People’s everyday behavior reflects their view of the world and their own place in it, and there’s no larger laboratory for observing that than the 6 million-plus daily riders in the New York City subway system. Two examples in the last 12 hours showed me how contrasting inner universes can co-exist at close quarters.
Two young Caucasian women burst onto the uptown D express from Midtown to Harlem last night and settled in to converse, one sitting next to me and the other standing over her. Their decibel level suggested that they had not come straight from the office. Be that as it may, they were definitely two happy bipeds. They broadcast their personal and professional business affairs with the cozy assurance of those who are entirely at home wherever they go.
Then this morning I was spacing out sleepily on the downtown A when a Hispanic or African-American couple slipped in beside me. They chatted away non-stop but so softly that I couldn’t quite make out if they were speaking English or Spanish until he exited at Columbus Circle. Their exchange signaled profound privacy and careful discretion, an awareness that they were allotted a certain portion of intangible space and no more.
I don’t mean to make too much of race in this case because one could easily find the exact reverse examples any day of the week. But it got me to thinking about Obama’s strategy with the intransigent Republicans who responded to his olive branch and openness to hear opposing views with a resounding goose-egg of support in yesterday’s vote on the mega-stimulus.
Obama seems determined to bend over backwards to please the unrepentant creeps who bankrupted our country and enriched their friends at public expense, and it’s hard to swallow when you recall the way the Reaganomics revolution started out in 1981 by steamrolling all opposition and appealing contemptuously over the heads of the ‘tax-and-spend’ Congress to the masses. At first glance, Obama looks like a wimpier version of Clinton even though Obama’s solid majority gives him a greater mandate. (Bush II’s complete lack of one didn’t slow him down, either.)
But maybe Obama’s biracial life has given him an insight about the double standards that we live with unconsciously, how the underdog has to navigate treacherous waters to win a consensus. Maybe he grasps in ways that are still mysterious to many of us that an unthreatening and patient approach, accompanied by determination, is the only way to build and sustain a consensus if you are a mixed-race, urban liberal handling the small-town, white heartland.
In this speculative subway metaphor, the blithely confident white ladies represent the Republicans. Propelled into power, their default strategy would be to set out their expectations and wrestle dissidents onto the mat for a quick pin. They would expect to be heard, to be understood and to win.
Expectations for and from our guy are quite different. He has to speak softly, alarm no one and carefully seduce without looking too powerful or too sexy. The built-in negatives are so much greater that his tactical approach requires subtlety, patience, endless charm and the right dose of panache.
But he has an advantage too, which is a lifetime of knowing both worldviews, the perspective of the rulers and that of the ruled, from inside and from outside. If Obama isn’t just another triangulating closet conservative, it could be quite a performance.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Please go away
I have a long-standing policy not to discuss in person or in print what happens to or in a certain mini-state from yesteryear, but the latest display of insensitivity from His Popeliness is too spectacular to ignore. After several of his predecessors struggled admirably over Christianity’s historical fellow-traveling with anti-Semitism, a certain church has just taken a 600-year step backward and doesn’t appear to be all that sorry.
It’s ironic that just as the United States is getting used to its first non-white president, world Catholicism decides to make nice with a raving Holocaust-denier welcomed back from the cold because he’s reactionary enough to meet all the Vatican’s strict limits on what may be believed.
Belief that the Jews made up all that stuff about Auschwitz not included.
I guess it’s good to know what Benedict the Sixteenth’s priorities are: sex, no; Virgin Mary, yes; Elders of Zion, who cares?
If it were just a nutcase bishop somewhere, one could argue that a billion-person tent is always going to include a wacko. But this action is far too consistent with Benedict’s steady rehabilitation of discredited anti-Semitic currents.
Lest we forget, the execrable Mel Gibson made a movie a while back that resuscitated old anti-Semitic slanders about who killed the Messiah. I personally saw Catholic nuns in Santiago shepherd whole classrooms of tender youths in to see it with the blessings of the local bishops—luckily, they weren’t attending a sex-ed class, merely two hours of torture-porn.
Benedict XVI saw no problem with that display. But I guess we shouldn’t expect an ‘A’ in cultural competency from a guy who could proclaim, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman. . . ’
Still, rehabilitating British-born bishop Richard Williamson puts him in the W category of tone-deafness. Williamson not only denies the Holocaust and thinks women should not attend universities, he even ‘suggested that the U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as an excuse to invade Afghanistan’, according to Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post.
