Taken from comments, this is worthy of its own post. Here is Sarah Palin outlining her reading list for Katie Couric:
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was
curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before
you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too.
Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "wow, how
could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be
thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like
a microcosm of America.
You are allowed to laugh--but only to keep from crying
More incoherence
Good God. Watch this clip. Let's leave aside the fact that at eight, she almost certainly had no idea who Joe Biden was, the attack is little more than a half-ass passive aggressive jab on Joe Biden's age. Lemme get this straight: 1.) We know seniors vote. 2.) We know John McCain is older than Joe Biden. 3.) We know John McCain really needs seniors to be for him. 4.) We know young people are for Obama. So I ask, how does this attack make sense? Moreover, in the interview, she doesn't even deliver it effectively. It's basically a bad attack delivered at the wrong target.
Seriously, I don't get this. An attack on Biden as a "Washington insider" and Palin as the "outside reformer" would makes sense. Instead they seem to have gone with, "Well we can't attack Obama for inexperience anymore, so we'll attack Joe Biden for being too old, and hope that no one notices that our guy is even older." Who are these people? Seriously, who is scripting this? Are her handlers fools? Are these the people we are supposed to be scared of? Are you serious?
Sarah: You are not a pit-bull, you are weak-sauce incarnate. These men who are coming for you are not playing. I know it looks like they're sweethearts, but they do not come to dance. If you're going to take a swing at them, take a fucking swing. You're going to have to come harder than this.
UPDATE: Oh my god. I'm watching a live broadcast online. Katie just asked her what newspapers and magazines and books she's read. I bullshit you not. She couldn't name a single one--not one.
UPDATES #2: She was best on social issues. She made a decent case for being pro-life, and came off pretty soft on homosexuality. Of course her calling it a "choice" bugged me. But I'm not the audience.
Before I go
It's worth noting this interesting piece by Rebecca Traister which attacks those of us who, from Traister's perspective, feel sorry for Palin. I would be included in that bunch. I don't begrudge Traister her opinion--hell, half my blog is made up of me attacking other writers and bloggers. Nothing wrong with the come back. I also appreciate that Traister made an effort to seperate me from the pity party.
Still, two things stood out for me. The first being this idea that the only reason for trying to understand the other side, is the expectation that they'll do the same:
Palin is tough as nails. She will bite the head off a moose and move
on. So, no, I don't feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for women who have
to live with what she and her running mate have wrought.
I can't really address the "feel sorry" deal, as I've never said that I do feel sorry for Palin. But to the point of empathy and humanity, this idea of trying to imagine what even the opposition is going through, and incorporating that in your thought process, and in your writing, I don't do that out of some hope that conservatives will do the same for me. Frankly, I don't much care.
I empathize because it's good for me, because it allows me another vantage point, because it's good for my intellectual health. I didn't write that piece to do Sarah Palin a favor. I wrote it to expand my own understanding of the situation. Thus what Palin--or her allies would do in response--is basically irrelevant. True empathy is a selfish act, not a favor done on someone else's behalf. You don't try to understand people because you expect something in return--the understanding is the return.
The second thing was this:
Coates asserts that McCain "[tossed] her to the wolves" and notes
that while she surely had some agency in this whole mess, "where I am
from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too
far, when your head has gotten too big."
Where I come from, a woman -- and especially a woman governor with executive experience -- doesn't have to rely on any elder or any man to protect her and pull her ass out of the fire.
Fair enough. But that's not a place I'd ever want to go. If there was no one to pull my ass out the fire, to check my ego, to say "slow your roll kiddo," I assure you, I would not have this blog, or much else.
UPDATE: I should add that Rebecca sent me a kind note about this. We disagree--respectfully, but I've never really believed in internet beef. Also, we both share a sense of horror at the prospect of VP Palin.
I woke up early on my born day
So, I turn 33 this afternoon at 2:30. I don't think I'll be blogging much, if at all, today. I got laid-off from a gig about a year and a half ago and I've been running nonstop ever since. Your birthday is good time to lay back and reflect, no? Think about what I did right, what I did wrong, and what lessons to take into the next year. As my man said, that buck that bought the bottle could have struck the Lotto. I'll see you guys tomorrow.
UPDATE: One thing I do know: With every year a lose a bit of alcohol tolerance. Sad but true. I thought mine's was the lush life--I used to write music reviews with John Coltrane and Jack Daniel's. If I tried that now, I'd just fall asleep. Man, each year I get drier. How pathetic.
September 29, 2008
I'm outta here soon as I fix the the flux-capacitor
So the latest spin is that Palin's problem wasn't a shocking ignorance of the issues, but that she was being "too scripted" by the McCain campaign. This is a pretty laughable bit of science fiction, an attempt to bend the fabric of reality, by reciting the problem backward, In fact the whole reason that Palin was "too scripted," is because she is shockingly ignorant of the issues. Furthermore, there is nothing scripted about this:
COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very
important when you consider even national security issues with Russia
as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United
States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just
right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to
make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation,
Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our
state.
If someone scripted that, they need to be shot.
Palin, her family and aides are determined to
remind voters what they so liked about the governor in the first place.
After the debate and talk radio hits, the plan is to find a way to let
Palin be Palin, moving her away from the pre-fab talking points and
letting the down-home daughter of Wasilla be herself.
"She wants to tell her story more, and people around her do, too,"
added the source. "This is a governor very much on her toes, very much
fed up with inaccuracies and fictions about her own life and career."
This is nonsense. Palin was being Palin. That's the problem. Of course this is the McCain people being McCain people--believe that media spin can somehow be transformed into reality. The problem isn't bad lighting. It isn't the wrong format. It isn't scripting. It's that the pick is disaster. No amount of repackaging can change that basic fact.
UPDATE: Video of Sarah "the barracuda." Better, I guess.
More on the BTN theory
Fascinating how none of these denunciations of lending to teh blacks have included a denunciation of George Bush's "Ownership Society." From the annals of the White House:
The President believes that homeownership is the cornerstone of
America's vibrant communities and benefits individual families by
building stability and long-term financial security. In June 2002,
President Bush issued America's
Homeownership Challenge to the real estate and mortgage finance
industries to encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that
exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and
non-minorities. The President also announced the goal of increasing
the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families
before the end of the decade. Under his leadership, the overall U.S.
homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time
high of 69.2 percent. Minority homeownership set a new record of 51
percent in the second quarter, up 0.2 percentage point from the first
quarter and up 2.1 percentage points from a year ago. President Bush's
initiative to dismantle the barriers to homeownership includes:
Of course ACORN strong-armed Bush into saying that. You know Bush, he routinely bows to, uhm, ACORN.
Another random TV On The Radio thought
UPDATE: Changed this a bit.
OK, the album is really growing on me. Starting to fit in that category I outlined earlier where I don't like it at first, but I can't stop listening. Commenter Justin described it like this:
That's how I bought my first Coltrane album, A Love Supreme.
I remember standing in the used CD store at the disc player they had up
front where shoppers could sample their future purchases.
About two minutes in, I thought, 'Wow, this guy has no rhythm. What's the big deal about him?'
About four minutes in, I thought, 'Why am I still listening?'
About ten minutes in, I thought, 'I think I hate this, but I'm buying it.'
Only it took me a few days. You know it's good when you get touched like that. When I was young, I knew I'd been hit when all my prejudices told me no, but I moved in spite of it, not even really understanding what was happening. I don't mean that "she starts fights at the club but she's really sexy" sort of deal. I mean that, "this isn't who I pictured myself liking" thing, It's great to get hit that way. It's like you've seen something so beautiful that it actually unveils something to you that was always hidden within you.
I still think "Crying" is the stand-out track. That guitar-riff is funky as hell, and just sets the whole thing off. I was sitting here working when that cut came on, and it hit me so hard that I just randomly yelled out "God Damn." I know awful. Hope I'm not offending my religious contingent.
Open Thread: The Bailout goes down (for now)
This seems like a good time for this. I'll update with links as we go. Here's the Times story.
Debunking the "Blame the Negroes" conspiracy theory
Thanks to everyone who helped educate me on this. I've learned a lot from reading comments and from some e-mails (special shot-out to my American Prospect peoples.) from those in the know. One of the privileges of blogging here is that, while I hope I do my own bit of teaching, I also get to do some learning. So, for those who don't read comments, here's some of what I've learned.
Probably the best handling I've read is this great piece by Robert Gordon. The basic conservative critique seems to be that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) strong-armed banks into giving loans to minorities and low-income folks who subsequently defaulted at higher rates than the norm. That wave of defaults caused the current meltdown. Two things about that argument immediately made me suspicious. I know very little about economics, but I know quite a bit about people. 1.) Folks who use single cause logic to explain gigantic complicated phenomena are almost always lying, ignorant or children. 2.) Folks who peddle victimology for giants ("the banks were forced to do it") while decrying the victimology of individual humans ("the white man forced me to do it") are also usually just lying. The Blame The Negroes (BTN) theory satisfies both criteria.But Gordon offers a more technical takedown giving us a history of the
CRA and basically summing up why the BTN theory is just wrong. Please check it out.
One could certainly oppose the CRA on principle. But simply shoe-horning that argument into the current crisis connects the argument with an ugly, ugly history. One of the most disturbing aspects of racism is how whites have historically used the black community as a kind of sin-eater for their own moral shortcomings. So post-slavery, even as sexual assaults on black women were virtually never prosecuted or punished, whites concocted the myth of the rapacious, sex-crazed black ogre and organized mass lynchings to purge themselves of the beast. Of course they were really purging themselves of their own guilt. So today as we pay the price for becoming overconsumers, we now hear voices telling us that the real problem is that the niggers and spics are overconsumers. It is from the conservative disciples of the same people who historically defended southern white thuggery that we get this novel theory. It's hard to not wheel around and hurl large objects across long living rooms when faced with such brazen displays of cowardice, and blatant punk-assness. But as I've said, it's best not to dwell on these people. At night, when no one is around, they know who they are. And now, so do we.
I don't get this. What makes the McCain people think that Sarah Palin is any more fluent on the economy than she is on foreign policy? She wasn't any better on those bailout questions than she was on Russia? Remember that notorious "get back to ya" response? Wasn't that on the economy?
But more to the point, I could wrong about this, but Gwen Ifill may be the last person in the entire field of journalism I would expect to care about "having questions to answer." There is some very off-color language I would likely use to describe this situation, but I don't know Ifill like that, and out of respect, I'll refrain. Suffice to say, she really ain't the one. First, she isn't from one of the major networks or cable. Second, she's always struck me as pretty tough and fair-minded. Wasn't she the one who sliced Cheney in that last presidential debate?
Carolyn The Great
Old school commenter Breuklyn asked about a citation I made from the "The Colonel," an incredible poem by one of my literary heroes, Carolyn Forche.
What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a
tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the
house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken
bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the
kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows
there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The
maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I
enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife
took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had
become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said
to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used
to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They
were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He
took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said.
As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck
them- selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the
last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said.
Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of
the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
The first time, I read this poem, it was like the first time I heard, say, the beat for Jeru's "Come Clean." I actually didn't like it--even as part of me knew that there was something great about it. That is the best feeling when it comes to art--that sort of revulsion that comes from your own ignorance, your own limitations, and then that part of you that says, "Wait, you could be missing something. I think you don't understand what's going on." I read this poem over and over until I got that it was beautiful and why. As a writer, it proves what I have found to be an immovable law--fuck all the metaphors and similies and personification. Great writing is about exquisite detaile, "a tray of coffee and sugar" the "green mangoes," the "commerical in Spanish," telling a parakeet to shut up. Because of all of that, the lone sureal image "The moon swung bare on its black cord" is simply arresting. Can you tell I love the poem?
The Colonel comes from Forche's book The Country Between Us. Forche always has some great lines, I think my favorite is something like, "There are more geese in this town than men, and the geese know it." Anyway, I read The Country Between Us when I was at Howard, during a period when I still had dreams of becoming a poet and getting an MFA. It was one of those books that just altered the way I wrote, and made it clear to me that I seriously underestimated what words could do in the hands of a bad-ass. The tone-shift, the ending, the brevity and almost violent rhythm of the poem just shook me. There are many, many great poems in that book. Check it out if you're a fan. Check it out even if you aren't one. It will make you a believer.
Your Pops is like Malcolm Farrakhan
UPDATE: Cosby hyperlink fixt.
I caught this down in the Clinton thread from a commenter:
I've noticed, TNC, that in lieu of fighting some of the fights on the
subject of obvious racism, you have a tendency to just want to squash
it and say "aw shucks, what are we so mad about anyways?"
I get this a lot--especially from my older African-American readers. The answer here is kind of complicated. It's easy, I think, to confuse people who deny racism exists with those who aren't particularly interested in always talking about it. I think some of this personal. I came up under a loving mother and very iconoclastic father (just this weekend he was agreeing with Newt Gingrich anti-bailout argument. two minutes later he proceeded to explain the significance of Cynthia Mckinney. it was all very beautiful and logical, actually).
The history and culture of black people was the air in my house. Not in that "Do you know who invented the straightening comb?" sort of way. But in that serious "read this book," "read that book" sort of way. My house was almost literally a library filled with books, about 75 percent of them about black people. Given that background, you might easily conclude that we spent our days around the dinner table discussing the evils of The White Man. But actually no. My folks had a very practical--almost conservative--approach to race and racism. They believe that, at the end of the day, black people had to compete. I'm not sure on this, but I never got that they held much regard for people who, say, would gather for the 25th anniversary of March on Washington, or even for people who gave gifts during Kwanzaa.
When those Malcolm X shirts became big in the early 90s my Dad refused to let me wear the one with Malcolm peering out the window with a gun. Now, Malcolm X was, in my house, about as close to Jesus as you could get. But Pops had a visceral aversion to Malcolm as a fashion statement, and basically believed that if you were committed to black folks you didn't wear it on a shirt, you didn't talk about it, you went out and did it. You didn't litter in your community. You didn't stand on the corner shit-talking. You raised your kids. You read the paper. You always had a book. You went to school and worked. Then you went in business for yourself--not for someone else--and worked some more. I remember Dad cornering me about that Malcolm shirt like it was yesterday, "Why are you so eager to tell everyone who you are?"I was, like, 14 at the time. But that one stuck with me.
Word is that some Rep. from Minnesota has officially picked up this idea that minorities are responsible for the financial crisis. I can't find any real account of what this woman said, and am thus hesitant to jump on her for it. I guess the Hill has an article on it, but it's behind a curtain. If you guys find a hard source please post it in comments. Suffice to say she could be critical of the CRA without blaming "blacks." I kind of doubt it--but still... UPDATE: I just watched that Cavuto clip. The racism of it is pretty shocking. I don't know if I even can get my head right to take this on. This is why some Jewish people get on that "Never Forget" "Never Again" shit. This "blame the blacks" angle is rooted in an ugly history in which, usually during times of economic distress, white thugs burned down black neighborhoods. They were almost always incited by racist media. Cavuto is doing his part--"loaning to minorities is a disaster." What an ugly disgusting, human being.
He ain't a crook, son
Give him credit because he's being honest--kinda, and this interview isn't that bad. He does share with McCain a general underestimation of Obama as a candidate, and maybe even, as a person. These guys are shell-shocked and locked into prism that was forged some 40 years ago. When they look at Obama they see the stereotype--another effete overly cerebral liberal. And so great is the illusion that they fall never even quite knowing what hit them, never even knowing they've been touched. File Clinton in that department--dig his complete mis-analysis of the black vote in the primaries. He simply can't believe he lost to this skinny black kid straight out of Hyde Park. Moreover, he still doesn't believe that this dude will topple the war-hero John McCain.
I know this can be infuriating to use lefty Obama supporters. Certainly I've done my share of raging. But then today it hit me: In the context of this campaign, and with all due respect to a former president, why do I give a fuck about Bill Clinton? All of us who've seriously followed and supported Obama understand that his greatest strength is not that the American people don't get him--but that dispensers of the conventional wisdom don't get him. These are the same people who confuse media trickery and false outrage with the hard work of voter turnout. We know that Obama isn't a doe in the woods, but a boa quietly and brutally constricting the life out of the opposing campaign. Excepting a strong speech at the convention, what has Bill Clinton been during this campaign but a sideshow? What did he do for his wife in South Carolina? In Virginia? In Wisconsin? Why do we think his homilies toward McCain will do that campaign (which is hauntingly similar to Hillary's) any good? Seriously, who is this guy and why do we need him? We keep asking why he isn't backing us harder. But the greater question is why do we care?
ESPN Screws the Cowboys
All of their experts picked Dallas to beat the Skins. We will lose. Fuckers.What else we looking at today guys? Best games?
UPDATE: Fucking ESPN for the lose. Damn Tom Jackson. Damn Keyshawn, From now on, keep my team's name out your mouth.
