In Which An Exception Is Made
It is time, I feel, to declare it officially Okay to call Barack Obama articulate, well-spoken, etc.
Yes, smart white liberals who cringe at this kind of thing, we've all seen the Chris Rock bit from Bring the Pain too; and yes, he was right to point out that those terms are usually used in a somewhat condescending manner when talking about black politicians.
But let's look at the difference, eh? Chris Rock was talking about Colin Powell, who's speaking style is indistinguishable from that of most any career military man you might see on television. Calm, measured, and to the point. Rock's point was that it's mildly racist to excessively praise a black guy for being on par with his white contemporaries. "What the fuck did you expect?!? 'I'm a drop me a bomb today! I'll be Pres-O-Dent!'"
It is now 12 years later, and we have a black guy who is genuinely head and shoulders above everybody else, rhetorically. He fucking well is well-spoken, articulate, and a dozen other things people too well-educated to use the word "fuck" as often as I do might say about someone as gifted as he is. So go ahead and say so, and use the time you save by not hectoring people who are trying to give a genuine compliment to the guy to figure out which Dave Chapelle bits it's acceptable for you to repeat at parties.
Fucking white people.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Speech
Seriously, you tell me that it wasn't the smartest thing you've ever heard a politician say about race in this country.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Fear Of A Black Plan
After four years I figured it was about time for me to reaffirm my standing claim that Roy can truthfully tack "and the Mighty Reason Man concurs" onto the end of (very nearly) every post, so I went looking for something recent to link to. Turns out he posted just yesterday on fears of Obama's potential assasination - specifically, certain rightwing reactions to that fear, but I'll come back to that - something I've been thinking about lately.
The first time someone spoke out loud to me about the fear of Obama being killed was a few months ago in a conversation I had with my mother. At the time, I dismissed it as ridiculous - not the idea that some crackpot racist might take a shot at him, but the notion that this should in any way influence one's vote. It wasn't until recently that it finally dawned on me why this was such a concern of hers, and why her concerns are shared - out loud or not - with a significant number of women from her generation. What finally made everything click was the blossoming of my suspicion that, while of course she was concerned for Barack himself, who she's really concerned about is Michelle Obama, as well as their two daughters. Which makes sense. Mom was too young to have truly grasped the significance of JFK, RFK, and MLK at the time, even though she vividly remembers their assasinations, but she has watched their families deal with the aftermath ever since. Given the intense spotlight that the media placed on them, the pain that those families have lived with ever since is more personal to Americans that age than I think the younger generations realize. When she talks about her admiration for Caroline Kennedy, for instance, what's unspoken, I now believe, is her fear that she'll have to watch Obama's daughters go through the same thing. That also goes for Ethel Kennedy, or Coretta Scott King, in regard to Michelle Obama.
In the end, what finally convinced my mother that these fears should not be allowed to impact her support of Obama was an interview Michelle gave recently where she addressed such fears. I'm paraphrasing, but what she told me was "If Michelle herself has made the decision to live with the risk, than so can I."
* * *
Which, to digress for a moment, is one of the reasons I think Michelle Obama is going to prove largely immune to the kind of demonization that Hillary Clinton endured - despite the fact that they have had roughly similar professional careers, and Michelle is, if anything, edgier than Hillary was in the 90's. What I don't think occurs to most people to ask is why Hillary was targeted for the rightwing hate campaign of the 90's, rather than just Bill. My pet theory goes like this: the hatemongers had to be careful that their defamation of Bill did not have the side effect of making Hillary a sympathetic figure - someone your wife identifies with and so hushes you when you get too far out in your ranting about Bill. Most men, I think, don't much care about the First Lady one way or the other, but if you can get their wives to hate her, you remove the circuit breaker in a good number of household political conversations, the hysteria can ramp up uninterrupted, and eventually you can write books about her hanging dildoes and crackpipes on the White House Christmas tree and still show your face in public. Pop-psychology and gross generalization, yes, but tell me you've never witnessed variations of just that dynamic.