And these aren’t some musty old off-the-cuff remarks. Williamson reiterated on Swedish television his belief that ‘there were no gas chambers’ just this month.
His buds at the society of Saint Pius X told him to hold off on ‘ill-advised’ statements. How about adding ‘trying to cover up the worst crime in human history’? I guess that’s not important to pastoral leadership.
Benedict obviously concurs with the Saint Pius X gang that anti-Semitic comments may be ‘abhorrent’ but are not ‘heretical’, which fully clarifies what’s important and what’s not in that body of dogma. Glad I have nothing to do with it.
It’s ironic that just as the United States is getting used to its first non-white president, world Catholicism decides to make nice with a raving Holocaust-denier welcomed back from the cold because he’s reactionary enough to meet all the Vatican’s strict limits on what may be believed.
Belief that the Jews made up all that stuff about Auschwitz not included.
I guess it’s good to know what Benedict the Sixteenth’s priorities are: sex, no; Virgin Mary, yes; Elders of Zion, who cares?
If it were just a nutcase bishop somewhere, one could argue that a billion-person tent is always going to include a wacko. But this action is far too consistent with Benedict’s steady rehabilitation of discredited anti-Semitic currents.
Lest we forget, the execrable Mel Gibson made a movie a while back that resuscitated old anti-Semitic slanders about who killed the Messiah. I personally saw Catholic nuns in Santiago shepherd whole classrooms of tender youths in to see it with the blessings of the local bishops—luckily, they weren’t attending a sex-ed class, merely two hours of torture-porn.
Benedict XVI saw no problem with that display. But I guess we shouldn’t expect an ‘A’ in cultural competency from a guy who could proclaim, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman. . . ’
Still, rehabilitating British-born bishop Richard Williamson puts him in the W category of tone-deafness. Williamson not only denies the Holocaust and thinks women should not attend universities, he even ‘suggested that the U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as an excuse to invade Afghanistan’, according to Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post.
And these aren’t some musty old off-the-cuff remarks. Williamson reiterated on Swedish television his belief that ‘there were no gas chambers’ just this month.
His buds at the society of Saint Pius X told him to hold off on ‘ill-advised’ statements. How about adding ‘trying to cover up the worst crime in human history’? I guess that’s not important to pastoral leadership.
Benedict obviously concurs with the Saint Pius X gang that anti-Semitic comments may be ‘abhorrent’ but are not ‘heretical’, which fully clarifies what’s important and what’s not in that body of dogma. Glad I have nothing to do with it.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Predictions--for 2008 [updated][updated again]
Popular journalism is all about moving on relentlessly to the next hot topic, but a little historical perspective can be marvelously sobering. Because I don’t systematically read my magazines, there’s always an issue lying about from several months ago, and it’s a treat to look at them knowing how things like the Democratic primaries or the Dow Jones averages turned out.
On January 7 a year ago New York magazine’s John Heilemann described Hillary Clinton’s massive misfire in preparing for the Iowa caucuses, how she dissed the local political clubs with no-shows while positioning herself as the inevitable candidate surrounded by presidential trappings, blaring trumpets, seraphin and cherubim. It’s a remarkable article because pretty much the entire primary season is laid out there, her hubris, her clueless campaign operation, the frantic last-minute smears dished out to try to push Obama into a ditch (remember the ‘secular madrassa’ he attended? not a Sarah Palin invention but straight from Hillaryoid Bob Kerrey), and last but not least the fatal influence of Bill, to whose wagon Hillary chose to remain hitched both in life and in the art of politics.
Heilemann speculated that even if Hillary were to win, she had exposed her weakness: the impression that she was a ‘candidate without a core or convictions other than that she should be, must be, president’ and that all the folderol built up around her was engineered to conceal that fact.
By contrast, the ten predictions for 2008 laid out by business writer James J. Cramer in the same issue would be embarrassing if anyone were rude enough to remember them. He acknowledges that making money in stocks may be ‘tough sledding’ over the next 12 months and then boldly insists that Goldman Sachs would finish the year at $300 a share—‘not a prediction, an inevitability’. LOL, ROTFL, off by a mere $226. Similar Fantasyland expectations are laid out for Google, Verizon and Apple.
Cramer’s crystal ball on corporate mergers was a little cloudy too, pretty much a .000 batting average except for a half-point he gets for guessing the acquisition of Merrill Lynch—by Europeans, he said, not as it turned out, by Bank of America. (The Europeans were too smart.) He foresaw that a simple interest rate cut would spur the sagging stock market back into the heavens—not!
