Talk about not believing your own eyes. Fox News showed a graphic while reporting on Clinton's calls for a ‘Lincoln-Douglas’ style debate, but rather than showing Abe and his debating partner, Stephen Douglas, they paired him off with escaped former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Maybe Ann Coulter was advising their editorial team.
Now, let’s stop to consider the level of stupidity and ignorance reflected in that gaff. Not only did they get two perfectly famous figures from American history dead wrong. They assumed A BLACK GUY could have been running for national office in the 1850s! Guys! Slavery still existed then! Even in Illinois the idea would have been laughable.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised in a country that worships goofy ignorance like W’s and thinks a president who can’t string together an English sentence is kind of cute.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
God, give me an F. Please.
My intuition in the electoral-political sphere is miserable and consistently wrong, so let’s hope it’s not working once again. But I now have a queasy feeling about the Obama campaign and suspect that the unbearable Clintonoids are correct that the tide has shifted against his candidacy.
Reverend Wright could do better than have his 15 minutes of fame at the candidate’s expense, but that wouldn’t matter if the silver-tongued senator could manage to get off the defensive and neutralize the drumbeat of negative coverage with some spin of his own. But that isn’t Obama’s style, and in my view it’s his biggest weakness.
There are myriad examples over the past few weeks of opportunities that Obama let sit when he could have levered the debate into brand-new territory. It’s not enough to insist that his appeal is that of the above-it-all healer and uniter since people want their leaders to show some balls in the healing process, too. The two things aren’t contradictory.
The Obama campaign could use some of the leftover juice from Edwards’ attacks on the big money boys, rather than responding to Hillary’s and McCain’s absurd claims that the guy who left Harvard to do community organizing is an ‘elitist.’ This from the $100 million lady and the guy who voted against the Martin Luther King holiday--the openings are barn-sized, but Obama didn’t even swat.
Yes, yes, the news media have played a shoddy role and may even have shifted definitely toward Clinton. Could be. But the soaring rhetoric and supra-racial vision is looking weaker and weaker when Obama can’t refocus in the face of an attack and bounce it back with the kinds of simplified counter-messages that modern politics requires.
For example, Obama could have shamed the absurd news anchors in the final debate for sinking into utter frivolity. Instead, he patiently tried to answer all their repetitious charges as if cooperating would convince them he was all right after all. That was the moment to take charge, even kick some butt, and the public would have applauded him for it.
But he didn’t, missing a chance to boost that sense of powerful confidence that nervous voters need at a time when their worlds are maked by uncertainty.
I think Obama’s margin in North Carolina will be less than expected and that Indiana will go to the suburban white lady, that the nominating process will drag on and that the remaining super-delegates will remain anxiously undecided. If his support sags further, I see Hillary Clinton edging closer and closer to the nomination, leaving us with the prospect of two candidates from the War Party to choose from.
I hope I’m wrong.
Reverend Wright could do better than have his 15 minutes of fame at the candidate’s expense, but that wouldn’t matter if the silver-tongued senator could manage to get off the defensive and neutralize the drumbeat of negative coverage with some spin of his own. But that isn’t Obama’s style, and in my view it’s his biggest weakness.
There are myriad examples over the past few weeks of opportunities that Obama let sit when he could have levered the debate into brand-new territory. It’s not enough to insist that his appeal is that of the above-it-all healer and uniter since people want their leaders to show some balls in the healing process, too. The two things aren’t contradictory.
The Obama campaign could use some of the leftover juice from Edwards’ attacks on the big money boys, rather than responding to Hillary’s and McCain’s absurd claims that the guy who left Harvard to do community organizing is an ‘elitist.’ This from the $100 million lady and the guy who voted against the Martin Luther King holiday--the openings are barn-sized, but Obama didn’t even swat.
Yes, yes, the news media have played a shoddy role and may even have shifted definitely toward Clinton. Could be. But the soaring rhetoric and supra-racial vision is looking weaker and weaker when Obama can’t refocus in the face of an attack and bounce it back with the kinds of simplified counter-messages that modern politics requires.
For example, Obama could have shamed the absurd news anchors in the final debate for sinking into utter frivolity. Instead, he patiently tried to answer all their repetitious charges as if cooperating would convince them he was all right after all. That was the moment to take charge, even kick some butt, and the public would have applauded him for it.
