Okay, fine. Chief Justice Roberts had 35 words to speak on Tuesday, and he got them wrong. It happens. Here's a story:
I was doing my first show as a college freshman, Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. I only had a small part, but it was a Mainstage show so I'd landed a big show right off the bat. Great joy to be there, and doing Shakespeare, and so forth. My character, the Pedant, was there for a bit of silliness about pretending to be Lucentio's father, etc., etc. Secondary-plotline stuff. And there was a moment when I had a long, blathering speech to deliver.
One night, I was in full blather. And the guy playing Baptista was in the moment so he did something slightly different from our other performances: he interjected a sound, just a little sound, as if the character was trying to interrupt but couldn't. That's all, not even a full word, just a little sound.
I stopped cold. Turned to him and said the decidedly unShakespearian "Huh?" Then realized what he'd done, turned back in order to resume my speech, and discovered in that moment that my brain had just lost the entire English language.
I made a succession of little strangling noises until the guy playing Baptista (hi, Jim Williams) stepped in with the next part of the scene and rescued me. Huge embarrassment yadda yadda, learning experience yadda yadda, ain't live theatre grand yadda, yadda and yadda.
This of course is exactly what happened to Mr. Roberts. Watch the tape linked above. Barack Obama thought the first phrase would simply be his name, so he started to speak, but Roberts wanted to add "do solemnly swear" to that first phrase. Obama's accidental interruption did to Mr. Roberts exactly what Jim William's interruption did to me, except that Roberts handled it better. He at least didn't forget an entire language, he just had a little wires-crossing, words-tangling adventure, right there with the entire damned world staring as his brain went blank during a moment of profound historical import.
All of which simply proves that history has a sense of humor. (Although you can see in Michelle Obama's face a strangled expression that says "This moment? You pick this moment to fuck up? This moment we've all waited for for centures? Aaaack!")
Naturally, the wombats on Fox News breathlessly asked "Is Barack Obama really president?!?!" Oh, shut up.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day
President Bush Goes Away
Gotta say. His farewell address the other day was the first speech of his that I've actually enjoyed. Particularly that last bit, when he said goodbye, then turned around and walked away. That part was terrific.
Historical Tides
There is a peculiar recurring theme in American history: weak, ineffectual presidents get overwhelmed by one or more crises are replaced by a strong president who seems to appear in history at exactly the right moment. I'm thinking particularly of Buchanan being replaced by Lincoln (who really came out of nowhere), and Hoover being replaced by Franklin Roosevelt. I think a lot of people are feeling the possibility that this might prove to be such a moment. The current crisis certainly has the potential to be as dire as the Great Depression, and once the election was over, with its astonishing historical implications just in terms of the nation's long racial struggle, the sense that Barack Obama might turn out to be the unlikely hero delivered by history just in the nick of time, this sense has only grown. An approval rating in the high 70s before he's even inaugurated? Unheard of.
The Size of the Crowds
I've got CNN on, and they occasionally show crowd shots. I've only got one reaction:
Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus...
But Beware Obamatry
The adoration people are feeling right now for Mr. Obama is of course dangerous in itself. It's born of economic uncertainty: everyone is feeling more than a little tenuous right now, and that's feeding this growing idolatry. (Hell, I'm feeling it too. Our funding for our next movie just dried up, barely a week before we were supposed to receive it, solely because the lenders decided to stop lending to anyone. So now we scramble, and hope fervently that money will start to loosen up a little once Mr. Obama is actually president. Which, as I write, is just over an hour from now.)
But it's inevitable that Obama will disappoint. No one has a flawless presidency, not Washington, not Lincoln, not FDR, no one. It cannot happen. And the higher Mr. Obama is lifted toward Mt. Olympus, the greater the sense of disappointment will be; the greater the attendant fall to earth.
Still...
As I watched the concert on Sunday, as Mr. Obama stood behind the speech delivering his speech to the crowds spread out across the Mall, I was suddenly struck by a notion:
Someday there's probably going to be a statue or a structure to him, right out there in the Mall. Aware though I am of the dangers of Obamatry, I'm getting a little swept up too. And he does have the potential. He absolutely has the potential to be one of the greats. Whether he'll be able to actually pull it off, well, that remains to be seen.
But now I'm going to just sit back, and watch, and enjoy this moment like crazy.
Gotta say. His farewell address the other day was the first speech of his that I've actually enjoyed. Particularly that last bit, when he said goodbye, then turned around and walked away. That part was terrific.
Historical Tides
There is a peculiar recurring theme in American history: weak, ineffectual presidents get overwhelmed by one or more crises are replaced by a strong president who seems to appear in history at exactly the right moment. I'm thinking particularly of Buchanan being replaced by Lincoln (who really came out of nowhere), and Hoover being replaced by Franklin Roosevelt. I think a lot of people are feeling the possibility that this might prove to be such a moment. The current crisis certainly has the potential to be as dire as the Great Depression, and once the election was over, with its astonishing historical implications just in terms of the nation's long racial struggle, the sense that Barack Obama might turn out to be the unlikely hero delivered by history just in the nick of time, this sense has only grown. An approval rating in the high 70s before he's even inaugurated? Unheard of.
The Size of the Crowds
I've got CNN on, and they occasionally show crowd shots. I've only got one reaction:
Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus...
But Beware Obamatry
The adoration people are feeling right now for Mr. Obama is of course dangerous in itself. It's born of economic uncertainty: everyone is feeling more than a little tenuous right now, and that's feeding this growing idolatry. (Hell, I'm feeling it too. Our funding for our next movie just dried up, barely a week before we were supposed to receive it, solely because the lenders decided to stop lending to anyone. So now we scramble, and hope fervently that money will start to loosen up a little once Mr. Obama is actually president. Which, as I write, is just over an hour from now.)
But it's inevitable that Obama will disappoint. No one has a flawless presidency, not Washington, not Lincoln, not FDR, no one. It cannot happen. And the higher Mr. Obama is lifted toward Mt. Olympus, the greater the sense of disappointment will be; the greater the attendant fall to earth.
Still...
As I watched the concert on Sunday, as Mr. Obama stood behind the speech delivering his speech to the crowds spread out across the Mall, I was suddenly struck by a notion:
Someday there's probably going to be a statue or a structure to him, right out there in the Mall. Aware though I am of the dangers of Obamatry, I'm getting a little swept up too. And he does have the potential. He absolutely has the potential to be one of the greats. Whether he'll be able to actually pull it off, well, that remains to be seen.
But now I'm going to just sit back, and watch, and enjoy this moment like crazy.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Content of His Character
When the moment came, it surprised me.
Not the outcome. I had been cautiously optimistic for several days that Senator Obama would win. But "caution" is the key word--there was a great deal of optimism, whole barrels-full of hope, that had been bottled up because, frankly, we've seen voting shenanigans before. (And there were some--emails sent to Democrats declaring that because of long lines at polling places, it was perfectly okay for them to come and vote on Wednesday. But this sort of thing only really works when the race is close. It wasn't.)
And this is the sort of history that isn't made easily. I am the descendant of a Southern slave-owning family, and I've seen these changes in my own family. I knew very well my great-grandmother, born in 1896, who would openly talk about "those little pickaninnies" playing on the corner. As the child of a hippie, liberal to the core, now living on the "left coast," I was an Obama fan since about a third of the way into his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention--but had the rest of the country made these changes along with me and my family? (Bear in mind my own Californians' appalling decision on Proposition 8, in this same election.)
And it's been so bad for the last eight years. Way back in 1994, when the Republicans were sweeping into Congress, there was another result that disheartened me even more: George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards to become governor of Texas. I watched him at the podium, making his victory speech, and I was filled with dread. I could see so clearly what was coming; but still, when it came, it was so much worse than I had ever feared it might be. For the past eight years, this has not been my America. It has not been generous, it has not sought peace, it has not led by example. My nation has done things that filled me with horror: spiriting innocent people away in broad daylight, sending them to nations where unspeakable things could be done to them, any idea of individual rights stripped away at will. It has been so bad, and the idea that this ship could ever be righted again seemed to drift farther and farther away.
