Obama Pulls Within Three Points In Cali

West-Siiiiiiiidddeee!!! Let's go baby.

So I'm finally reading What's The Matter With Kansas...

But I thought this would be a good time to link to one of the great spoofs of all time. Enjoy.

Oh, Bob Herbert

I've been of mixed mines about Bob Herbert. It's great that he's on his beat, but I generally don't enjoy columnists (well a couple), so I don't know what to say. Anyway this is sad. Gawker finds Herbert plagarizing himself. The Essence:

We may have Two Americas, but Bob Herbert has only one stock description of the crappy public schools.

Some good news

We're gaining on you. The Essence:

Al Sharpton to Clinton--Zip it Bill

Speaks for itself. Sharpton is actually quite engaging here. But that was never his problem.

Clinton Dissected

Bill, that is. Very nice piece. Not based on arm-chair theory, or bullshit psychoanalysis. The essence:

Who can say what Clinton’s effect on the campaign trail really is? However much journalistic critics and Obama supporters cringed at Bill Clinton’s performances, they seemed to help Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada.

But those experiences seemed to unleash something more antic and unruly in Clinton’s attacks on Obama and the media, making the Clinton campaign even more about him and less about her. The effect was a bit like a dieter who reads on the Internet that doughnuts are actually good for you.

Richard Cohen Reciting Clinton Talking Points

So tarring Obama with Farrakhan had no effect. Now Richard Cohen passive-aggressively puts his hopes in the racism of white people. Cohen argues that Obama "played the race card" by labeling Clinton's comments about King as "ill-advised." The very putrid essence:

The turning point for Obama actually came in New Hampshire, when Hillary Clinton said that Martin Luther King's "dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964." This, of course, only reflected historical reality and was, moreover, a slap not at King, but at Johnson's predecessor, John F. Kennedy, to whom Obama is often compared. (Both Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, have since endorsed Obama.)

Possibly we shall someday learn that Hillary Clinton's remark was diabolically intended to offend blacks. I doubt it. Whatever the case, though, some important African-Americans quickly reacted -- and the Democratic primary campaign was never again the same. Not only did the Clintons not back off, but they seemed to savor the moment. As for Obama, instead of adroitly taking the sting out of what Hillary Clinton had said by shrugging it off, he called her comments "unfortunate" and "ill-advised."

The upshot was the racially divided vote we saw in South Carolina, one Bill Clinton immediately likened to Jesse Jackson's victories in 1984 and '88 -- in other words, yet another asterisk, a race-based triumph and therefore of negligible importance. Obama won big, bigger than expected. But a lot of his margin came from African-Americans, particularly, and unexpectedly, women, many of whom were supposedly in Hillary Clinton's corner. He got about 80 percent of the black vote.

Witness a columnist breathlessly filling inches. First of all, the idea that "the Dream" wasn't realized until Johnson is--racist or not--just wrong. Did Brown v. Board not happen? Was the Mongotmery bus boycott just erased from history? Was Hartsfield not the mayor of Atlanta? This is not a slight to Johnson--he bravely sacrificed the future of the Democratic party for the future of the country. But he isn't the start of the realization of "the Dream." In fact, "the Dream" was well in motion before King ever even made his speech.

But moreover, this idea that somehow Barack winning the black vote is ultimately a minus is complete bullshit. I remember this time last year when pundits were crowing about it being a problem that black people seemed to favor Clinton. I am sorry, a win is a fucking win. The idea that whites will reflexively flee Obama because he called a Clinton comment "ill-advised," and because a lot of black people like him is a cynical, unprovable assertion. We have no way of knowing whether it's true.

Furthermore, South Carolina's primary was only racially divided because Edwards and Clinton did so poorly among blacks, not because Obama did so poorly among whites. Barack got a quarter of the white vote, and basically tied Clinton for white men. Where he really lost was among white women--but that has more to do with Clinton's status as an important first, than any sense that Obama had morphed into Marcus Garvey.