But he didn’t, missing a chance to boost that sense of powerful confidence that nervous voters need at a time when their worlds are maked by uncertainty.
I think Obama’s margin in North Carolina will be less than expected and that Indiana will go to the suburban white lady, that the nominating process will drag on and that the remaining super-delegates will remain anxiously undecided. If his support sags further, I see Hillary Clinton edging closer and closer to the nomination, leaving us with the prospect of two candidates from the War Party to choose from.
I hope I’m wrong.
Monday, 28 April 2008
May I serve you?
When I was a kid, one didn’t ‘eat out’ as a rule, except to occasionally visit a ‘dining room’ on Sundays after church where a waitress named DeeDee or Trixie wearing a white uniform with an exploding handkerchief in the blouse pocket would bring you one of the specials. Since the main reason for this exercise was to free up Mom from the labors of food preparation once a month, the whole affair was straightforward and workaday, and the amusement for adults involved seeing some of their acquaintances among the townspeople out doing the same thing. For the kids, it was getting butter in individually wrapped pats.
Now that we collectively spend nearly as much being served our food as we do in buying it, how we eat out says something about the reigning assumptions of a place and the way we handle the emblematic act of consuming. I just spent a week on the road and so had multiple opportunities to experience the way Americans are expected to eat in public and to compare them with the rituals and habits of my jaded fellow New Yorkers.
Needless to say, it ain’t a pretty sight given that bipeds are involved. I include myself in that sentence since despite my best attempts at cultural sensitivity, I did not always contain my annoyance at the chirpy intrusiveness that marked the relationship between me and the local versions of Candace and Dotty, who consistently assumed that I had come to restaurant not to satisfy my hunger or to have a business meeting but to spend time with them.
These youthful waiters are now trained regularly to interrupt whatever their customers are doing to see if they are delighted with the dishes laid before them. No amount of monosyllabic replies, eye contact refusal, or stubborn continuation of the conversation will dissuade the confidant servers from another offer of freshly ground pepper or inquiries about iced tea refills. The idea that one might prefer to be left alone would come as a shock to them, as I can attest from having suggested it.
And woe is he who puts down his fork! One must stand ready to defend one’s plate like Leonidas on the bridge at Thermopylae lest the wait staff, in their misguided notion of efficiency, whip it away to get the diner into the next phase, no matter what the rest of the table is doing.
The overall impression—and an apt symbol, I believe, for how consumption of all varieites has been organized in our culture—is that the situation is tightly controlled by the seller, with the purchaser bundled neatly into a narrow range of apparent, but not real, choices. To put it another way, it is as though the waiter is the customer and we the beneficiaries of his or her performance, for which we should gladly accede to the established rules and then pay handsomely.
Only a culture in which the human interchange that uniquely occurs over the breaking of bread has been debased and nearly forgotten could reify so consistently and completely the mechanics of obtaining a public meal to the exclusion of the role of people in it. Like the state-run economies of the disappeared Soviet bloc, the consumers are unimportant as individuals, expected partiently to queue for whatever products are provided, to carry them home and gives thanks to the people’s republic. We are at their service and in exchange, allowed to live another day.
At my last meal out, even the musicians providing background music thought it appropriate to chastize the diners sarcastically for not applauding them with sufficient energy. After all, who did we think we were, sitting there eating while they created Art? I wanted to explain that I didn’t dare put down my fork.
Now that we collectively spend nearly as much being served our food as we do in buying it, how we eat out says something about the reigning assumptions of a place and the way we handle the emblematic act of consuming. I just spent a week on the road and so had multiple opportunities to experience the way Americans are expected to eat in public and to compare them with the rituals and habits of my jaded fellow New Yorkers.
Needless to say, it ain’t a pretty sight given that bipeds are involved. I include myself in that sentence since despite my best attempts at cultural sensitivity, I did not always contain my annoyance at the chirpy intrusiveness that marked the relationship between me and the local versions of Candace and Dotty, who consistently assumed that I had come to restaurant not to satisfy my hunger or to have a business meeting but to spend time with them.
These youthful waiters are now trained regularly to interrupt whatever their customers are doing to see if they are delighted with the dishes laid before them. No amount of monosyllabic replies, eye contact refusal, or stubborn continuation of the conversation will dissuade the confidant servers from another offer of freshly ground pepper or inquiries about iced tea refills. The idea that one might prefer to be left alone would come as a shock to them, as I can attest from having suggested it.