Okay, it’s easy to make fun of stock pickers getting it wrong but useful to recall when these ‘experts’ insist on ridiculous fees to manage our pension funds. However, one prediction I would have liked to see come true is Cramer’s vision of an Army of the Foreclosed marching on the White House and camping out on the grounds of the Washington Monument. So far the only army in that town has been Barack’s.
Twilight Highlights: Speaking of politicians with no core convictions, I wonder how long our new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, will take to distance herself from one of her lobbyist father’s clients: Altria, the tobacco peddler formerly known as Philip Morris. About as long as the rest of the Democratic establishment will take to put mileage between themselves and Governor Paterson, currently buried up to the neck in his own slop.
[P.S.] I forgot to include the fact that Altria executives and its PAC provided Ms. Gillibrand’s 2008 campaign with the tidy sum of $24,200, according to the Jan 25 New York Daily News. Remind me a year from now when the local Democrats insist on voting for her to avoid corporate-toady-sell-out Republicans from gaining her office.
[Update] David Paterson is a prick, but he’s an amateur prick, the worst kind. The New York Post all but outed their source for the hatchet toss aimed at Caroline Kennedy after she bowed out, previously identified by reportorial convention as ‘someone close to the governor’. Paterson denied he knew who did it, but The Post responded with a picture of Paterson with Pinocchio nose on its main web page, and a columnist called him out directly.
Meanwhile, New York magazine reports this week that Paterson commonly uses that phrase when he talks off the record himself. Jesus, God and all the saints. Could DP possibly have heaved that parting burst of mojoncitos from his own sling?! The guy diddles around for a month, goes along with the farce of a total neophyte cashing in on her name for national office and suddenly pirouettes and pretends he never took her seriously. Not satisfied with the hash he made of the whole process, he then stoops to spreading dirt on her personal life? The political knives are about to be drawn on this clown and none too soon.
On January 7 a year ago New York magazine’s John Heilemann described Hillary Clinton’s massive misfire in preparing for the Iowa caucuses, how she dissed the local political clubs with no-shows while positioning herself as the inevitable candidate surrounded by presidential trappings, blaring trumpets, seraphin and cherubim. It’s a remarkable article because pretty much the entire primary season is laid out there, her hubris, her clueless campaign operation, the frantic last-minute smears dished out to try to push Obama into a ditch (remember the ‘secular madrassa’ he attended? not a Sarah Palin invention but straight from Hillaryoid Bob Kerrey), and last but not least the fatal influence of Bill, to whose wagon Hillary chose to remain hitched both in life and in the art of politics.
Heilemann speculated that even if Hillary were to win, she had exposed her weakness: the impression that she was a ‘candidate without a core or convictions other than that she should be, must be, president’ and that all the folderol built up around her was engineered to conceal that fact.
By contrast, the ten predictions for 2008 laid out by business writer James J. Cramer in the same issue would be embarrassing if anyone were rude enough to remember them. He acknowledges that making money in stocks may be ‘tough sledding’ over the next 12 months and then boldly insists that Goldman Sachs would finish the year at $300 a share—‘not a prediction, an inevitability’. LOL, ROTFL, off by a mere $226. Similar Fantasyland expectations are laid out for Google, Verizon and Apple.
Cramer’s crystal ball on corporate mergers was a little cloudy too, pretty much a .000 batting average except for a half-point he gets for guessing the acquisition of Merrill Lynch—by Europeans, he said, not as it turned out, by Bank of America. (The Europeans were too smart.) He foresaw that a simple interest rate cut would spur the sagging stock market back into the heavens—not!
Okay, it’s easy to make fun of stock pickers getting it wrong but useful to recall when these ‘experts’ insist on ridiculous fees to manage our pension funds. However, one prediction I would have liked to see come true is Cramer’s vision of an Army of the Foreclosed marching on the White House and camping out on the grounds of the Washington Monument. So far the only army in that town has been Barack’s.
Twilight Highlights: Speaking of politicians with no core convictions, I wonder how long our new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, will take to distance herself from one of her lobbyist father’s clients: Altria, the tobacco peddler formerly known as Philip Morris. About as long as the rest of the Democratic establishment will take to put mileage between themselves and Governor Paterson, currently buried up to the neck in his own slop.