So when the moment came, when Obama's victory was declared right at 8:00 p.m. local time, I could tell the moment was coming--the electoral math was such that California's preordained result would put him over the top--but when it actually happened, when I saw the words blaze across my TV screen, it genuinely took me by surprise.
Because I had not expected to be so moved. I had not expected that the optimism, pushed down and bottled up, might erupt as vehemently as it did. I had not expected the sense of relief to be as enormous as it was. And when CNN cut to footage of the celebration at Ebenezer Baptist Church, I had not expected it, and tears just kept rolling for a good five or ten minutes.
It may not be the Promised Land, not quite yet. But we're a lot closer than we were, and damn if that isn't just about the greatest thing I've seen in a long long time.
Not the outcome. I had been cautiously optimistic for several days that Senator Obama would win. But "caution" is the key word--there was a great deal of optimism, whole barrels-full of hope, that had been bottled up because, frankly, we've seen voting shenanigans before. (And there were some--emails sent to Democrats declaring that because of long lines at polling places, it was perfectly okay for them to come and vote on Wednesday. But this sort of thing only really works when the race is close. It wasn't.)
And this is the sort of history that isn't made easily. I am the descendant of a Southern slave-owning family, and I've seen these changes in my own family. I knew very well my great-grandmother, born in 1896, who would openly talk about "those little pickaninnies" playing on the corner. As the child of a hippie, liberal to the core, now living on the "left coast," I was an Obama fan since about a third of the way into his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention--but had the rest of the country made these changes along with me and my family? (Bear in mind my own Californians' appalling decision on Proposition 8, in this same election.)
And it's been so bad for the last eight years. Way back in 1994, when the Republicans were sweeping into Congress, there was another result that disheartened me even more: George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards to become governor of Texas. I watched him at the podium, making his victory speech, and I was filled with dread. I could see so clearly what was coming; but still, when it came, it was so much worse than I had ever feared it might be. For the past eight years, this has not been my America. It has not been generous, it has not sought peace, it has not led by example. My nation has done things that filled me with horror: spiriting innocent people away in broad daylight, sending them to nations where unspeakable things could be done to them, any idea of individual rights stripped away at will. It has been so bad, and the idea that this ship could ever be righted again seemed to drift farther and farther away.
So when the moment came, when Obama's victory was declared right at 8:00 p.m. local time, I could tell the moment was coming--the electoral math was such that California's preordained result would put him over the top--but when it actually happened, when I saw the words blaze across my TV screen, it genuinely took me by surprise.
Because I had not expected to be so moved. I had not expected that the optimism, pushed down and bottled up, might erupt as vehemently as it did. I had not expected the sense of relief to be as enormous as it was. And when CNN cut to footage of the celebration at Ebenezer Baptist Church, I had not expected it, and tears just kept rolling for a good five or ten minutes.
It may not be the Promised Land, not quite yet. But we're a lot closer than we were, and damn if that isn't just about the greatest thing I've seen in a long long time.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Second Verse, Same as the First
Sure, I’ll admit it: I fell asleep during Senator McCain’s speech last night.
I mean I tried, I really did. I would pause the TiVo, get up and check e-mail, grab a drink, then sit back down, and a couple minutes later there I’d be, nodding off again. Pause, stand, calisthenics, acupuncture, walking across hot coals, sit, and sleep.
Which doesn’t mean it was a bad speech; but if he wanted to contrast his style with Obama’s, he definitely accomplished his goal.
Still. I heard enough to get a decent impression of what he was on about, plus of course there has been plenty of summarization and analysis since then. So with the Republican National Convention now over (and the hundreds arrested soon to be released, we hope), a few thoughts.
Almost without exception, every speech I heard was obsessed with the notion of character, specifically John McCain’s character. We heard the Hanoi Hilton story every single time; we heard the line “I’d rather lose an election than a war” every single time, including from McCain himself. McCain, everyone insisted, has been tested in ways few other Americans have ever been tested, and he stood his ground, passed that most horrific of tests without blinking.
(By the way, the New York Times had a startling portrait of Senator McCain on yesterday’s front page, which you should be able to find here.)
The Republicans love to do this, they love to make elections entirely about character. “McCain has already been tested, we know he has the character to be President.” But eight years ago, that election too was about character, according to the Republicans: “George W. Bush is a man of upright moral character who will restore dignity to the White House.”
And you know, I am still favorably impressed with President Bush’s upright moral character. (Sure he lied us into a war and has an unfortunate fondness for torture and other outright betrayals of civil rights; but as a family man he’s terrrrrific!) But in the end, Mr. Bush was incompetent, and we have all suffered the innumerable consequences of his incompetence. Now Bill Clinton, he definitely suffered (and suffers) some character flaws--but you can't really say that he was incompetent. The results of his stewardship of the nation are too plain.
So I just can’t bring myself to care too much about McCain’s candidacy if he bases his qualifications on his character. Certainly I admire his character, enormously--I don’t for a second imagine that I’d have measured up half as well under those conditions in Hanoi. But competence does matter, and judgment. Now you can’t win an election purely on competence, as Michael Dukakis proved years ago. But judgment matters too, and about the only time any Republicans spoke about McCain’s judgment was when they talked about the surge.
(I have a question about the surge. Is there any possibility that the insurgents, and the rebels, and the Sunni thises and Shi’a thatses, have realized that if they just lie low for a while, the Americans will go away and then they can fight it out unimpaired? I mean, that’s what I would do.)
But here’s the thing. “I would rather lose an election than a war.” Upright, forthright, unbendable, unbowed John McCain. But I would submit that the selection of the person who will be, as the phrase has it, a heartbeat away from the presidency, that matters just as much as the war question. Particularly when you’ve got a 72 year old candidate who’s been through hell and back, and has this recurring cancer problem.
And when he made that selection, reports agree that he really wanted either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. Both of whom are experienced men with qualifications up the wahoo, and while I have political issues with both, I don’t doubt their essential fitness to do the job. If the question of who might succeed the President bears any weight, either of those would have been admirable choices. Plus they were the two closest to McCain’s heart, the guys he really truly wanted for the job.
But neither of them was acceptable to the hardcore right-wingers who have recently succeeded in shaping a rather frightening party platform (a PDF is available here), and so McCain went with Governor Palin, whose fitness to be President I am not alone in doubting. In short: when tested on a crucial question, McCain went with the political choice rather than stand his ground.
As I say. The Republicans have made this character argument before, George W. Bush being their most recent example, and now they’re following exactly the same playbook all over again. It was also fascinating to watch on Tuesday, when President Bush spoke and was roundly praised and applauded; then only a short while later, other speakers got up to talk about how things have been going badly for the last eight years and how McCain will set the ship right again, and the delegates applauded and cheered that, too. And have you seen Lieberman’s 2006 speech in fulsome praise of, yes, Barack Obama?
To hell with character. Give me somebody who can do the damn job, paired with a running mate who can also do the job. Is it so much to ask?
I mean I tried, I really did. I would pause the TiVo, get up and check e-mail, grab a drink, then sit back down, and a couple minutes later there I’d be, nodding off again. Pause, stand, calisthenics, acupuncture, walking across hot coals, sit, and sleep.
Which doesn’t mean it was a bad speech; but if he wanted to contrast his style with Obama’s, he definitely accomplished his goal.
Still. I heard enough to get a decent impression of what he was on about, plus of course there has been plenty of summarization and analysis since then. So with the Republican National Convention now over (and the hundreds arrested soon to be released, we hope), a few thoughts.
Almost without exception, every speech I heard was obsessed with the notion of character, specifically John McCain’s character. We heard the Hanoi Hilton story every single time; we heard the line “I’d rather lose an election than a war” every single time, including from McCain himself. McCain, everyone insisted, has been tested in ways few other Americans have ever been tested, and he stood his ground, passed that most horrific of tests without blinking.