Michelle Obama, however, has a built-in advantage. Regardless of whether it's objectively true or not, the popular perception is and will remain that Obama is at higher risk for assasination than any other candidate in memory. Therefore, in agreeing to let him run (and anyone who has seen her on television has little doubt that had she not agreed, he wouldn't be in the race), she has shown the kind of courage that we praise in police spouses, firefighter spouses, and military wives. In watching Michelle, I think a lot of women ask themselves if they'd be willing to expose their families to that kind of potential devastation - and regardless of their answer, they come away with a much higher baseline level of respect for her.
The first major test of this, of course, is this nonsense about her being proud of her country for the first time blah blah. My guess is that despite the ludicrous level of media attention it received, we'll look back two months from know and realize that it rolled right off her back - if we even remember to look back in the first place.
* * *
And then there is the rightwing reaction to the potential danger to Obama - both overtly, as Roy highlights, and, in the very near future, covertly.
Roy quotes an Instapundit linkee:
"And yet it is more probable that an attempt on Obama will be made than at any time in the last few decades. The country has been infected with Bush hate for so long, and the popular culture has been so infested with dreams and threats and "works of art" imagining the death of Bush, that extending that level of political hate to Obama is trivial."
For the immediate future, I think your're going to see a reasonable number of rightwing hacks echoing this idea (complete with "hey man, i'm just letting you know what people are saying out there" links from Instapundit). Most seem to be attributing this to basic lunacy, but I see it more as laying the groundwork for their response to a potential assasination attempt. By getting this out there now, they can seem less like opportunistic vultures when they essentially blame the victim if it actually happens. After all, were the unthinkable to happen, the number one rhetorical priority would be to prevent him from becoming a martyr by creating a false distinction between Obama - who they'll then be forced to praise 'til the end of time - and the Democratic Party. Blaming the Democrats for the hate that inspired such an abominable act changes it from a crime to a self-inflicted wound, and therefore a reason to support Republicans. "Hey, I've been saying this all along, so you can't say I'm taking advantage of the situation."
But that's just a minor effort to deal with an abstract possibility. Once the general election kicks off, the fear of assasination is going to be a key line of just-under-the-surface attack on Obama.
It will happen like this. Once Obama actually has the nomination in hand, black excitement is going to go into the stratosphere. The last bits of hesitation will be shed as well-founded cynicism is replaced by belief that it really, actually, seriously could happen. That exitement, that hope, is going to be everywhere, and it will make it very easy for the hacks to pose the question: "What happens if this hope is murdered and African-Americans get their hearts broken again in such an excruciating manner?"
That's when people start talking about riots.
Because that's the other thing that people of my mom's generation remember about assasinations: the violence that engulfed almost every urban center in the country when Martin Luther King was killed.
Without necessarily putting them in this context, there are going to be a lot of images this summer of the riots of '68; and if that seems too distant, we'll get to see video from LA in the '92 riots. There are going to be a lot of people who won't need the connection to be made for them, they'll come up with it all on their own: imagine something on a scale of LA in '92 happening in all 100 cities that rioted in '68. This does not mean those people are racists; it is actually a pretty natural correlation, and entirely topical. But anytime buzz about the idea starts to die down, some minor story or controversy somewhere will just happen to put it back, not necessarily on the front page, but in the front section. You're going to hear Reginald Denny's name more than once this summer.
This will never be an explicit attack from mainstream Republican sources, but bet your ass it's going to be whispered in all the dark corners of the conservative movement, and quite a few of the only-somewhat-dim ones. Add to the mix rumors (which already exist in primordial form, but to which I will not link; a minute with google will find them) of black militants planning retaliatory attacks throughout the US in the event of an attempt on Obama's life, and you have a wickedly potent fear-based attack that leaves the right people's hands clean. It's a brilliant reversal of what the left is expecting: Don't vote for Obama, not because it means the blacks are taking over, but because at any moment for the next four years a single bullet would destroy every major urban center and start a war in our streets. The blacks have to be let down easy; he must be defeated by the ballot so that he can't be killed by the bullet.
The assasination talk is not going to go away. It will rise and fall throughout the campaign. I actually think that most mainstream sources are sensitive enough to accusations of racism to not allow themselves to get too far out ahead of the curve on wild speculation about what would happen in the event of an attempt on Obama. But there will most certainly be those that constantly try to leap ahead, who dangle incendiary stories in front of the media and dare them to bite, hoping to push the conversation into panic mode. Watch for those militant retaliation rumors to get picked up by Drudge.