[P.S.] I forgot to include the fact that Altria executives and its PAC provided Ms. Gillibrand’s 2008 campaign with the tidy sum of $24,200, according to the Jan 25 New York Daily News. Remind me a year from now when the local Democrats insist on voting for her to avoid corporate-toady-sell-out Republicans from gaining her office.
[Update] David Paterson is a prick, but he’s an amateur prick, the worst kind. The New York Post all but outed their source for the hatchet toss aimed at Caroline Kennedy after she bowed out, previously identified by reportorial convention as ‘someone close to the governor’. Paterson denied he knew who did it, but The Post responded with a picture of Paterson with Pinocchio nose on its main web page, and a columnist called him out directly.
Meanwhile, New York magazine reports this week that Paterson commonly uses that phrase when he talks off the record himself. Jesus, God and all the saints. Could DP possibly have heaved that parting burst of mojoncitos from his own sling?! The guy diddles around for a month, goes along with the farce of a total neophyte cashing in on her name for national office and suddenly pirouettes and pretends he never took her seriously. Not satisfied with the hash he made of the whole process, he then stoops to spreading dirt on her personal life? The political knives are about to be drawn on this clown and none too soon.
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Quant-model politics
Is it naïve to expect politicians to stand for something? Anything?
Already the usual suspects are chiming in unison that the new hand-picked senator from our state, Kirsten Gillebrand, can start shaping her unpopular pro-gun positions to fit her new, more urban constituency. Snake-oil salesman Chuck Schumer, her mentor-to-be and apparently a big reason why she got the nod, promptly announced that she would be touring Brooklyn, an area she cared nothing about until last night, so that she can start feeding those residents the proper lines and get herself positioned for a statewide race next year.
Gillebrand enjoys a perfect 100 rating from the National Rifle Association, but her ‘views’ on that topic are now going to get a thorough laundering by Schumer and others whose idea of politics is to develop pandering into a fine art. You calculate who wants what down to the last fraction of a voter, shape your message scientifically to pretend to care about those topics with the most electoral weight, then sally forth onto TV relentlessly repeating the stock phrases that your focus groups have indicated will garner you votes.
Schumer’s success at this model is pretty terrifying, and he has built up a phalanx of former aides as his junior imitators in the state legislature and Congress, like weasely Representative Anthony Wiener and the fresh-faced Daniel Squadron just arrived to Albany. They swarm into our consciousness by following the tested model of non-stop exposure and fanatical pursuit of the lowest-common-denominator commonplaces. (Wiener was on the tube this week praising the re-opening of the Statue of Liberty.)
The result is that these guys get ahead, but the vague sense that they believe in the same things we do is an illusion. Schumer cultivates the image of a standard liberal, but when his accumulation of personal power is at stake, all bets are off. He personally shepherded nasty Michael Mukasey through the confirmation process as Attorney General despite that reptile’s support of the Bush torture program. Not many New Yorkers would agree to that, but 90 percent of them remain ignorant of it since no local Democrats dared to bring it up, and Republicans were delighted.
Schumer apparently got the increasingly pathetic Governor Paterson to choose a Blue Dog upstate Democrat to strengthen the Democrats’ lock on statewide offices. But joy at the precipitous demise of the corrupt Republicans should not automatically generate a hero’s welcome for a passel of corrupt Democrats.
Schumer is also as guilty as anyone in the country for the Wall Street debacle as he shilled for their interests in exchange for contributions just like any Carolina cracker would do for the local cigarette companies. If he were an Alaskan, he’d be competing with Sarah Palin to boost oil drilling in the wildlife refuges. He’s not even embarrassed about it—on the contrary, Schumer likes to brag about how quickly he delivers to the interest group du jour because that’s how he understands his job.
That doesn’t mean we have to accept his philosophy, that politics is nothing but a crude clash of interests in which the relative strengths of each group translate directly into an equivalent portion of society’s goods—an entirely static and conservative formula that can only reinforce the status quo. Schumer is loyal to nothing but himself and his influence game, and under a dictatorship or a fascist state he’d be a cabinet minister with communications channels open to the opposition just in case they some day succeeded in overthrowing his boss.
Governor Paterson shot himself in both feet with his coy guessing-game bullshit, his encouragement of the foolish Caroline K boomlet and now his crass opportunism in putting in Gillabrand to help his own chances for re-election. He’s run through his entire stock of good will in less than a year.
