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Elitist Persecution

The Cost of Better

I don't care if it's a double standard. When Obama chooses to engage Clinton on her native 'slash-n-burn' turf, it may always hurt him more than it helps. I'm glad for it. The double standard may be rooted in historic fear-based caricatures of the ever threatening black male. I don't care. I don't want a black President at any cost. I want a BETTER President.

That's the primary reason why I've supported Obama: he captures my imagination and makes me believe better is possible even in national and global politics. If he now chooses to believe his high-priced political consultants when they tell him that negativity is the only way to combat negativity and to show he's tough enough, SHAME ON HIM.

Here are a couple insightful critiques to that affect:
"The Low Road to Victory," NY Times
"How Obama Fell to Earth," NY Times

Speaking in Code: Is It a Lie If You Really Believe It?

After 6 weeks of such blatant fear-baiting that it successfully reversed the momentum that had reduced the Clinton's 25 point lead in PA to just 5 points, I am aghast at how many intelligent people have convinced themselves that race had little to do with the PA Primary results, but rather that voters' were compelled to support someone who "real Americans" can identify with.

Does anyone else hear the irony here?

"Real Americans" is code for our inability to talk about race. C'mon, the 'melting pot' that is Obama more adequately identifies with more people from more backgrounds than any other candidate in history! He's a white/black, immigrant/native, have/have not, educated/down-to-earth, basketball-playing/pleasure-bowling, Muslim-named/Christian-faith-having, church going/intellectually-honest, community organizing, college professor turned public servant—who's benefited from every opportunity America has to offer, yet knows what it is to be marginalized. Who has ever embodied more of the complexities and dichotomies of what it is to be American? If race isn't the significant factor affecting "real Americans" ability to "identify" with Obama, what is it that alienates him from them that isn't also a part of either of the other candidates' narratives?

(Forgive my infatuation with the phrase "real Americans." After my "Imus/VA Tech" piece on GP, I was told by a commenter that, since and I were elitest kindred, I needed to join him on a long odyssey to discover how "real Americans" live. That is only a small step shy of what I use to hear from "real American" schoolmates: that if I wanted to "complain" about justice in America, I should "go back to Africa.")

Don't get me wrong. It's not that race is the only fear that has been exploited or happens to be the only difference some voters see between themselves and Obama. But race is a reasonable proxy for discussing other religious, cultural, educational and socio-economic differences in our American experience because it's so inextricably intertwined with most of these other 'concerns.' As such, race is far from being the trivial card game it is insidiously portrayed as. It is the thing America can't get past because "real Americans" struggle to admit its pervasiveness, its complexity and its impact on their thinking. But we can't ignore it; we know it's something: so we speak in code.

Michelle Martin of NPR's Tell Me More spent much of her Wednesday show (4/23) on the nexus of race in the media coverage of the political campaign. Do you hear what I hear?

Tell Me More Segments:
Clinton Takes Pennsylvania Primary
Pennsylvania Voters React
Media Experts Discuss Race Conversation

The Death of Political Hope

I hope I'm wrong, but I think the 2008 PA Primary marks the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign. David Brooks said it well on the News Hour last night: it's hard to be a "tough hope miester." I guess it's just as well that Google never put his name in their spellchecker.

I call it the end because the polls and pundits testify that the establishment has succeed in its two primary objectives (pun intended):

1. Just enough Blacks have been convinced that it is somehow racial—and thus wrong—to vote for Obama in part out of racial solidarity. Thus, they vote against him, but seldom because of his politics.
2. Just enough whites have been convinced that they shouldn't vote for him because of some fictitious, nebulous lack of solidarity on his part with "real Americans."

It's a political K.O. combination. And as soon as the polls seemed to show it, the pundits begin to tout it relentlessly. "Obama has a hard row to hoe." "More of Hillary's supporters now say they will not vote for Barak in a general election, than Barak supporters say they won't vote for Hillary." I literally lost count of how of how many times it was surmised on CNN with such visibly sincere regret that it would be 'nearly impossible for Barak to win the general election without the support of the average, white, lunch-bucket voter'—as if, based on the reportedly 2100 Pennsylvanians polled, it were a foregone conclusion that Obama had lost majority white support everywhere and that blacks don't carry lunch-buckets.