That these attacks are probable is not a reason to renounce support for Obama; if you think it is, you might as well write off the possibility of a black man ever becoming President. But it is a reason to be vigilant, and be prepared to push back on this stuff the second it threatens to hit the mainstream.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Good People of Texas & Ohio:
So! You will soon be in the voting booth! It is time to make a decision, to make your voice heard, to seal the deal (probably) on the Democratic nominee for President1. Except you hesitate, because you know how important this choice is. This is the man or woman who will go up against the entrenched Republican machine that's been in the driver's seat in one way or another since 1980, with only a little hiccup in 1993-94. Who will then embark on the difficult mission of repairing all that George Bush et al. have ruined. Who to choose?
Calm down. It's all right. I'm here to help. There is a very simple way of organizing all your thoughts about the candidates, the system, and the consequences of the choices involved here.
It is time to do a little roleplaying (with a nod to PTI):
You are a Republican. First off, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOUR PARTY IS KILLING AMERICA! Ha ha. I kid because I love. Seriously, though. You're a Republican. Your party is staring into the abyss. You were given all the levers of power, and you fucked up everything; worse, the public has finally realized it. You got your ass handed to you in the 2006 midterms, and the 2008 congressional races are looking to be a GOP bloodbath. Things are so bad that many are increasingly convinced that this is the end for movement conservatism itself – Uncle Barry's gift to the people is about to croak, and there's a waiting list to spit on the corpse. Suddenly, all of your positions are hideously unpopular with the public. Your word is like ashes and your honor is like dust. You are a joke. Do you prefer to:
A. Rehash all the battles of the nineties, when your star was on the rise, and every week came news of some new smear against Bill Clinton. Remember the nineties? Political journalists do. Even the nominally liberal ones look back with fondness on those days of scandal and leak and soap opera (I'm looking at you, David Plotz). Those were very exciting times. To the Good Old Days! (p.s. - remember that time John Kerry ran for President, and for the last two months before the election, all anyone talked about was a war that ended in 1975? Yeah. That's right. You're feelin' me.)
B. Talk about the last seven years.
You are Joe Lieberman. You are a self-righteous prick who has shown the moral courage (feel the sneer...taste the sneer...) to not actually switch sides and officially join the Republicans, but instead choose to air your constant accusations of treason under the guise of "more in sadness than in anger" criticism from within; after all, a supposed Democrat calling the Democratic Party a security liability is going to get on TV a lot more than a Republican doing the same thing. Good for you! As Fox News' favorite elected Democrat, would you rather:
A. Have the wife of the man about whom you once said "In this case, the president apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral," become the Democratic nominee, thus allowing you to kick The Holy Joe Roadshow into overdrive in support of John McCain. Think of all the nasty things you'd get to say about the Clintons! On television! And, incidentally, the absolute hatred of the Clintons felt by many red staters would likely drive turnout in the general election, blunting the rising Democratic tide in the Congress, and perhaps allowing you to maintain some of your current importance as Senator #51.
B. Watch as the supercharged Democratic turnout engendered by an Obama nomination benefits down-ticket Democrats, leading to even bigger gains in the House and Senate than people are predicting. No longer needing to kiss your ass for support on tight votes, Harry Reid instructs the Senate clerk to begin referring to you as "the gentleman from Nobody Gives A Fuck." Alan Colmes laughs at your impotence.
You are the elite Democratic Establishment By which I mean the consultantocracy, the DLC, etc. Most of you (Howard Dean as DNC chair being a notable exception) are where you are because of the Clintons - either through the jump start that working in the Clinton White House gave to your career (Rahm Emmanuel) or the influence that comes with membership in the ascendant wing of the party in power (anyone at DLC during or just prior to Clinton). You come from different walks of life, have taken different paths since the Clinton years, are scattered across the country in various positions of Democratic authority. So what do you all have in common? You came of political age in an era when the Republicans were kicking your asses. These were the dark days of the Democratic Party - everywhere you turned, there was a Republican in front of a camera mouthing off about the moral and testicular faults of the Democrats. Understandably, this has fundamentally shaped your approach to national-level politics. For the sake of argument, I am willing to concede that the Third Way, top-down, pour-all-your-resources-into-swing-states mentality you adopted was the best possible approach to governing a country that tolerated Newt Gingrich and seemed ready to put Reagan's face on the dime. Under this scenario, during the nineties, you held the walls against the rightwing hordes - under extremely trying circumstances - and managed to prevent the worst case scenario: the success of the Republican impeachment power play intended to remove Clinton from office. For this, you deserve congratulations and gratitude.