(By the way, the New York Times had a startling portrait of Senator McCain on yesterday’s front page, which you should be able to find here.)
The Republicans love to do this, they love to make elections entirely about character. “McCain has already been tested, we know he has the character to be President.” But eight years ago, that election too was about character, according to the Republicans: “George W. Bush is a man of upright moral character who will restore dignity to the White House.”
And you know, I am still favorably impressed with President Bush’s upright moral character. (Sure he lied us into a war and has an unfortunate fondness for torture and other outright betrayals of civil rights; but as a family man he’s terrrrrific!) But in the end, Mr. Bush was incompetent, and we have all suffered the innumerable consequences of his incompetence. Now Bill Clinton, he definitely suffered (and suffers) some character flaws--but you can't really say that he was incompetent. The results of his stewardship of the nation are too plain.
So I just can’t bring myself to care too much about McCain’s candidacy if he bases his qualifications on his character. Certainly I admire his character, enormously--I don’t for a second imagine that I’d have measured up half as well under those conditions in Hanoi. But competence does matter, and judgment. Now you can’t win an election purely on competence, as Michael Dukakis proved years ago. But judgment matters too, and about the only time any Republicans spoke about McCain’s judgment was when they talked about the surge.
(I have a question about the surge. Is there any possibility that the insurgents, and the rebels, and the Sunni thises and Shi’a thatses, have realized that if they just lie low for a while, the Americans will go away and then they can fight it out unimpaired? I mean, that’s what I would do.)
But here’s the thing. “I would rather lose an election than a war.” Upright, forthright, unbendable, unbowed John McCain. But I would submit that the selection of the person who will be, as the phrase has it, a heartbeat away from the presidency, that matters just as much as the war question. Particularly when you’ve got a 72 year old candidate who’s been through hell and back, and has this recurring cancer problem.
And when he made that selection, reports agree that he really wanted either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. Both of whom are experienced men with qualifications up the wahoo, and while I have political issues with both, I don’t doubt their essential fitness to do the job. If the question of who might succeed the President bears any weight, either of those would have been admirable choices. Plus they were the two closest to McCain’s heart, the guys he really truly wanted for the job.
But neither of them was acceptable to the hardcore right-wingers who have recently succeeded in shaping a rather frightening party platform (a PDF is available here), and so McCain went with Governor Palin, whose fitness to be President I am not alone in doubting. In short: when tested on a crucial question, McCain went with the political choice rather than stand his ground.
As I say. The Republicans have made this character argument before, George W. Bush being their most recent example, and now they’re following exactly the same playbook all over again. It was also fascinating to watch on Tuesday, when President Bush spoke and was roundly praised and applauded; then only a short while later, other speakers got up to talk about how things have been going badly for the last eight years and how McCain will set the ship right again, and the delegates applauded and cheered that, too. And have you seen Lieberman’s 2006 speech in fulsome praise of, yes, Barack Obama?
To hell with character. Give me somebody who can do the damn job, paired with a running mate who can also do the job. Is it so much to ask?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Crawling Back to Normal
Time passes, and it does what it does, and slowly I have managed to crawl back to something that feels like normal. In no order whatsoever:
Casino Roulette
My first trip to Vegas produced the not-at-all surprising revelation that one casino is just like every other casino. Went wandering around one in the morning the first night there, thinking it would be cooler at night (ha!), left the nice air-conditioned MGM Grand to wander the Strip, got as far as the Luxor and needed to get back into air conditioning again. Where I found that the casino there looked almost exactly the same as the one at the MGM Grand. Then I took the walkways back again, making interior crossings from building to building as long as possible, thus leading me through whatever that weird “medieval castle” place is, and discovering again that their casino seemed awfully familiar. Well of course it is—the science of separating you (willingly!) from your money is just that, a science, and a science that is about as refined and well-practiced as any you’ll ever find. Casinos all look alike because that look makes you give them money, and lots of it.
I never gambled, by the way, but I watched friends gamble. And even with a well-practiced (online) blackjack system, nothing online prepares you for the subtle shift that happens when your dealer gets swapped out in the middle of a good run of cards, or when the pit boss leans in to see how things are going. Suddenly, money starts going away, very fast.
One more thing: the purpose of chips is to make your money abstract. If you were gambling with real hundreds or thousands or higher, you would definitely feel it more than when your money has been abstracted to colorful little chips. And once your money has been abstracted, it goes away faster. A science, thoroughly perfected.
Cleaning House
The process of going through someone’s house, cleaning up their life, is difficult for all sorts of reasons. (And a toolshed in Florida in August adds a whole new layer of difficulty.) My grandfather was one of the most unsentimental people I’ve ever known—he would sell off pretty much anything, without a qualm; but he still managed to accumulate mountains of stuff. And so, of course, as I helped with the awful process of working through it all, the following inevitable logic chain went through my head:
1) Man, he had a lot of crap
2) Man, people in general have a lot of crap
3) Man, I’ve got a lot of crap
Leaving me thoroughly resolved to do some house-cleaning of my own when I got home. But of course, once I actually did get home...
Bleah
The second the plane touched down, that’s when all my resolution vanished. I’d been solid and strong for days; now I was something else. Mostly petulant and lazy. God did I get lazy. Watched endless hours of the Olympics, not because I actually enjoyed watching table tennis but because it was on. Took days to crawl my way back to my normal routine. So if I owe someone an email or a phone call, my apologies, and I should get to it soon.
Mr. Smith, Meet Mr. Obama
I had one of those birthday-things, and celebrated the awful occasion by going to a screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, one of my favorite movies. It was sponsored by Generation Obama as a fundraiser for the campaign, and afterward there was a panel discussion that included Aaron Sorkin, one of favorite screenwriters and of course the creator of The West Wing.
(And because my mom has mad skillz as a gift-giver, the very day I went to this function, she sent me a birthday box containing a DVD of Charlie Wilson’s War, which was written by Aaron Sorkin. She bought it a month ago, long before I knew this event was going to be held; she also had no idea that that particular movie was written by Mr. Sorkin, she just thought I’d like it. Yep.)
The panelists were under some constraint to keep their remarks focused more on Obama than on the movie we’d just watched, which was mildly disappointing. The question I didn’t get to ask was this: Mr. Smith is clearly a fantasy, because in it, Jefferson Smith is clearly defeated, and only obtains victory because one of the bad guys suffers an attack of conscience and confesses. And as we all know, in the real world, that simply never happens. So, while the movie’s portrait of naiveté versus idealism (Jeff Smith suffers because he is naïve; he wins because he holds firm to his idealism) is definitely relevant to this campaign, ultimately the movie probably offers a hopeful vision that won’t much resemble what happens in the real world.
Although after Michelle Obama’s marvelous speech last night, I don’t know, I’m suddenly feeling delightfully naïve all over again...
Casino Roulette
My first trip to Vegas produced the not-at-all surprising revelation that one casino is just like every other casino. Went wandering around one in the morning the first night there, thinking it would be cooler at night (ha!), left the nice air-conditioned MGM Grand to wander the Strip, got as far as the Luxor and needed to get back into air conditioning again. Where I found that the casino there looked almost exactly the same as the one at the MGM Grand. Then I took the walkways back again, making interior crossings from building to building as long as possible, thus leading me through whatever that weird “medieval castle” place is, and discovering again that their casino seemed awfully familiar. Well of course it is—the science of separating you (willingly!) from your money is just that, a science, and a science that is about as refined and well-practiced as any you’ll ever find. Casinos all look alike because that look makes you give them money, and lots of it.
I never gambled, by the way, but I watched friends gamble. And even with a well-practiced (online) blackjack system, nothing online prepares you for the subtle shift that happens when your dealer gets swapped out in the middle of a good run of cards, or when the pit boss leans in to see how things are going. Suddenly, money starts going away, very fast.
One more thing: the purpose of chips is to make your money abstract. If you were gambling with real hundreds or thousands or higher, you would definitely feel it more than when your money has been abstracted to colorful little chips. And once your money has been abstracted, it goes away faster. A science, thoroughly perfected.