For her part, Senator Gillabrand is the daughter of a Republican lobbyist with business ties to the just-indicted Joe Bruno, who ran the Republican-majority state senate for decades. She seems to fit the Schumer mold of tireless self-promotion and infinite policy flexibility. This the best we could do in one of the most liberal states in the nation? Although the end of the Kennedy-Paterson circus is welcome, it’s a pity that the Obama presidency has not brought to our unfortunate state politics any sense of public service as a noble, rather than a purely expedient, endeavor.
Already the usual suspects are chiming in unison that the new hand-picked senator from our state, Kirsten Gillebrand, can start shaping her unpopular pro-gun positions to fit her new, more urban constituency. Snake-oil salesman Chuck Schumer, her mentor-to-be and apparently a big reason why she got the nod, promptly announced that she would be touring Brooklyn, an area she cared nothing about until last night, so that she can start feeding those residents the proper lines and get herself positioned for a statewide race next year.
Gillebrand enjoys a perfect 100 rating from the National Rifle Association, but her ‘views’ on that topic are now going to get a thorough laundering by Schumer and others whose idea of politics is to develop pandering into a fine art. You calculate who wants what down to the last fraction of a voter, shape your message scientifically to pretend to care about those topics with the most electoral weight, then sally forth onto TV relentlessly repeating the stock phrases that your focus groups have indicated will garner you votes.
Schumer’s success at this model is pretty terrifying, and he has built up a phalanx of former aides as his junior imitators in the state legislature and Congress, like weasely Representative Anthony Wiener and the fresh-faced Daniel Squadron just arrived to Albany. They swarm into our consciousness by following the tested model of non-stop exposure and fanatical pursuit of the lowest-common-denominator commonplaces. (Wiener was on the tube this week praising the re-opening of the Statue of Liberty.)
The result is that these guys get ahead, but the vague sense that they believe in the same things we do is an illusion. Schumer cultivates the image of a standard liberal, but when his accumulation of personal power is at stake, all bets are off. He personally shepherded nasty Michael Mukasey through the confirmation process as Attorney General despite that reptile’s support of the Bush torture program. Not many New Yorkers would agree to that, but 90 percent of them remain ignorant of it since no local Democrats dared to bring it up, and Republicans were delighted.
Schumer apparently got the increasingly pathetic Governor Paterson to choose a Blue Dog upstate Democrat to strengthen the Democrats’ lock on statewide offices. But joy at the precipitous demise of the corrupt Republicans should not automatically generate a hero’s welcome for a passel of corrupt Democrats.
Schumer is also as guilty as anyone in the country for the Wall Street debacle as he shilled for their interests in exchange for contributions just like any Carolina cracker would do for the local cigarette companies. If he were an Alaskan, he’d be competing with Sarah Palin to boost oil drilling in the wildlife refuges. He’s not even embarrassed about it—on the contrary, Schumer likes to brag about how quickly he delivers to the interest group du jour because that’s how he understands his job.
That doesn’t mean we have to accept his philosophy, that politics is nothing but a crude clash of interests in which the relative strengths of each group translate directly into an equivalent portion of society’s goods—an entirely static and conservative formula that can only reinforce the status quo. Schumer is loyal to nothing but himself and his influence game, and under a dictatorship or a fascist state he’d be a cabinet minister with communications channels open to the opposition just in case they some day succeeded in overthrowing his boss.
Governor Paterson shot himself in both feet with his coy guessing-game bullshit, his encouragement of the foolish Caroline K boomlet and now his crass opportunism in putting in Gillabrand to help his own chances for re-election. He’s run through his entire stock of good will in less than a year.
For her part, Senator Gillabrand is the daughter of a Republican lobbyist with business ties to the just-indicted Joe Bruno, who ran the Republican-majority state senate for decades. She seems to fit the Schumer mold of tireless self-promotion and infinite policy flexibility. This the best we could do in one of the most liberal states in the nation? Although the end of the Kennedy-Paterson circus is welcome, it’s a pity that the Obama presidency has not brought to our unfortunate state politics any sense of public service as a noble, rather than a purely expedient, endeavor.
Friday, 23 January 2009
Lawnmowing
What a relief to see the fresh, new leadership of our country at the State Department signaling by their presence that diplomacy will now take precedence over brute force. If the symbolism weren’t clear enough of Obama and Biden escorting Hillary Clinton to announce the appointment of special Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan envoys on only day 2 of the new presidency, their remarks were quite explicit: we’re leaving the disastrous approach of the last team far behind.