However.
Your time is over. What was arguably (not by me, but nevermind) the only viable response to a rising rightwing tide in the nineties, is no longer an appropriate course of action in the year 2008. With the failure of movement conservatism as both an ideology and a center of power splashed all over the front pages, we can no longer afford the institutional flinch that seems to accompany even the boldest of your attacks on out-of-line Republicans - that little bit of wiggle room that allows you to back off under intense rhetorical counterfire from people who have no use for the truth. You know what I'm talking about. It's that thing that makes your balls melt every time someone says "socialist" or "weak on terror." The desire to explain yourself to professional liars, and to tailor your policies to keep them from being mean to you.
Do you prefer:
A. A second Clinton presidency, one that preserves the niches of authority that various Clintonistas have carved out for themselves during the Party's years out of power. This is your chance to solidify the gains you have made, to ensure ideological continuity for another decade by nurturing and advancing those that conform to your outlook - those that wish to run the Democratic party like a bad CEO, trading investment in the future for marginal short-term gains, not realizing that that approach leads to a never-ending game of catchup.
B. Someone who will clear the deck. Between Obama in the White House and Dean at the DNC, the career prospects for any but the most effective Clinton accolytes will approach zero. New blood will flood the entire Democratic infrastructure - you know, the one that Democrats in the 80's and 90's failed to properly maintain. Targeted gains along the margins? Fuck that. The new order from the top will be to hit the Republicans where they live. Sniping a seat from the Conneticut House delegation will still be nice, but what we really want is to unseat a Senator from Alabama and take the Governor's mansion in Texas. No more trying to tie policy proposals into knots trying to avoid unfair criticism that's coming at us no matter what we do - and no more leaving local-level Democratic parties to die just because they aren't in a particular election season's hotspots.
You are a Republican commentator. Be it print, radio, or television. You make a living - or at least coke and stripper money - by saying, not necessarily nice things about Republicans, but definitely awful things about Democrats. In fact, it's best to not be too explicitly supportive of the GOP, the better to frame your Democrat-bashing as Independent Wisdom.
Seriously, how on edge are you? You are about to enter a time of:
A. FEAST! Hitlery is back, boys and girls, and she wants the launch codes for the missiles! And to replace the CIA with lesbians! And to let Bill give admission interviews at the state school YOUR daughter goes to! Not only could you be in for up to eight years of Chris Matthews howling over every rumor you can manage to make up, but anytime you want, you can put the truly vile shit into a book with a large typeface and get it published by Regnery - which will promptly arrange to have large quantities of your masterwork purchased on the sly by a few rightwing institutions in order to push it onto the bestseller lists. As a career move for a writer, it's better than fucking Dean Koontz. Straight cash, homie.
B. Famine. The producers on every newstalk show in America are going to set their Blackberrys on fire deleting your name so fast. Why? Because you aren't going to be any fun, not anymore. You're going to have to go through so many verbal contortions to try to remove any trace of anything that even appears to be racist, you're going to end up sounding like... a Democrat, circa 2003. Hey, remember how much fun it was to be able to stop any Democratic politician dead in their tracks by saying, "Do you mean you WANT Saddam to stay in power?" Time to find out what it feels like to be on the wrong end of that shit, brother. You could be talking about Obama's usage of the semicolon, and some straight-outta-college douchebag with a shit-eating grin and a tie his mom bought him is gonna go "That's exactly the kind of stereotype that Obama's candidacy puts to shame. Come on now, you're better than that." Motherfucker doesn't even have to say the word "racist", and all the sudden you can't show your face in Washington for six months without diagramming every sentence in the goddamn transcript and showing receipts from your donations to the United Negro College Fund. Think tank execs become deathly allergic to the combination of your presence and a camera. Your editor at Regnery tells you they have to attend their grandmother's funeral. Three times. And every morning on the radio, you get to hear Don Imus talk shit about you as he reads excerpts from his webcomic, Captain Someone Else Is A Racist.