Cleaning House
The process of going through someone’s house, cleaning up their life, is difficult for all sorts of reasons. (And a toolshed in Florida in August adds a whole new layer of difficulty.) My grandfather was one of the most unsentimental people I’ve ever known—he would sell off pretty much anything, without a qualm; but he still managed to accumulate mountains of stuff. And so, of course, as I helped with the awful process of working through it all, the following inevitable logic chain went through my head:
1) Man, he had a lot of crap
2) Man, people in general have a lot of crap
3) Man, I’ve got a lot of crap
Leaving me thoroughly resolved to do some house-cleaning of my own when I got home. But of course, once I actually did get home...
Bleah
The second the plane touched down, that’s when all my resolution vanished. I’d been solid and strong for days; now I was something else. Mostly petulant and lazy. God did I get lazy. Watched endless hours of the Olympics, not because I actually enjoyed watching table tennis but because it was on. Took days to crawl my way back to my normal routine. So if I owe someone an email or a phone call, my apologies, and I should get to it soon.
Mr. Smith, Meet Mr. Obama
I had one of those birthday-things, and celebrated the awful occasion by going to a screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, one of my favorite movies. It was sponsored by Generation Obama as a fundraiser for the campaign, and afterward there was a panel discussion that included Aaron Sorkin, one of favorite screenwriters and of course the creator of The West Wing.
(And because my mom has mad skillz as a gift-giver, the very day I went to this function, she sent me a birthday box containing a DVD of Charlie Wilson’s War, which was written by Aaron Sorkin. She bought it a month ago, long before I knew this event was going to be held; she also had no idea that that particular movie was written by Mr. Sorkin, she just thought I’d like it. Yep.)
The panelists were under some constraint to keep their remarks focused more on Obama than on the movie we’d just watched, which was mildly disappointing. The question I didn’t get to ask was this: Mr. Smith is clearly a fantasy, because in it, Jefferson Smith is clearly defeated, and only obtains victory because one of the bad guys suffers an attack of conscience and confesses. And as we all know, in the real world, that simply never happens. So, while the movie’s portrait of naiveté versus idealism (Jeff Smith suffers because he is naïve; he wins because he holds firm to his idealism) is definitely relevant to this campaign, ultimately the movie probably offers a hopeful vision that won’t much resemble what happens in the real world.
Although after Michelle Obama’s marvelous speech last night, I don’t know, I’m suddenly feeling delightfully naïve all over again...
Friday, May 30, 2008
Link Closure
Busy bizzy buzzy bee. Just a couple quick things to note, mostly written by other people, oh joy! And thus closing some links I've been meaning to close:
On the subject of Senator Obama and the Rev. Wright, I have nothing to say about Part 2 of that saga that Bill Moyers didn't say much, much better. Just a taste:
But the entirety of what he said is worth reading, and can be found here, right at the top.
One of the things that's bugged me recently about the rise in gas prices is that the oil companies have stopped even bothering to explain what's going on. Into the breach steps Andrew Leonard at Salon. He writes a regular column called "How the World Works" that I would say is required reading if only I read it regularly. It's dense, and complex, and it helps if you have an economics degree, which I most certainly don't. But the man certainly seems to know what he's talking about, and he has written an excellent explication of why we're paying so damn much at the pump. You can find it here.
A person should always investigate the facts before complaining about how we're being gouged by the oil companies. Read Mr. Leonard's article, get a sense of the astonishing complexity of these prices--then go back to complaining about the gas companies because, you know, that's just fun.
Links are closed. I go back to other things. Hi do ho, hi dee hi.
On the subject of Senator Obama and the Rev. Wright, I have nothing to say about Part 2 of that saga that Bill Moyers didn't say much, much better. Just a taste:
We are often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this--this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers."
But the entirety of what he said is worth reading, and can be found here, right at the top.
One of the things that's bugged me recently about the rise in gas prices is that the oil companies have stopped even bothering to explain what's going on. Into the breach steps Andrew Leonard at Salon. He writes a regular column called "How the World Works" that I would say is required reading if only I read it regularly. It's dense, and complex, and it helps if you have an economics degree, which I most certainly don't. But the man certainly seems to know what he's talking about, and he has written an excellent explication of why we're paying so damn much at the pump. You can find it here.
A person should always investigate the facts before complaining about how we're being gouged by the oil companies. Read Mr. Leonard's article, get a sense of the astonishing complexity of these prices--then go back to complaining about the gas companies because, you know, that's just fun.
Links are closed. I go back to other things. Hi do ho, hi dee hi.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A Tale of Two Transcripts (Part 2)
The Jabbering Class
The Privileged Few, they will have their say. Years ago, they ensconced one of their own, Roger Ailes, as the head of Fox News. As everyone knows, Fox News has ever since been the Pravda of the conservative right, their “fair and balanced” being no more fair and balanced than Pravda ever actually represented “truth.”
In the wake of Sen. Obama’s speech, Sean Hannity seized the occasion. He responded to Obama’s challenging speech on race by not at all dealing with race. It also ended on an astonishing note of self-adulation, but I’ll get to that later.
Hannity invited Frank Luntz to dissect the Obama speech. Luntz is a very smart man who bills himself as a pollster, even though the kinds of polls he runs are the ones designed to make people answer questions the way the pollster wants them to. (He himself has said so.) What Luntz really is, is a semantician. He’s a manipulator of language, highly in demand in the Republican party for his ability to make language bend the people to its will. But calling himself a pollster (even though he has been frequently sanctioned by polling organizations) allows him to pretend he is impartial and above the fray. In other words, calling himself a pollster is itself a semantician’s manipulation of language.
The First Absurd Salvo
Luntz’s very first critique of the Obama speech was in itself pretty astonishing:
Sounds like an interesting left-field critique, but it’s simply an attempt to diminish Obama’s vaunted oratorical skill. (Which scares the bejeebers out of his political opponents.) When one is speaking on a subject as charged as race, where time and again we have seen people make tiny off-the-cuff misstatements that have been seized upon and wrung dry (as Obama himself did with his “typical white woman” remark a couple days later), the last thing on earth you want to do is stand in front of the nation and wing it. (Wouldn’t they have just loved it if he had. Because then, then they’d have had something they could’ve worked with. Some bone they could have gnawed for months.)
Also, it seemed plain to me that Obama deliberately kept his delivery flat in order to stay away from anything that sounded, in a word, preachery. It was necessary for him to draw as a sharp a contrast as he could between his calm, measured oratory and the flights of passion that seized Rev. Wright. We know from Obama’s other speeches that he can wind up a crowd real good, but this wasn’t the time. Luntz deliberately ignores all this in order to make the false claim that Obama’s speech was (a) insincere and (b) dull.
(Of course, insincere and dull is exactly what we get every time our current president reads from the teleprompter, but let’s stick to the subject.)
But Wait, There's More
Mr. Luntz then dares the following, referring to Obama’s comment that Rev. Wright “contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad of the community that he has served”:
In response to that, one need only say: Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. Both of whom claimed, as Rev. Wright did, that America deserved 9/11 for its sins, except that for Falwell and Robertson those sins were liberalism and homosexuality, while for Wright the sin was slavery and racism. Pick your poison.
Luntz and Hannity then engaged in a very poorly-defined critique of this line from Obama: “I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother....” Seizing, inevitably, on the word “disown,” they said, essentially, that it was bad without ever actually saying why. Frequent cohost Kristin Powers, a Democratic Party operative, tried to weigh in, without much effect.
Is it? Why? After all the clamor for Obama to do exactly that, to disown his pastor, now when he refuses to do so suddenly the word “disown” is really a meaningless rationalization? It’s the semantic version of sour grapes, basically. But of course Luntz doesn’t really explain what he’s trying to say effectively, except for a very vague complaint that Obama equates his grandmother with his pastor. Which was, of course, entirely the point: as Ms. Powers correctly tried to note, Obama was stating that his pastor is imperfect and complex just as his grandmother was, but that he wasn’t about to abandon someone so important in his life just because of some disagreements. (My own great-grandmother, born in Virginia in 1898, once referred to some black children as “pickaninnies.” Should I disown or disavow her?)