Our ‘enduring values’ will be key to American policy, said Obama while announcing the end of torture. America ’s ‘moral example’, not just its military might, will dictate its strategy. These explanatory words are at least as important as the executive order signed to close Guantánamo and end the kangaroo courts there. They suggest thaat his actions are not mere expediency in recognition of a failed strategy but rather a condemnation of morally reprehensible actions.
Obama also took the opportunity, albeit hesitatingly and couched in the required rhetorical bows to the poor-victim Israelis, to refer to the intolerable suffering of the people jammed into the Gaza open-air prison camp. With George Mitchell standing by his side, Obama’s suggestion that their well-being will matter in the diplomatic nudging to start up again in the Middle East is a tiny step in the right direction. Given the nearly exclusive focus on the colonials’ comfort in the last decade and especially the last month, forcing the parties and American public opinion to consider Palestinian lives as essential to progress there is a radical departure.
Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to listen to NPR on the way back from Washington and heard the most remarkable report from Jerusalem. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to track down the broadcast or the transcript [help welcomed from any savvy weboids out there]. But even without the exact phrases in front of me, I can state that it was an amazing example of the Israeli lock on our national thought process as well as a reminder of the cynicism of that old bromide about ‘balance’ in news reporting.
You can’t get a serial killer story on the local TV channel without airtime for the accused’s lawyer to add some pathetic spin. But a ‘serious’ news entity like All Things Considered can actually broadcast a story covering the ‘full political spectrum’ in Israel (the reporter’s phrase) without a single Arab voice—even though they comprise one-fifth of the population and just might have dissenting views on a few things.
‘All’ the people in this case obviously means ‘all Jewish Israelis’, which says something about the NPR reporter’s unconscious identification with his sources.
I doubt if the two boosters interviewed really do span the notoriously fractious Israeli political spectrum, but let’s assume they’re representative given the enormous popularity of the war among Israel's Jews. There’s no need to repeat the justifications repeated since the Gaza assault began, but the uncritical NPR ‘report’ accidentally revealed something about the motives behind it in the minds of its enthusiasts.
One of the talking heads used a telling analogy: the IDF, he said, was in Gaza to ‘mow the lawn’, not to dislodge Hamas. Obviously, grass grows back, so the exercise will have to be repeated periodically. (The ‘analyst’ admitted as much.)
In short, according to the ‘full political spectrum’ in Israel, Zionism will be at war with non-Jews pretty much forever, and Israel plans to go blow up its neighbors at regular intervals until the end of time. I guess that eliminates the need to pursue a peaceful solution, and it’s a great example of why the departed W was so comfortable with his Israeli counterparts—they conduct their business the same way he did.
Our ‘enduring values’ will be key to American policy, said Obama while announcing the end of torture. America ’s ‘moral example’, not just its military might, will dictate its strategy. These explanatory words are at least as important as the executive order signed to close Guantánamo and end the kangaroo courts there. They suggest thaat his actions are not mere expediency in recognition of a failed strategy but rather a condemnation of morally reprehensible actions.
Obama also took the opportunity, albeit hesitatingly and couched in the required rhetorical bows to the poor-victim Israelis, to refer to the intolerable suffering of the people jammed into the Gaza open-air prison camp. With George Mitchell standing by his side, Obama’s suggestion that their well-being will matter in the diplomatic nudging to start up again in the Middle East is a tiny step in the right direction. Given the nearly exclusive focus on the colonials’ comfort in the last decade and especially the last month, forcing the parties and American public opinion to consider Palestinian lives as essential to progress there is a radical departure.
Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to listen to NPR on the way back from Washington and heard the most remarkable report from Jerusalem. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to track down the broadcast or the transcript [help welcomed from any savvy weboids out there]. But even without the exact phrases in front of me, I can state that it was an amazing example of the Israeli lock on our national thought process as well as a reminder of the cynicism of that old bromide about ‘balance’ in news reporting.
You can’t get a serial killer story on the local TV channel without airtime for the accused’s lawyer to add some pathetic spin. But a ‘serious’ news entity like All Things Considered can actually broadcast a story covering the ‘full political spectrum’ in Israel (the reporter’s phrase) without a single Arab voice—even though they comprise one-fifth of the population and just might have dissenting views on a few things.
‘All’ the people in this case obviously means ‘all Jewish Israelis’, which says something about the NPR reporter’s unconscious identification with his sources.