Well too fucking bad, cowboy. You loved you some media frenzy when you got to accuse others of loving Saddam and Terror and Nukes in New York, so you get no sympathy from me - even if you really aren't a racist. And, after a while, just when the media starts running the inevitable backlash stories, when people start thinking that maybe the whole thing was overblown, when you think that finally, finally, it's going to be over and you can get back on TV, Coulter's going to be standing a little too close to someone with a cameraphone when she drops an n-bomb, and it'll start all over again.
So back to the American Spectator for you. Bob Tyrell still thinks you're a shitty writer, but at least he admires your spunk.
You are a foreigner. Too bad for you, ha ha! We have the bombs, and you have the malaria. What you gonna do, sucker?
But that attitude is exactly the problem, isn't it? That kind of horseshit is a good chunk of the reason why you don't like America. You aren't one of those that hates America just because we are on top of the global pecking order - you genuinely fear that we have gone dangerously out of control. No longer a bulwark against the advances of the Soviet Union, the US has become, if not quite an imperial power, a country that is no longer safe to leave to its own devices. Republicans can give all the justifications they want, the simple fact is that you aren't nearly as comfortable with US hegemony as you were in 2000.
And what, in your mind, is the primary symbol of all that is wrong with American policy toward the world? Iraq. And despite your better instincts, a litany of American actions in Iraq and elsewhere have led you to be reluctantly sympathetic to - if not in outright agreement with - the notion that the so-called Global War on Terror is really a crusade against all dark-skinned people who don't toe the US line. After all, when you see America in the news, what do you almost always see? White guys with guns. How much do you believe in the Melting Pot - you know, that key self-conception taught to American schoolchildren that you, as a foreigner, have never heard of? Not very much, I would imagine.
Which would be more likely to help you regain a favorable opinion of the United States:
A. The overthrow of the party in power by...a rival who hems, haws, and bends over backwards to avoid saying that Iraq was a mistake - one that has given no reassurance that she is immune to the Thatcherite temptation to blow something up to prove she can hang with the lads2. Which leads to an important point - the election of a woman to a position of supreme authority may be a big deal in the States, but to a lot of the rest of the world - particularly the dark skinned parts - such a thing is hardly a novelty, and hardly the point. Ask an Indian how racially enlightened the British were under Queen Victoria.
B. The election of the first non-caucasion in American history - one who has explicitly and repeatedly condemned the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Who speaks in terms of unity and cooperation, both within the United States and without - exactly the kind of language that allows someone to support the US without feeling weak, or traitorous to their own people. It may seem like a small thing, and on a purely tactical level it is; but as any number of "clash of civilizations" types will tell you, one of the primary battle grounds of the War on Terror is in the minds of foreigners who aren't necessarily with us, but aren't really against us either. For them, this kind of symbolism counts.
You are John McCain. Hey, John! Remember that time eight years ago when I really liked you because you were the only Republican candidate willing to stand up and call the influence of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell evil, and then a couple years later you gave the commencement address at Liberty University in a blatant pander to the religious Right so that maybe this time you wouldn't get your ass kicked in South Carolina? Man, crazy world.
Anyway, good for you on wrapping up the Republican nomination. Maybe choking back your rage long enough to pose for this picture was worth it after all. Hey, at least you didn't have to literally kiss his ring! Eh? Eh? Ah, I'm kidding. You are a Man Of Principle.