September 27, 2008
I guess it's commenters day
Here's another good one from a reader:
mr. coates:
I am a regular reader of yours and I am surprised and shocked that
after your excellent discussion about why "uppity" is a problem and
your popularizing the piece about "white privilege" you aren't talking
about McCain's unwillingness to look at Obama while they were talking
or look at him when they shook hands.
You know full well that McCain's people wanted a free flowing
debate, but then when they got it, their candidate essentially froze
out Obama by not even acknowledging his presence.
Is this what would have happened at townhalls?
You need to look at this picture and ask yourself how many times
you, me and every other colored man has been put in this position,
looking to the white man while we shake his hand as he looks away at
his girlfriend or wife or his buddies.
Its the unwilingness to take a colored man seriously.
Its the unwillingness to address the colored man as an equal.
Its the unwillingness to accept that in some situations, all things
being equal, the colored man is as sharp and eloquent and forceful as
his white counter part.
Its the unwillingness to accept that after years of shunting smart
colored men aside to tertiary corridors - hip hop, movies, sports -
they are still finding a way of standing tall and proud in the heart of
western academy and western power
Obama might be a post-racial candidate and I have no problem with
that but he's showing how racial so many of these whites - particularly
McCain - is.
Say something Mr. Coates.
Before I go forward I need to show some respect. I'm a certain age and I bring with that certain assumption. I'm taking from this gentleman's writing style that he is of another generation. McCain is also of another generation. I say that to say that there may be things going that I completely missed.
Having said that, what I saw on stage was a rigid ideologue. I think Eugene Robinson nailed this--McCain (like all ideologues) has to believe that those who oppose him represent some sort of treason, evil, or moral failing. I think this is why conservatives never liked him much. I just saw it as a basic lack of respect for your opponent.
Maybe, it was race, maybe it wasn't. Let's, for the sake of argument, assume the worst--that it was racism. I really am not mad about it because I strongly believe, if that's the case, that McCain will pay the price for his own racism. I keep saying this, it ain't 1968. McCain can be dismissive and underestimate Obama right up to November. If he thinks that the way to garner votes is to lecture Obama, refuse to look him in the eye, and generally wave him off, I say, more power to him. Let his racism take right on back to the Senate. The point of an election is win--it isn't to take offense at the stupidity of your opponents.
But there's a larger point here. You guys probably know this, but I strongly believe that disrespect exacts arguably a higher price on the disrespecter than on the disrespectee. Rest assured that Obama isn't taking McCain lightly. He would not go into a debate and be dismissive of him at all. I keep hearing people complain that Obama can't be angry because he's black. What they're are missing is that the cage is actually the key to set Obama free. He shouldn't be angry. He shouldn't take offense at McCain. Hillary was plenty angry. How'd that work out? Liberals have a bully complex. Having gotten chumped repeatedly, we're confusing strength with arrrogance, toughness with strut. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way. they ain't the same, son. To paraphrase Carolyn Forche, Obama needs to do exactly would he did last night--slice McCain to lace. But he needs to do it so quietly, calmly and efficiently, that even those who are paid to opine on such things, don't even notice the blood all over the floor.
So, what shall we call them?
Commenter Sporcupine offers a response to my post on diversity and WAMU:
We need a better typology of white nonsense (says the white lady approaching 50).
Krikorian's snideness does not look to me like "the black guy took
my job" anger from people who are down on their luck. Pulling from
another of today's posts, it isn't from someone who's white and poor,
or white and afraid of being poor.
Instead, it's from the libertarian smart-aleck corner. The key point
is "The people in charge are irrational and I'm going to show you how
they're stupid." The same people, with the same tone, will show up to
oppose tax increases, price controls, government subsidies, minimum
wage,tobacco limitations, and every effort to make public education
work.
The people involved think that they're the smartest folks around,
and they're mad that folks don't elect them to run everything. If you
remember a kid in middle school who felt that way, imagine that guy
grown up. Also, remember that the kid didn't have many friends or
convince many people with his obsessively detailed but always odd
little explanations--and the grown-up versions are not very successful
even among conservatives.
Nevertheless, they appear often enough on affirmative action to be
annoying. Often, they are beside themselves with glee because they've
thought of the witty idea of using the phrase "the content of their
character" in a sentence.
I'm not saying it isn't garbage. I am, though, saying it's a
particular subset of garbage, and it's worth knowing which kind. This
isn't working class rage. It's a geeky nerdy guy trying to get
attention by showing how smart he is--and never understanding why
hardly anyone is ever impressed.
I want a name for this particular variety, but the best I've come up
with is "snuppity," to capture the combination of snark and
self-promotion. Doesn't quite work,but I don't have a better name yet.
Nominations?
Great, great race humor
Dig Bill Maher at the end here. Pretty cool.
Be angry with yourself...
...if you are watching a show with a character named "White Boy." What can I say? I'm in a hotel. But Hoopz is fine. Not much else, but fine.
Are the Negroes responsible for the state of the economy?
I keep hearing whispers that the real reason the economy is failing is because banks were forced to give home loans to minorities who, on balance, have worse credit ratings. I've never subscribed to the nasty subprime lender theory. People have to be responsible when they sign their names. The basic street knowledge says that if some dude is promising you a house and you don't have to put anything into it, there's a scam in their somewhere. Still, this "the niggers did it" theory doesn't pass the smell test for me. I generally distrust singular theories, and I especially distrust singular theories coming from people with an axe to grind. There is a subset of conservatism that doesn't just oppose "diversity" and "affirmative action," but will use virtually anything as a club to make their point.
Let's be clear--the kid is out of his league. I've done some rooting around on this through google and can't find any hard evidence to back this theory. I'm talking a specific policy broad enough to show a definite cause and effect relationship. But I'm green here. I'd love to see someone--specifically, not generally---trace this theory for me. Please step up, folks. I have only one demand--be detailed and thorough. No punk-ass meditations on the ills of diversity. No strawmen. No changing the subject. Serve up some weak-sauce, and it will be called out as such.
The importance of white thuggery
When I was coming up in Baltimore you generally didn't go to another neighborhood unless you were A.) Escorted by an adult B.) Rolling at least six or seven deep. Sometimes the latter was actually safer than the former. Anyway you had a healthy respect and fear of other people's turf--and you had a special respect and fear of white people's turf. For all the the white yuppie fear of the ghetto, you never hear about the black fear of white ethnic enclaves. In Baltimore, white people were generally only seen over at Mondawmin to renew their license. Which was cool, because you weren't gonna see me in Camden, like, ever. There was a beautiful symmetry in this--they had their racists, we had our thugs.
It's worth pointing out that even the racism of the Polish, the Italians and the Irish isn't much different than the territorial nature of the Cherry Hill and Murphy Homes cats that also scared the crap out of us. Race aside, they all had a sense that you were walking on "their turf." I think that's a little different than the racism of the Deep South. Anyway, yuppies are white and thus generally have no fear of becoming Yusef Hawkins, so they're generally only afraid of black thugs. Worse still, writers and media tend to live in places where white thugs have generally fled or been pushed out of--Manhattan and Washington D.C. Neither area really has a white working class.
I've been wondering, for some time, why when we talk about poor people we virtually never talk about white people. I'm not saying this is the only reason, but I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that the writers, the media, the think tanks tend to be in places where they are surrounded by poor people and virtually all of them are black. We always knew there were poor whites, homeless whites, drug addicted whites because they were all over the city--even a majority black city like Baltimore. Our neighborhoods may have been more violent, but of course we were also carrying a larger share of the unemployed, the socially dysfunctional, and the systemically impoverished.
But there's a difference between a disproportionate number of black people being poor, and most black people being poor, or even most poor people being black. I would love to see some poverty think-tanks open up in cities like Baltimore or in states like Iowa and Wisconsin. I know black folks have problems. But we aren't the entire problem.
Notes from the wrong side of history
I have blogged ad nauseaum about why conservatism remains so white and so male. I've tried for finesse often, but here's a reason that's about as subtle as butcher knife--they really don't give a fuck. Witness this silly item from Mark Krikorian that passive-aggressively tries to link Wamu's failure with its diversity efforts.
It's a real piece of work, but this is what you do when you have nothing of substance to say about one of the most challenging issues of our time, when you can't man up to the fact that, on these matters, you hail from the side that supported "Whites Only" signs and backed the thugs at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. You sit back and make snide comments about Affirmative Action run amock. You hurl spitballs from across the room at liberals and their sensitivity training. You get up dancing after a first down, while your team--our team--is getting blown out the stadium. Good God, people are packing their future into boxes, parents are sick over their college funds, middle-agers are watching their retirement waste away, and this dude is cracking wise about diversity. How classy.
September 26, 2008
But when I swing my sword, they're all choppable
Liveblogging starts now folks. Let's go.
10:55 I keep hearing this "Obama kept agreeing with McCain, he should stop that next debate." Obama should not listen to these people. He got his licks in, and he did them looking directly at McCain. He should not be dragged into petulance.
10:36 I like the invocation of his father--ties him to the American mythos. Of course McCain hits back with POW POW POW...
10:30 This "You don't understand," "You don't know the difference between a tactic and strategy" may have worked if Iraq had not been a debacle. This is a CHANGE election, not a status quo election.
10:12 I like that Spain line. I think this "don't talk to anyone" line is a loser, it was a loser in the primaries, it's a loser now.
10:05 McCain's tie is better.
10:00 Boy McCain sounds punchdrunk. On another note, Obama flubbed the young man's name. Not good.
9:55 Nice riposte "extinction for North Korea...Songs about bombing Iran..."
9:51 The dagger of venom again--"That is a strategic mistake..."
9:46 I'm sorry maybe I am drinking the Kool-Aid but Obama is hanging tough on this Iraq thing. In other news, Deborah is a great commenter.
There is some language that I've intentionally avoided when talking about Sarah Palin. You won't ever hear me say "I feel sorry for her." You won't hear me say "I have sympathy for her." and you won't won't hear me say "I feel bad for her." I don't feel sorry for her and I don't feel bad for her. I do have sympathy for her--the same sympathy that's required whenever you try to write honestly and engagingly about people you don't know.
I want to be clear--please don't ever confuse my quest to understand those whose core beliefs are different from mine with a wavering of my own. Do not think that because I am attempting to look at the world from someone else's perspective that I believe that that invalidates my own perspective. Writing is fighting, as the great Ishmael Reed once said. Any serious combatant in this piece better be doing his homework, and trying to get a thorough understanding of his opponents. On one level, he may have to concede that his opponents are right--but even in that there are tactics; the combatant coops his opponents moves and makes them his own. But on the straight-up pugilist level, there is simply the point of knowing your opponent. When you ridicule them and are dismissive of them, when you condescend to them and offer them your pity, you underestimate them.
I, on some level, relate to Sarah Palin. On another level, I relate to McCain. But I'm not interested in the false choice of either you hate them, or your coddling them. There are plenty of places on the web where we can go to unleash our rage and vent at the opposition. Personally, I'll always prefer the dagger...
A truly sexist remark
Uhm, I was just sitting here working on a post with MSNBC on mute, and glancing up occasionally. I just saw Barack and Michelle walking in. Uhm, Michelle is dope, like really dope--a dime-piece as we used to say, back in the day. That was a great fucking dress she was wearing. I don't think white people get this--or maybe you guys do. From her very physical appearance (hips, height, complexion) to her pedigree (South Side, Ivy League) Michelle is exactly what black folks would have wanted a "First Lady" to be. It's like she was dreamed up in "Black First Lady" factory or some shit. Incredible.
I've wanted to say that for a while, but I haven't because, frankly, I'm nervous about saying anything about her physical appearance. I've done my best to be respectful. I'd ask any commenters--without feeling restrained--to attempt to do the same.
Headed to Baltimore in the Ford Explorer...
Sorry guys, been running around today and meeting with the fine folks at the Atlantic in D.C. Got to meet Andrew in person for the first time, so I'm swooning. Anywho, will be liveblogging the debate tonight from out here in Charm City. Stay tuned.
The NFL this week
Alright so a moratorium on dissing the Lions. So what are we looking at this week guys? While you think on that, check out this sick one-handed catch.
I remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to
take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready.
Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test.
I sat down in Dr. Sarkar's class and resolved to wing it. Of course I
failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was
talking about. I wasn't a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just
badly unprepared, and in way over my head. Seeing the Palin interview
on CBS, I thought of myself in Dr. Sarkar's exam. But see, I was a
college undergraduate who had the chance to take the class again, which
I did, and passed (barely). I wasn't running for vice president of the
United States.
I've been thinking a lot about this nomination and rewatching the videos of Palin's interview. Honestly, it's all made me tremendously sad. There are lot of us lefties who are guffawing right now and are happy to see Palin seemingly stumbling drunkenly from occasional interview to occasional interview. I may have been one of them. But I'm out of that group now.
The Palin pick was the most crassest, most bigoted decision that I've seen in national electoral politics, in my--admittedly short--lifetime. There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative--small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women. Had Barack Obama picked Hillary Clinton, there simply is no way they would have picked Sarah Palin. To the McCain camp, Palin isn't important as a politician, or even as a person. Her moose-hunting, her sprawling fam, her hockey momdom, her impending grandmother status are a symbol of some vague, possibly endangered American thing, one last chance to yell from the rafters "We wuz robbed." Lineup all your instances of national politicians using white victimhood to get into offices--Willie Horton, White Hands, Sista Souljah, Reagan in Philadelphia etc.--they were all awful no doubt. But I have never seen a politician subject an alleged ally to something like this.
Almost too much here to blog about. I like him calling Larry out on that "ask a black guy" thing. But I also like his point about blacks and the Dems via Katrina. Anyway watch and have at it.
September 25, 2008
John Rich says "This is how you tell a black joke..."
Seriously, no more whining from white comedians--or white people--about not being able to make fun of black people. What these guys really want is the right to make fun of black people--and suck at doing it. There's only one rule when it comes to black jokes, and it's the same as all jokes--Be Funny. See below please.
CHFF assembles a list of the players Millen passed on, in his attempt to resurrect The Posse or Three Amigos. Among the misses, Adrian Peterson, Shawne Merriman, Dallas Clark, Ben Rothlisberger...
The saga continues
Good lord when the GOP decides to engage in bankrupt identity politics, they go hard..."This crisis mode that we are in..." She just a bag of catch-phrases, "politics as usual," "bipartisan action," "the taxpayers," "shoring up our economy," "reigning in spending."
September 24, 2008
Couric interviews Palin
Not as bad as Gibson, but good lord. This campaign is now officially surreal. If Palin is supposed to be the "ordinary American" she passed that test--she really does sound like an ordinary American. Her answers sound like the responses Couric would get if she interview one of my friends. At three A./M. After a night of drinking.
Letterman goes off on McCain
Suffice to say this "suspend the campaign" crap ain't playin well. Check out the video below. Still, Letterman's got some ego himself in this clip, no?
Breaking!!! Leaked clips from Katie Couric's Sarah Palin interview!!
Straight from the notebook of investigative reporter Matty Y:
McCain yells "Fair One"
This whole thing about McCain wanting to delay the debates, or suspend the campaign, reminds me of being a kid and watching two dudes knuckle up over some minor juvenile dispute. ("Yo, he was trying to talk to your girl!") Inevitably one would rocked a few times and then hold up his hands and get to stalling--Yo, chill son, chill! Lemme take off my chain. Lemme take off my chain!
Great post from cool commenters
Guy Fawkes writes:
Ghetto Slogan should be:
"Obama 08 - Fuck The Dumb Shit."
Haha. That about sums it up. Maybe we can make it an acronym. New hood motto--"Obama '08 FTDS"
Random TV On The Radio Thought
Sorry to come back to this but goddamn, "Crying." is a great song. I'm generally skeptical of neo-soul--so much of that shit is derivative. This is what I want my "neo-soul" to sound like. Moreover, I have fantasies of hearing this on Hot-97. Would love to see this break through to a "blacker" audience. I know, I know, it's always about race with me. Anyway, what a great dance track--something very "Erotic City" about it . Were I ever at a party and this came on, I might murder some one. Seriously, I'm throwing elbows. For the unintiated, you can sample here. I'll be talking about this song more as soon as I figure out what it's about.
Since Sarah Palin was selected for the vice-presidential nomination,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given more press conferences than she has.
That's the country John McCain believes in.
What's that great line from Rawls in Season 4? "Democracy in action . Let's show those Third World fucks how it's done."
Why integration will never work
Because ya'll mo-fos heard Chuck Berry's guitar and decided everything should proceed from there.
OK, let me back up some. I've written some about my transition from hardcore hip-hop head to quasi-alt-rock head. There was a lot in between there--mainly Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, the Spinners and some other good stuff. Basically I was a musical segregationist--Bull Connor with headphones and a CD Tower. In fact, when me and Kenyatta hooked up, I literally kept her CDs on a separate tower, deriding them as "white shit." She grew up in a much more integrated situation and thus was more open-minded. But I was in my 20s and could care less. Pavement could get the bozack.