And woe is he who puts down his fork! One must stand ready to defend one’s plate like Leonidas on the bridge at Thermopylae lest the wait staff, in their misguided notion of efficiency, whip it away to get the diner into the next phase, no matter what the rest of the table is doing.
The overall impression—and an apt symbol, I believe, for how consumption of all varieites has been organized in our culture—is that the situation is tightly controlled by the seller, with the purchaser bundled neatly into a narrow range of apparent, but not real, choices. To put it another way, it is as though the waiter is the customer and we the beneficiaries of his or her performance, for which we should gladly accede to the established rules and then pay handsomely.
Only a culture in which the human interchange that uniquely occurs over the breaking of bread has been debased and nearly forgotten could reify so consistently and completely the mechanics of obtaining a public meal to the exclusion of the role of people in it. Like the state-run economies of the disappeared Soviet bloc, the consumers are unimportant as individuals, expected partiently to queue for whatever products are provided, to carry them home and gives thanks to the people’s republic. We are at their service and in exchange, allowed to live another day.
At my last meal out, even the musicians providing background music thought it appropriate to chastize the diners sarcastically for not applauding them with sufficient energy. After all, who did we think we were, sitting there eating while they created Art? I wanted to explain that I didn’t dare put down my fork.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Workers trump states
Mugabe’s 28-year grip on Zimbabwe must be loosening significantly if the country’s Electoral Commission can defy him by confirming the loss of his parliamentary majority. The whole idea of the recount was bizarre to start with—it was held even though the three-week-old presidential vote’s results haven’t even been announced yet. Since the recount clearly was arranged to reverse the ZANU-PF electoral defeat, for Commission officials to rise to this level of rebellion suggests that cracks are appearing in the ruling party.
Meanwhile, South African president Mbeki continues to gaze lovingly into Mugabe’s eyes, but his own workers apparently are seeing a bit straighter. South African dock worker unions brilliantly refused to unload a boatload of Chinese weapons headed for the Zimbabwean tyrant in solidarity with the people who would be beaten and slaughtered with them.
That action set off similar resistance in Mozambique and even Angola, where the president of that one-party state met very publicly with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer who is touring Africa to forge an anti-Mugabe coalition. Since the Angolans are historically close allies of Mugabe, that photo-op indicates a tidal wave shift.
Even the British, who as the former colonial power prudently kept their mouths shut in the first few days, are now joining the chorus against Mugabe, apparently in the assumption that he can’t use the old Rhodesia bugaboo to shore up his position.
It’s a pity that an American government led by the Republicans, the party that longest stood shoulder to shoulder with the old apartheid regime, should now be the taking the lead to end one of Africa’s worst nightmares, rather than the liberated South Africa of Nelson Mandela. But at least the people are having something to say, too.
Meanwhile, South African president Mbeki continues to gaze lovingly into Mugabe’s eyes, but his own workers apparently are seeing a bit straighter. South African dock worker unions brilliantly refused to unload a boatload of Chinese weapons headed for the Zimbabwean tyrant in solidarity with the people who would be beaten and slaughtered with them.
That action set off similar resistance in Mozambique and even Angola, where the president of that one-party state met very publicly with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer who is touring Africa to forge an anti-Mugabe coalition. Since the Angolans are historically close allies of Mugabe, that photo-op indicates a tidal wave shift.
Even the British, who as the former colonial power prudently kept their mouths shut in the first few days, are now joining the chorus against Mugabe, apparently in the assumption that he can’t use the old Rhodesia bugaboo to shore up his position.
It’s a pity that an American government led by the Republicans, the party that longest stood shoulder to shoulder with the old apartheid regime, should now be the taking the lead to end one of Africa’s worst nightmares, rather than the liberated South Africa of Nelson Mandela. But at least the people are having something to say, too.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Hunting seasons
I have just seen the appalling news of the acquittal on all counts of the police detectives who fired 50 bullets at three unarmed black men and killed one of them, Sean Bell, the night before he was to be married. No doubt we’ll now hear a lot of pious comments about how it’s not really about racism and none of the accused is individually a racist. (In fact, two of the three cops are black).