The Myth of Our "First Black President"

TNR does the knowledge on Bill and blacks. The essence:

Back in 1992, the Clintons were decidedly not heroes to black America. Bill ran on a platform of welfare reform. He was tough on crime, and some felt he gratuitously supported the execution of the brain-damaged African American killer Ricky Ray Rector on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. When Clinton scolded the obscure rapper Sister Souljah at a meeting of Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Rainbow Coalition, Jackson called it a "Machiavellian" gambit for white votes. That fall, Clinton carried 82 percent of the black vote--a low sum compared to other Democratic nominees. (In 1988, for instance, Mike Dukakis carried 89 percent of the black electorate.)

Yeah basically, except a lot of black people were down with welfare reform and criminal crackdowns. I'm not sure that hurt Bill so much. Besides Gore got more of the black vote than Bill, but I wouldn't say blacks liked Gore more. All that said, I agree with the basic assertion. Black people's affection for Clinton has long been overstated.

Kilpatrick Drama

Sorry but this just makes me sad. I guess if it interferes with his stewardship of the city, it's a problem. But, for some reason the only thing that struck me about the text messages was that the two of them seemed very much in love. I don't say that to make light of adultry. I guess Kilpatrick's wife and kids are the ones who are really suffering.

A Neo-Southern Strategy

Shay over at Booker Rising says that's what will ultimately tackle Obama:

The South Carolina vote will provide momentum in this presidential race, but it will not mainly be experienced by Sen. Obama's campaign. Instead, it will be experienced mainly by Sen. Clinton's campaign, thanks to the Southern Strategy that will have reverberations throughout the country.

She's not the first to say it. I saw Buchannan making the same point the other night. Color me unconvinced. First off, Nevada and New Hampshire aren't southern states. Furthermore, Obama did very well among rural voters in Nevada, and beat Hillary among white men in South Carolina. The state's that Clinton is counting on are places like New York and California. I don't know how a "southern strategy" works to the Clinton's advantage there. The bigger problem with this thesis is that it can't be proven. If Obama looses, anyone can say it was because of  a "new Southern strategy." But how do we know it isn't simply because the voters preferred Hillary?

It's the black/brown thing all over again. Look, far be it from me to give white folks more credit than they're due. But you can't automatically conclude that racism will doom Obama--especially after his perfomance in Iowa, and his relatively strong performance among white men in South Carolina. We should be less cynical allow people the same sense of humanity and complexity that we would want.

Newsflash: Latinos breath air, consume food

Greg Rodriguez brings it. The essence:

Nationwide, no fewer than eight black House members--including New York's Charles Rangel and Texas' Al Green--represent districts that are more than 25% Latino and must therefore depend heavily on Latino votes. And there are other examples. University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto has begun compiling a list of black big-city mayors who have received large-scale Latino support over the past several decades. In 1983, Harold Washington pulled 80% of the Latino vote in Chicago. David Dinkins won 73% in New York City's mayoral race in 1989. And Denver's Wellington Webb garnered more than 70% in 1991, as did Ron Kirk in Dallas in 1995 and again in 1997 and '99. If he had gone back further, Barreto could have added longtime Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who won a majority of Latino votes in all four of his re-election campaigns between 1977 and 1989.

That is just, well, true. I've said my piece on Latino racism, but I think at the end of the day Greg is just right. To simply say Obama lost Nevada because Latinos hate blacks is reductionist. It's the sort of line which, one word at a time, strips Latinos of any sort of complexity and humanity.

Christopher Hitchens Rebuttal

Nice riposte by Ross Douthat over at the Atlantic to Hitchens take on Obama and race. Christopher Hitchens is, quite simply, a bad mutherfucker. I found God Is Not Great to be incredibly inspirational and arguably the greatest work of polemic I've ever read. That said, there is point where contrarianism, too, becomes an ideology. I worry that he sometimes crosses that line.

Bill will be Bill

My old buddy Jake Tapper on Clinton's coded race-based appeal. I can't, for the life of me, understand how any self-respecting black person can support Hillary after this sort of crap. I don't think people have any sort of special "racial responsibility" to back Obama. I thought about Edwards, and Joe Biden (when he was still in the race) myself. Shocked about Biden? To me, calculated bigotry is way worse than a slip of the tongue.