When I came to New York a couple things happened--1.) I got kind of disenchanted with a lot (not all) of hip-hop 2.) As a guy writing about music, but no longer socially segregated, I found that that shoulder shrug I gave when someone asked about Everything But The Girl wasn't cool, it was just ignorant. If I was gonna survive I had to know more. Again, the full story is here.
When I decided to integrate my collection, one major factor stood in the way--white rockers and their unvarnished love of the electric guitar. Part of that was real, and part of it was imagined. I'm sure some of my black readers who haven't made the leap can relate to the following: You know how some white people hear "black guy" and immediately picture some dude running from the cops? Anytime, anyone mentioned "white people" and "music" all I could hear were blaring guitars. Sure enough, when I ventured out, the loud guitars of The Strokes, The White Steipes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were waiting for me.
I learned to love a lot of it--some of it not so much. But I bring this up because I've got a homeboy straight out of the South Side of Chicago--doubtlessly reading this right now--who I'm trying to put on. Know what the biggest barrier is? The guitars. Heh, so funny. So I've been going through my music trying find some "white music" that doesn't feature blaring guitars. Not the easiest task. By the way the term "white music" is great. It's one of those moments when the world is flipped. A "white" perspective views itself as introducing, say, literature to the world. Thus we have subsets and exceptions like "black literature." But Negroes think they invented music, thus music that they don't see as there own is "white music," an exception, viewed skeptically and often derisively. It manages to somehow toss country, electronic, and grunge in the same bag and dismiss it as "some white shit." Funny--when you're on the bottom you aren't any more noble. No one is clean.
UPDATE: Ahh the souls of white folk. So diverse! All jokes aside, the blues of course. Was thinking more contemporary, though. Ditto for Kraftwerk. Personally, Bjork was a good intro into the new world for me.
It's weird people mention the Isleys. You know what's wild? I love the ballads and have slept on everything else. I know it's wrong but I basically bang two joints off Go For Your Guns. Guess which ones?
One of the major adjustments of Obama and Bayh's Responsible Fatherhood
Act is that it prohibits state and federal government from taking money
from child-support payments -- what is essentially a "tax" on a
parents' earnings -- and ensures that all of it goes to the family. It
also expands the Earned Income Tax Credit to provide an additional
credit for non-custodial parents who keep up on their payments, thus
encouraging fathers to keep legitimate jobs and avoid the underground
economy.
And:
In addition, the Obama-Bayh bill addresses the issue of incarceration.
The legislation prevents the government from treating time spent in
prison as "voluntary unemployment," a practice that can leave a parent
re-entering society with a mountain of child-support debt based on his
or her income prior to incarceration. The bill sets aside federal
grants for transitional jobs and prisoner re-entry programs. The
Justice Center, a think tank focused on criminal justice, estimates
that more than 7 million children may have a parent in prison or jail,
or under parole or probation supervision. The bill also requires each
state to review and make adjustments for debt of men who were
incarcerated or otherwise unemployed when the debt was accumulated.
Obama can use the bully-pulpit to push fatherhood all day long, so long as there is work behind his words. One thing I noticed when Obama gave his Father's Day speech--a lot of men felt slighted, But I didn't hear from too many single mothers dealing with deadbeat Dads, worried that their ex-dudes were being scapegoated. Try doing that shit for a few weeks. Stereotyping will be the last thing on your mind.
Sooner or later we'll all see who the prophet is
I'm going to go out on a limb here and do something I try really hard to never do, make a prediction. Sarah Palin is the nail in the McCain campaign's coffin. No Vice-Presidential nominee--not Vice-President--can be this much drama. Constantly defending old girl's record, having to expend resources to shut down investigations in Alaska, and having to actively shield her from reporters has to exact a price. At the very least it knocks Joe Biden's gaffes right off the radar.
We talked some a few weeks back about the problems of running a media-centered strategy. I believed then, and believe now, that McCain's "win the news-cycle" strategy is playing with fire in a house of straw. I know there is a school of thought that prizes "drama," "heat," and "sizzle" as assets for organizations trying to compete. Those people should be fired and banished to soup kitchens. Invariably they work in media ("journalists." clucking heads, PR people etc.) and thus their ideology is self-serving. Palinpalooza is case in point. For weeks we heard this ridiculous line of argument that Palin brought the same "excitement" and "energy" to the table as Obama, thus equalizing the race. That is exactly the sort of fatal underestimation that is going to get John McCain murked in November.
Obama isn't Obama because he is more "exciting" or had me more "heat" or "energy." He's Obama because his handlers had a deft understanding of caucus rules, because they understood the promise of the Dean/Trippi internet strategy, because they understood the ground game. Fuck all the rhetorical flourishes, all the talk of "exotic" lineage, all Ivy League pedigree, all the hoary meditation on the impact of a black president. It's all bullshit. If Obama doesn't hang eleven straight on Team Clinton in February then we'd all be talking about the dream of Susan B. Anthony. If Hillary Clinton's people understood the rules the way Obama's people did, then McCain would be running ads attacking The Restoration.
The point is that Palin brings "excitement" and "energy" but nothing else. It's all hot-sauce but no catfish. And now the jig is up. I've been pretty harsh in my criticism of the press. But some of these cats are, in the words of Bunk, good police. And even those who aren't, at least, like to look like it. McCain is basically backing these dudes into the corner and daring them to do their job. Bad idea, kid. Very. Bad.Idea.
UPDATE: Thanks for the corrections, guys.
Millen Done
Damn. Not sure it helps. Ford stuck with Millen all this time. That says to me that there are ownership issues? But while we're on the topic--WTF is with drafting three straight wide-receivers?
UPDATE: Props to commenter Frank for the news.
UPDATE #2: Dig this
The Lions are 31-84 under Millen
Wow. That really puts into perspective how long Millen sucked. Who in the NFL is allowed to stick around and lose like that? No head coach could have that win-loss ratio. That is just awful. Was he Ford's son-in-law? Are we entering into Worst GM ever territory? I know Elgin Baylor was pretty bad for a while too.
I know what you want
You want to talk about TV On The Radio's new joint. It's a bad idea for me to render a verdict, given I've only had the album a day. I tend to not get things the first time I hear them. I hate virtually every Outkast album the first time a hear it. A month later I'm claiming genius. That's real talk. When Bombs Over Baghdad hit, I hated it--for about a week. Now I think it's one of the greatest hip-hop songs ever. Off the top I can say I like "Crying"--like, a lot. The rest I need to meditate on.
September 23, 2008
It was all a dream
Kenyatta just called and told me the blog made The Approval Matrix, New York Magazine's "deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies." I would love to play low-key and act like this isn't a big deal. But you guys know me well--I'm all Thanksgiving, lazy Sundays and hot July.
Still, when I was 12, and imagining a day when I could laugh about getting chased by North and Pulaski or dissed by yet another Tamika , I didn't imagine it like this. I thought I'd be smoother, richer and taller. I got the taller part right, at least. Of course, I also thought I'd be feted by girls with fat nameplate earrings, tennis skirts and hot pink Air Maxes. Instead I'm here on this ordinary day doing laundry and defusing rumors of my son brushing his teeth with cleaning products. It is grand, isn't it?
McCain's Thirteen cars
Meh, I really could care less, just like with the houses. Still, somehow I think some of you guys (Frankie) will love this.
A day after Detroit lost at San Francisco, falling to 0-3, Lions
vice chairman Bill Ford essentially said he'd fire team president Matt
Millen if he had the authority.
"I think the fans deserve better
and if it were in my authority, which it's not, I'd make some
significant changes," Ford said Monday.
Asked by a reporter if he believed Millen should leave the team, Ford said, "Yes, I do."
The Ford Motor Co. executive chairman is the son of William Clay Ford, the franchise's owner since 1964.
In
rare interviews, the elder Ford has stood by his decision to hire
Millen in 2001 and to stick with him since then. With Ford atop the
franchise, the Lions have won only one playoff game and are an
NFL-worst 31-84 since Millen took over in 2001.
I think this is Millen's last season. There is a big difference between talking and walking. Even when you once kind of walked. Who knew?
We will not got gently into that Emmy-less night
A reader writes about The Wire:
I don't think Baltimore sank The Wire - between Homocide
and Hairspray the city is actually cool for a city with no beaches or
fashion industry. I also don't think it's complexity - people love Lost
and that show doesn't make any sense. But I agree with you and a lot of
other people that its largely black cast could not have helped it with
white viewers, which is what the Emmy voters are. Did you notice that
Prezbo was the only white character on almost every episode in Season
4? Probably most Wire fans didn't notice, didn't care, or patted
themselves on the back for watching the show anyway, but I bet my great
uncle from NE Pennsylvania who can't articulate why he doesn't want to
vote for Barack Obama would.
But my point is that maybe it's that white people don't empathize with
black characters, though it's hard to believe anyone with kids wouldn't
be riveted by Nay, Randy, Dukie, and Michael in Season 4. Part of it
had to be the dialogue. Some of the characters in the game (I hate that
phrase but it's the only one I can think of) would have been pretty
confusing for my great uncle to follow. Especially Snoop. The
conversation she has with the hardware store employee in the first few
minutes of Season 5 is probably how lots and lots of white people
viewed the show. And I'll admit it - sometimes I put the subtitles on
when she was on the screen, but that was at least partially because
she's the most quotable person on the show ("you earned that buck like
a motherfucker".) But the dialogue had to be off putting for some
people.
Anyway, any show with that much loyalty generates a lot of opinions.
Interesting. I tend to believe that great narrative and character conquers all--even color. But then, I'm a writer. I have a stake in believing that.
By popular demand: Chablis-sipper Chris Rock talks down to Pabst-drinking whites
Best riff: Sexism isn't the reason she lost. She lost to a black guy nobody heard of. She didn't lose to "The Power." Oooh The Power got her. LOL.
UPDATE: More context here for Chris Rock's takedown of Clinton. Apparently Chris Rock did this immediately after Bill Clinton offered only tepid support for Obama--on the same show. Ballsy, to say the least. Gonna try and find full video of both. If anyone gets please link in comments and I'll post.
Posting will be semi-light today
Sigh. Got a call from school. The kid and one of his friends in mischief--again. Regrettably, I'll be slightly preoccupied teaching the boy the values of trust, respect and love (in that order). We begin with a toothbrush and scouring powder...
I'm refraining from commenting on what's obviously the most important
story of the last week, and possibly the most important story of the
next decade or more, because I have no expertise on a subject that
requires real expertise to discuss intelligently, and thus nothing
useful to add to the reams of commentary beingproducedbypeoplewhounderstand the situation - to the extent that anyone does - far, far better than I do. Like James Poulos,
I stand ready to offer vaporous commentary on American culture and
society that may or may not relate to the current crisis - but only
after the crisis itself is at least some distance in the rearview
mirror.
Discretion is the better part of not sounding stupid. My greatest fear is coming off like one of those "political strategists" who think that politics is little more than another trip to State. This is not a game. I think it'd be best if I didn't treat it like one.
Last week really ought to have been the end of the McCain campaign.
With the whole country feeling (and its financial class acting) as if
we lived in a sweltering, bankrupt banana republic, and with this
misery added to the generally Belarusian atmosphere that surrounds any
American trying to board a train, catch a plane, fill a prescription,
or get a public servant or private practitioner on the phone, it was
surely the moment for the supposedly reform candidate to assume a
commanding position. And the Republican nominee virtually volunteered
to assist that outcome by making an idiot of himself several times
over, moving from bovine and Panglossian serenity
about the state of the many, many crippled markets to sudden bursts of
pointless hyperactivity such as the irrelevant demand to sack the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And
yet, and unless I am about to miss some delayed "groundswell" or mood
shift, none of this has translated into any measurable advantage for
the Democrat.
For the moment, let's leave aside, the fact that this whole "Why isn't Obama dominating?" is about the oldest, most hackneyed analysis available in the media-verse. The claim is demonstrably false. Like factually wrong. The rest of the column isn't any better. And this isn't the some throwaway claim, it's the central thesis of the column. The piece's very title--Is Obama Another Dukakis--is a cliche. What do we make of a first-rate writer delivering fifth-rate punditry?
I have more to say about this. But I need to calm down and think.
UPDATE: Lot of strawmanship going on below, and borderline trolling. For those who want to change the subject, let's simplify. This is the claim Hitchens makes in his lede and the one I cited in my post:
And yet, and unless I am about to miss some delayed "groundswell" or mood shift, none of this has translated into any measurable advantage for the Democrat
That claim is directlycontradicted by the news of the past week. It is literally false. Now I know some of you are flat-earthers, but there needs to be some semblance of basic facts here. Either you have evidence that bolsters the claim, or you don't. Calling Obama "a typical politician" or changing the subject doesn't cut it. Show your work. A little honor among combatants, please.
Sen. John McCain's
top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of
being called "liars." They pressed the media to scrutinize specific
elements of Sen. Barack Obama's record.
But the call was so
rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may
have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to
McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.
The errors in McCain strategist Steve Schmidt's charges against Obama and Sen. Joe BidenSarah Palin when -- in each case -- the truth would have been damaging enough
It's clear that the McCain campaign has basically decided on using the Bush playbook for handling the press. But I think the campaign made one critical error. The whole bully/lie/clamp-up method of handling reporters works swimmingly if you're already in power. Not so much if you're still trying to get power. It's fine to appoint unqualified hacks to office, especially if you're in your second term. Not so much when you're still running for your first.
The McCain folks have really pushed the envelope on this press-manipulation thing, which ultimately, I think, will prove to be a costly mistake. First, as I said, these dudes aren't in power yet. But second, and most importantly, anyone who's ever gone to public school knows that even the meekest, most bespectacled, nerdiest kid has a breaking point. Ditto for the White House. Even the most cowardly stenographers have a little "I ain't no punk" in them. And this is exactly the sort of thing that triggers that impulse:
Schmidt also complained of Obama backers' attacks on McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
"As soon as Gov. Palin was nominated, one of ... Obama's chief campaign surrogates, [Florida Rep.] Robert Wexler,
went out and accused her of being a Nazi sympathizer," Schmidt said.
"Where is the outrage to that aspersion on the part of some of the
biggest newspapers in the country?"
But Wexler didn't call Palin a Nazi sympathizer. He called former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan a Nazi sympathizer, and attacked Palin for allegedly having endorsed him.
To paraphrase Kevin Hart from 40 Year Old Virgin, you throwing a lot of false charges at me, so I'm goin take em as disrespect. Watch your mouth. And help me with my "Obama's an effete Chablis-sipper" narrative. I'm on deadline son!
One last dis for The Wire
It ends as it begins. The Wire got one nomination for an Emmy and in five years, never won anything. Now the last season was highly problematic and was poisoned by Simon's anger toward the news industry. Still, overall I'm with Jacob:
"It's like them never giving a Nobel Prize to Tolstoy," said Jacob Weisberg,
editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and a correspondent for Slate.com. "It
doesn't make Tolstoy look bad, it makes the Nobel Prize look bad."
Weisberg, who has been an ardent supporter of "The Wire," added, "It's sort
of proof if you needed any that the Emmys are not something that should be taken
seriously."
I think race is a factor here, but not one acting in singular stand-alone fashion. It was race, drugs and Baltimore all working together. B-More just isn't considered a sexy city. Furthermore, there were structural things. People loved the Sopranos because, in the end, it was about family. Plus the ensemble nature of the show made it hard to fix on one person. It's crazy but unlike most Wire fans, my favorite season is two. I think completely flipping shit and showing how drugs isn't just a "black" problem was incredible. Furthermore it was just beautifully acted. Ziggie was incredible. But as Frank Sobatka would say, Fuck the wall.
UPDATE: A few commenters have highlighted Homicide to note that Baltimore isn't a killer for Emmys. But as a side about the race thing--this isn't about one element "acting in singular stand-alone fashion." It's many things all at once. Race and location being two of them.
Barack Obama--Chicago Thug
I'm not very interested in Limbaugh being Limbaugh when he calls Obama a "Chicago thug." Still Adam Serwer's retort made me laugh:
You don't get much realer than Barack Obama, it's true. I hear he
bleeds courvoisier. He chews spent slugs like bubblegum. He can roll a
blunt with his toes.
Kids today still roll blunts?
Billy Dee Williams says "Sandra Bernhard, keep my name out your mouth..."
In one of the most scathing and arguably vulgar personal attacks on the
Republican vice presidential nominee yet, Bernhard lashed out at Palin
during opening night of her one woman show in Washington, D.C. on
Thursday night. Among other controversial remarks, Bernhard called
Palin a 'turncoat bitch' who "would be gang raped by blacks in
Manhattan."
In one particularly abasive [sic] rant, Bernhard
attacked everything from Sarah Palin's fashion sense and hair style to
her political views and religious beliefs.