But that’s not the point. Condi Rice famously insisted that George Bush was personally not hostile to people of other races in reference to his historic incompetence after Hurricane Katrina. We’re supposed to believe that if a guy is nice to his dinner guests, it doesn’t matter where his priorities lie when ruling the nation or when letting fly with his service weapon.
I wrote here a few months ago about a Long Island suburbanite who awoke one night to find his teenage son fleeing from a crowd shouting racist threats in his front lawn. He went out, fired a shot at them and killed one. That guy, an adult black male protecting his family in the middle of the night, was convicted of murder.
One would have to be very comfortable as well as naïve to not see a pattern in these incidents. Black males simply are not protected by the police apparatus in our liberal city, nor are they allowed to protect themselves. Whether you want to call that racist or use some other term, it remains a fact.
The police union and the upper echelon of the department bear a heavy burden on this case as well for closing ranks and implicitly justifying the crazy behavior of these loose cannons.
There will be solemn marches and speeches now, and I will certainly attend them to show my disgust. But police work in this city has now become more difficult, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see people a lot more trigger-happy when facing tense moments involving the cops. After all, if they can fire at you 50 times with impunity when you don’t have a gun, what is the logic of cooperating when you do?
But that’s not the point. Condi Rice famously insisted that George Bush was personally not hostile to people of other races in reference to his historic incompetence after Hurricane Katrina. We’re supposed to believe that if a guy is nice to his dinner guests, it doesn’t matter where his priorities lie when ruling the nation or when letting fly with his service weapon.
I wrote here a few months ago about a Long Island suburbanite who awoke one night to find his teenage son fleeing from a crowd shouting racist threats in his front lawn. He went out, fired a shot at them and killed one. That guy, an adult black male protecting his family in the middle of the night, was convicted of murder.
One would have to be very comfortable as well as naïve to not see a pattern in these incidents. Black males simply are not protected by the police apparatus in our liberal city, nor are they allowed to protect themselves. Whether you want to call that racist or use some other term, it remains a fact.
The police union and the upper echelon of the department bear a heavy burden on this case as well for closing ranks and implicitly justifying the crazy behavior of these loose cannons.
There will be solemn marches and speeches now, and I will certainly attend them to show my disgust. But police work in this city has now become more difficult, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see people a lot more trigger-happy when facing tense moments involving the cops. After all, if they can fire at you 50 times with impunity when you don’t have a gun, what is the logic of cooperating when you do?
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Biloxi, Mississippi
I’ve heard several references to the supposed fact that the war in Iraq had slipped down into fourth place in importance to the Pennsylvania primary voters, replaced by something called ‘the economy’. Given that the failed conquest of Iraq is now burning a half billion of our debased dollars a day, I don’t see how the two things can be so neatly separated either by the commentators, the voters or most of all the candidates.
This Gulf city is the other Katrina story, less known than that of New Orleans, but with similar storm damage and recovery problems. Two colleagues and I were here for other reasons, but by chance got the opportunity to attend a FEMA informational meeting open to the public one night.
We were surprised to hear horror stories and complaints very similar to those reported in the months after the storm, surprised because it happened THREE YEARS ago. The tangle of programs and benefits is far too confusing for an outsider, but the overall message was pretty clear: there’s not enough money to really do things properly and get people back on their feet. Some are muddling through, but those who were struggling to make it before the hurricane aren’t getting the help they need. And they won’t.
Furthermore, a lot of the rebuilding and other relief work is being handled by private charities and sustained by the ongoing presence of volunteers. Government funds are also present but more constrained by guidelines and rules and also limited in quantity. Some people just don’t qualify for the government programs, and even if they do, the maximum is quickly reached and often absorbed just in getting by day to day.
The main reason there’s no money to spend on people’s needs, here in Biloxi and everywhere else, is because George W Bush decided he wanted to play soldiers with it instead. That isn’t stated very often, but it’s the glaring, obvious truth. I’d like to see someone pound that message home in between discussions of Hillary’s laugh and Barack’s middle name.
This Gulf city is the other Katrina story, less known than that of New Orleans, but with similar storm damage and recovery problems. Two colleagues and I were here for other reasons, but by chance got the opportunity to attend a FEMA informational meeting open to the public one night.
We were surprised to hear horror stories and complaints very similar to those reported in the months after the storm, surprised because it happened THREE YEARS ago. The tangle of programs and benefits is far too confusing for an outsider, but the overall message was pretty clear: there’s not enough money to really do things properly and get people back on their feet. Some are muddling through, but those who were struggling to make it before the hurricane aren’t getting the help they need. And they won’t.