Meanwhile in GOPville

Things are getting testy. If you watched the NH debate with these guys, you know that Romney is absolutely hated by all the other candidates. But man, McCain is going for the throat. I wish I could go down there and vote for Romney. Nothing would please me more than to see Romney v. Obama.

Obama's Speech

OK, so here's the video...

Jim Clyburn on South Carolina

Man the good Congressman from South Carolina tried to stay neutral, but he seems to be saying that Clinton race-baiting handed Obama this one.

Barack Is Like

Man just watched Obama acceptance. Circa '94, I thought Nas was God's gift to hip-hop. Whenever I heard he was releasing a cut, or was on someone else's record, I had this sense that I just knew he was gonna rip it. It was like watching Jordan in the playoffs or Elway in the 4th. That's the feeling you get when Obama is about to give a speech. I just watched Pat Buchannan say that Obama has to give a perfect speech. And before I even heard a word, I knew he'd deliver. Incredible.

The Essence:

As we leave this great state with a new wind at our back, and we take this journey across the great country, a country we love, with the message we carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire, from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast, the same message we had when we were up, and when were down--that out of many we are one, that while we breath we will hope.

Man. What'd Slick Rick say? Even make construction workers turn feminine.

The Irrepressible Colbert King

Doing the knowledge on the new American dynasty. The essence:

Which gets me to that superficially charming, self-absorbed couple Billary, ever so possessed with an outsize sense of entitlement. What else to call Bill and Hillary Clinton as they partner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, tag-teaming Barack Obama with alternating blows both above and below the belt? It's an act the twosome plans to take all the way to the White House.

If they make it there -- a big if -- the only unanswered question is where Bill will choose to hang his hat. Will it be in her old space in the East Wing, or will he set up shop in the West Wing?

Smart money is on Billary settling in the Oval Office with "his" and "hers" desks.

It's a nice piece. I gotta say, the Clinton's really bring the venom out. Here's Modo earlier this week straight swinging swords:

Clinton Tackled In South Carolina

Read 'em and weep. I'm not sure what any of this means. We knew this was coming as soon as Obama shocked the world in Iowa. Truth be told, I can't give much analysis at the moment anyway. Loretta Sanchez' fine-ass is on MSNBC right now. No disrespect, but I've got a thing for her. She's a Clintonista, but I think I could find a way to not hold that against her. Plus it's at least an improvement over my vaunted imaginary affair with Condi Rice.

The Problem With Season Five of The Wire

It's tough to join in on the collective beatdown now being administered to The Wire. Most of this season's critics have focused on Simon's allegedly innacurate depictions of the newsrooms. I can't call that. But I do think that this season's problems are related to Simon's homecoming. The beauty of The Wire has always been in the many shades and complexion of its villany. From the craven Stan Valchek to the burecratically ruthless Ervin Burrell to the calculating Stringer Bell, Simon has always painted his villains with an amazing degree of depth. Ditto for the show's heroes, and Simon has always said that he is completely unconcerned with good and evil.

But this season, Simon seems to have embraced evil full-bore. Many of his villans of more recent vintage are either unvarnished assholes or straight psychopaths. In the case of Marlo, Chris and Snoop, this is only slightly problematic and I think it's important that people not think that every criminal is some sort of enlightened thug of the Omar or even Wee-Bay variety. Some thugs are just that, thugs, and The Wire would be remiss to ignore that. What makes Season Five hard to take, is the addition of uncomplicated villany of James Whiting and Thomas Klebanow, the two editors running the Baltimore Sun.

Again, I can't speak to the accuracy of the newspaper scenes. But both characters are based on two editors that Simon beefed with during his time at the Sun. Unlike the villains in the police department, no context is offered for Whiting and Klebanow. Presumably their toomfoolery is a response to national cuts taking place across the newspaper industry. But unlike previous bueracratic fuckups--such as Burrell or Rawls--Whiting and Klebanow just seem to relish in rudeness and incompetence.