"Now you got Uncle
Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the shit and points her fingers
at other women. Turncoat bitch! Don't you fuckin' reference Old
Testament, bitch!" Bernhard said. "You stay with your new Goyisha
crappy shiksa funky bullshit! Don't you touch my Old Testament, you
bitch! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no
longer taken literally! You whore in your cheap fuckin' New Vision
cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina
Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bullshit moment."
Wow. Not just raped. Not just raped by niggers. Raped By Blacks In Manhattan.
The thing I don't get here is why Palin engenders this sort of hate. Frankly this is as mysterious to me as people who think Obama is an eltist. I mean, I disagree with old girl on just about every issue you can imagine, but how that morphs into a desire to se her raped, much less raped by blacks in Manhattan, is beyond me.
Futhermore, I've got to say that as one of that number, this is wrong on so many levels. First with each passing day there are less of us here in Manhattan. Thus I doubt that brothers hungering uncontrollably for white-woman flesh could even reach critical mass. More to the point--What the fuck? Is it worse to get "raped blacks in Manhattan" than, say, "blacks in Brooklyn" or "blacks in Georgia"? I'm not offended as a black guy, I'm offended as a Manhattanite. The essence of racism is the fear of us darkies "marryin yer daughters." And I respect that, I really do. But, I draw the line at 110th street. As Chauncy says, here in Harlem, we are respectable Negroes.
UPDATE: Timeout is good, no?
Bailout these
Haha. Matt points to this awesome letter sent to the Times:
Dear Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson:
My student loans are too big and it is hurting the economy. Can I have a bailout, please? I need $92,000.
Thanks.
Obama and the racist vote
This topic crops up once a month it seems. And so we have a furious debate, again, over how much racism will cost Obama in November. Hmm, well it'll probably cost him something, but this seems to me to be a giant unknowable. I also agree that there are some transperency issues here.
But there iis something else here also--Obama, as a black man, has to have already considered all of this and just put it out of his mind. Most black folks can't afford to sit around and calculate how much racism is actually affecting their lives--it would be like a running back going out and thinking, on every play, about how hard he was going to get hit. We have to live. So the bottom line for me, and for a lot of black Obama supporters is simple--the kid has to win. He just has to do it.
Frankly, I'm tired of hearing about white racists. I don't want Obama out there playing to them, but at the same time I don't want the rest of us living in fear of them. Put plainly--fuck a racist. I will not spend days worrying over some knucklehead in Ohio who's convinced himself that I'm the reason he got laiid off and his kids are failing out of school. That dude is gonna do, what racists do--something stupid. The question is what will the rest of us do?
Serious analysis of the financial crisis
I wanted to draw on my vastreservoir of knowledge and say something deep about the bailout. But then I realized nothing I could say whatever match the sage, sober advice of The Flaming Lips. Seriously, we can chat about the bailout--but watch the video first.
September 21, 2008
Carson Palmer
Dog, get a new team. That was crazy. Any other NFL talk here. I think I'm gonna live blog the late game. Man, Palmer will never win anything with that franchise... UPDATE: Listening to this Eagles game. McNabb is murdering fools. 15/16 145 yards--it's only the first half.
UPDATE#2: Ugh. I nodded off and now Donovan is hurt, I guess. Kevin Kolb is in.
I don't quite get this John Dickerson column, which argues that Obama's use of sarcasm is this somehow new, and potentially suicidal, weapon. Hasn't Obama been this way since he started debating, ranging from "I look forward to you advising me Hillary" to that "Annie Oakley" riff? Hell, I think sarcasm is one of Obama's best weapons. Here is back in 2004 chin-checking Alan Keyes.
September 19, 2008
Dallas is going to kill Green Bay
I usually stay away from this sort of thing. But all of ESPN's experts picked Green Bay. Those odds are too good. What other games are folks looking at? Pittsburgh v. Philly has me thinking. Also Indy v. J-ville.
Lapdogs, all of you
I hear a lot of talk below about how Angela Bassett should hacve been Storm. Fools. The right pick is clear. Nona Gaye. To paraphrase MF, a rather stunning sister with flows that's gorgeous.
UPDATE: One other interesting thing about Nona--she is almost literally the spawn of "Let's Get It On." Word is that Marvin wrote that song after seeing her mother--who was like 17 years younger than him. There's something cool about knowing that song produced one of the most beautiful women on the planet.
How to talk to your woman
If you want her to kill you. Seriously, I love this technique:
Girl: Where have you been this past week?
Boy: Yeah, weeks are formed by days. And days are formed by hours, which are formed by seconds. I've said this all along. Were you not clear?
Why is Hollywood ignoring She-Hulk?
Were I not hooked-up, and old enough to be her father, I'd be stalking Alyssa Rosenberg because of the following graff:
There are hundreds of comic-book superheroines in the DC and Marvel
Comics universes alone. Female characters play integral roles in almost
every superhero team and major comic-book plot. Wonder Woman helps
found the Justice League. The Scarlet Witch and the Black Widow are the
first of many female members of the Avengers. Susan Storm Richards, the
Invisible Woman, is one of the most important members of the Fantastic
Four. At their best, a few superheroines transcend their paneled pages
and become literary figures. But rather than drawing on extant rich
stories about female superheroes, contemporary comic-based movies
either downplay their powers and their personalities or rewrite them as
trashy high camp.
Dude, talk about what a man wants? An encycolpedic knowledge of MU? What else is there? In all seriousness this is a great, great piece. Alyssa chronicles the shoddy treatment superheroines have received on the big screen--when there was any treatment at all. I think Holly Berry may have done more to destroy Superheroines than any single person on the face of the earth. When I was kid Storm was a bad-ass--she beat Scott Summers without her powers. Anybody here remember her taking out N'astirh during Inferno? Moreover, I don't know if any character in the MU evolved more over time. She went from the innocenct, meek African chick to Michelle Obama overnight. OMG. I just realized...Michelle Obama is Storm!! We can come bck to that later.
Anyway, in Halle Berry's hand she was basically reduced to some mealy-mouthed chick whose eyes turned white. In the comic she flew through the air like Neo and relieved whole droughts. In the movie she was decoration. I didn't read DC, but I know there are some folks who are highly peeved about her rendition of Catwoman. What an awful movie. And where the hell is She-Hulk? If they do Justice League are the even gonna bother with Hawkgirl? One of the great things about Bruce Timm's Justice League and Justice League Unlimited was the prominence of female characters. There's even a episode where the whole world is left in the hands of women, and Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman have to grapple with what that means.
Frankly, I don't expect things to get better. Hollywood is doing a so-so job with superheros in movies, period. Under that cloud, I doubt things will get better, in terms of gender.
For the New York in you
Megan links to this piece on the evils of rent control. I haven't studied the issue enough to draw a firm conclusion. That said, I kind of retch at the thought of artificial controls on the rental market in New York. It's very hard for me to imagine that prices would increase with more apartments on the market. And Charlie Rangel, who actually defended occupying multiple rent-controlled apartments while owning property in the DR which he paid no taxes on, doesn't help the case.
September 18, 2008
Ta-Nehisi jocks himself
Indeed he is. Anyway, Baltimore City Paper just named The Beautiful Struggle the best book about Baltimore in its "Best of Baltimore" series. Now, I gotta be honest, I don't know how many books I was actually competing with. But, I used to read B-More City Paper when I was a lad coming up, so its quite an honor for them to sing my praises.
Since this is the time to brag, I'll tell you that, after reading the book, Walter Mosley said I was, "the James Joyce of the hip-hop generation." I'd rather be the "James Lofton of any generation" Joyce wasn't quite the deep threat that Lofton was in his later years, but I greatly appreciate the kind words. Also for those B-More Bad Boys (does anyone remember those Starter caps and fitteds custom made for each city?) in the house, I'll be in the area (that's erryah for the uninitiated) next week. On Thursday, I'll be at the Johns Hopkins University bookstore. On Saturday, I'll be at the Baltimore Book Festival with my Pops. Damn, it's gonna be good to get back home. I'm gonna stuff myself on Mo's crabcakes and the meditate in Mondawmin Mall.
Anyway this presents yet another chance to link to the excerpt and the trailer. Check it out.
Courtesy of Andrew, here's Daniel Larison, mirroring Bacevich, on the American predicament:
As the temporary ability to pay increases, restraint recedes and a
culture of feeding and exciting appetites grows. As virtue is the
moderation or even denial of appetites, moral integrity in society as a
whole weakens as this culture gains ground. When limits to our
consumption seem to fall away, the desire for acquisition and
domination becomes stronger and it begins to be expressed in our
relations with the rest of the world. We begin to define our interests
to satisfy unbounded desire, and so the scope of what we believe is
rightfully ours expands until it encircles most, if not all, of the
globe, and we are then violently offended when our claims are
challenged. Coupled with this desire is the fantasy that technology
will gradually overcome or address every limitation, so that every
barrier to growth will fall sooner or later. The expectation of
progress makes us impatient when our excesses lead to collapses, and
when those collapses happen responsibility is deferred again and pinned
on useful scapegoats whose punishment will allow us to return to our
previous unrestrained habits.
Basically. The trouble is that can anyone win an election saying this? For my money, moderation is as nonpartisan as getting an education--its just makes sense. But are we ready to hear that message? Or have we been lulled to sleep. The scariest part about that two minute Barack Obama ad was when he asked the viewer to go read his economic plan. It felt unique to me, in that it asked us to do something almost for him, and I guess for ourselves. But I kept thinking, will people really do that? Are we ready to act like adults yet?
There is no black leadership
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. --Pat Buchanan.
Nor should there be. I think I've written this before, but one good to come out of Obama's campaign is that, hopefully, we can dead this idea of "black leadership." Certainly there are black people who are leaders in their respective fields--say a Majora Carter for instance--and often they approach those fields from a quasi-black perspective. But this notion that there is a coterie of bigwigs who can dispense "the black perspective" from up on high needs to disregarded with the quickness.
One reason is because those who still embrace that label, do it mostly for self-serving ends, and because their relevance depends on it. Jelani Cobb got at this while explaining the Old Gaurd's reaction to Obama: But for a more cracven example, dig my old Washington Monthly editor, Stephanie Mencimer, exposing the unseemly coalition between civil rights leaders who now front for predatory lenders:
Payday lenders and other corporations that
specialize in predatory lending have only one really useful argument in
defending their business practices, and it goes like this: They provide
a public service by catering to the "unbanked" and other financially
underserved communities--i.e., those discriminated against by white
banks that won't make loans to African Americans. Without payday or
other subprime lenders, they argue, many poor minorities would have no
way of buying homes or keeping their lights on in an emergency.
It's a seductive argument, in part because it's based on a kernel of
truth. Black Americans in particular have indeed been shut out of
mainstream banks for decades. But as Corbett notes, loans with 300
percent interest rates are hardly a desirable alternative. Nonetheless,
the subprime and payday loan industries have been somewhat successful
in fending off stricter regulation, in large part because they have
recruited African Americans and civil rights groups to make the
argument for them.
Martin Luther King's SCLC comes out looking particularly bad in Mencimer's reporting. But the piece really shows how the alliance is widespread extending from Al Sharpton (though no longer) to Jesse Jackson to the Urban League to CORE. Really, these guys are so running a racket now. This has nothing to do with improving the lives of black people and everything to do with lining their pockets. The peice is great, please read it now.
The Dagger of Venom
Here it is again. Barack is at his best with humor, killing them softly. He can't fight like Foreman, when his style is Ali.
Can we stop the madness now?
McCain's bounce is over. It's foolish to take heart from this, and it's more foolish to start bragging. The fact is that we have no idea what is happening. Still, it's amazing how so many of us abandoned Occam's Razor. Is Obama being too nice? Is he playing too much defense? Does Palin catch him off gaurd? Is he losing the news-cycle? Uhm, maybe John McCain just got a nice bump from the convention--as most candidates do. All this means is that we're back where we started--that is, in a presidential race.
Somehow I missed this
I have no idea why they send people out to defend things like this. Maybe he was counting on Chris going soft.
September 17, 2008
Is Johnny Mac really worth that much?
Someone mentioned in the comments that the Atlantic had altered pictures of McCain. I had no idea what they were talking about and basically ignored it. A few days ago, I finally got caught up on the whole affair:
When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed
Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she
rubbed her hands with glee.
She delivered the image the magazine asked for--a shot that makes the
Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known
for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies. But she didn't bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. "I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad," she says.
After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to "please come over
here" for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There,
she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. "That's what he
thought he was being lit by," Greenberg says. "But that wasn't firing."
What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the
horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him.
"He had no idea he was being lit from below," Greenberg says. And his
handlers didn't seem to notice it either. "I guess they're not very
sophisticated," she adds.
Greenberg has subsequently been let go by her photo agency. Now listen, I can indugle in all manner of McCain-haterade, but even I don't get this one. The moral problems are obvious. But even from the perspective of craven cowardice, this just seems stupid. Was it really worth losing money? Just to photoshop a pic of McCain? Maybe she has money to burn. You know, being a liberal elitist and all.
UPDATE: Deborah makes a good point below. Like the Move-On ads (" Gen. Betray-Us," "John McCain you can't have my baby" etc.) I struggle to see how any of this helps get the people these guys hate out of power. Who is honestly swayed by those ads? Who sees a photoshopped pic of McCain with monkey-crap on his head and thinks, "Yeah, I really do hate McCain!" I guess you could see them as "firing up the base," but actually, no. First, this isn't a year when the base doesn't feel like voting. Second, if you're the type to get fired up by a pic of McCain with blood drooling down his grill, uhm, you probably were already pretty fired up to begin with. It just seems like a temper-tantrum more than anything.
Again, I have no idea how and why this stuff works
But for what it's worth, here's the latest from Barry O. Thoughts?
McNabb threw another 37 passes Monday night without putting one on
the hands of a Dallas defender. He's now thrown just 79 picks in 3,802
career attempts (2.08 interception percentage).
He began the season second on the all-time least intercepted list,
just a shade behind Neil O'Donnell's 68 picks in 3,229 attempts (2.11
percent)
To put McNabb's 79 career INTs into perspective, consider that
future Hall of Famer Brett Favre threw 79 picks from 2004 to 2007
alone. McNabb has thrown 79 picks in a decade.
Man if this dude had ever had a stable, real receiving group.
She is who we thought she was
Matt, examining Lady de Rothchilds defection to McCain, notes that irony must be truly dead. "Lady" de Rothchilds main reason for not endorsing McCain? Obama is an elitist. More accurately elitism is dead. When a gazillionaire who insists on being IDed as "Lady" can call a black dude from the South Side, whose mother had him as a teenager an elitist, the word has no meaning.
September 16, 2008
Sarah Palin and white privilege
For the most part, I've stayed away from the "If Sarah Palin was black" paradigm. I think that sort of thing opens you up to generalizing. That said, I found this Tim Wise piece pretty convincing:
White
privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like
Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes
with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like
to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible,
all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six
years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of,
then returned to after making up some coursework at a community
college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to
achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as
unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first
place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town
smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state
with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island
of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people
don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S.
Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means
you're "untested."
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under
God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the
founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately
disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was
written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until
the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused
criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which
you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), you are a
dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American
institutions.
The basic point here, I think, is that racism allows white people to be mediocre. In all honesty, I'm still thinking about a lot of this, and trying to see where I stand. I must be honest with you--this whole Barack Obama thing has fucked me up. We can talk White Racism all day, but I'm still grappling with the idea that this dude won primaries and caucuses in states that a lot of us always presumed were off-limits to black folks. I know that Appalachia explains a lot, but still, it didn't explain it two years ago. No one thought this was going to happen. The worst thing, I think, would be to continue to write and think like Obama didn't happen. All of that is to explain why I'm sort of wishy-washy on how race is being played out. Still, I do have trouble imagining any black person with Sarah Palin's MO being governor of anything.
Carly Fiorina should stop "helping" Sarah Palin
Seriously, she's had all the "help" she can take. That said, does this give us some insight into the Bush years? Do some conservatives simply underestimate the task of government? Does this explain the "she's just like me!" thing? Is the idea that running a business is hard, but any fool can run a government? Also she follows this up with another foible about McCain.
Candy Crowley defends campaign journalists
I get what she's saying, but saying that Barack Obama stretches the truth to, doesn't really address the fundamental argument--that the media should check these mo-fos when they lie. It's true that telling people that a presidential candidate wants to teach sex-ed to five-year olds is pretty extreme, but that said If Barack is lying, check him too, The point isn't that the media should be harder on just McCain, it's that they should do their job with all candidates. Saying "Well the other guy does it to" isn't a "get of your job free" card.
Monday Night Lights
Man, it's hard to be a Cowboys fan. I know what you're thinking. "Ta-Nehisi, you guys won the game!?!?" Tony Romo was exciting as always. T.O. was awesome. Ditto for Felix Jones. But there is a fatal flaw here and it scares the hell out of me. 10 penalties for 108 yards. I don't know how many face-masks I saw yesterday. Great teams just don't do that. Compare that to the Patriots without Brady--two penalties for 10 yards. I really believe that the difference between good teams and great teams is mistakes. I can't even remember how many facemasks I saw yesterday.