This whole thing with Rev. Wright has been a massive attempt to create guilt by association. It is thus disingenuous (at best) to complain when Obama associates his imperfect grandmother with his imperfect pastor.
And by the way, Gary Kamiya has an excellent response to Rev. Wright’s comments in today’s Salon, asserting that “Wright isn’t the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.” With which I entirely agree.
Saying Much, Doing Nothing
Luntz then raises a question that seems to deal with the issue, but doesn’t. It has the effect of making him sound high-minded without his having to actually, you know, be high-minded.
You’ve gotta love it. Let’s have an open and frank discussion about race, he seems to say, and then he pivots to the economy. And as to that point, Obama delivered another major address the very next day, on the subject of the Iraq war, then dealt with the economy the day after that. So you can’t say that Obama is getting distracted from other issues, since the very next day he turned to other issues. The thing is--nobody paid any attention to these speeches. Race is a red-meat issue, and that’s all anyone wanted to report on. Obama asked whether we were going to allow ourselves to continue to be distracted, and the media then proceeded to try very hard to distract us.
Then, of course, there was the section of the speech where Obama said that the people trying to distract us, The Privileged Few, include “talkshow hosts and political commentators.” No surprise, Luntz found that personally offensive.
Again: Robertson and Falwell. If you’re going to make the guilt-by-association argument, you have to be open to the possibility that your side is just as tainted, if not more so.
Sean Hannity Ventures an Opinion
Mr. Hannity went on to say:
Note how artfully that was phrased (Luntz must have helped on this before the show)--while at the same time appearing to be fair by noting that he has no idea whether Obama actually feels that way, Hannity nonetheless found a way to state forcefully and affirmatively, in solid declarative language, “that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.”
Do you feel scared yet? Well why not?! What are you, stupid? A racist and an anti-Semite would be president! You should be terrified of that! Vote Republican!
It went on like that for a while, mixing the “we don’t really know whether he feels that way” language with more fear-mongering, until finally they got weirdly self-congratulatory.
The Grand Finale
Hannity claimed that he was the one who got the Rev. Wright scoop in the first place. Which may be true, I don’t know and I don’t particularly care who scooped whom. But he used this claim to further assert that McCain and Clinton should “stay away from this [issue] and let those of us that have led from the beginning continue to talk about it.”
Yes, it’s true: Sean Hannity, a leading voice for racial dialogue. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?
And... commercial break!
I have nothing further to say.
The Privileged Few, they will have their say. Years ago, they ensconced one of their own, Roger Ailes, as the head of Fox News. As everyone knows, Fox News has ever since been the Pravda of the conservative right, their “fair and balanced” being no more fair and balanced than Pravda ever actually represented “truth.”
In the wake of Sen. Obama’s speech, Sean Hannity seized the occasion. He responded to Obama’s challenging speech on race by not at all dealing with race. It also ended on an astonishing note of self-adulation, but I’ll get to that later.
Hannity invited Frank Luntz to dissect the Obama speech. Luntz is a very smart man who bills himself as a pollster, even though the kinds of polls he runs are the ones designed to make people answer questions the way the pollster wants them to. (He himself has said so.) What Luntz really is, is a semantician. He’s a manipulator of language, highly in demand in the Republican party for his ability to make language bend the people to its will. But calling himself a pollster (even though he has been frequently sanctioned by polling organizations) allows him to pretend he is impartial and above the fray. In other words, calling himself a pollster is itself a semantician’s manipulation of language.
The First Absurd Salvo
Luntz’s very first critique of the Obama speech was in itself pretty astonishing:
Well, the first thing is that he read it on the telemprompter and, frankly, he didn’t read it that well. When you are in a situation where you’re being challenged, when your credibility is under attack.... Don’t ever read a teleprompter. Look at them straight in the eye.
Sounds like an interesting left-field critique, but it’s simply an attempt to diminish Obama’s vaunted oratorical skill. (Which scares the bejeebers out of his political opponents.) When one is speaking on a subject as charged as race, where time and again we have seen people make tiny off-the-cuff misstatements that have been seized upon and wrung dry (as Obama himself did with his “typical white woman” remark a couple days later), the last thing on earth you want to do is stand in front of the nation and wing it. (Wouldn’t they have just loved it if he had. Because then, then they’d have had something they could’ve worked with. Some bone they could have gnawed for months.)
Also, it seemed plain to me that Obama deliberately kept his delivery flat in order to stay away from anything that sounded, in a word, preachery. It was necessary for him to draw as a sharp a contrast as he could between his calm, measured oratory and the flights of passion that seized Rev. Wright. We know from Obama’s other speeches that he can wind up a crowd real good, but this wasn’t the time. Luntz deliberately ignores all this in order to make the false claim that Obama’s speech was (a) insincere and (b) dull.
(Of course, insincere and dull is exactly what we get every time our current president reads from the teleprompter, but let’s stick to the subject.)
But Wait, There's More
Mr. Luntz then dares the following, referring to Obama’s comment that Rev. Wright “contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad of the community that he has served”:
This is not your hairdresser. This is not the guy who does your nails. This is your pastor. This is your rabbi; this is your priest. This is a spiritual leader of a community.
In response to that, one need only say: Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. Both of whom claimed, as Rev. Wright did, that America deserved 9/11 for its sins, except that for Falwell and Robertson those sins were liberalism and homosexuality, while for Wright the sin was slavery and racism. Pick your poison.
Luntz and Hannity then engaged in a very poorly-defined critique of this line from Obama: “I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother....” Seizing, inevitably, on the word “disown,” they said, essentially, that it was bad without ever actually saying why. Frequent cohost Kristin Powers, a Democratic Party operative, tried to weigh in, without much effect.
LUNTZ: ... Barack Obama is an outstanding communicator.... But I now follow the words that he chooses. And if you watch his speech overall, it is Kennedy-esque. But the moment that you start to look at the language—and I’ve got the text here. That word “disown”...
HANNITY: Yes.
LUNTZ: ... he’s going to pay a price for that in that he brings in his own family and tries to do that.
HANNITY: Because he stays friends when he says he doesn’t disown. He’s still friends with the guy.
POWERS: But wasn’t he talking about the...
LUNTZ: More than just friends.
POWERS: Wasn’t he talking about the complexities of people? That’s the way I heard that.
LUNTZ: You are correct. And he’s trying to explain it. But the problem is when you get to words like “disown,” it’s a rationalization. It’s a defense rather than an explanation.
Is it? Why? After all the clamor for Obama to do exactly that, to disown his pastor, now when he refuses to do so suddenly the word “disown” is really a meaningless rationalization? It’s the semantic version of sour grapes, basically. But of course Luntz doesn’t really explain what he’s trying to say effectively, except for a very vague complaint that Obama equates his grandmother with his pastor. Which was, of course, entirely the point: as Ms. Powers correctly tried to note, Obama was stating that his pastor is imperfect and complex just as his grandmother was, but that he wasn’t about to abandon someone so important in his life just because of some disagreements. (My own great-grandmother, born in Virginia in 1898, once referred to some black children as “pickaninnies.” Should I disown or disavow her?)
This whole thing with Rev. Wright has been a massive attempt to create guilt by association. It is thus disingenuous (at best) to complain when Obama associates his imperfect grandmother with his imperfect pastor.
And by the way, Gary Kamiya has an excellent response to Rev. Wright’s comments in today’s Salon, asserting that “Wright isn’t the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.” With which I entirely agree.
Saying Much, Doing Nothing
Luntz then raises a question that seems to deal with the issue, but doesn’t. It has the effect of making him sound high-minded without his having to actually, you know, be high-minded.
Can we have a discussion in this country about race where we don’t have an approach that tries to level accusations? And can we have a discussion that doesn’t say that whites are racist and African-Americans are not? [Obama neither said nor implied any such thing. Plainly.] Are we going to have this kind of open conversation?