I doubt if the two boosters interviewed really do span the notoriously fractious Israeli political spectrum, but let’s assume they’re representative given the enormous popularity of the war among Israel's Jews. There’s no need to repeat the justifications repeated since the Gaza assault began, but the uncritical NPR ‘report’ accidentally revealed something about the motives behind it in the minds of its enthusiasts.
One of the talking heads used a telling analogy: the IDF, he said, was in Gaza to ‘mow the lawn’, not to dislodge Hamas. Obviously, grass grows back, so the exercise will have to be repeated periodically. (The ‘analyst’ admitted as much.)
In short, according to the ‘full political spectrum’ in Israel, Zionism will be at war with non-Jews pretty much forever, and Israel plans to go blow up its neighbors at regular intervals until the end of time. I guess that eliminates the need to pursue a peaceful solution, and it’s a great example of why the departed W was so comfortable with his Israeli counterparts—they conduct their business the same way he did.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
R&B Nation
Every four years on Inauguration Day, the winners descend on Washington, D.C. This time around, it was young adults and African-American families.
That’s my unscientific measure of the 2 million people who gathered in the nation’s capital Tuesday, and it pretty much sums up my impression of who is taking charge of our future. I haven’t seen any estimates in published accounts so far, but to anyone on the street it was pretty obvious that blacks had poured out to celebrate the Obama Moment and comprised a hefty percentage of the attendees—I would say close to half.
I remember when the rich white people took over during the first Reagan inauguration in 1981, a festival of fur and blinding blonde up-dos that augured the coming shift to unapologetic selfishness. No more Carteresque, populist moments like the casual stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue re-enacted Tuesday by Barack and Michelle—Reagan’s day was all about the full celebration of elite power and clubby, neo-royalist exclusivity.
Having lived in Washington for many years during and after college, I can attest to the fact that the city shifts its mood and habits with the reigning powers as befits a factory town—the factory being the machinery of state. I can further testify that having the Democrats in power is tons more fun.
That said, there is nothing to compare to the excitement of having the two Washingtons—one white-ish and official, the other black and often feeling like a foreign country or a barely tolerated colony—merge into one. We strolled along U Street on Monday night where hordes of mostly young people roamed about in the cold, some lining up outside Ben’s, the now-famous chili shack where the Obamas recently sampled the fare.
That nearly hysterical fascination for the First Family hasn’t been seen in Washington-the-city (as opposed to Washington-the-capital) in my memory. Ben’s had set up giant red, white and blue OBAMA letters sculpted in ice outside the door, which caused me to consider the fetishizing tendencies built into our presidential system. Since the Brits have a queen, they don’t fuss over their PMs—hard to imagine anyone building an ice sculpture to Gordon Brown.
As for the ceremony itself, there are plenty of eyewitness accounts, so I’ll only add a few laughs. For example, was Bill Clinton suffering from severe heartburn? The poor man has been eclipsed along with his entire generation and seems none too happy about it.
Reverend Warren spectacularly bombed in his lame revival of the Christian right’s family fetish. Aside from equating himself with Obama by enumerating both the president’s and his own children one by one, a grown man breathlessly uttering the names of little girls does not inspire confidence these days—even if he is a preacher. Especially if he is a preacher. Plus his prayer sucked. Let’s hope the Obama crew has learned that openness to adversaries shouldn’t include tolerance of insults and hateful speech.
Then there was Cheney in his wheelchair looking crumpled and unrepetant as he prepares for his imminent interview with Satan.
The marvelous touches provided to the overly solemn formalities by Aretha Franklin and Joseph Lowery were, to me, the highlights of the stage event. It’s hard to feel ‘history’ in the bones, but Franklin’s elegant styling of a tune we all learned in grade school about ‘my country’ spoke to the ironies of patriotism for people who were officially excluded from citizenship in such recent memory. At the end Lowery tackled the race taboo head-on and made us all laugh—none too soon.
In the end, though, Tuesday was about our long encounter with color and the national dementia that slavery generated as it required us to adopt schizophrenia as a founding ideology.
When I spent most of a year in Africa, the pressure of being the white guy was so exhausting that I promptly moved to the suburbs when I got back to remove myself from the categorizing glance. I had had enough of being saluted in Ghana with an Ashanti term dating from the colonial period that translates as ‘Sunday white man’ (apparently the Brits strolled about after church). There, I was white first and foremost and never allowed to forget it—not from any hostility but simple inability to see past my biological characteristics.