UPDATE: Also, I just want to say that Donovan McNabb is sick. There may be no other QB short of Brady that I would want piloting my team. I know he isn't Manning, but goddamn he just had that "never say die" thing working for him yesterday. I've kinda hated on him for most of his career--mostly because he played in the Cowboys division. I had a similar antipathy for John Elway in his time. But in, like, 1994 I watched Elway throw, like, 50 yard pass to Rod Smith to beat the Redskins in the closing seconds of a game that was surely headed to OT. In those days Rod Smith was unknown and Elway just scrambled out and hit him like it was nothing. And it came at a moment when Elway could have just played safe and took it to OT. At that moment, I knew he was great. I feel like the same happened with Donovan yesterday, even though they didn't win. If you are Philly fan calling for Kevin Kolb, you are an idiot. I mean seriously.
David Brooks--elitist
Latte-sipping, Chardonnay-swilling sissy David Brooks on Sarah Palin:
It turns out that governance,
the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired
skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
What is prudence? It
is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It
is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern
the essential current of events -- the things that go together and the
things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in
complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.
How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader
possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the
study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances
to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and
who can't, what has worked and what hasn't....
Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a
corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of
governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national
issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like
President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with
brashness and excessive decisiveness.
I kind of agree with this, and then not really. Palin's problem isn't that she doesn't have experience it's, as Fallows said last week, she isn't interested. The problem with that Bush Doctrine answer, as well as this idea that we should be at war with Russia, is that she seemed incredibly ill-informed--almost like she hadn't actually followed any of the debates involving post-9/11 foreign relations. Had Palin actually come across as informed, I don't think Brooks would be writing this column, and I don't think Ross would be pulling back. The problem isn't a lack of experience--it's a lack of curiosity and interest.
That other bridge
Man, Alaska's on some shit. I'm not so much shocked to see Palin trying to get federal money for Alaska. That's what you supposed to do when you're repping your state, no? More interesting is the fact that the Congressman lobbying for the money wanted to name the bridge after himself. Wow.
September 15, 2008
Man, is Vince Young a bust?
Sorry, meant to post this last week. But, really, it's hard to imagine him coming back from this and fulfilling his potential. There are plenty of dumb QBs in the NFL. There are some with weak arms. There are others who seem to always throw a pick at the worst time. But you can not be a QB in this league and be the sort of guy who doesn't want to go back in because you're getting booed. Ever. That just don't fly. It's inadvisable to conduct your life that way. It's impossible to conduct a life in the NFL that way.
"[T]he portrait [on "SNL"] was very dismissive of the substance of
Sarah Palin, and so, in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton
as very substantive and Sarah Palin as totally superficial," Fiorina
argued. "I think that continues the line of argument that is
disrespectful in the extreme and yes, I would say, sexist, in the sense
that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton
does not mean that she lacks substance."
Now Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are sexists. I just want to be clear here--Fiorina is working on behalf of a guy who once made an incredibly mean joke about Chelsea Clinton, and giggled after one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton a bitch. I don't know if either of those instances were sexist. The first was shockingly cold-hearted, and a serious pot-calls-kettle-black moment given McCain's own lich-like visage. The second was, at best, awkward. I can not believe people will go for this. It just boggles the mind.
UPDATE: Video guys. I don't know, maybe she was caught of guard. I'm trying here. Work with me people.
Let It Come
You may have noticed that throughout this election I've made constant allusions to Marion Barry. That's because my first job in journalism was working at the illustrious Washington City Paper. This was the summer of 1996, I was 20 year old college student, and Barry, back from the dead, was busy inflaming the city's white population. When I started at City Paper, I was given a copy of Jospeph Mitchell's Up In The Old Hotel, Norman Sims and Mark Kramer's Literary Journalism and Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe's Dream City. It's funny because while the former two books came to define me professionally, the latter was the most influential.
Most people who saw D.C. from afar in the 80s and early 90s, simply thought that city was populated but utter morons. But Dream City put Barry in historical perspective, tracing the doings of the racist thugs who'd once been its overlords. Barry carried with him all of that history, and master politician that he was, he employed it to great effect. By the end of his mayoral career, a consortium of wise-men in the District were actually considering paying him not to run. I didn't cover Barry much, but I got to study the work of some great reporters who did. I thought then that the District under Barry was simply a particularly egregious case of demagoguery and victimology. But I was young, and I didn't know history.
Rick Perlstein has outlined how Nixon basically turned a victimology of white struggle into a political career. Then there are the racists who terrorized the black middle class in the South, and then routinely charged that they, themselves, were the aggrieved, not the blacks who they'd just run out of town. White victimology is lamentable and ultimately accepted, mostly because the "white working class" is more an idea, an weird amalgam of the purity of the white Southern belle and nobleness of the savage, than an actual group of people. Still it's been a sight to watch the same clucking heads that dismiss black people for "a culture of failure" and for worshiping ignorance, now tell us that it's fine for someone who potentially holds the fate of civilization in their hands to know as much about the Bush Doctrine as the man on the street, to think that "Intelligent Design" is science. Enough, indeed. Marion Barry wrecked D.C. These fools are talking about the world.
Here's an interesting video that shows how objectivity becomes a cover for weakness. I think Dacid Gergen just disagrees, and I'll give him a pass. But two things stick out to me from this: 1.) It's OK that Palin was clueless about the Bush Doctrine because most Americans and journalists are clueless about it. By that logic, most Americans are qualified to be president. 2.) Palin's ignorance only matters if it affects the "game." In other words, unless McCain loses votes on this, it's actually irrellevant. This is the sort of analysis that arises when your more interested in process than in actual results. It's also, interestingly enough, pretty judgemental. The more I watch, the more I think it's not that you have to be objective, you just have to be careful what you're objective about.
Barack needs to attack affirmative action
Yep. That argument again. I've said what I think of this idea. And at this moment, I don't know how it doesn't look incredibly, incredibly cynical.
Kinsley on political liars
Yes, I know this is a few days old. I meant to highlight this last week. Anyway here is the magic graff:
But the bigger reason is that no one -- not the media, not the campaign
professionals, not the voters -- cares enough about lying. To some
extent, they even respect a well-told lie as evidence of
professionalism. If a candidate complains too much about an opponent's
lies, he or she starts being regarded as a bad sport, a whiner. Stoic
silence doesn't work either. People start asking why you don't "fight
back." Pretty soon, the victim of the lies starts getting blamed.
C'mon: this isn't paddycakes; politics ain't beanball; and so on. This
happened to Al Gore in 2000 and to John Kerry in 2004. And it's already
starting to happen to Barack Obama this year.
This is basically it. I think most folks just assume all politicians lie. With that as a baseline, the only thing left is who lies more effectively? Of course the problem is as a reporter, when you start treating a lie as "a side of the story" then you, in fact, become a carrier of the lie, because you lend legitimacy to the lie by employing a false equivalency.
UPDATE: For the record, they're still lying. Like just today. Incredible. I actually think they're now overplaying it and making their condescension and complete disregard for the American intelligence a little too obvious.
Pretty rough
For those who haven't seen it, here's Obama's new ad. Like I've always said, I have no idea how and why these things work. I do wonder, though, whether people are swayed by citations of the media.
The Unthinkable
Randall Kennedy on black folk and possibility of an Obama loss:
I anticipate that most black Americans will believe that an Obama
defeat will have stemmed in substantial part from a prejudice that
robbed 40 million Americans of the chance to become president on the
day they were born black. They will of course understand that race
wasn't the only significant variable -- that party affiliation,
ideological proclivities, strategic choices and dumb luck also
mattered. But deep in their bones, they will believe -- and probably
rightly -- that race was a key element, that had the racial shoe been
on the other foot -- had John McCain been black and Obama white -- the result would have been different.
Meh, I think we'll be fine. If Obama loses black folks will struggle. If he wins we'll struggle. I do think me, personally, I'll have some serious thinking to do if he loses to the sort of campaign McCain is running.
Sarah Palin and the nod-factor
Got a lotta girls that would love to replace you... --Mase
It seems that everyone has posted this beautifully reported piece on Palin's cronyism in Alaska. But one thing that a lot of people have missed is the influence of Puff Daddy on Palin:
Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of
Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he
took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found
himself branded a "hater."
I don't know about you, but the thought of Palin taking us all to the Apocalypse while banging the remix of Around The World makes me feel all warm.
September 14, 2008
Open Sunday football thread
Headed to Brooknam to read. Meantime, here's an interesting take on the Cowboys v. Eagles game. I know it's on Monday, but hey, I'm a fan.
4:24 Damn that Indy game was nuts. As a buddy just told me, I don't think Tavaris Jackson belongs in the league.
7:12 Man, anyone watching San Diego? They just went up on a 66 yarder to Sproles.
7:25 Jesus Brandon Marshall has 18 catches....Who is sticking him?
7:32 Wow Broncos just went for a two and the win. Instead of taking the extra point. They made it, Cutler is a beast.
Billy Dee Williams says "They are who we thought they were. Again."
Seriously. I understand how a black person could hold conservative beliefs. I got that. But I have no idea how a black person could belong to a party that has people like this in their midst. Amazing. I have to say, win or lose, this campaign has, in many ways, made me more pessimistic about race, not less. I just spent a week in Chicago doing some reporting. I can't cannibalize what I found, but I just want to say that what these folks are doing to Michelle Obama is a fucking travesty. You guys have no idea. Imagine if she were former drug addict and criminal, who denied that she had siblings? Oh, wait...
It just bears repeating
I'm not saying that this is decisive in any respect. One thing the primary taught me was that money has its limits. But still, it is impressive.
Palin has come under fire in recent days for misleadingly saying she
told Congress "thanks but no thanks," refusing an earmark for a bridge
to a sparsely inhabited island in her home state. Independent groups
and media fact-checkers have said Palin advocated for the federal
earmark before opposing it, only ended after Congress had essentially
killed it, and kept the $223 million for the appropriation after the
project was killed.
Weak-sauce as objectivity--what a notion. Can't you tell your readers what happened, instead of this "but others say." And by the way--aren't you media fact-checkers. Isn't that your job? What politicians have long figured is that whole swaths of the press corps are so lazy and, frankly, just soft that their idea of journalism as little more than On The Other Hand-ism, as the art of dueling press releases. It all makes you long for the day when journalism still was blue-collar job.
UPDATE: Via a commenter below. Perfect illustration of the problem. Is John King Roberts a journalist or some manner of flack-facilitator? I demand actual proof--not just a puffed-up job title.
September 13, 2008
Nate Silver talks some sense
Doesn't Nate know that what the polls say today necessarily dictate the results in November? What is he thinking?
Think how much different the conventional wisdom would be if Al Gore
had won 300 more votes in Florida. Bush's strategy of rallying to the
evangelical base would have been considered a failure, as would the
Rovian politics of personal destruction. But instead, because of what
was essentially a mathematical coin-flip -- the vote count was so close
in Florida that nobody really knows who won -- these things are
considered to be standard operating practice in any competent campaign.
In
the absence of actual results, what opinion-makers look toward instead
is polls. And presently, with John McCain holding a 1-2 point lead in
most national polls, essentially every aspect of Barack Obama's
campaign has come under intense scrutiny, whereas Steve Schmidt is
regarded as some kind of savant. This is even worse than being
results-oriented, because we don't yet know the ultimate effect of the
choices the McCain campaign has made on November's results. Certain of
their choices, such as their intensely negative campaign against Barack
Obama and perhaps even their selection of Sarah Palin, may be
short-term winners but long-term losers.
LOL of the day
Not to bite off of Andrew, but this is just too good. From Kaus:
Does Lynn Forester de Rothschild actually exist, or did Paul Gigot invent her?
Hello Brooklyn
Tomorrow I'm going to read from my book the Beautiful Struggle at the Brooklyn Book Festival. If you're in the area, come out and see me in 3-D, when I let the rhythm hit another MC. Alright, bad Rakim allusion. You get the picture. Please come out. For those who don't know about the book, it's a memoir of my time coming up in West Baltimore. Check the trailer below:
Who'd a thought he'd get pushed like this on daytime TV. He's just lying about the lipstick on a pig thing, and sex ed. I haven't been writing as long as some of my colleagues, so if they say this is a different McCain, I'll take their word.
In search of hierarchy
This Marc Fisher column, which Jeff linked, was really hard for me to read. Not because I think it's off, but because of comments like this:
"She's just as flawed as we are," Tweddle said. "It's not the fact that
she's a woman but the way she does it all. And let me tell you:
There're more American parents with unwed pregnant teenaged children
than American parents with Harvard grads. She's real."
For hours, I walked through the crowd talking to people, mostly women.
Again and again, I heard variations on this idea: "She's more like us
than Obama, McCain or any of the others," as Rupp put it. "She knows
what we go through."
As Fisher points out in his column, this is an extension of this idea that expertise, intelligence, and considered opinion are overrated. I'd take it even further--this is about Rocky as God, and the limits of a culture-hero, who in his latest incarnation asked us to believe that a 60-year old man could go toe to toe with championship-caliber boxer.
I don't want to lean to hard on this point, mostly because it bears an eerie resemblance to the way blacks supported Marion Barry and Sharpe James. But this idea that the person who has the means to end civilization should be like "like me" has got to end. This is not the time.
Mention a name or theme -- Brett Favre, the Patriots under Belichick,
Lance Armstrong's comeback, Venus and Serena -- and anyone who cares
about sports can have a very sophisticated discussion about the ins and
outs and myth and realities and arguments and rebuttals.
People
who
don't like sports can't do that. It's not so much that they can't
identify the names -- they've heard of Armstrong -- but they've never
bothered to follow the flow of debate. I like sports -- and politics
and tech and other topics -- so I like joining these debates. On a wide
range of other topics -- fashion, antique furniture, (gasp) the world
of restaurants
and fine dining, or (gasp^2) opera -- I have not been interested enough to learn anything I can add to the discussion. So I embarrass myself if I have to express a view.
What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough
in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many
people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush
Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the
case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a
lack of
attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven
years.
And then:
Gibson used the word "preemptively" -- but if a knowledgeable person
had pushed back on that point ("Well, preemption has was what John F.
Kennedy had in mind in acting against the imminent threat of Soviet
missiles in Cuba"), Gibson would certainly have come back to explain
the novelty of the "preventive war" point. Because he knows the issue,
a minor mis-choice of words wouldn't get in the way of his real intent.
Sarah
Palin did not know this issue, or any part of it. The view she actually
expressed -- an endorsement of "preemptive" action -- was fine on its
own merits. But it is not the stated doctrine of the Bush
Administration, it is not the policy her running mate has endorsed, and
it is not the concept under which her own son is going off to Iraq.
How
could she not know this? For the same reason I don't know anything
about European football/soccer standings, trades, or intrigue. I am not
interested enough. And she evidently has not been interested enough
even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era.
People are claiming that the Bush Doctrine is vague and thus Palin may have been legitimately confused. I call bullshit. She looked like she had never heard of it, not like she was confused on a particular aspect.
Ta-Nehisi Falls Off
Been kinda slow this week, I know. I'm in Chi-town reporting out a story for my Atlantic overlords. Man I tell you, it would be easy to fall in love with this place. A buddy of mine told me I need to come back in, say, February and then see how much I like it. That hawk coming off the lake is no joke, I hear. Anyway, someone sent me this in reference to all the hand-wringing involving Barack. Thought it was funny. Let's hope it's true
September 11, 2008
The most revealing thing I've seen about Sarah Palin
I like to think I've been at least sober in my criticism of Palin. Maybe not. Either way, today, I finally got it. Forget about Trooper-gate and creationism. Forget about the truly low, cynical people who think that being the target of "liberal ridicule" neccessarily means your qualified to lead the country. Forget about moose-hunting and pipelines. You simply can't be a credible VP nominee and have no idea what the Bush doctrine is. Watch this clip. And then think about the people who say Andrew has lost his mind over Palin's nomination. I admit, for a while I wondered why he was going so hard. Now I know. And now I know who, truly, must be out their minds.
UPDATE: Many have noted that the Bush Doctrine has actually been a somewhat amorphous phrase. Fair enough. But she seemed to not even have a handle on any of the various definition. It was almost as if she'd never heard the phrase. It wasn't like she said "Well what aspect" or "It's changed a few times." She seemed to be basically clueless.
Not good...
Is anyone else watching the Sarah Palin interview? Wow...She sounds like she has no clue.
UPDATE: Let me be clear. This isn't simply liberal crowing--in fact, I think any liberal crowing about this is missing the point. This is not about strong disagreements on policy--this is about listening to someone who has no handle on the facts, and thus can't even really disagree. This woman could be president. She seemed to have utterly no idea what the Bush Doctrine even was. Amazing. UPDATE #2 Wow what a mangling of Lincoln. That's not even close to what she said. I'm off the fence on Palin, if I ever was. That was an incredibly ignorant interview. She is way scarier than Dick Cheney. She seems to have at best a pedestrian understanding of foreign policy. Incredible.