Furthermore, a lot of the rebuilding and other relief work is being handled by private charities and sustained by the ongoing presence of volunteers. Government funds are also present but more constrained by guidelines and rules and also limited in quantity. Some people just don’t qualify for the government programs, and even if they do, the maximum is quickly reached and often absorbed just in getting by day to day.
The main reason there’s no money to spend on people’s needs, here in Biloxi and everywhere else, is because George W Bush decided he wanted to play soldiers with it instead. That isn’t stated very often, but it’s the glaring, obvious truth. I’d like to see someone pound that message home in between discussions of Hillary’s laugh and Barack’s middle name.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Dialectic of Bipedism
It would take a resuscitated Freud properly to probe the repression, projection and assorted psychic acrobatics of the ineffable GW Bush and his cohort of bipeds. For example, consider the decades of Cold War criticism of the prison created by the Soviet bloc states as exemplified by the Berlin Wall. This terrible monument was supposed to illustrate all that was cruel and inhumane about those systems and the contrasting delights of Freedom. Yet all around us, walls now go up as the preferred solution to social ills, and suddenly we are supposed to applaud these universal symbols of thralldom and oppression.
We have the Mexican Wall, which is supposed to divert the flow of immigrants (and will be about as successful in doing so as the New Orleans levees in holding back the Mississippi), the wall around the Gaza Strip and the West Bank wall to herd the Palestinians into their pens. Now comes the Sadr City wall in Baghdad as reported in today’s New York Times.
This one is supposed to ‘stem the infiltration of militia fighters,’ according to Michael Gordon who a few paragraphs later dutifully repeats the Bushite falsehood that the Sadrist faction is an ‘Iranian-backed group’ battled by the ‘Iraqi forces’, who are by implication not Iranian-backed. Ha ha.
Every expert not consuming crystal meth knows this is total propaganda by the White House cynics who engendered this war and, not content with their sterling record so far, are eager to carry it further eastward. Gordon and the Times, burdened with a shoddy record of complicity, should be ashamed of repeating this line as they know full well that it is laying the groundwork for the war’s expansion.
The language appearing in this account is telling: Gordon quotes an American officer that they want to turn Sadr City into a ‘protected enclave’ and who assures worried residents that they have no desire to stop government services from coming in. The Gaza ghetto should be a calming precedent for local residents.
Once the wall is completed, and the American-backed Iraqi enemies of local residents are in control of it, the lady trying to get in and out to buy a loaf of bread may find those promises a little thin. But of course by then, it will be too late, and new excuses will be offered—by Michael Gordon & company.
Maybe Bush has been reading Robert Frost: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ That’s quite true, especially if your own brain is a stand-alone gated community.
We have the Mexican Wall, which is supposed to divert the flow of immigrants (and will be about as successful in doing so as the New Orleans levees in holding back the Mississippi), the wall around the Gaza Strip and the West Bank wall to herd the Palestinians into their pens. Now comes the Sadr City wall in Baghdad as reported in today’s New York Times.
This one is supposed to ‘stem the infiltration of militia fighters,’ according to Michael Gordon who a few paragraphs later dutifully repeats the Bushite falsehood that the Sadrist faction is an ‘Iranian-backed group’ battled by the ‘Iraqi forces’, who are by implication not Iranian-backed. Ha ha.
Every expert not consuming crystal meth knows this is total propaganda by the White House cynics who engendered this war and, not content with their sterling record so far, are eager to carry it further eastward. Gordon and the Times, burdened with a shoddy record of complicity, should be ashamed of repeating this line as they know full well that it is laying the groundwork for the war’s expansion.
The language appearing in this account is telling: Gordon quotes an American officer that they want to turn Sadr City into a ‘protected enclave’ and who assures worried residents that they have no desire to stop government services from coming in. The Gaza ghetto should be a calming precedent for local residents.
Once the wall is completed, and the American-backed Iraqi enemies of local residents are in control of it, the lady trying to get in and out to buy a loaf of bread may find those promises a little thin. But of course by then, it will be too late, and new excuses will be offered—by Michael Gordon & company.
Maybe Bush has been reading Robert Frost: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ That’s quite true, especially if your own brain is a stand-alone gated community.
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