And one other point.... There are issues of economy. Our economy is melting down... and yet, Barack Obama is now responding to his pastor....
You’ve gotta love it. Let’s have an open and frank discussion about race, he seems to say, and then he pivots to the economy. And as to that point, Obama delivered another major address the very next day, on the subject of the Iraq war, then dealt with the economy the day after that. So you can’t say that Obama is getting distracted from other issues, since the very next day he turned to other issues. The thing is--nobody paid any attention to these speeches. Race is a red-meat issue, and that’s all anyone wanted to report on. Obama asked whether we were going to allow ourselves to continue to be distracted, and the media then proceeded to try very hard to distract us.
Then, of course, there was the section of the speech where Obama said that the people trying to distract us, The Privileged Few, include “talkshow hosts and political commentators.” No surprise, Luntz found that personally offensive.
Now, look, let’s talk about class warfare, which is what the Democrats have always tried to do against the Republicans. [Because it’s what the Republicans have been actually doing for lo these many years—the upper class successfully dominating every other class. The Democrats take the trouble to point this out, and get accused of attempting to wage class warfare.] ... This is not about Republicans talking about affirmative action or welfare or Democrats or whatever. This is about a religious figure, a very important person in Senator Obama’s life, who has a point of view that is frightening.
Again: Robertson and Falwell. If you’re going to make the guilt-by-association argument, you have to be open to the possibility that your side is just as tainted, if not more so.
Sean Hannity Ventures an Opinion
Mr. Hannity went on to say:
What if Barack Obama, for the entire year that the MoveOn media out there has ignored any scrutiny of him, and they’ve gone along with the bumper sticker of change and the slogans. What if he really deep down in his heart thinks like Pastor Wright? ... I think that would be dangerous. That would mean we would have—if he agreed with Wright, and I don’t know that he does, but if he did, that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.
Note how artfully that was phrased (Luntz must have helped on this before the show)--while at the same time appearing to be fair by noting that he has no idea whether Obama actually feels that way, Hannity nonetheless found a way to state forcefully and affirmatively, in solid declarative language, “that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.”
Do you feel scared yet? Well why not?! What are you, stupid? A racist and an anti-Semite would be president! You should be terrified of that! Vote Republican!
It went on like that for a while, mixing the “we don’t really know whether he feels that way” language with more fear-mongering, until finally they got weirdly self-congratulatory.
The Grand Finale
Hannity claimed that he was the one who got the Rev. Wright scoop in the first place. Which may be true, I don’t know and I don’t particularly care who scooped whom. But he used this claim to further assert that McCain and Clinton should “stay away from this [issue] and let those of us that have led from the beginning continue to talk about it.”
Yes, it’s true: Sean Hannity, a leading voice for racial dialogue. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?
LUNTZ: And you’ve got the evidence. You’ve got the tape that proves it. Congratulations, Sean.
HANNITY: Thanks. We’ll talk more in the future.
And... commercial break!
I have nothing further to say.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A Tale of Two Transcripts (Part 1)
In Philadelphia
Across the street from Independence Hall on Tuesday morning, there was a moment when, as observers as disparate as David Gergen and Jon Stewart noted, a major American politician spoke to us as if we were adults.
There are two transcripts related to that moment in our American life that I want to deal with. The first is of Senator Obama’s speech, delivered at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia; then I’ll talk about a certain response to it that exemplifies from where the fight is going to come.
The transcript of Obama’s speech is here; there is YouTube video of it here.
Unclean Hands
Let me first start by saying that Senator Obama does not have clean hands on this issue. His campaign has been just as guilty of “playing the race card” as Senator Clinton’s--if not more so. To pick just one example, there was the moment when Senator Clinton said in a speech, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” To me, that never read as a denigration of Dr. King’s role in the civil rights movement, it was simply a realistic reading of the often-necessary interplay between visionaries and institutions, and it was also just what she said it was: a recognition of the role that governments can play when they are run well. (Not to say that the Johnson administration was always well run, but let’s not get distracted by that argument.) I’ve said for years now, when small-government activists get all up in my face about how government should keep out of everything except defense and trade, that the Civil Rights Act is a prime example of something that a powerful central government can do beyond the initial scope of its powers--the southern states clearly didn’t want to enact any such legislation, but were forced to by the combined strength of the northern and western states, to everyone’s long-term benefit. Dr. King could not have done it alone, and that’s exactly the point Sen. Clinton was trying to make.
But the Obama campaign took it as an attempt to downplay Dr. King’s importance, which I for one never thought it was, and it bothered me--a lot--that the Obama campaign was willing to go there.
So when I heard that Sen. Obama was going to deliver a “major address” on the subject of race, I did not approach it with the same sort of “Obamatry” that characterizes some of his more ardent supporters--an unquestioning adoration that is in itself a little worrisome. No, I simply wanted to hear what he had to say, hoping against hope that he might just say something valuable.
The Race Problem
Scapegoating of The Other is a problem that has been long with us--for exactly as long as The Many have been exploited by The Powerful Few. Limiting our discussion to the American experience, Howard Zinn has pointed out how white landowners in the southern colonies pitted their black slaves against the local native tribes in order to keep both in line. None of this is new; our current “immigration debate” was sparked by absolutely nothing--except for a desire by those in power to invent an argument by which they could keep themselves in power. There was no actual event that set it in motion, the number of people illegally crossing the border is pretty much the same as it has been for quite a while now, but some bright spark realized that by exploiting fear of The Other, s/he could make plenty of good political hay. And so we continue to fuss and fret over the issue, all the while dancing to the tune of The Powerful Few.
Through it all, at least since the Civil Rights Act (1964), race has been much spoken of, but almost never with any seriousness. Opportunities for minorities slowly grew over time, and as we (by “we” I mean white people such as me, which in its broader sense means those of us who happen to have been born into the “right” club) saw those opportunities expand, we allowed ourselves to believe, without ever really questioning whether it was actually true or not, that the problem was resolved or, at least, resolving.
But all that meant was that we grew fat and self-satisfied, ignoring whatever subterranean currents still remained, hiding away in our desperate little souls. When a Michael Richards came along, a comedian taking outrageousness past the point of comedy, we jumped on that poor man with a word that has become every bit as bad as “pedophile,” calling him “racist” without ever questioning whether maybe we all had some Michael Richards in us.
Actually, that’s probably exactly why we jumped on him so hard--how dare he say what we know we’re not supposed to say! That breaks the code, it brings something into the open that we’d prefer remain buried. And as a result, Michael Richards’s career is destroyed--and we once again manage to avoid having the real discussion about race that we desperately need to have.
But then on Tuesday, Barack Obama stepped up to the podium.
The Speech
Running about forty minutes long and delivered, deliberately, without preacher-like fervor, the speech was clearly a bit of damage control in the wake of comments by Sen. Obama’s longtime, pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But there are lots of ways to approach damage control, and Sen. Obama took the high road, using Rev. Wright’s inflammatory preaching (“God damn America!”) to search for the pain beneath it--and then to reach even higher and seek for the pain that underlies the myriad forms of racism in every American’s soul. He worked just as hard to find the resentments felt by underprivileged whites as he did in elucidating the long history of subjugation and oppression felt by blacks in America.
Perhaps Obama is uniquely qualified to make such a speech, coming from a racially-mixed background that makes him both black and white, with relatives, as he noted, spread across three continents. (Lord knows George Bush could never have given a speech such as this--setting aside the question of whether he’s even capable of it, he simply wouldn’t be credible.)
The whole purpose of the speech was to take the broader view. Rev. Wright said some reprehensible things, but Obama also told of the man he’s known for more than twenty years...