More levity
Heh someone reminded me of this clip via e-mail after reading our hip-hop thread below. This is classic material. "It was a nigger named Kevin, with the Mac-11..."
More liberal condescension
Another sexist attack on Sarah Palin. Alright, not really. Just more sneering at small-town America.
UPDATE: WARNING!! WARNING!! SARCAM AND IRONY DETECTED!!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!!
Come on guys, like the song says, "If you don't know me by now..."
Obama on responsibility
Andrew links to Obama responding to the Bell Curve in 1994. I found his analysis to be about what I'd expect. Much more interesting is this:
For blacks, that means taking greater
responsibility for the state of our own communities. Too many of us use
white racism as an excuse for self-defeating behavior. Too many of our
young people think education is a white thing and that the values of
hard work and discipline andself-respect are somehow outdated.
That
being said, it's time for all of us, and now I'm talking about the
larger American community, to acknowledge that we've never even come
close to providing equal opportunity to the majority of black children.
Real opportunity would mean quality prenatal care for all women and
well-funded and innovative public schools for all children. Real
opportunity would mean a job at a living wage for everyone who was
willing to work, jobs that can return some structure and dignity to
people's lives and give inner-city children something more than a
basketball rim to shoot for. In the short run, such ladders of
opportunity are going to cost more, not less, than either welfare or
affirmative action. But, in the long run, our investment should payoff
handsomely. That we fail to make this investment is just plain stupid.
It's not the result of an intellectual deficit. It's theresult of a
moral deficit.
That is 1994, when Obama IDed himself as "a civil rights lawyer and writer." I disagree with portions of the first part of his analysis. That said, this is basically the same formulation on race that Obama has today. He may recognize that this plays well for white people. But it is also what he and his wife, if I may add, are on the record as believing for many years now. It may be political calculation. But it's also what he actually thinks.
Small town mockery
More on the topic du jour. Ladies and gentlemen, have at it.
CHFF comes with the ratings
Glad to see my Cowboys on top. That said, I'm still skeptical about the coach. My most enduring memory of Wade Phillips was him foolishly benching Doug Flutie for some flavor of the moment (Rob Somethingorother) before the playoffs, after Flutie had started all season. We will learn a lot this Monday night. Andy Reid has killed the Cowboys over the years.
When keeping it real goes very wrong
On the last day of the Democratic convention, I strapped on my Ipod, and took a nice trail-run through the wilds of suburban Denver. I was lovely scene, the mountains in the distance, the full blue sky, prairie dogs (I'm not making this up) scampering through the fields. And then crashing through my ear-buds came the following lines:
You know the Pun'll dis you, if you're whole steez is unofficial I'll come and get you and let the Desert Eaze tongue-kiss you. With one pistol and two clips, I'll make you're crew do flips Like acrobatics, my gat is magic.
Hmmm. I normally love those lines--especially when jogging down Malcolm X, or even in Central Park. But, somehow there amongst the natural wonder of Colorado, Big Pun just felt wrong. I thought about that while reading over Conor Friedersdorf nuanced take on white people who play gangsta rap at their weddings. Frankly, I think such a practice is the ultimate in white privilege--any respectable black groom committing such an act would get a beat-down from his grandparents. But, in all seriousness, Conor hits on one of the saddest things about hip-hop and modern R&B--the abandonment of euphemism and subtlety. I have my theories about where Ronald Isley's "Voyage To Atlantis" ends, but I'd rather here him being coy, than hear R. Kelley snickering like a eight-year old with a dirty magazine.
Through a lens darkly
Clive Crook expands on the liberal condescension meme. Hmm. I'm always amazed at how being black completely colors my perception. All the working class people I've ever known and loved were Democrats. I bet there are Latinos who've had a similar experience. That is my bias, which I freely admit. It means that while I've felt some liberal condescension from the that blacks are defined as victims of racism, I've also felt it in the view that blacks are defined by a culture of failure and pathology. What both views share is a basic lack of respect for a group's humanity, for the variety of their experience, for the complexity, beauty and baseness of their lives. Condescension is ignorance, no? Or rather ignorance spoken with the confidence of a knowledge of people who you don't really know.
I've always thought the What's The Matter With Kansas thesis to be condescending, but that's because as black person, I know what is to be subject to stick-figure, crude algebraic analysis. Of course because such condescension comes from conservatives, nobody calls it that. But really, what was the "welfare queen" trope but condescension to poor black women? What was the "silent majority" notion but condescension to the apparently voluble and un-American minority? What is the idea that everything from food stamps to Pell grants represent some sort of reparations but condescension to blacks? Lets push it forward--What is the notion that John Kerry's wind-surfing reflects on his manliness but a sort of macho condescension? Conservative bloggers have been in quite a lather over alleged liberal sneering toward Sarah Palin. But if Palin's sneering toward "community organizers" wasn't condescension, then the word has no meaning.
What we have is a kind of bullying--ugly demagoguery in the robe of righteous principle. The fact of the matter is that the problem isn't whether liberals or conservatives condescend, it's who they condescend to. This is a numbers game--there are simply more white people then blacks, thus the market for righteous outrage and umbrage is bigger in white America. Ditto for the gays. This is why we can agree that the Manhattanite who disses NASCAR having never seen it is condescending. But the exurban church-goer--armed with no evidence--who says two men marrying is an abomination is "traditional." This despite the fact that both views are ultimately rooted in ignorance, and ultimately seek to employ that ignorance to define someone else. Condescension happens, no doubt. But it's a lazy, weak, and ultimately dishonest, thinking that sees the white working class (to the extent that such a thing exists) only as targets of condescension, and everyone else as authors of victimology.
September 10, 2008
Conservatives are never too PC
Even when they're claiming that using the phrase "lipstick on a pig is sexist." Ridiculous. I think Republicans get a pass on this shit because everyone knows they're being cynical. I shouldn't say they're getting a pass--it seems like media is all over them. Still we should call this what is--whining, complaining and fake-ass outrage.
The Powell Factor
Michael Crowley thinks Colin Powell could tip the election. I tend to think that Powell's gravitas isn't what it was in the 90s. An endorsement would certainly help the recipient, but I wonder how much it would tip the polls. Maybe Barack has this was stashed away somewhere. One can hope.
Obama and the one-drop rule
You aren't qualified. --Brian Billick
Noticed in the comments below we're debating whether Obama is actually "black" again. This seems like a monthly topic. It always amazes me when I see a scrum of white people claiming that some dude "isn't really black" or that "he talks white." Predictably this sort of logic comes from the same people who claim that such identity games are part of the problem with black youth. For the record these dubious accolades aren't just reserved to biracial blacks but is often awarded to any black who manages to hold a job, tie a Windsor knot and dont be tryin to talk like dis. But you must admit that it is, indeed, an incredible time to be alive--here we have a pill-shooting, Malcolm X-paraphrasing, dap-giving, dirt-off-the-shoulder-brushing, Omar-from-The-Wire loving dude from the South Side who "isn't really black." Postracial indeed.
Let me not strain this debate. Here's a simple way to think about this--let the dude be who he wants to be. I'm not biracial, and my only acquaintance with that experience is anecdotal. I would not endeavor to be so arrogant, rude and ignorant as to tell any biracial what they are. If Tiger Woods considers himself Cablinasian, so be it. What the fuck do I know about how he's lived? Ditto for Barack. If he considers himself a biracial black man, then that's the end of the debate for me. Furthermore, in that identity, he stands in an honorable tradition--Frederick Douglass was a biracial black man as was Booker T. Washington. Malcolm X's mother was biracial.
To white people who feel smart enough to assess the relative blackness quotient of black people, I say--Stop Now. No offense, but just on the strength of you having this dialogue, I'm certain you haven't the fucking faintest idea what you're talking about. To black people who feel that your years of living in your skin gives you the right to question another man's blackness, I say--Stop Yesterday. All indication seem to demonstrate that nothing intelligent is coming from our end either.
Why not give the man his respect. He is what he says he is. A black man with a white mother. Let's not act like he's the first.
What ages well and what doesn't
That thread on old-school nerdom got me thinking. Was half the stuff I loved as a kid even that good? I recently bought a collection of every old Transformers episode ever made and--surprise--most of the sucked. The movie was still incredible though and holds up remarkably well. Anyway from time to time I go on Youtube and play the following video. I don't even know how good the show was--but it reminds me of a time I thought I'd never yearn for. God damn, I hated being a kid. But the one thing that age robs--and probably technology--is that sense of wonder. I got to tap into that when I wrote my book. But now, rarely a day goes by when I don't yearn for that sense of boundlessness.
On another note, my dream is to do an oral history of cartoons from the late 70s to the early 90s and publish it online--something like Thundarr to Batman The Animated Series. Justice League is really the last great one.
Standard Hollywood liberal tripe. How dare he tell us we're screwed?
Revoking my nerd-pass
You would think, given the plethora of movies and television shows
dealing with the supernatural, super-heroes or plain-old geeks, that a
old school role-playing Galaxy Rangers fan like me would be in heaven
right now. When I was young we all dreamed of a day when Marvel comics
would hit the big-screen, and Robotech would be canon. Clearly that day
is upon us. And yet when faced with the onslaught of nerd-fare,
increasingly my reaction has been an unrestrained, "Meh." I don't much
care about government agents investigating the unexplained. I have no
idea why any sensible human population would live near a town of
vampires. I thought Robert Downey Jr. was transcendent in Ironman,
which was entertaining, but ultimately a little shallow. I'm not sure
what's happening to me here. I should be worshiping Hollywood right
now. Instead I've cut off my cable, thrown out my television, and
canceled my WoW account. What's happening to me? Am I just old?
UPDATE: Sorry that's about True Blood not Buffy. Whedon is great--his run on X-Men was incredible. Also, why am I completely unexcited about the new Star Trek?
An actual reason for concern
The Times says that Obama's fundraising machine may not be all it was cracked up to be. The story is maddeningly anecdotal and buries the most significant piece of evidence in the back:
The Obama campaign set a goal in mid-June of raising $300 million for the campaign and about $150 million for the Democratic Party
over four-and-a-half months, fund-raisers said. As of the end of July,
however, the Obama campaign was well short of the $100 million a month
pace it had set, taking in about $77 million between the campaign and
the party that month.
More than any national poll, the money question would concern me. This story looks like a warning, but I don't know if there's much more to take from it then that.
Oh yes, there will be polls
When I first started blogging, earlier this year, I made the mistake of linking to every single poll that came out. We won't be doing that anymore. I've concluded that polls--and especially national polls--are only part of the picture when it comes to a national race. But my hunch is there are a bunch of us here longing to play David Axelrod. So let's have at it.
Megan thinks Obama is in trouble because McCain is up by almost three points in the RCP average. Maybe. I think comparing Obama and McCain right after the Republican convention is a bad idea. Moreover, I think national polls are a bad idea in a system that basically is a state by state race. A candidate's lead in the national poll doesn't neccesarily mean he's flipping battleground states. Just as likely, he could just gaining meaningless, entrenched support in states he already owned.Which is one of the reasons, I'm going to go with Nate on this, who after looking at six battleground states concludes:
At a macro level, these numbers seem like basically
good news for Obama, since the overall numbers in swing states haven't
moved much at all - just shifted around some from region to region.
McCain is polling about 3 points better right now than he was at the
pre-convention equilibrium. It's possible that those 3 points are
manifesting themselves mostly in states that were already very red.
Maybe Obama will lose Idaho and Nebraska and Alabama by 30 points
rather than 20, but that doesn't help McCain very much electorally (an
exception might be in a state like Indiana).
In other words, I
suspect that the probability of Obama winning the electoral college
while losing the popular vote probably increased as a result of the
post-convention dynamics. If you literally just looked at the polling
out today, McCain would win the popular vote by 2-3 points, but Obama
would probably be at least even money in the electoral college, by just
barely holding onto Michigan and Pennsylvania and then either winning
the Colorado/Iowa/New Mexico parlay, or perhaps Florida.
It's important that that is a very very qualified answer. McCain could still win this thing. But liberals need to be careful about assuming that they're watching Al Gore and John Kerry on loop.
Make you say go Barry and do the whop
Somehow, I suspect, we won't see Cindy McCain doing this. Seriously though, Michelle's got it going. Those South Siders know how to step.
UPDATE: Fair warning. All rumor-mongering on Sullivan will be deleted from here on out. Frankly, I have no clue what the situation is--and neither do you. Beyond that, this blog isn't a repository for people pissed off that other Atlantic bloggers don't allow comments. If you want to talk about Sullivan you have two options. 1.) E-mail him 2.) Go to www.typepad.com and start your own blog where you will be free to muse on the job prospects of people who you don't know.
September 8, 2008
Effete liberals and the people they condescend to
On Dave's suggestion, I read my colleague Clive Crook's piece in the Financial Times on the Democratic Party's problems with the working class. I found it interesting, but ultimately wanting for specifics. Clive argues that basically liberals think they have the best interest of the working class at heart, and yet they routinely talk down to said working class, who in turn punish Democratic candidates at the ballot box every four years. This is hard for me to take for a couple reasons. First off, I'm black and grew up in a working class community, and I never heard anyone complain about presidential candidates talking down to them. I'm willing to allow that my experiences are atypical, though.
Still, whenever I hear these charges of liberal condescension they're almost always accompanied by what I would very generously call a sprinkling of examples. Clive only gives us a routine by comedian Bill Maher. For this to stick, I'd need to hear about Walter Mondale's condescension to working class voters, or Jimmy Carter's. It's true I hear a lot of Republicans invoking that charge, but I rarely hear actual examples. Interestingly enough, Clive doesn't believe that Obama fits the bill--and yet that's exactly how Karl Rove chose to paint Obama in his silly "country club" remarks.
I also don't get the idea that anything besides Fox News and talk radio qualifies as liberal media. In my happy home right here at the very prominent Atlantic (if I may say) I believe me and Fallows are the only liberals on the eight man roster. It's true the average big city reporter is unlikely to believe that gay marriage represents a significant threat to marriage itself. But outside of social issues, I'm not sure how liberal your average reporter is. It remains the case that on the essential foreign policy question of this decade, the New York Times (that alleged temple of liberal media bias) basically went along with the Bush program. I'm willing to be convinced on the "liberal media" point and on the "liberal condescension" point, but you'll have to give me some proof to take these ideas out of the "War on Christmas" territory. But just because conservatives say it, doesn't make it true.
One thing I think I think
I think Peter King is basically right. They need to cut the pre-season, and end this madness about extending the regular season. Unless they want to shorten the average player's career, of course.
I swear I'm going to stop
I really am. But I just wanted to point out the daily ROFLer from Howard Wolfson:
You may not remember, but Hillary Clinton is at her best staying positive and contrasting with her opponents on issues.
As it happens, I agree with the piece. It's stupid to view Hillary strictly as Palin-bane. But that first part of that comment is almost contradicted by the first last. I guess Wolfson deserves slack because he basically was trying to get Hillary to do just that. But I thought part of the point of her candidacy was that she was fighter who relished attacking. Wasn't that what that infamous "fun part" comment was about? Anyway, from here on out, there will be self-imposed ban on snide comments by me, directed at Wolfson. The rest of ya'll can do what you feel.
A Patriot-hater mourns Tom Brady
Well not really a hater. I more so hate a particular breed of Patriot fake-ass fan that's materialized in the last decade. I saw a gaggle of them at the sports bar yesterday--the sort of mofos in Moss jerseys who don't know the half about John Hannah, Steve Grogan or Ronnie Lippett.
Anyway, I think anyone who truly hates the Patriots should be really upset about Tom Brady's injury. As my good friend (and die-hard Bills fan) Eyal Press said to me yesterday--if you're a true fan, you to see your team beat the Patriots at their best. You want to take on the Franks under Charlemagne, not under Lothar. Manning's Super Bowl is special because he beat Brady on the way. Ditto for the other Manning and the Giants. The first Dallas Super Bowl of the 90s would not have sucked if it hadn't been Jim Kelly or even Thurman Thomas out there.
Basic decency aside, I can't see how any real fan of a team, or any fan of the NFL, could want to see Tom Brady out for the season.
Olberman yanked from the election anchor chair
I'd love to pitch a fit about MSNBC changing their election coverage, and rant about the weakness of media executives, or the hilarity of this notion of "liberal media." But I think, more than any ideological move, it all comes down to this:
Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004
conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained
in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks.
I liked Olberman and Matthews, if only from an entertainment perspective. But had MSNBC done better in the ratings, I doubt they'd be making this change.
