at least if you take it at face value -- the best and most honest passage in the whole speech, explaining, even as it does not excuse, the seeds and inspirations of a very real kind of latent white racism.
But we can just take it at face value. Nor can we ignore the slippery transitions that have led Senator Obama to this point. He has figured the Rev. Wright's absurdities as just another justifiable kind of black anger. Now he's gone and drawn a parallel between that black anger and this "similar" anger in the white community. Now. It's been a while since I took Honors Geometry, but I remember the transitive postulate well. And if the Rev. Wright = Black Anger, and Black Anger = White Anger, then the Rev. Wright = White Anger.
To which I am compelled to add, That Equation = Bullshit. Q.E.D.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.
So Reagan was elected thanks to festering racism? Is that what you're saying, Senator?
Just checking.
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends.
This, of course, is true. And lamentable. (Michael Dukakis, meet Willie Horton.)
But I'm not sure that it's any less lamentable when politicians' wives do it in reverse. (Lady McBama, meet those 60 Minutes cameras.)
Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
This is also true.
Just as it is true that talk show hosts and liberal commentators built entire careers exploiting ad exaggerating legitimate claims of racism (and sexism) while ignoring the many bogus and illegitimate claims of each.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.
Here, again, is a wonderful passage: honest and open about these white American resentments in ways that precious few politicians of any color ever are. And that is truly refreshing.
But. (And you knew there was gonna be a but.)
The turn here to a common enemy, to the fight against corporate America and questionable accountants and Washington insiders and the wealthy few, sounds awfully divisive for someone who's supposed to be uniting us all. It all sounds pretty standard-issue, old-school, liberal-left, class-warfare-esque for a guy who's supposed to represent a new kind of politics.
Maybe when he says he's going to bring us all together, he really means just white and black Democrats.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy...
That may be contrary to the claims of his critics, but I'm not so sure it's contrary to the claims of his rhetoric. Or of his speeches. Or of his supporters.
...— particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
This time, I didn't say it; he did. So everyone still reading and thinking about sending an email of complaint can just send one to the Senator instead.
[to be continued...]
Posted at 09:41 AM
Sat - March 29, 2008
A LESS PERFECT UNION, PART TWO
and a most obfuscating
explanation.
Now. Where were
we?
Oh, that's right. Just about to get to the good stuff...
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.
Note the leap in logic here. The first part sort-of gets right what Geraldine Ferraro said. But the second part is nothing at all like what she actually said. Or like what the people who defended her actually said. Or like what anyone who's ever been critical of his campaign and all the uncritical fawning over it has ever said.
Mr. Stirring Orator, meet Mr. Straw Man.
On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
First, a note about style: that second use of views breaks both the rhythm and the grammar of the not-only/but construct, but the greatness and goodness line is beautiful, and that final, trailing clause is too. Syntax, rhythm, parallel structure are all lovely and effective.
Now to substance: this is a good start. Too bad it never really goes anywhere.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.
That is true. But watch how, for much of the rest of this speech, he proceeds to equivocate.
For some, nagging questions remain.
Would it be indelicate to point out that questions can only remain when they have not been clearly (or at least adequately) answered?
It would?
Good.
Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course.
Funny thing, that.
Because just a few days before this speech, Senator Obama declared, I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the gospel... If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. He also told CNN that he didn't know about all these statements, that he only knew about one or two, and that if he'd thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then he wouldn't feel comfortable [at the church.]
So, in other words... Here in this great and open and fiercely honest speech, he's admitting that he lied -- or at least heavily distorted -- the facts of what he claimed just a few days earlier. But, you know, when we're all listening to the pretty words, I suppose it would be indelicate to point that out. Much less to be bothered by it.
Oh, and another thing -- occasionally fierce? Please. Those are weasel words at their best. Anyone out there really think there were -- or still are -- some days when the Reverend Wright slinks down from his bully pulpit and says, you know, I don't feel so bad about the US of KKKA today? Anyone think he has quiet moments here or there when he decides that maybe the American government didn't invent AIDS to destroy the black man?
When you consider that these sermons are a matter of public record, that the Rev. Wright was apparently known for these sorts of tirades, and that several news outlets, including Rolling Stone magazine, knew about these profanity-laced harangues from the Reverend's pulpit a long time ago, you can arrive at only two conclusions:
1) Senator Obama lied about what he knew, then reversed field in this speech, and no one really called him on it. Or...