But seriously John, here's the thing. George, it seems, has handed you a big old shit sandwich, the likes of which hasn't been eaten since Gerald Ford was on the receiving end of the beating everyone wanted to give to Nixon - and at least Ford got the consolation of having his finger on The Button for a little while. The point is, running as the Republican nominee this time around is a tough proposition. Being the nominal leader of the Party That Ruined Everything For Everyone is not exactly the top listed job offering on craigslist3. So you gotta ask yourself, would your life be easier if you could run against:
A. Hillary Clinton? I suppose it depends on what kind of campaign you're going to have. Any chance you're going to be running as The Baddest Motherfucker On The Planet? You know, the type of dude who sings funny little songs about declaring war on foreign countries because fuck you, what are you gonna do about it? There is? Excellent! Then this seems to be the way to go. After all, with Hillary as an opponent, you get to be perhaps the last Presidential candidate who gets to ask his opponent, "Oh yeah? Well what did you do during Vietnam?" - because "I worked for the McGovern campaign" is, in the minds of a certain segment of the voting population, a lot more damning than "I was fourteen years old, grandpa." And come on, you know you can't wait to start saying flip-flop about her vote to authorize the war and subsequent calls for withdrawal. Tell me I'm wrong! Tell me I'm wrong! You can't, 'cause I'm not.
But that's not even the point, is it? Sure, you're all ginned up to go through the motions of campaigning, dropping clever soundbites on the media and scoring gotcha points in the debates. Between you and me, though, we know what really matters to a Republican presidential candidate these days - rallying the base. You have got to get those backward fuckers to show up to pull the lever for you, and that's a problem, because They. Don't. Like. You. Ain't that a sonofabitch? Apparently, Falwell didn't put in a good word with the Almighty after all. As it turns out, you won the nomination not because everyone on the Right loves you, but because they think you're the least likely to scare off the independents in the general election. "I love you because you are probably marginally acceptable to people less extreme than me" isn't exactly drop-your-panties material. So what is one to do? Well, Jack, you're in luck, because have I got a loophole for you. You don't need to get them to come out for you; they'll come crawling out of the woodwork to vote against her. They hate Hillary more than they love Jesus, and that is good for John McCain.
B. Barack Obama? Well, do you like distancing yourself from shadowy groups running political ads on your behalf that you didn't actually authorize? I hope so, because otherwise August and September are going to suck. Pop quiz: what is the media going to be Daredevil-sensitive to with a black man as a major party nominee? Bow your head in shame if you said anything other than "racist innuendo." Now, come on, John. You know what some of those good ole boy business groups in the south are going to do. You fucking well know it. They think they'll be able to get away with it, because they always have. Everything's anonymous, no paper trail leading back to the guys who actually paid for the flyers/push polls/cryptic radio spots. But that was local and state-level hijinx, the stuff that gets on the state newspaper front page for a few days and then disappears. Welcome to a media-intensive national campaign in 2008, son; someone somewhere pokes around anywhere near the n-word, and even Fox News has to pretend righteous indignation - hell, they might even put exclamation points in the headline, Nancy Grace style. No, I don't think you're going to say anything like that, John, but there are plenty of people out there who will, and every reporter on the planet is going to ask you if you condemn them, and you are going to find that your Straight Talk armor against the press is really quite porous if your response isn't "Hell yes, fuck all racists everywhere, Barack Obama is a fine upstanding American" every single time. Hard to talk about how much better you are than someone else when you keep having to apologize to them. Worried yet? Ha. That's just the amateur shit. Wait 'til the Klan holds a fundraiser for you on the front lawn of a state capitol.
* * *
Happy to be of assistance.
1Unless you are voting for the Republican nominee, of course. In which case, good for you! I applaud your commitment to your ideals! You are obviously committed to the principle of democracy. Just remember that voting in the primary is only the first step; you need to follow through in the general election. Make sure you circle November 5 on your calender.
2 Some may object to this as a swipe against the notion of a woman being able to lead the military. It is not. Instead, it is a reflection of my belief that a HRC presidency would only become so by a slim margin in the general election, and therefore would be hypersensitive to accusations of weakness from the very beginning. The fact that she has repeatedly reiterated her willingness to drop bombs, deploy troops, and generally be a kicker of foreign asses does not encourage confidence in this regard.
3Look! A web-based reference! I am Young & Hip.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Fear The Ursine
We ain't here to start no trouble...
We're here to jack Indy the fuck up.
Bear Down!
On a related note -
Brian Urlacher: Crushing tool of divine retribution against your offense, or force of nature that springs up out of nowhere to wreck havoc and general destruction?
I shall be wandering around the city of Chicago in a drunken haze all weekend, so if you see me, yell "The President is a mass hallucination" really loud at me.