Palin and the press
I don't know how exercised to really be about the McCain campaign's ridiculous argument that reporters should show "respect and deference" to Sarah Palin. I urge plenty of the former, but virtually none of the latter. But anybody who's being covered has the right to look out for their own interests, certainly the press will look out for its own interests--even if that interest doesn't necessarily coincide with producing a compelling story. I'll save my outrage for Charlie Gibson should he whiff during the interview. Unlike Josh, I don't much care that he isn't asking about her family--I just don't want him to go out like a punk. We've heard a lot of bloviating about what the press should have done in the run-up to the war. There's only one way to make amends--stop bitching about McCain's tactics and do your job. Candidates are adversaries of the press, not partners.
September 7, 2008
Tom Brady's knee
Listening to the stream of sports talk in Dallas. Word is that Brady is done for the year
But before I go...
Here is a lovely quote from a truly revealing profile of Alec Baldwin. Here, Baldwin is talking about 30 Rock:
If the show does succeed, it'll be something of a fucking miracle,
because NBC hasn't done a fucking thing to help this show at all. This
show is the red-headed stepchild in the lineup. They've gone out of
their way to wring the last drops out of 'My Name Is Earl' and
'Scrubs.' Those shows are done! They're cooked! Yet they do a one-hour
episode of 'Earl'! You've got to be fucking kidding me!
Heh, let the record show that for the last day or so, I've been randomly pointing at Kenyatta and yelling, Those shows are done! Hilarious.
Game Day
Folks,
I'm off to the sports bar in a bit. Taking my 8-year old son (a budding defensive linemen/center in his own right) with me. I see this as the inauguration of great tradition. My aim is to do this every Sunday of the season. Anyway, feel free to pop in here and weigh in on the games. I'll talk some myself when I get back. I think we'll learn a lot about Jacksonville and Vince Young today.
A conservative take on income inequality
David Frum brings us a very interesting article on how income inequality hurts the Republican Party. I found his discussion of immigration most provocative:
It's widely understood that abundant low-skilled immigration hurts lower America by reducing wages. As the National Research Council
noted in its comprehensive 1997 report: "If the wage of domestic
unskilled workers did not fall, no domestic worker (unskilled or
skilled) would gain or lose, and there would be no net domestic gain
from immigration." In other words, immigration is good for America as a
whole only because -- and only to the extent that -- it is bad for the
poorest Americans. Conversely, low-skilled immigration enriches upper
America, lowering the price of personal services like landscaping and
restaurant meals. And by holding down wages, immigration makes the
business investments of upper America more profitable.
I'm sorta conservative when it comes to markets. I think people who are willing to come here and obey the law should be able to compete, and that over the long-term that process helps the whole country. It's an awkward position for a liberal to hold. At the end of the day, who can really deny that an poor, hungry workers won't hurt poor, slightly less-hungry workers?
Anyway, my big beef with this piece is that, after outlining the problem, Frum gave me no concrete solutions. He gave hints via Romney and Giuliani, but no solid sense of what a conservative take on income inequality would actually look like.
September 5, 2008
On Fred
You guys know I agree with about .0005 percent of what Fred says. Having said that, he's somehow managed to drive some weak-minded, 22-year old insane with such rage that they've taken to impersonating him. This person thinks very very little of Fred. And yet, in a comic twist, seems unaware that however weak-minded he takes Fred to be, the fact that Fred now has seemingly opened a condo in this person's head, shows the imposter to be weaker still. Is that irony? I think so, but I get confused so often.
Anyway, I'm usually above insulting people over the internet, but this guy is going to Herculean lengths to troll. I leave it to you to dream of what his real life--not to mention social life--must be like. Anyway, do yourself a favor and don't respond to posts that look especially outrageous. I know the real Fred is so off the wall that it's hard to distinguish. Just give it a second before you respond, please. I'll be in, within an hour or so, to erase the scribblings of this unfortunate soul. I wish I could get him the help he clearly needs--for now, the "delete post" button will have to do.
On apologies
Heh, I think some of you were almost as pissed about me apologizing for the "jump in a river" line as the "uppity" comment. For the record the line was directed at some of my fellow pundits and bloggers who've been on this "woe is Sarah Palin" kick. As much as I disagree with them, I don't actually want them to jump in a river--not even metaphorically.
Anyway, I get why people actually recoiled at the apology. When tackling the opposition, there is always the temptation to respond with as much force as possible, to marshal all your sarcasm, all your anger, all your righteousness, and hurl it at them without regard. When I write, I'm always at war with that temptation. I did a lot of that when I was young, and I quickly became a master of The Screed, if not much else. It was writing as a sort of scrawled pornography, writing as masturbation, writing to work out my own anger, and the issues of people who happen to agree with me. But when I looked up from it all, I still felt alone--my whole audience consisted of people who were like me, so effectively, I was.
You can beat the opposition with a club all day long, if you have no regard for the people on the side getting sprayed with blood. That's a kind of writing that pleases me and people who agree with me, but shows absolutely no regard to people who either don't agree, or aren't decided. I have no idea why anyone would want to write in such a fashion. It's arrogant, self-absorbed, and better suited to one's diary, or their inane, half-drunk, happy-hour ramblings.
If you see me apologize, and think that it is, as one commenter said (In Bush-like fashion, may I add) "a sign of weakness," know this--I care about what is, not "signs" of what is. My strength isn't in my righteousness, my haughtiness, and it damn sure ain't in my spelling. My strength is in--if I may be so bold--slinging verbs, in pulling from arcane places, and--mostly--in assuming that the people on the other side have their reasons also. What I hope to do is engage those arguments directly, honestly, without strawmen (the truest sign of weakness), and respectfully. If you see me apologize, it's because I didn't do that. I have no fear of admitting an error--and I don't do it to comfort the other side. I do it for me, and for those who might be swayed. There's nothing weak about that.
Ladies and gentleman--but mainly just white people....
I present your spokesperson. Seriously, it's over. He comes equipped with requisite "black friend," and a buddy who plays an "American guitatar"--as opposed to a, you know, French one. I know, I'm mocking "small-town American." I clearly have no regard for the "white working class"--the only working class that exists, ever, in history. What do you expect? I'm the only guy who started drinking Honest Tea because McCain mocked Obama for drinking it. UPDATE: For the record, I hate all campaign songs equally. The "Yes We Can" video--and song--was propaganda as corn syrup. I'm not sure what to call this--except not good.
Last Night
Went to bed sick. I think Westmoreland sent the plague come take me out. Haven't watched yet. What did you guys think? Please try to put yourselves in the minds of Republicans and/or swing voters who might be swayed. It may have been dishonest, for instance, but was it effective?
September 4, 2008
Michelle Obama--"uppity"
I wouldn't call the elitist charge racist. Certainly it's been used against non-black politicians, and no party has a monopoly on populism. But still:
"Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word "uppity," Westmoreland said, "Uppity, yeah."
That would be Congressman Lynn Westmoreland. Comparing Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin. Incredible. The worse part is it isn't vague. Uppity is exactly the term white thugs and terrorists used to use for high-achieving blacks--right before they burned down their neighborhoods and ran them out of town. Only this time, they're going for the whole country,
UPDATE: Note that this is not anonymous "conservatives." This is not amorphous "Republican bloggers." This is not a strawman. This an elected member of the Congress who supports John McCain calling a woman from the South Side of Chicago, a mother of three two kids, and Ivy League grad, "uppity." And you guys want to rail about shadowy, uncited liberals "looking down" on Sarah Palin? You gotta be fucking kidding me. Cry me a river--and then go jump in it.
UPDATE#2: That last sentence was unkind and intemperate. My apologies. UPDATE#3: Meh, anger has never gotten me anywhere good in my life--though I'm really angry right now. The worst part of shit like this is that so much of it always comes from conservatives--the exact same people who turn around and want to have a conversation about a "culture of failure." This is why these dudes have no credibility with black people--or any people who aren't white. Would you listen to anything coming out a party where one congressman calls Obama "boy", and another calls his wife "uppity?"
Comment of the century"
From Brent:
I have been reading comments from conservatives for days now that say
something like "all you elitist liberals are underestimating her and
you're gonna pay the price for that." Whenever I see that I try to get
some specifics about what exactly liberals are doing that would
constitute an underestimation of Palin and on every single occasion, I
get no serious response at all. A lot of conservatives seem to be
operating along the lines of a meta-narrative that has almost nothing
to do with what liberals are actually saying. I am not sure yet whether
that is a deliberate strategy or simple delusion.
My last post on strawmen and dishonesty (ok, so probably not)
Basically, it seems fine these days to argue against what you wish your opponents were saying, as opposed to what taking the time to counter what they actually are saying. Weak-sauce. Get over it you say? Fine, we expect from party apparatchiks, but from actual journalists, come on:
Derided by her critics as someone who comes from a town of fewer than
10,000 people, she went after Obama for his famous "bitter" comment
about small-town residents, made at a San Francisco fundraiser.
Who are these critics? Obama has been derided "by his critics" for being black, but I didn't know he was supposed to be having an argument with Stormfront. Come on. That is just fucking lazy.
Owned
So, so owned. Yes I know it's too easy, but he's right. The biggest failing of media, in terms of covering this election, is getting in bed with these "strategists" who are little more than out of work Party flacks.
All your pundits are belonging to us
Seriously, when I grow up I want to be Fallows. Here's a shockingly sober assessment of last night.
Good question
From commenter Whitey:
would you want someone who spoke in the tones of West Baltimore to
potentially be the next vice-president, a position where you're
speaking to the world?
Yes. Yes I would. But then I talk in the tones of West Baltimore, and I do my best not to change that, no matter who I'm talking to. It's who I am, and I'm not sure why I would want to be something else. I've never gotten the accent beef, beyond personal preference, or selling. I'm not sure why a Southern accent sounds stupid. When I was in college, I loved listening to the girls from South Carolina talk. You may not dig how Palin talks, but for my money, that really has no relevance to anything.
Also for the record Ta-Nehisi (pronounced Tah-Nuh-Hah-See) is an Egyptian name for ancient Nubia. I came up in a time when African/Arabic names were just becoming popular among black parents. I had a lot of buddies named Kwame, Kofi, Malik (actually have a brother with that name), Akilah and Aisha. My Dad had to be different, though. Couldn't just give me a run of the mill African name. I had to be a nation.
When did "community organizing" become communism?
I agree with a lot of the commenters in the speech thread. I don't quite get this. It's something Obama did, like, fifteen years ago. Why is it considered this un-American abomination? Isn't electoral politics, essentially, just "community organizing?" Is the basic idea at work here whatever you opponent does is alien, and whatever you do is proper? What are we going to go after next? Is eating at McDonanald's five days a week "American?" Is having your kids play soccer, French? I'd love a list of practices that automatically make your American citizenship suspect. Or is it simply anything Democrats do? Where does this go? "Only merlot-sipping Democrats actually inhale oxygen. Real Americans hold their breath until they turn blue and pass out..."
What the white man means when he says "Ghetto"
I got a friend, who named her kid Alexis. Kid look like A Buick. --Adele Givens
When I was 17, I scooted off to college at Howard University, "the capstone of Negro education." But it just as well could have been "the capstone of Negro wealth." Howard may be the most diverse collection of black people on the planet. I met black people from Montreal, Belize and Iowa. I met black people who spoke Russian and majored in math. I met black Jews. I met black biracials. I met black legacies who could stretch their ties to Howard back through generations. But what really marked me about Howard was that it was the first place I came into contact with black people of incredible means.
While this had practical implications, it's cultural ones are what I carry with me today. I had never heard of Jack and Jill, before I got to Howard, and I thought all black girls dyed their hair red/blue/blond and threw in finger-waves and extensions. It was at Howard that I learned that Tamika was a ghetto name--not an American one. Indeed, Howard was the first place where people didn't make fun of my name, but would stand back, nod and say, "Wow, brother that's deep. What's that mean? How'd you get that name?" You must understand that it was the tradition among a certain sect of students to give themselves African or Arabic names in their first year. I always took pride in telling them that I got my name from my Dad. They were old money--but I was Afrocentric before the word was even invented.
Howard was the first place where I got snapped on for pronouncing "carried" as "curried," for calling "Baltimore," "Baldimore," for calling a "pocket-book," a"pockiebook." The point isn't that Howard was a bastion of upper-class condescension--it most assuredly was not. When you black, everyone gets snapped on, for everything, and I've always found great democracy in that. But my point is that I learned what it meant to be "ghetto" at Howard. But what I've never learned, what I've never quite gotten is the white equivalent.
I've been thinking about this all through this Sarah Palin fiasco. I think within days, people were debating over whether she was, essentially, ghetto.
Sarah Palin was relentless in her speech Wednesday night. She drilled
Barack Obama, elites, San Francisco, the press, and civil libertarians.
She even went after Michelle Obama. And she did it all with a smile and
a little mischief. Republicans have been flummoxed because Obama seems
untouchable, but Palin may have found an effective way to criticize
him--while becoming an elusive target in her own right.
No less than a month ago, I was hearing that with the "celeb strategy," Republicans had finally discovered how to attack Obama. Look, as I said, I think Palin gave a fine speech. But this idea that Democrats should be "scared" looks like a weird case of projection.
A lot of Dems will go to bed nervous tonight. They should.
Hmmm, I guess. But let me take a swing--this is nothing more than pundit insurance. Frankly, it's easy to talk up the virtues of the underdog. If they get stomped, you lose nothing because the favorite was supposed to win anyway. If they hold their own, but still lose, you're redeemed. If they win you get to do the "I told you so" dance. This is the real source of these "Everything is good for McCain" stories. It's just pundits watching thier ass.
My Morning Jacket
A few of you guys recommended this band--which album do you guys think is best? Sampling on emusic right now (which owns face btw). Just curious which one you guys like best.
UPDATE: Also sampling the new Stills joint. Sounds better than their last. I liked the debut a lot. Maybe I'll buy this one
UPDATE #2: BTW, for me, the album of the year, right now, is that French Kicks joint. There are some great songs on there.
September 3, 2008
She looks fine
Sorry, I should have been live-blogging this. I think Sarah Palin is a lot better with this prepared speech than she seemed on Friday. I still think the massive lack of vetting and her far right position on abortion is a problem, but I see what her conservative backers see in her. She could be effective.
Dumberr
I keep reading all this foolishness about how Palin has "excited the social conservative base." So what? This is the same "base" that led their leaders right into Terri Schiavo. Hell, Howard Dean excites the Democratic "base." But I think we know that Barack Obama is better standard-bearer. I would just love for these geniuses to make this a race between Obama and Palin. Obama hasn't confused his base for the country. These guys don't seem to know the difference.
A legitimate beef over sexism
It's true that the McCain campaign is using sexism as a cover. But I just saw the fake bikini pics of Sarah Palin, while scrolling through Huffington Post. I know HP isn't responsible for the photoshop job, but they should still take them down immediately. In the words of Biggie and my beloved mother, HP is dead wrong. Either sexism is wrong--or it isn't. It can't just be wrong when it happens to Anita Hill. UPDATE: We are getting into some murky water in terms of protocol. I debated not even naming the site, and then settled on naming it but not offering a link. There's also the Mike Murphy\Peggy Noonan debacle. I decided not to link because I thought those guys were off-the-record and it feels icky to capitalize on a technical glitch. But the net is the wild west. I'm not sure if there are any rules...
Similarly obnoxious and inappropriate are the numerous photographs floating
around the internet that superimpose Gov, Palin's face on the cover of a fashion
magazine or on the body of a woman in a bikini. Objectifying Gov. Palin isn't
going to win Barack Obama any votes.
Thanks for that bold, clear-eyed assessment, Howard. Just the sort of advice that allowed Hillary to romp through the primaries. How foolish of Obama to think that circulating photos on the internet would be an effective strategy against McCain. So glad we have you in the party to issue these scintillating correctives.
The folly of pre-season picks
Peter King unveils the prophecy action, not just telling us who will be in the Super Bowl, but who will be Defensive Rookie of the Year. Zounds, man! Your remarkable crystal ball is supreme!
...anyway, I seriously resent him choosing the Cowboys for many reasons. Look I've been a Cowboys fan since I was five and saw that gorgeous blue star on the silver helmet. But seriously, we commit too many penalties under Wade Phillips, and tend to come up big in the small games, and small in the big games. Love the players. The team, not so much. Second, picking the Cowboys just about guarantees that I'm right. The NFL is notoriously unstable, these days--in a good way. No one would have picked the Giants. But I guess "I Have No Fucking Idea" wouldn't amount to much of a column.
Marc you buried the lede!
Here's a little factoid in Ambinder's summary of the Palin business which I somehow missed:
There are senior-level advisers in the campaign who opposed the pick
and who are leaking details about the vetting process to undercut the
pick.
I never picked up on the idea that Palin for VP was divisive within the campaign.
About that Jewish vote...
McCain is sending Palin to Florida next week. This is an excerpt from the files of Sarah Pailin's pastor:
Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's
"judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity:
"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the
newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son]
was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of
that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer
and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people.