2) Senator Obama, who's known the Rev. Wright for twenty years as his pastor and spiritual advisor, only ever, in all that time, happened to hear an occasional fierce comment that sounded nothing like those YouTube clips we've all seen a couple of kajillion times now.
Could he really have been that lucky -- or that much in the dark -- for twenty years? If so, then I'm not convinced his judgment, upon which he has based a large part of his campaign for the presidency, is really all that good or keen. (He seems to have known about the Rev. Wright's sermons they way President Bush knew about Osama bin Laden's plans to attack the U.S.: in brief, at a distance, without worrying all that much about them.) If not, then he lied to cover his ass, reversed field, did not get called on it, and has proven himself (yet again) just another typical politician -- albeit one who continues to pretend that he is (way) above and (far) better than all of these petty things.
Which brings me 'round again to what I have been saying all along these past two years: the guy's a phony. He is not what he pretends to be. He is not what everyone wants to believe he is. And that would be alright with me, at least, if we could all admit that we're just fucking ignoring it. That the media and his fawning, sometimes fainting supporters have decided to believe in the construct of Obama, in the fiction, rather than the reality, of the man in his campaign, and that they're willing to give it a shot because, well, what have we got to lose? But this relentless, regrettable pageant that Obama is something new and better and different -- led by a campaign team that, if they believe it, are as naive and foolish as Donald Rumsfeld in his battle plans for Iraq, and that, if they don't believe it, are as duplicitous and hypocritical as Hillary Clinton or even George Bush on their worse days -- is here exposed, in glorious black and white, for everyone to see. And, apparently, ignore.
And it's that, more than anything else, that drives me nuts about this campaign, and that drives me, over and over again, to write posts like this.
Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.
Just read those last eight paragraphs over again. Because they apply just as well to this sentence.
Go ahead. I'll wait -- and sigh -- 'til you're done.
Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely...
Even though, you know, a couple of days ago I said that I didn't. Even though, you know, I dis-invited him last year from my announcement speech because I knew he could get kind of rough in the sermons and I'd decided that it was best for him not to be out there in public.
See the pattern here?
He knew it. He didn't know. He knew it.
He told the truth. He lied. He told the truth, while pretending he hadn't lied.
If I didn't know any better, I'd swear I was writing about Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky, meet Jeremiah Wright.
... — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
That's clever. By which I mean, cloying. By which I mean, disingenuous.
Of course we've all heard remarks from our pastors, priests, or rabbis with which we've strongly disagreed. But hearing that we ought to come to church every Sunday or that homosexuality is a sin according to the church or that this wine really does turn into the blood of Jesus Christ just before you drink it is not quite the same as hearing that God should damn America, that Hiroshima is somehow a moral equivalent of 9/11, that AIDS was invented by the United States government to systematically eliminate blacks, or that this country may as well be called the US of KKKA.
To suggest otherwise is folly. And Senator Obama knows it.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial.
That's right.
They were stupid and senseless and, quite frankly, nuttier than a pound of cashews. And it would have been nice to hear you say that. Instead, we get...
They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice.
... that they were just a little attempt to speak out against perceived injustice. Which is also what happens, I suppose, when a bunch of white idiots burn a cross on a black family's lawn. Is that, too, just some community leaders' efforts to speak out against perceived injustice?
Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
That last clause strikes me as odd -- like a bit of pandering to the white right, or at least the white middle, by making sure to demonize radical Islam -- especially in the midst of a speech allegedly about tolerance and unity. But apart from that, this is a strong and stirring passage, one that rightly dismisses -- even as it does not quite condemn -- the Rev. Wright's comments.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Now comes the pivot: let's not worry about the Rev. Wright's wrongs; let's pay attention to all of these problems we have and see how we can solve them.
It is, of course, difficult to argue with that sentiment. Yes, by all means, let's dispense with the distractions and get down to the details of solving our many problems. And yet, this is the Senator's own distraction. Followed by his own misstatements about it. And we have to sort it out, if only to see what it says about him, his judgment, and, yes, (by God,) his character.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?