Add to that the shocking turns to the dark-side by McNulty and Freamon, and you've got a stew of cynicism, that's hard to take. The Wire is still far and above the best show on TV, and at this point, I'm only measuring season five by the previous outings. That in and of itself is testament to The Wire's greatness. Still, I'd hate for the last season to be the worst.

Bill Clinton Is Marion Barry

Well as I saw him seven years ago. Man I'm getting old. Anyway the piece basically looks at Clinton as a more competent Marion Barry.

The Essence:

Both men are from the South and were raised poor by single mothers. Both have had their potentially impressive careers marred by an inability to manage their appetites for lust. And both are the bane of white conservatives and Washington's elite. Barry was despised by the black upper crust of D.C.'s Gold Coast, which dismissed him as an unsophisticated �Bama just as Georgetown socialites snubbed Clinton as trailer trash. Clinton left the country in vastly better shape than Barry left the District, but both have been awarded a moral pass from people who specialize in offering redemption to wayward souls.

Man, I remember how much fun I had writing this piece. I was depressed as hell, playing Everquest 18 hours a day. Besides basic functions of fathering and biology, all I did was write. Props to Stephanie Mencimer for helping this piece come to life. Anyway, enough nostalgia

More David Simon Back And Forth

And the debate rages on. Here's an interesting rejoinder to Simon's critique of the news.
The essence:

Older readers like Simon may bemoan their increasingly thin papers. But a whole new generation of Internet-savvy youngsters is being introduced to newspapers on the Web. There they can post links to their favorite stories on social networking sites like Facebook, compete against each other in online news quizzes and gain exposure to different opinions and coverage. Every day, my friends, family members and I trade e-mail about what we read online. My best friend and I, who exchange dozens of e-mails daily, gossip just as feverishly -- and as frequently -- about Ronald Brownstein's political insights as we do about Britney and Lindsay's latest shenanigans.

Read Simon's original take here.

Hil Takes The Times

No surprise here. Personally, I think it was the following anthem which pushed her over...

Blacks v. Latinos--again

More grist for the mill. Pretty sad.

Stephen Colbert, Andrew Young and Malcolm Gladwell Going For Thier's

This you must see to believe...

Obama at Ebeneezer--Uhm, Wow

So this is my problem with blogging, and you guys have to forgive me because I am new to this. A few days ago I took on Obama for his comments about anti-semitism and homophobia on the homefront. I was responding to excerpts from his speech, which gave the impression that he'd spent much of it chastising black folks. In fact it was about 30 seconds of a 34 minute speech--and a needed 30 seconds. I still maintain my criticism of Obama's stance on gay marriage. But I don't know how you watch this speech and aren't moved.

That said, one of the hard things about following Obama is that there is a section of the media that is more interested in his criticisms of black America, than anything else he's saying. I made the mistake of equating him with the critics.

Cynical Press to Obama: Jettison the Niggers

Mickey Kaus urges him to do just that. This is the sort of shit that kept me from voting for years. Politicians are expected to be power-hungry. I accept that as an unfortunate byproduct of our system. But dumb-ass journalists who champion the dissing of the weak, in pursuit of power, are loathsome. The essence:

The more obvious move is to find a Sister Souljah--after Saturday--to stiff arm. The most promising candidate is not a person, but an idea: race-based affirmative action. Obama has already made noises about shifting to a class-based, race-blind system of preferences. What if he made that explicit? Wouldn't that shock hostile white voters into taking a second look at his candidacy? He'd renew his image as the trans-race leader (and healer). The howls of criticism from the conventional civil-rights establishment--they'd flood the cable shows--would provide him with an army of Souljahs to hold off. If anyone noticed Hillary in the ensuing fuss, it would be to put her on the spot--she'd be the one defending mend-it-don't-end-it civil rights orthodoxy.

If you are white--and frankly don't much give a damn about people--Sista Souljah was a brilliant tactic. If you're black, and paying attention, it was a succesful attempt to appeal to the worst prejudices of white people by telling Southern racists that Slick Willy was no nigger-lover.