(Need we talk about media's ability to shape public opinion. We even use qualifiers anymore, like "90% of the few blacks polled said they voted for Obama," to talk about our supposedly scientific sampling of people. If only 2000 people are sampled how many represent which demographic in order to be an adequate composite sampling of an entire state? I was flabbergasted by the number of times I heard "white" coupled with "won't" last night. It felt like all the language became us-versus-them.)

The way this has played out reminds me of the way voting districts in the South were redrawn after Reconstruction, after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and then again in the 1990s. I remember reading as a student about gerrymandering. Blacks went from having no rights of citizenship prior to the Civil War (1863) to having voting districts drawn in such a way that it minimized the political influence of people of color throughout the period of Jim Crow ( roughly 1865-1965). "After the Voting Rights Act, racial gerrymandering was ironically 'flipped around' to create 'majority-minority' districts. Using this practice, also called 'affirmative gerrymandering,' these districts were created with the stated purpose of redressing previous discrimination to ensure higher ethnic minority representation in government." In the 1990s, this remediation was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (right after the 'conservative revolution'). Yet, to the best of my knowledge, the rulings didn't posit a required remedy. It didn't require that lawmakers take maps of their states and cut them grid-like into equal size districts as a way to not favor any particular group. And I remember thinking:

If it is somehow wrong to construct voting districts along racial lines, it has to be just as perilous to deconstruct them for racial reasons as well. How do you determine which districts to redraw? How do you stop predominately white legislative bodies from redrawing every predominately colored district (just because it happens to be a district predominately of people of color)?

Thus, the Supreme Court ruled that the historically privileged could remain so.

I feel the same about the way the Establishment of both parties have come after Obama. Instead of offering intelligent critique of Barak Obama's policies, positions or politics, they have chosen instead to criticize his experience for being different from "real Americans." And a just enough people have bought it and decided to let the historically privileged remain so.

You Call That a Debate?

The so-called Pennsylvania 'Debate' hosted by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson the other evening was so absurd that I almost didn't post on it (PBS's NewsHour summarized it well). Are these the prestigious interpretors of politics and culture for us? God help us!


I take less exception that they inquired about all the tabloid issues than I do with the fact that they didn't ask any question that would have gotten at any more than what we've already heard rehearsed over and over by the media ad nauseam. Will the real journalists among us please stand up?

As John Stewart points out, 60+ minutes in, at question #16, they finally got around to what they described as "the number one issue on voters' minds!" You can't make up absurdity this good.

Class & Racism (Not Race) Harms Our Health

I found this amazingly interesting. It's a radio interview on NPR's Tell Me More. A new documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick asks why minorities suffer disproportionately from many health problems. The film's producers discuss new research that suggests the mental stress of racism and poverty can take a direct toll on physical health.

The 7-part documentary will generally air Thursday nights. Check local listings for exact times.

Stephen Colbert on the PA Brouhaha

Colbert is a satirical genius...

Don Imus and VA Tech—A Year Later

This is a re-write of some thoughts I posted a year ago after the VA Tech tragedy. It's a tough one, because it asks us to identify with those we viscerally (an perhaps rightfully) despise. But isn't that the message of Jesus on the Mount...

It was only a short year ago that "shock jock" Don Imus chose to refer to the accomplished women playing in the NCAA Basketball Finals as "nappy-headed hoes," later billing the match-up for his listeners as the "jiggaboos" versus the "wannabes." Imus' disrespect came as little surprise. He had a long history of slur and slander against Blacks, Africans, Asians, Latinos, Jews, Arabs, women, homosexuals, the poor, and just about anyone he considered unlike himself. And he had been paid handsomely to be so. The absurd brevity of his time spent off the air is perhaps only surpassed by the financial profitability of his return.

But the story that a middle-aged white man of means in the U.S. showed himself to be (or made his living as a) racist and sexist is not news to me. He is not the first, nor will he be the last. Not that what he did was not news-worthy, but his misogynistic or otherwise bigoted views seemed almost beside the point to me.