Fair questions all. Too bad he doesn't really answer them.
And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
That sounds just like what abused wives have been known to say about their abusive husbands. (Oh, yes, I know he beat me with a baseball bat, and I know he said some terribly idiotic things about AIDS and the U.S. Government, but he's really a good man...)
Think I'm exaggerating? Well, maybe I am. Just a bit. But think about the analogy, and then read this next paragraph:
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
See what I mean?
Yes. I imagine you do.
Even if you don't agree with it.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
Is there anything more tiresome -- or more insufferably egotistical -- than a man quoting himself, from his own navel-gazing, insufferably egotistical book?
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note — hope! — I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish — and with which we could start to rebuild.”
Well, yes. That passage right there.
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
That's a great paragraph. Full of great writing and vivid language. The last sentence is especially striking, both rhythmically and rhetorically. I admire the hell out of the craft, even as I resist the too-easy, too-convenient-by-half Romanticization of the church and the experiences within it. As if believing that AIDS were a genocidal construct of the United States government is just another bit of bawdy humor, just one more inescapable bit of the bitter biases that make up the black experience in America.
If you ask me, that's awfully close to an insult to every American black with sense and intelligence enough to rightly and immediately dismiss the pandering, paranoid claptrap that Rev. Wright was spewing.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.
No, it doesn't. Not at all.
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.
And here's where my head almost explodes.
Do you buy this? Really?
Does anyone, save for the most blind and ardent supporters of Senator Obama, really believe this? Do you really believe that this guy could say these things from the pulpit, over and over and over again, be known for this sort of silliness and prejudice and rank hatred, even sell examples of it on church-peddled DVDs, hold these feelings near and dear enough to shout them from his spiritually forked tongue across his morally compromised pulpit, and yet never once, in twenty years, let slip even the slightest hint of inkling of them in private conversations with a man who was, depending on the metaphor, like a son or brother or nephew to him? Really?
Wow.
If you do -- maybe, just for one last try, you should read and think about this.
He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
Interesting. Both that he should reduce all that hatred and ignorance to the simple category of contradictions, and also that he should paint the entire community with so broad a (half-brush). When you see him throwing so many good and moral and rational members of the black community under the bus like this, it will, I suppose, be much less of a shock when he tosses his own grandmother under there at the end of the next paragraph.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
Well, yes. You can.
I'm not necessarily saying that you should have. But you could have.
I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — ...
Here we go.
...a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
Watch out for those bus wheels, grandma. Good thing for you it's already pretty crowded under here.
I honestly don't know what I find more offensive here: the complete selling out of his grandmother, who'd raised and nurtured and cared for him her whole life, just to score some political points and try to save face for that unapologetic racist of a Reverend, or the idiotic equation of his grandmother and all that she did for him throughout his life with the Rev. Wright and his obviously suspect spiritual counsel.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
I suppose he wants to seem progressive and principled. But he just seems ungrateful.
[to be continued...]
Oh, that's right. Just about to get to the good stuff...
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.
Note the leap in logic here. The first part sort-of gets right what Geraldine Ferraro said. But the second part is nothing at all like what she actually said. Or like what the people who defended her actually said. Or like what anyone who's ever been critical of his campaign and all the uncritical fawning over it has ever said.
Mr. Stirring Orator, meet Mr. Straw Man.
On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
First, a note about style: that second use of views breaks both the rhythm and the grammar of the not-only/but construct, but the greatness and goodness line is beautiful, and that final, trailing clause is too. Syntax, rhythm, parallel structure are all lovely and effective.
Now to substance: this is a good start. Too bad it never really goes anywhere.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.
That is true. But watch how, for much of the rest of this speech, he proceeds to equivocate.
For some, nagging questions remain.
Would it be indelicate to point out that questions can only remain when they have not been clearly (or at least adequately) answered?
It would?
Good.
Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course.
Funny thing, that.
Because just a few days before this speech, Senator Obama declared, I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the gospel... If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. He also told CNN that he didn't know about all these statements, that he only knew about one or two, and that if he'd thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then he wouldn't feel comfortable [at the church.]
So, in other words... Here in this great and open and fiercely honest speech, he's admitting that he lied -- or at least heavily distorted -- the facts of what he claimed just a few days earlier. But, you know, when we're all listening to the pretty words, I suppose it would be indelicate to point that out. Much less to be bothered by it.