The worst part of this era of Democratic politics is the elevation of people who seemingly stand for nothing. Say what you want about John McCain, he believes in the war. George Bush really believed that stem-cell research was a bad idea. In fact, the one triangulator among the GOP, Romney, is seemingly reviled by all the other candidates. This is not to say they don't have hucksters and panderers among them, but on our side the politics of calculation seems to rule the day.

It's very hard to see myself endorsing electoral cowardice. It's very hard, in other words, to see myself endorsing the Clinton's given their long record of tossing niggers off the boat when it was expedient.

The Black Latino Gap Put In Perspective

This is worth reading. The Essence:

Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.

The awkwardness and simplicity seen and heard in the coverage of the Latino electorate illustrates how ill-equipped the news organizations, the political parties and the society as a whole are to understand and deal with the historic political shift previewed in Nevada: the death of the black-white electorate. Simplistic talk about the Latino vote provides another example of how we live when the 'experts' and their organizations are increasingly out of touch with the dynamism and complexity of the electorate and the general populace.

As a result, the growth of the very diverse Latino electorate will likely force the revelation of more inconvenient truths. Principle among them is the media's conclusion that anti-black racism among Latinos explains why they voted Clinton and not Obama in Nevada. Story after story tries to fit the Latino vote into the procrustean bed of old-school, black v. white politics.

Including me, obviously. For the record, I'm not sure that's wrong. I've argued that the Latino v. African-American storyline is flawed, because it doesn't take into account the diversity of both communities. That said, I'm not sure that in fifty years, Mexican-Americans in particular, who comprise a large percentage of Latinos in the country, won't simply be viewed as another tribe of ethnic whites. Isn't much of Miami's Cuban-American community hewing to that trajectory? I also don't think you can dismiss evidence of Latino racism because the academic in question doesn't watch Univsion.

That said, I'm especially sensitive to the idea that it's almost entirely white--and sometimes black--reporters/analysts who are telling the Latino side of this story. What the fuck do they know? I have a rule when it comes to black people. If you haven't sat down for dinner with a black family in the past year, you should really avoid generalizing about black people. The same follows for Latinos.

Obama's Promise

Like a lot of folks, I spent yesterday watching the debate. I gotta say I was disappointed to see Obama go so hard at Hillary. Don't take that the wrong way. I know why he went after her, and I know he had to. But watching him go into the gutter with her went against everything that I love about him as a candidate. Barack has a cool, intellectual, above-the-fray sort of steez. This is not aloofness, but more like a sense that he can't be busied with petty bullshit. Furthermore, it's a thrill to see a brother exhibiting that sort of cool, not on the court or in a music video, but in the race for the presidency. I'm just not sure that presidential politics, as it currently exists, will mesh will with it. Anyway, courtesy of the Obama campaign, here's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Obama Refuses To Go Gently Into That Good Night

Gotta take my son to school. More on this later. But for now, Talking Points Memo, take it away

Obama Corners The Negro Market

Well we knew this was coming. Notice how the dumb-ass, ill-thought, unlettered (that's a Christopher Hitchens word) fulminations about Barack's lack of blackness have quietly receded to the back, now that he is polling at 60 percent in the black community. I really can't say I'm shocked. More surprising is the Kenyan boy wonder's inability to bring the Southern white folks into the conversation. Yeah I know, I'm an optimist. Forgive me. Next go round, I'll be more cynical.

Martin Luther King's Last Speech

Yeah, I know its not the official birthday, but whatever. When I was young I was always a Malcolm man, like my father. In a lot of ways, I still am. But come on, you've got to give it up...

More on Latino racism

By way of Sullivan, this piece argues that Lation anti-black prejudice has been underreported and has roots in that other motherland. The essence:

The fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily), whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of Africans) — the largest concentration in all of Spanish America.

The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility.

Obama on Gay Marriage

Extending off of yesterday's post about Obama's condemnation of homophobia among us, it's irritating that Obama would call out other black folks on this issue, when his gay marriage position is bigoted. Furthermore, remember that gospel singer he was rolling with who claimed homosexuality could be excised by prayer? Obama prides himself on being cerebral, but his stand against gay marriage is straight politics. If the wind were going the other way, I highly doubt Obama would stand where he does.