Which of course reminds me of that greatest of American poets, Walt Whitman, who gloried in the rich complexities of life, and who of course said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Whitman understood this over a century ago; Obama understands it now. But The Powerful Few need us to wallow in false certainty; they peddle a Manichaean, black-and-white (literally) worldview in which a “wrong” word automatically equates to a wrong person, in which no one is allowed to be complex but must be perfectly simple--or else immediately and categorically denied. Often these Powerful Few are professed Christians, but they have of course entirely forgotten--willfully forgotten--Christ’s warning: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Or, as Obama put it himself:
(Within minutes of this you heard conservative pundits proclaiming how offended they were that Obama had “stooped” to the political in this passage. The Powerful Few will do what they must to protect their privileges--but that’s for the next installment of this little essay.)
Obama’s best passage is also his most insightful:
It is here that his endlessly-repeated leitmotif of change shifts its shape, metamorphosing from a political slogan to something like a real ideology--a vision of an America that is never static, that, as Obama said in his speech, “...may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” America represents an ongoing evolution in the idea of human rights, a constant expansion from the limited sense that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote “all men are created equal,” an expansion that continues today with all its attendant strains--Jefferson surely never imagined that transgendered individuals would one day seek their equal rights, but once that door of equality was opened, it was inevitable that one day everyone, absolutely everyone, would insist on passing through. The process is never easy, but it becomes impossible if we look at the nation as something static and constant and cold, something that does not evolve or change.
Obama himself is the change he seeks; and if there’s any justice at all in the world, the challenge he posed on Tuesday--implicitly asking us, by treating us as adults, whether or not we will in fact act like adults--will end with him in the White House. Where my most fervent hope is that he will continue to lead through challenge for the next many years, exactly as he did this week.
Now that, that would be the kind of president I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Next time... the Powerful Few jabber back.
Across the street from Independence Hall on Tuesday morning, there was a moment when, as observers as disparate as David Gergen and Jon Stewart noted, a major American politician spoke to us as if we were adults.
There are two transcripts related to that moment in our American life that I want to deal with. The first is of Senator Obama’s speech, delivered at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia; then I’ll talk about a certain response to it that exemplifies from where the fight is going to come.
The transcript of Obama’s speech is here; there is YouTube video of it here.
Unclean Hands
Let me first start by saying that Senator Obama does not have clean hands on this issue. His campaign has been just as guilty of “playing the race card” as Senator Clinton’s--if not more so. To pick just one example, there was the moment when Senator Clinton said in a speech, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” To me, that never read as a denigration of Dr. King’s role in the civil rights movement, it was simply a realistic reading of the often-necessary interplay between visionaries and institutions, and it was also just what she said it was: a recognition of the role that governments can play when they are run well. (Not to say that the Johnson administration was always well run, but let’s not get distracted by that argument.) I’ve said for years now, when small-government activists get all up in my face about how government should keep out of everything except defense and trade, that the Civil Rights Act is a prime example of something that a powerful central government can do beyond the initial scope of its powers--the southern states clearly didn’t want to enact any such legislation, but were forced to by the combined strength of the northern and western states, to everyone’s long-term benefit. Dr. King could not have done it alone, and that’s exactly the point Sen. Clinton was trying to make.
But the Obama campaign took it as an attempt to downplay Dr. King’s importance, which I for one never thought it was, and it bothered me--a lot--that the Obama campaign was willing to go there.
So when I heard that Sen. Obama was going to deliver a “major address” on the subject of race, I did not approach it with the same sort of “Obamatry” that characterizes some of his more ardent supporters--an unquestioning adoration that is in itself a little worrisome. No, I simply wanted to hear what he had to say, hoping against hope that he might just say something valuable.
The Race Problem
Scapegoating of The Other is a problem that has been long with us--for exactly as long as The Many have been exploited by The Powerful Few. Limiting our discussion to the American experience, Howard Zinn has pointed out how white landowners in the southern colonies pitted their black slaves against the local native tribes in order to keep both in line. None of this is new; our current “immigration debate” was sparked by absolutely nothing--except for a desire by those in power to invent an argument by which they could keep themselves in power. There was no actual event that set it in motion, the number of people illegally crossing the border is pretty much the same as it has been for quite a while now, but some bright spark realized that by exploiting fear of The Other, s/he could make plenty of good political hay. And so we continue to fuss and fret over the issue, all the while dancing to the tune of The Powerful Few.
Through it all, at least since the Civil Rights Act (1964), race has been much spoken of, but almost never with any seriousness. Opportunities for minorities slowly grew over time, and as we (by “we” I mean white people such as me, which in its broader sense means those of us who happen to have been born into the “right” club) saw those opportunities expand, we allowed ourselves to believe, without ever really questioning whether it was actually true or not, that the problem was resolved or, at least, resolving.
But all that meant was that we grew fat and self-satisfied, ignoring whatever subterranean currents still remained, hiding away in our desperate little souls. When a Michael Richards came along, a comedian taking outrageousness past the point of comedy, we jumped on that poor man with a word that has become every bit as bad as “pedophile,” calling him “racist” without ever questioning whether maybe we all had some Michael Richards in us.
Actually, that’s probably exactly why we jumped on him so hard--how dare he say what we know we’re not supposed to say! That breaks the code, it brings something into the open that we’d prefer remain buried. And as a result, Michael Richards’s career is destroyed--and we once again manage to avoid having the real discussion about race that we desperately need to have.
But then on Tuesday, Barack Obama stepped up to the podium.
The Speech
Running about forty minutes long and delivered, deliberately, without preacher-like fervor, the speech was clearly a bit of damage control in the wake of comments by Sen. Obama’s longtime, pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But there are lots of ways to approach damage control, and Sen. Obama took the high road, using Rev. Wright’s inflammatory preaching (“God damn America!”) to search for the pain beneath it--and then to reach even higher and seek for the pain that underlies the myriad forms of racism in every American’s soul. He worked just as hard to find the resentments felt by underprivileged whites as he did in elucidating the long history of subjugation and oppression felt by blacks in America.
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 handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And 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.
Perhaps Obama is uniquely qualified to make such a speech, coming from a racially-mixed background that makes him both black and white, with relatives, as he noted, spread across three continents. (Lord knows George Bush could never have given a speech such as this--setting aside the question of whether he’s even capable of it, he simply wouldn’t be credible.)
The whole purpose of the speech was to take the broader view. Rev. Wright said some reprehensible things, but Obama also told of the man he’s known for more than twenty years...
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.... He contains within him the contradictions--the good and the bad--of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
Which of course reminds me of that greatest of American poets, Walt Whitman, who gloried in the rich complexities of life, and who of course said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Whitman understood this over a century ago; Obama understands it now. But The Powerful Few need us to wallow in false certainty; they peddle a Manichaean, black-and-white (literally) worldview in which a “wrong” word automatically equates to a wrong person, in which no one is allowed to be complex but must be perfectly simple--or else immediately and categorically denied. Often these Powerful Few are professed Christians, but they have of course entirely forgotten--willfully forgotten--Christ’s warning: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Or, as Obama put it himself:
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. 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.
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.
(Within minutes of this you heard conservative pundits proclaiming how offended they were that Obama had “stooped” to the political in this passage. The Powerful Few will do what they must to protect their privileges--but that’s for the next installment of this little essay.)
Obama’s best passage is also his most insightful:
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 had 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. 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.
It is here that his endlessly-repeated leitmotif of change shifts its shape, metamorphosing from a political slogan to something like a real ideology--a vision of an America that is never static, that, as Obama said in his speech, “...may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” America represents an ongoing evolution in the idea of human rights, a constant expansion from the limited sense that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote “all men are created equal,” an expansion that continues today with all its attendant strains--Jefferson surely never imagined that transgendered individuals would one day seek their equal rights, but once that door of equality was opened, it was inevitable that one day everyone, absolutely everyone, would insist on passing through. The process is never easy, but it becomes impossible if we look at the nation as something static and constant and cold, something that does not evolve or change.
Obama himself is the change he seeks; and if there’s any justice at all in the world, the challenge he posed on Tuesday--implicitly asking us, by treating us as adults, whether or not we will in fact act like adults--will end with him in the White House. Where my most fervent hope is that he will continue to lead through challenge for the next many years, exactly as he did this week.