Oh, and another thing -- occasionally fierce? Please. Those are weasel words at their best. Anyone out there really think there were -- or still are -- some days when the Reverend Wright slinks down from his bully pulpit and says, you know, I don't feel so bad about the US of KKKA today? Anyone think he has quiet moments here or there when he decides that maybe the American government didn't invent AIDS to destroy the black man?
When you consider that these sermons are a matter of public record, that the Rev. Wright was apparently known for these sorts of tirades, and that several news outlets, including Rolling Stone magazine, knew about these profanity-laced harangues from the Reverend's pulpit a long time ago, you can arrive at only two conclusions:
1) Senator Obama lied about what he knew, then reversed field in this speech, and no one really called him on it. Or...
2) Senator Obama, who's known the Rev. Wright for twenty years as his pastor and spiritual advisor, only ever, in all that time, happened to hear an occasional fierce comment that sounded nothing like those YouTube clips we've all seen a couple of kajillion times now.
Could he really have been that lucky -- or that much in the dark -- for twenty years? If so, then I'm not convinced his judgment, upon which he has based a large part of his campaign for the presidency, is really all that good or keen. (He seems to have known about the Rev. Wright's sermons they way President Bush knew about Osama bin Laden's plans to attack the U.S.: in brief, at a distance, without worrying all that much about them.) If not, then he lied to cover his ass, reversed field, did not get called on it, and has proven himself (yet again) just another typical politician -- albeit one who continues to pretend that he is (way) above and (far) better than all of these petty things.
Which brings me 'round again to what I have been saying all along these past two years: the guy's a phony. He is not what he pretends to be. He is not what everyone wants to believe he is. And that would be alright with me, at least, if we could all admit that we're just fucking ignoring it. That the media and his fawning, sometimes fainting supporters have decided to believe in the construct of Obama, in the fiction, rather than the reality, of the man in his campaign, and that they're willing to give it a shot because, well, what have we got to lose? But this relentless, regrettable pageant that Obama is something new and better and different -- led by a campaign team that, if they believe it, are as naive and foolish as Donald Rumsfeld in his battle plans for Iraq, and that, if they don't believe it, are as duplicitous and hypocritical as Hillary Clinton or even George Bush on their worse days -- is here exposed, in glorious black and white, for everyone to see. And, apparently, ignore.
And it's that, more than anything else, that drives me nuts about this campaign, and that drives me, over and over again, to write posts like this.
Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.
Just read those last eight paragraphs over again. Because they apply just as well to this sentence.
Go ahead. I'll wait -- and sigh -- 'til you're done.
Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely...
Even though, you know, a couple of days ago I said that I didn't. Even though, you know, I dis-invited him last year from my announcement speech because I knew he could get kind of rough in the sermons and I'd decided that it was best for him not to be out there in public.
See the pattern here?
He knew it. He didn't know. He knew it.
He told the truth. He lied. He told the truth, while pretending he hadn't lied.
If I didn't know any better, I'd swear I was writing about Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky, meet Jeremiah Wright.
... — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
That's clever. By which I mean, cloying. By which I mean, disingenuous.
Of course we've all heard remarks from our pastors, priests, or rabbis with which we've strongly disagreed. But hearing that we ought to come to church every Sunday or that homosexuality is a sin according to the church or that this wine really does turn into the blood of Jesus Christ just before you drink it is not quite the same as hearing that God should damn America, that Hiroshima is somehow a moral equivalent of 9/11, that AIDS was invented by the United States government to systematically eliminate blacks, or that this country may as well be called the US of KKKA.
To suggest otherwise is folly. And Senator Obama knows it.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial.
That's right.
They were stupid and senseless and, quite frankly, nuttier than a pound of cashews. And it would have been nice to hear you say that. Instead, we get...
They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice.
... that they were just a little attempt to speak out against perceived injustice. Which is also what happens, I suppose, when a bunch of white idiots burn a cross on a black family's lawn. Is that, too, just some community leaders' efforts to speak out against perceived injustice?
Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
That last clause strikes me as odd -- like a bit of pandering to the white right, or at least the white middle, by making sure to demonize radical Islam -- especially in the midst of a speech allegedly about tolerance and unity. But apart from that, this is a strong and stirring passage, one that rightly dismisses -- even as it does not quite condemn -- the Rev. Wright's comments.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Now comes the pivot: let's not worry about the Rev. Wright's wrongs; let's pay attention to all of these problems we have and see how we can solve them.
It is, of course, difficult to argue with that sentiment. Yes, by all means, let's dispense with the distractions and get down to the details of solving our many problems. And yet, this is the Senator's own distraction. Followed by his own misstatements about it. And we have to sort it out, if only to see what it says about him, his judgment, and, yes, (by God,) his character.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?
Fair questions all. Too bad he doesn't really answer them.
And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
That sounds just like what abused wives have been known to say about their abusive husbands. (Oh, yes, I know he beat me with a baseball bat, and I know he said some terribly idiotic things about AIDS and the U.S. Government, but he's really a good man...)
Think I'm exaggerating? Well, maybe I am. Just a bit. But think about the analogy, and then read this next paragraph:
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
See what I mean?
Yes. I imagine you do.
Even if you don't agree with it.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
Is there anything more tiresome -- or more insufferably egotistical -- than a man quoting himself, from his own navel-gazing, insufferably egotistical book?
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note — hope! — I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish — and with which we could start to rebuild.”
Well, yes. That passage right there.
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
That's a great paragraph. Full of great writing and vivid language. The last sentence is especially striking, both rhythmically and rhetorically. I admire the hell out of the craft, even as I resist the too-easy, too-convenient-by-half Romanticization of the church and the experiences within it. As if believing that AIDS were a genocidal construct of the United States government is just another bit of bawdy humor, just one more inescapable bit of the bitter biases that make up the black experience in America.
If you ask me, that's awfully close to an insult to every American black with sense and intelligence enough to rightly and immediately dismiss the pandering, paranoid claptrap that Rev. Wright was spewing.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.
No, it doesn't. Not at all.
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.
And here's where my head almost explodes.
Do you buy this? Really?
Does anyone, save for the most blind and ardent supporters of Senator Obama, really believe this? Do you really believe that this guy could say these things from the pulpit, over and over and over again, be known for this sort of silliness and prejudice and rank hatred, even sell examples of it on church-peddled DVDs, hold these feelings near and dear enough to shout them from his spiritually forked tongue across his morally compromised pulpit, and yet never once, in twenty years, let slip even the slightest hint of inkling of them in private conversations with a man who was, depending on the metaphor, like a son or brother or nephew to him? Really?
Wow.
If you do -- maybe, just for one last try, you should read and think about this.
He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
Interesting. Both that he should reduce all that hatred and ignorance to the simple category of contradictions, and also that he should paint the entire community with so broad a (half-brush). When you see him throwing so many good and moral and rational members of the black community under the bus like this, it will, I suppose, be much less of a shock when he tosses his own grandmother under there at the end of the next paragraph.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
Well, yes. You can.
I'm not necessarily saying that you should have. But you could have.
I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — ...
Here we go.
...a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
Watch out for those bus wheels, grandma. Good thing for you it's already pretty crowded under here.
I honestly don't know what I find more offensive here: the complete selling out of his grandmother, who'd raised and nurtured and cared for him her whole life, just to score some political points and try to save face for that unapologetic racist of a Reverend, or the idiotic equation of his grandmother and all that she did for him throughout his life with the Rev. Wright and his obviously suspect spiritual counsel.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
I suppose he wants to seem progressive and principled. But he just seems ungrateful.
[to be continued...]
Posted at 03:37 PM
Thu - March 27, 2008
A LESS PERFECT UNION, PART ONE
and a most cloying speech.
I've been promising it, at least some of you have
been waiting for it, and this damned thing's gonna be long enough already, so
let's get right to it. My thoughts, reactions, and (who could have seen this
coming?) criticisms of Senator Obama's A More Perfect Union
speech...
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Now there's some good writing.
(Though it would be even better if they'd removed in order, which serves no purpose except to goose the rhythm. But I digress.)
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street,...
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Now there's some good writing.
(Though it would be even better if they'd removed in order, which serves no purpose except to goose the rhythm. But I digress.)
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street,...