Latino Racism

So going back over the Latino factor in the Nevada vote, some problems are arising. It's weak to simply say Obama lost because Latinos hate black folks. But I think going forward, the racism we see in Latino communities is going to be a problem. TNR ran a revealing piece on this a few months back.

The essence:

Duke University's Paula McClain, working with nine other sociologists, found similar attitudes among Latinos living in Durham, North Carolina. According to McClain et al., "Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks." For instance, 58.9 percent of Latino immigrants, but only 9.3 percent of whites, reported feeling that "few or almost no blacks are hard-working."

These attitudes were not confined to working-class Latinos. Yolanda Flores Niemann of Washington State University and four other sociologists discovered among Latino college students the same kind of stereotypes that Mindiola found in Houston. Among the top ten traits that Latino college students ascribed to black males were "antagonistic," "speak loudly," "muscular," "criminal," "dark skin," and "unmannerly."

We should be careful about generalizing Latino prejudices the way some others generalize about black homophobia or anti-semitism. Furthermore, I bet the data you'd get amongst, say, Latinos in New York would be different. This isn't about any special animus that brown people have for blacks. In fact it's just the opposite. The attitudes of Latinos--I'm willing to bet--closely mirror the attitudes of other immigrants, and ethnic whites. I would think that Mexican-Americans in Houston have about as much love for blacks as Polish-Americans do in Chicago. That's unfortunate. But in a way it proves the essential American-ness of many Latinos. Hating niggers is always a good first step toward citizenship.

Man I'm a fiend

Woke up at 4 AM to catch The Wire on demand. No dice. I'm getting the shakes here. Time to reach for the morphine...

Skip Gates is so 1994...

I mean really. Check out this backward-ass interview over at Mother Jones. No disrespect to Adam Hochschild, who wrote the stunning King Leopold's Ghost, but it just amazes me that after years of studying with some of the great seers of American academia, in some of the greatest intellectual institutions ever established in world history, Skip Gates racial analysis still boils down to this sort of strawmanship:

Look—no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

Who is making this argument? Where are the black lefties, or black welfare mothers, or irresponsible black fathers who are running around saying the Klan is responsible for teenage pregnancy among black people? Dude please. You always know a hack because he has to reduce his adversary into a flat cartoon before he can engage him. This is the sort of moralizing that's only employed against black people. The deep South--even today--is home to the country's poorest and most backward population of white people. No one looks at them and says, yeah you guys need a moral revolution. People look at them say, yeah ban gay marriage that'll make your life better. More Gates hackery:

Look at black immigrants landing here in Boston from Haiti who can’t even speak English! After ten years, they own taxi medallions. So it’s not simply a matter of racism. I mean these people are as black as anybody, but they have an immigrant mentality. We need to instill an immigrant mentality back into the African American community. Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the ’50s were immigrant values even though we weren’t immigrants.

How does Gates suppose that we instill this mythical immigrant mindset in the minds of of millions of black people? Has he ever been to Little Haiti in Miami where that vaunted immigrant work ethic has landed fools exactly where Negroes around the country have been for generations? Has he ever been to Brooklyn where large swaths of black folks hail from the islands and still take the back-seat? Gimme a break. Gates is an intellectual in name and rep. But he hasn't brought the ruckus in years. For some actual heavy lifting on black immigrant values, see Malcolm Gladwell.

Barack's Sista Souljah Tactic

I reserve complete judgment until I can see the speech. But this continued hectoring of black folks by Obama feels disingenuous. Are there anti-semites and homophobes amongst us? Damn right. But there is something bullying in the idea that Obama pointedly refuses to confront white audiences over America's very real and well documented legacy of racism, and at the same time routinely throw darts at black folks.