The thing that captured my attention regarding the Imus coverage the first half of April 2007 was the power dynamic. You see, power matters, and Imus had plenty of it, which he used unrepentantly to pummel with impunity the dispossessed, disenfranchised, or otherwise already marginalized. Don Imus, who is now with ABC, at the time had a nationally syndicated CBS radio show that was simulcast on MSNBC (how much money was he making?), which NPR reporter David Folkenflik further characterized as attracting "an educated, affluent audience." Most interesting to me, again, was not that this was the case; however, I was floored by the sheer number of "educated, affluent" folks who unreservedly championed Imus' "right" to do what he had been doing. It was as if the unapologetically privileged got together and declared, "How dare you have a problem with us continuing to exercise our privilege at your expense? This is the way it's supposed to be. Haven't you gotten the repeated memos?"

They said it was a First Amendment issue, to which my only response can be: Neither hate, discrimination, nor any other form of exclusionary practice or language is a First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech does not guarantee one the right to be heard. Hate does not deserve a publicly facilitated audience (e.g. radio and television air waves), and those who resource it privately deserve whatever nonviolent (particularly financial) backlash they get.

Then came the story of Seung Hui Cho. The Western world cried out in horror at the massacre Cho perpetrated on VA Tech's campus—"the single largest act of recorded handgun violence on U.S. soil in American history" (the qualifiers "recorded handgun violence" and "on U.S. soil" are important because they help to conceal our selective recollection and shocking history of violence, particularly that which has involved what we would call "state-sponsored terrorism" if it were directed at us from the outside).

And we wept. And so should we weep again in the upcoming weeks, but not just for Cho's victims. We should weep for Cho and others like him, who are victims as well ... of the Imuses of the world.

Complete the post at God's Politics blog>>>

John Stewart on the PA Brouhaha

Thank you, thank you, John...




he was on a roll...

Daddy's Rules for Dating His Daughter

I post these here for archival purposes until such time that I need them. My daughter's (who are currently 5 & 3) will begin to memorize them at age 12, so that when they are 16 and able to date they will be able to give potential suitors better than fair warning. I will also begin indoctrinating my son at age 12 on behalf of the parents he will ask to entrust their daughters to him...

Rule One
If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three
I am aware that it was at one time considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appeared to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but if you buy into this, you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Allow me to interpolate. When it comes to sex and my daughter, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five
It is usually assumed that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is: "early."

Rule Six
Once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter:
Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual themes are to be avoided; movies which feature chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.

Rule Nine
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. (Although I've never been to Vietnam, I've watched enough war moves to be adequately traumatized.) The voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit the car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car. There is no need for you to come inside. And by the way, no one you know scares me.

SNL on Petraeus

I thought this was hilarious. Everyone was fair game.

Do We Disdain Candor That Much?

Every time Obama or someone from his campaign makes a candid statement, the Democratic and Republican establishment reacts by saying, "How dare he/she say that? This proves Obama's completely out of touch and a horrible candidate!" From Michelle's expression of new found pride, to Samantha's characterization of Hillary's monstrous political tactics, to Jeremiah's justifiable critique of America, to now Obama's analyses of race and cultural ideology, the establishment's consensus from both sides of the aisle is the same: "He's not fit!"

The most recent brouhaha is over the following comment recorded by telephone at a fundraiser in San Francisco and cited in this Huffington Post article:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I understand that as a political strategy it's expedient, but I wish for once a politician wouldn't backtrack for fear of being further misconstrued. Neo-cons dig in for ideological reasons in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary of the position they are taking. Why should Obama, a college professor as well as community organizer, not be allowed to publicly assess and validate the cultural antagonisms that have had America in conflict with itself and others for the past 15 years? He didn't say cultural conservatives have no right to be. He totally legitmated the right to be culturally conservative, while honestly disagreeing with political positions conservatism compels adherents to take. Isn't that refreshing? Isn't that what we want from politicians, or would we rather they pander for fear of the political cost? One may disagree with his position or his particular choice of words, "bitter" and "cling," yet mitigation only grows out of respectful, generative public exchange of authentically expressed views.

Perhaps more importantly, we, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, have to allow those who would lead to express themselves candidly without worry for how opponents can turn statements into political fodder. If we want to be outraged, should it not be at the political and cultural interpreters of society (journalists and pundits) who obscure the substance of public discourse and spotlight the sensational?

Kudos to Chris Matthews who chose not to fan the flames of this beside-the-point non-story this morning.

*Update: Matthews too fell victim to the sensationalism.