Now that, that would be the kind of president I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Next time... the Powerful Few jabber back.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
No Electioneering Within 100 Feet of This Blog
I've always been an early-morning voter. Just seems the sort of thing that, when it comes around, I like to get under my belt first thing. Makes the rest of the day seem a little brighter, at least until the actual results come in and then, you know, generally cloudy skies and thunderbolts.
And see, the whole problem with front-loading the primary schedule is that I didn't get to vote for the guy I actually wanted to vote for. John Edwards pulled out last week, to my great surprise and disappointment. And since, in a two-way contest, I have a clear preference for Obama over Clinton, and since the polls have it so very close between them, this didn't seem the right occasion to be casting symbolic votes. Therefore I voted Obama, and am happy to have done so--but would have been even happier to have voted for Edwards.
My polling place is in a National Guard station, with a big, I don't know, a howitzer or something stationed outside and, inside, a lovely picture of weapons of war shooting at each other. (Which is okay, because of course that's what these guys do--but there were no pictures of people anywhere, nothing human on display.) (Although there was a vending machine where you could buy Fresca, so there you go.)
Some arcane rule seems to have been put in place, the intent of which was to allow independents to vote Democrat if they wish. But the result was pure confusion: there were booths set aside for independent voters, clearly marked as such; but every time someone went into one of them, a poll worker had to pop out of her chair and pull them out, telling them to go into one of the marked "DEM" booths. I predict stories will soon emerge about large numbers of spoiled independent ballots.
What this meant was that independents and Democrats had to line up to wait for a free DEM booth--and this neighborhood being what it is, the whole notion of an equal number of REP and DEM booths is simply absurd. The booths for Republicans stood empty the whole time I was there, and Democrats stood in line. Pure silliness.
Still, I've done my bit. Got my sticker, and now it's off to the rest of my bright, bright day.
And see, the whole problem with front-loading the primary schedule is that I didn't get to vote for the guy I actually wanted to vote for. John Edwards pulled out last week, to my great surprise and disappointment. And since, in a two-way contest, I have a clear preference for Obama over Clinton, and since the polls have it so very close between them, this didn't seem the right occasion to be casting symbolic votes. Therefore I voted Obama, and am happy to have done so--but would have been even happier to have voted for Edwards.
My polling place is in a National Guard station, with a big, I don't know, a howitzer or something stationed outside and, inside, a lovely picture of weapons of war shooting at each other. (Which is okay, because of course that's what these guys do--but there were no pictures of people anywhere, nothing human on display.) (Although there was a vending machine where you could buy Fresca, so there you go.)
Some arcane rule seems to have been put in place, the intent of which was to allow independents to vote Democrat if they wish. But the result was pure confusion: there were booths set aside for independent voters, clearly marked as such; but every time someone went into one of them, a poll worker had to pop out of her chair and pull them out, telling them to go into one of the marked "DEM" booths. I predict stories will soon emerge about large numbers of spoiled independent ballots.
What this meant was that independents and Democrats had to line up to wait for a free DEM booth--and this neighborhood being what it is, the whole notion of an equal number of REP and DEM booths is simply absurd. The booths for Republicans stood empty the whole time I was there, and Democrats stood in line. Pure silliness.
Still, I've done my bit. Got my sticker, and now it's off to the rest of my bright, bright day.
Friday, January 04, 2008
For What It's Worth
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
As the winner was quick to point out last night, something very like a revolution--the clean, mostly bloodless small-d democratic kind--may have begun at last. "Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope," Senator Obama said last night. Wouldn't it be great if that were true? If it were actually true?
John Edwards, who came in second in the Iowa caucuses, pointed out that by a two-thirds majority, the people of a staid, mostly-white, conservative state have voted for "a change candidate," by which he of course included himself. The same can be said on the Republican side, where Mike Huckabee (whose name, I just can't help it, always makes me think of Python's "Eric the Half-a-Bee" song) posted a win that the Wall Street Journal snarked was a victory for the evangelical left. And if the very idea of an evangelical left makes your head spin a little, then that could be taken as yet another endorsement of this notion that there's a groundswell for change, beginning right there in little ol' boring ol' Iowa.
It's the sort of thing that a lot of us dared to hope, just a little bit, after Obama's now-legendary keynote speech at the Democratic convention in 2004. His rise was so meteoric that, even as a former Chicagoan (I moved away in 2002), I really wasn't aware of him till that keynote moment. But I sure was aware of him after it, and I was delighted when he was elected to the Senate--but found his actual career in the Senate a little disappointing. I was hoping for fireworks, but he seemed to settle into the career Washington path a little too easily.
So when he announced for President, I was, initially, a supporter. Then came the Jefferson-Jackson event on November 10th last year. Purely by chance, I was home that night doing nothing, just switching channels at random, which I really don't do much since the advent of TiVo (I've got 20-plus movies stored on it right now, waiting for me to get to them). Even less often do I check in on C-Span, but that night I did, just in time for the Jefferson-Jackson speeches. Where I was surprised to find that Obama's speech, while excellent (right from the git-go, with the Chicago Bulls-style loudspeaker announcement), was only the second-best of the night.
The best? For me, it was John Edwards. (You can catch the whole thing here.) Now this, this was a man breathing fire. And given how bad things have gotten over the past eight years, fire was and is my minimum requirement for taking office. (For the record, my mom is a Ron Paul supporter, who is also most definitely a fire-breather--but I just can't quite bring myself around to the whole libertarian thing.)
As I've said any number of times here, I am now firmly of the belief that poverty is, worldwide, the key problem that sits underneath every other problem--and all along, for years now, Edwards has been talking about poverty in much the same way that Al Gore talked about the environment. He has credibility on this issue because it's not just something he tossed into a stump speech while running for office, it's something he's been actively working on for years. And yes, I know there have been presidents who've tried to tackle poverty before--most notably Lyndon Johnson's failed "War on Poverty" forty years ago. But past failure doesn't at all mean that the fight should be abandoned, and even a good effort that doesn't accomplish what it seeks is vastly superior to no effort at all--which is what we've had for way too long now.
So I already knew this about Edwards, and every once in a while I would think to myself that I really should take a closer look at him. But the Jefferson-Jackson event was the moment that did what the 12,000 debates didn't--it allowed every candidate to speak for several minutes at a time, not several seconds at a time, but the evening was still compact enough that everyone could get a turn without wearing out the audience. So that where the debates did nothing to change my thinking about any of the candidates, this event did. Because although Obama's speech was good (and so was Hillary's), Edwards was fired up and saying things I believe desperately need sayng. For example: "...we do not believe in allowing lobbyists to write the laws of the United States of America...."
This was part of a rhetorical run in which Edwards attempted to define what progressives like himself stand for, in a speech I've wished for years that a Democrat would make. It's a truism that he who defines an argument wins the argument, and for too long now, conservatives have been brilliant at defining the argument. "If you don't support the war in Iraq, you're not a patriot" is only one absurd example. By making that argument stick, they made every reasoned objection to the war into an emotionally-packed declaration of anti-Americanism, so that reason went out the window and people only heard what they had already been emotionally primed to hear. In such an environment, for years now I've been desperate for a progressive to make a positive affirmation of what we're for, and why we're for it. Edwards finally did that.
So I came away from that C-Span session with a new candidate to back. And although he only came in second last night, I think he's right that he and Obama represent the "change candidates." And that although Obama was speaking specifically of his candidacy, this night may in fact represent that broader change that could signify a real revolution in what this nation is about--a change to something that might actually represent the promise of America, the fulfilled promise rather than the promise betrayed over the last eight years.
"Hope," Obama said last night, "is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be." Every single commentator last night seemed awestruck by this speech, and while it's still much too early to declare that a revolution is really underway, still, I feel just enough cautious optimism to dare to set it forth in print.
Edwards or Obama, in the end I will enthusiastically vote for either one. And if in the end they could maybe pair up somehow, well, that would be pretty great too.
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