This all started with the "acting white" canard that Obama brandished back in 2004. White pundits routinely applaud Obama's "courage" when he plays the black pathology card, and then they applaud him for "transcending race" when he says little about white racism in his speeches. Less noted is that Obama will loose no support among black people for saying things like this, as the "what's wrong with niggers" is a perennial conversation among us.

Let's be clear: homophobes, anti-semites, racists, bigots and demagogues should be shunned, denounced and purged from our midst. But don't talk that shit, and then come to Harlem and have dinner with Shartpon. And don't act like black America is the only--or even the major--source of these ills. We have our problems, no doubt. But it wasn't us who gave the world Matthew Shepard.

Big Boring Important Post of the Week

So, from time to time you hear Huckabee pushing for a "fair tax." Ezra Klein over at the American Prospect does the math on this deceptive bit of nomenclature.

Sometimes there is justice

Apropos of nothing, I am posting the following Hitchens video. I get warm everytime I see this. Hitchens seems mildly (mildly??) drunk, but pounds Ralph Reed, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, just for being a strawman liberal. Please stick around for one of the greatest Hitchens quotes ever, and there are many. "If you gave Falwell an enema, you could have buried him a matchbox." The druken master in top form.

The Science of Tomming

Fascinating piece in Slate today by Alan Wolfe. It's a review of Randall Kennedy's book Sellout. Kennedy is a professional contrarian and that has merits as well as its problems. Interestingly enough in his new book, he defends the right of black folks--and all folks, i guess--to label people sell-outs. But he argues that Clarence Thomas was unfairly branded a sell-out. Wolfe like the book, but isn't buying the defense of Thomas

People about to be lynched are not in the best position to argue, as conservatives are wont to do, that race should no longer matter.

Damn straight.

How The West Was Won

It's not so sad to me that Obama lost Nevada, even with the support of a powerful union. Much more disturbing is this strategy which Sullivan lays out. There's been a lot of talk about this groundswell of multi-racial support that would rally to Obama. I hope that still holds true. Moreso, I hope that this idea that Hispanics didn't support Barack simply because he's black is overblown. It feels a little too easy. But the idea that at the end of the day, Barack--for all his nonpartisanship, for all his talk of unity--is still subject to many of the racial pitfalls that hamstrung in 88, is just distressing.

It does look like Hillary is well positioned for the long war. Man, if she wins, she will get destroyed in the general. She is the worst of every possible world. She has the high negatives of a really partisan, left-winger. But she's actually hated among left-wingers. Further, this primary has alienated her from black voters. In the words of the mighty Avon Barksdale, when I look at Hillary I see a candidate without a country. Who is her base?

A Bound Man

Shelby Steele says its Obama, but I just finished the book and I think Steele is the bound guy. The book should basically be titled, "How dare Barack Obama choose to be black?!?!?" More on this later, as I'm working a review on the book for the Nation. For now here's Steele prattling on for a pliant Bill Moyers and then the dregs at Fox News.

Also My good friend Jelani Cobb exposing the simple-mindedness of "America's foremost black intellectual" (George Will's words). Yeah, when I want to know about black people, I go straight to George Will.

Some people just have it...

Again, I'm a sucker for a cool story. This is a piece from one of my heroes--E.L. Doctorow--that really explores the pathos of the suburbs. Overdone, I know, especially for a West Baltimore kid like me with no sympathy for those fortunate enough to live the life of the picket fence. Still, if you can bring it, you can bring it. And if you can bring it in your 70s, man, respect due. Here's a taste:

People will say that I left my wife and I suppose, as a factual matter, I did, but where was the intentionality? I had no thought of deserting her. It was a series of odd circumstances that put me in the garage attic with all the junk furniture and the raccoon droppings—which is how I began to leave her, all unknowing, of course—whereas I could have walked in the door as I had done every evening after work in the fourteen years and two children of our marriage. Diana would think of her last sight of me, that same morning, when she pulled up to the station and slammed on the brakes, and I got out of the car and, before closing the door, leaned in with a cryptic smile to say goodbye—she would think that I had left her from that moment. In fact, I was ready to let bygones be bygones and, in another fact, I came home the very same evening with every expectation of entering the house that I, we, had bought for the raising of our children. And, to be absolutely honest, I remember I was feeling that kind of blood stir you get in anticipation of sex, because marital arguments had that effect on me.