That episode suggests to me that African-Americans were experiencing and understanding the day not only with terrific pride but also perhaps a dosis of relief at the chance to be just folks. It will be quite a moment when Obama ceases to be the first black president because we have ceased to notice that particular detail. The young people who flocked to the Obama campaign and showed up to claim their victory on the streets of Washington grasped that kernel of post-identity wisdom, well before the rest of us.
That’s my unscientific measure of the 2 million people who gathered in the nation’s capital Tuesday, and it pretty much sums up my impression of who is taking charge of our future. I haven’t seen any estimates in published accounts so far, but to anyone on the street it was pretty obvious that blacks had poured out to celebrate the Obama Moment and comprised a hefty percentage of the attendees—I would say close to half.
I remember when the rich white people took over during the first Reagan inauguration in 1981, a festival of fur and blinding blonde up-dos that augured the coming shift to unapologetic selfishness. No more Carteresque, populist moments like the casual stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue re-enacted Tuesday by Barack and Michelle—Reagan’s day was all about the full celebration of elite power and clubby, neo-royalist exclusivity.
Having lived in Washington for many years during and after college, I can attest to the fact that the city shifts its mood and habits with the reigning powers as befits a factory town—the factory being the machinery of state. I can further testify that having the Democrats in power is tons more fun.
That said, there is nothing to compare to the excitement of having the two Washingtons—one white-ish and official, the other black and often feeling like a foreign country or a barely tolerated colony—merge into one. We strolled along U Street on Monday night where hordes of mostly young people roamed about in the cold, some lining up outside Ben’s, the now-famous chili shack where the Obamas recently sampled the fare.
That nearly hysterical fascination for the First Family hasn’t been seen in Washington-the-city (as opposed to Washington-the-capital) in my memory. Ben’s had set up giant red, white and blue OBAMA letters sculpted in ice outside the door, which caused me to consider the fetishizing tendencies built into our presidential system. Since the Brits have a queen, they don’t fuss over their PMs—hard to imagine anyone building an ice sculpture to Gordon Brown.
As for the ceremony itself, there are plenty of eyewitness accounts, so I’ll only add a few laughs. For example, was Bill Clinton suffering from severe heartburn? The poor man has been eclipsed along with his entire generation and seems none too happy about it.
Reverend Warren spectacularly bombed in his lame revival of the Christian right’s family fetish. Aside from equating himself with Obama by enumerating both the president’s and his own children one by one, a grown man breathlessly uttering the names of little girls does not inspire confidence these days—even if he is a preacher. Especially if he is a preacher. Plus his prayer sucked. Let’s hope the Obama crew has learned that openness to adversaries shouldn’t include tolerance of insults and hateful speech.
Then there was Cheney in his wheelchair looking crumpled and unrepetant as he prepares for his imminent interview with Satan.
The marvelous touches provided to the overly solemn formalities by Aretha Franklin and Joseph Lowery were, to me, the highlights of the stage event. It’s hard to feel ‘history’ in the bones, but Franklin’s elegant styling of a tune we all learned in grade school about ‘my country’ spoke to the ironies of patriotism for people who were officially excluded from citizenship in such recent memory. At the end Lowery tackled the race taboo head-on and made us all laugh—none too soon.
In the end, though, Tuesday was about our long encounter with color and the national dementia that slavery generated as it required us to adopt schizophrenia as a founding ideology.
When I spent most of a year in Africa, the pressure of being the white guy was so exhausting that I promptly moved to the suburbs when I got back to remove myself from the categorizing glance. I had had enough of being saluted in Ghana with an Ashanti term dating from the colonial period that translates as ‘Sunday white man’ (apparently the Brits strolled about after church). There, I was white first and foremost and never allowed to forget it—not from any hostility but simple inability to see past my biological characteristics.
That episode suggests to me that African-Americans were experiencing and understanding the day not only with terrific pride but also perhaps a dosis of relief at the chance to be just folks. It will be quite a moment when Obama ceases to be the first black president because we have ceased to notice that particular detail. The young people who flocked to the Obama campaign and showed up to claim their victory on the streets of Washington grasped that kernel of post-identity wisdom, well before the rest of us.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Stand by. . .
Just back from my trip to Washington for the Big Event, spent two nights in a one-room apartment with four other adults (my room was the walk-in closet) and had work-related meetings after the dust settled. So it will take me one or two days to gather my wits, er, thoughts and share them here.
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