First Black president?

That dumb-ass title always annoyed me. I don't care that it's Toni Morrison who said it or that it was said in the New Yorker. It basically reduced being black to playing the sax, loving fried chicken, being abandoned by your Daddy and screwing around on your wife. What's becoming clear is that Clinton has--and had--many virtues, but being black was never one of them. I love that he pushed the EITC, and maybe welfare reform had to come. I, frankly, don't know enough about econ to give him credit for the 90s boom.

But more than anything, Clinton was a masterful politician. And what mattered more than his actual policies, was the method the fact that he could charm the pants off virtually anyone--black people included. What's becoming clear from this piece by my old friend Chris Lehmann, is that some of us are waking up.

Peace to Andrew Sullivan for that Chris Lehmann link...

Black v. Brown

Nice to see Matt Yglesias debunking one of the dumber story lines coming out this election--the idea that Latinos will gravitate to Clinton, because Obama is black. The only thing more annoying than lefties who talk about a black-brown coalition, is reporters who spout breathlessly about a black-brown divide. Typically these folks conflate Cuban-Americans in Miami with Dominican-Americans in New York and Mexican-Americans in L.A. But they aren't the same, in each case you find that each groups relation to the local black population is different. That doesn't mean things are great, but this overarching "black-brown" theory  of conflict is over-inflated.

Things from other planets

So I have to say that my knowledge of writers dealing in women's issues is like just a notch above nil. So what I say next, I say with almost no context--I loved Caitlin Falanagan's piece on Katie Couric in this month's Atlantic. Much of the hooblah over Couric's move to the nightly news went right over head, mostly because I can't distinguish one morning show from the other, nor have I ever much understood why one attracts more viewers than the other. I don't know that Flanagan knows either, but man she made a killer case for women who swear by Katie Couric, and even better case for why her move to evenings was ill-concieved and bound for disaster.

The essence:

That Katie has bombed at CBS is a testament, not to the existence of a glass ceiling, but to the fact that real revolutions are so thoroughgoing that they don’t just provide a new answer, they change the very questions being asked. Katie’s mandate to lure women and young people to the nightly news was in itself ridiculous and doomed to fail—and a goal beneath her talent and ambitions. No woman needs to storm the Bastille of nightly news, because the form has become irrelevant: Oprah has immeasurably more cultural, commercial, and political clout than Charles Gibson and Brian Williams, and no young person is ever going to make appointment TV out of a sober-minded 6:30 wrap-up of stories he or she already read online in the afternoon.

There's a lot of great stuff leading up that sad, tragic point. I know a lot of people hate Flanagan, and possibly with good reason. But man I am a sucker for piece of kick-ass writing.

Chris Matthews repents

Yeah, I'm not down with Hillary, but even I could see that Chris Matthews was going over the line. Seems he caught some flack for it and pulled back.

Give the white man props

I was dismayed to hear that Huckabee was appealing to the cavemen of South Carolina. Guess it doesn't matter much because even if I lived in SC, he wouldn't get my vote. That said, I'd love for my conservative brethren to have a shot at someone who at least tries to seem nonracist. Give Fred Thompson and John McCain props for that.

Pulling back the hoods and white sheets...

Reason reveals the author of Ron Paul's racist newsletters.

More Obama

Seriously, not to harp on this subject, but the Times has a silly op-ed on Obama and race. The piece basically argues that the only way for Obama to win is to duck conversations of race and not be "the black guy." The piece combines the worst of cynical horse-race political journalism with all the hamfisted racial logic that's kept people from really getting what Obama is about.

The kid has attracted tons of press for not speaking about race like Sharpton or Jackson. Newsflash: most black folks don't talk about race like Sharpton or Jackson. Unlike the media, we don't define black by how many times you shout "Reparations Now" in a given interview. And for the record, this is typical for black people. Someone else brings up race, and then everyone turns around and says "Why are you so hung up on race??" Right...