Judgment -- you can't miss it."
Sarah Palin was in the church when dude said this. Look I have no idea, how Palin feels about Jews or Israel or much else. As a general standard, I think all politicians should be judged on their individual merits. My beef isn't with Palin--it's with professional hyperventilators who have no problem denouncing Rev. Wright as a raving antisemite, who love to talk about the wave of antisemitism sweeping over the ghetto, but have nothing to say about this sort of thing. It's disgusting, weak and the stock and trade of intellectual cowards.
UPDATE: Commenter Brenda offers a much-needed correction:
That sermon was acutally from the head of Jews for Jesus, guesting at
the church, not the regular pastor. I think your point still stands,
and Brickner certainly received an effusive introduction from said
pastor, but let's be as accurate as possible if we're going to make
this case.
UPDATE #2: From commenter Ano:
So, which is it? Do Wright and Palin-Pastor matter, or don't they? This
type of post kind of makes it sound like you want a double-standard
going the OTHER way (Wright = OK, Palin-Pastor = significant).
Not at all. For my money, neither matter. Like I said, I have absolutely no idea how she feels about Jews. But I want people who go around hollering about Wright to be loyal to their own standard. Feel me? That goes for the critics--and it goes for reporters who insist that Wright is a problem among Jews.
And now back to your regularly scheduled program
As I've said before, I think it's wrong to use the pregnancy of child as any sort of political tool. It doesn't belong in the conversation. But maybe that's just me being silly and naive:
Gov. Palin and her husband "have embraced the grandchild about to be
born," Gary Bauer, a social conservative activist and onetime
presidential candidate, told the Texas delegation. "They already are
teaching America a lesson about the sanctity of life," he added, as the
delegates jumped to their feet in applause.
Good to know Gary. I'm not going to get into the twisted morals of dude's statement. But these sanctimonious fucks kill me. Either it's wrong for the kid to be a political football--or it isn't. For the record, this doesn't change how I feel. It's cruel and arrogant to use a child's pregnancy to attack a political foe. It's blind and arrogant to use a child's pregnancy to bolster a political ally.
On the run
Running errands this morning guys. The kid just started school. I gotta pop in on him and make sure he isn't acting a fool. I know I was when I was his age. Posting will commence as usual this afternoon.
In a comment sent out by the Arizona Republican's aides, adviser Carly
Fiorina said she was "appalled by the Obama campaign's attempts to
belittle Governor Sarah Palin's experience. The facts are that Sarah
Palin has made more executive decisions as a Mayor and Governor than
Barack Obama has made in his life. Because of Hillary Clinton's
historic run for the Presidency and the treatment she received,
American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry
sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of
Governor Palin."
This post writes itself. It really does.
UPDATE: In case you're wondering about Biden calling Palin "good-looking," here's the remark, in context. The guys are just flailing, now.
The McCain camp today disputed rumors
that presumptive vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was ever
registered with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party by releasing
years of voter registration history . . . but it looks like that
doesn't apply to her husband.
This afternoon, the director of Division of Elections in Alaska,
Gail Fenumiai, told TPMmuckraker that Todd Palin registered in October
1995 to the Alaska Independence Party, a radical group that advocates
for Alaskan secession from the United States.
I'm sorry, I don't have her making it to November guys. I just don't.
UPDATE: Commenter Jaybird writes:
As a libertarian nutball, I've gotta say that half of the attacks on Palin make me like her. Hearing she married a third party kinda guy? How is that bad? She married a nut. So did *MY* wife
Let's be clear. Nothing's wrong with belonging to a third party. But here's the thing--she's on a ticket whose motto is "Country First," and whose headliner has repeatedly accused Obama of putting himself before country. Meanwhile her husband is a member of a political party that advocates secession. Put the shoe on the other foot. What if Michelle Obama belonged to a party advocating some sort of secession? What would happen?
UPDATE#2: Closed. Nuff said, I think.
For Raiders fans
All that talk about Mike Haynes and Lester Hayes talk got me thinking about this video. Man it makes me envious of Raiders fans. All my great passions here--football, poetry, and NFL Films.
These are a few of my favorite things
This response to the Campbell Brown post, got me thinking:
"Catches wreck"? You're just making slang up now.
A few years back, when I had a corporate job in journalism, a buddy of mine with a similar gig had a great idea for a joke--we'd just start saying niggardly around all our coworkers and watch them freak out. Then when they gave us uncomfortable/confused looks, we'd say, "I'm saying, I'm black. I can say niggardly!" Hilarious in concept, but I didn't have the stones to pull it off. I tell that story as way of saying this--despite my many, many typos, I'm a language freak. Arguably the greatest piece of info Kenyatta ever passed on to me was the fact that a flock of ravens is called "An unkindness of ravens." I thought that was such an evocative phrase.
I basically believe in the democracy of words, that truly great turns of phrases don't come from eggheads (like me) but from people out in the world, living life and looking for economic ways to express themselves. If you catch me using what people commonly refer to as "slang," it's not to shut anyone out, or confuse people--it's because I like the language. Coming from hip-hop and traditional poetry--and also just living as a minority in the country--I've kinda gotten used to not always knowing what people mean. In fact, I relish. It took me two years to understand what Buckshot meant when he said, "I'm Swayze." But once I figured it out, it was awesome. When I was in college, one of my favorite poems was by this cat Larry Neal. It was called "A Jive Eschatology." I almost fell out over the title alone. Of course later I realized it was kinda racist. And sexist. And antisemitic. Oh well--the title still pwns!!
Anyway, my point is that you'll probably read me going all kinds of ways with the words. Don't freak out, just turn it over in your head a bit. Or you can cheat and check out Urban Dictionary. Most importantly understand that I'm a blogger second--and a failed poet first.
That experience meme isn't the only problem...
Let me get this straight--McCain lectures Obama on putting country first. GOP operatives run commercials attempting to tie Obama to Bill Ayres. But McCain believes that the Vice-Presidency should got to someone who has ties to a group that is literallyunpatriotic:
"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."
Wow. Hilzoy sums it up better than I can, but damn these cats have a lot of gall.
All class
Joe Biden--Joe Biden, mind you--responding to Karl Rove calling him a "big, blowhard doofus":
On hearing the news, Biden grinned and said "he's a great American."
Man that Obama cool is rubbing right off on him. On other matters, Rove needs to learn how to snap on people. He would have gotten laughed right out my seventh grade class for that one. Of course this follows that "black guy at the country-club who snatched my girl" crack. No disrespect, but you gonna have to come harder than that kid.
The limits of media manipulation (pt. 2)
I'm too young darlin, and your too old, but That don't mean that you got no soul... --The Ohio Players
What continues to stand out for me about this Palin pick is it's essentially passive-reactive nature. McCain's biggest concerns seem to have been killing Obama's convention bounce, coming up with a counter to Joe Biden and generating some "heat" around the pick. Contrast that with Obama's criteria--no drama, someone he's comfortable with, someone who will be a capable, and independent, adviser. What we are seeing is one strategy based on reacting to external forces and another based on acting according to internal forces. As in life, the trouble with making moves according to forces beyond your control is that those forces shift. They're also subject to your misunderstanding. Obama chose a VP that he felt--rightly or wrongly--would be good for him. McCain picked one whom he felt would be well-received,
In fairness, despite all these "Everything Is Good For McCain" stories, the fact is that Obama can afford an aggressive strategy. In reality his "working class white people problem" is no worse than any other recent Democrat's, and the PUMA deal is now being exposed as an internet mirage. Obama has a relatively excited base, and a country looking for any reason to dump the GOP. Those factors have greased the machine--the social networking, the voter registration, the organizing--making it much easier to be aggressive.
Meanwhile McCain is dealing with a base that truly mistrusts him. Whereas Obama has no real history of beef with NOW, Planned Parenthood and Emily's List, McCain's problems with the power-brokers of his party are legendary. It's true that many women (up until now) may have thought McCain to be pro-choice. But the other part of that meme is that many conservatives don't see McCain as warrior in the anti-abortion fight.
I think many of these "everything is good for McCain" stories essentially boil down to one thing--New Hampshire. A lot of big media were totally convinced that Obama was about to run the table, and they got burnt. With Obama not opening up a 15 point lead (frankly I don't think any Dem nominee would be leading by more, right now) reporters are scared that this will shift the other way. It's insurance coverage, no?
Campbell Brown catches wreck
Not that it was hard--Tucker Bounds had almost nothing to work with. I am seriously wondering whether this charade can actually endure through the primaries campaign. Moments like these, you see the intrinsic value of Obama's "no drama" approach to campaigns.
September 1, 2008
Woodson v. Sanders
I promised this yesterday, so let's go ahead and have at it. Someone--can't remember who--made the case that Rod Woodson was ultimately better than Deion because he was such a vicious hitter. Indeed. But whenever I think of Deion, I think of that great quote which I am about to mangle--"Water covers 3/4 of the earth. Deion covers the rest." In his prime, dude could basically shrink the football field. He is the only true shut-down corner who I've seen, in my lifetime.
I always held his lack of hitting against him. But there was this one game in the mid-late 90s against the Redskins that made me forgive him. Old School Skins fans will remember Albert Connell one half of the dissappointing Connell/Westbroook reciever tandem. Earlier in the year the Cowboys had been outclassed by the Skins, but had come back and won in OT with an improbable bomb to Rocket Ismail. The week before the teams played again, Connell trash-talked Deion nearly every day. Deion, not known for humility, said nothing, But the first play of the game, he runs into back-field and nails Stephen Davis. The next play he runs up and throws a vicious forearm at Connel, right in the mouth. I think Connell had like two catches for nine yards that day. I think in that same game, he got concussed but then ran a punt back for a TD.
Deion is the only player who I know of that I attribuite two Super Bowls to, on different teams in back to back years. That 49ers team was merely good wiithout him, and the Cowboys likely would have made it three straight. The very next year, the Cowboys were also merely good (two years under Switzer) but Deion made the champions. Maybe I just didn't see enough of Rod Woodson, given that he was in the AFC. But man, from my perspective, Deion Sanders is the greatest CB I've seen in my time, and possibly the greatest of all time.
Sarah Palin
You guys probably have deduced that I have no interest in talking about this pregnancy issue. If you want a comment from me, here it is. Following the lead of Thoreau, I will say that by the time I was a senior in high school, in every class there was a girl with child, or who had had a child. In those environs you quickly discover that teen-pregnancy is no joke. Later I discovered that pregnancy, period, is no joke. I don't know what else to say short of wishing the whole Palin fam the best.
UPDATE: See hyperlink for the Thoreau reference
UPDATE#2: Barack's response
UPDATE #3: OK, think we've all vented, no?
Biden\Obama on 60 Minutes
It's worth watching, if you didn't miss it. They actually seem like they like each other. Also, Obama said something that really rang true to me, when asked why he didn't stress the historical nature of his candidacy more--"This is not a symbolic exercise for me. I intend to win." For me, that is the essence. For many, many reasons, the acceptance speech should not be a self-congratulatory moment for black folks. Perhaps, chief among them, is the fact that dude is still trying to win. When you've got 38 million people watching you, what's more important--Assuaging the concerns of the black left or trying to put a dagger in the McCain campaign?
The trouble with Trevor Berbick
On account of that Wolfson update, I just went back and watched some Tyson clips. Man, he was a machine in his day. The thing I forgot was how, in he mid-80s, seemingly everyone he faced was afraid--even when his opposition is on offense they look they're actually on defense. It's like they aren't trying to knock him out, they're trying to stop him from hitting them. Anyway, here's the clip that started it all.
The end of the beer track/wine track idiodicy
Here's Obama and Biden responding to a dumb-ass statement by Steve Kroft:
""But you tried really hard to reach these
people,'' Kroft pressed. "You went and sipped beer, which I know you
don't particularly like - I mean you even...
"Steve, I had a beer last night,'' Obama interjected. "I mean, where do these stories come from, man?"
"I'm the one... [that] doesn't drink," Biden added
"Where does the story come from that...I don't like beer? '' Obama asked. "C'mon, man."
Leaving aside the beauty of the fact that it's Biden who doesn't drink, you guys know I have a special--deep, deep-seated--hatred for campaign cliches. They represent, not simply lazy reporting, but an abuse of the English language. Everytime I hear some fool (and this includes Obama) drone on about "post-partisanship,": "the spirit of bipartisanship," "Dunkin Donuts vs. Starbucks voters," "soccer moms," "active grannies," I want to hurl my laptop at the wall. Campaign cliches are the mark of the reporter/analyst/operative who is too lazy to be bothered with--specifically--thinking about what he means, and instead just resorts to the easy-chair of half truth.
But of all the backward ass campaign cliches to be visited upon the American public, none is more pernicious than "beer track/wine track." What an utter abuse of metaphor. Look, I'm a liberal who lives in Manhattan. In my fridge-right now---you can find a six of Red Hook. I love beer, and instantly distrust anyone who doesn't. In fact, in college, I refused to date any girl who didn't drink beer. None of that Midori Melon and a salad bullshit for me; Nothing says sexy like a Sam Adams and chicken wings. I don't think I have a single friend (who isn't a recovering alcoholic) who doesn't like beer. Most of them drink wine too, but the official drink of young Manhattan liberals is beer, no question.
Moreover, I detect a hint of racism here. This false analogy leaves no place for the many tribes of black voters--"The Hennessey Track," "The Curvosier Track," "The MGD Track." Once again the media conspires to keep black folks out. And isn't just us. I mean among white folks, isn't there a "Pabst Blue Ribbon Track," a "Boons Track," a "Mint Julip" track. Come on big media. Where's the humanity???
UPDATE: It's on. How many "Tracks" can we get here?
More thoughts on West, Obama and Malveaux
I went back and watched the entire video of their appearance on Tavis's show, and then thought some on it. There is a tendency to react to this sort of thing out of anger, and I kinda was angry when I first started watching. But the more I listened, the more I calmed down, as I saw what really seemed to be at work. I didn't hear a single policy disagreement in the entire interview. Not one. What I did hear was a general complaint that Obama isn't claiming his blackness--historically or politically. That sort of talk makes me cringe, if only because it's so open to interpretation and can easily slide into a sort of lazy equivalence between lefty politics and blackness. Barack Obama could have stood up and quoted Boooker T. Washington or George Schuyler and yet, I don't think that's what his critics are talking about.
The specific charge seems to be essentially that Obama--for political reasons--neglected to mention Martin Luther King by name ("the preacher from Georgia" being demeaning"), that he didn't mention Katrina, that he was--in Malveaux's words--"white-washing" his speech so as not to offend good white folk. Hmmm. I took the "preacher from Georgia" riff as poetic use of understatement. MLK's significance is such these days that, in America, he is the air, the symbol of purity that ideologues of all stripes reach for to launder their cause. But, hey, I love poetry, and I'm an Obama fan, so maybe I see too much. That said, it seems to me that an attempt at white-wash which mentions "the preacher from Georgia" and references the March on Washington, is a sorry effort indeed. Are we to believe that Obama's folks, think that white voters--fresh off a week of having history drummed into them--are going to somehow miss these references? If this is the Obama campaign's idea of hoodwinking white folks, they should all be fired.
Not really, at least that's never quite how I saw it. What I get from Hitchens is a kind of "enemy of my enemy" embrace of the right, more than any serious belief in, say, prayer in schools, a ban on gay marriage, or even the complete dismembering of the welfare state. (Not trying to box Hitchens in here, he's always been an iconoclast. I think he's against abortion, for instance.) It's funny because when he left the Nation and lambasted "those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden," I actually related. But given our subsequent overreach, that remark is haunting now, and doesn't ring with the same old truth. Still there's a kind of arrogance that comes out of ideology---as a young(er) lefty, I thought I was on the side of science, truth, and honest inquiry. I actually believed that our side was not simply just, but more intelligent and more honest. Forgive me, I was in my 20s, and filled with the dumb zeal of a lover. It all came to a head with Bowling For Columbine, a "documentary," which didn't so much shift me rightward, as it made me wary of how easily the righteousness morphs into condescension.
I think when you realize your own are capable of being just as cowardly, just as dishonest as those you believe will bring about the Apocalypse, there's a tendency to turn your fire on them. You see in them, not just error, but hypocrisy. Not saying it's fair. But when the Iraq War started, I was working at the Village Voice. I wasn't a supporter, but I think a disproportionate amount of my scorn was directed at the people, nominally on my side, who I felt were pushing the discredited tactics of '68. But anger is blinding too, and thank God I had to fight with editors to get anything in the paper. One of the reasons I've gone easy on folks who were pro-war, is I know if had had my way, I would said my share of dumb shit.
I thought about this reading Hitchens' column today on McCain's houses and the distastefulness of populism. I agree with his basic point, and yet I was amazed to see him proffer this suspect chronology which features Obama supporters attacking McCain's houses and Republicans hurling the elitism charge in defense. It's true that hearing Chuck Schumer go on about McCain's $500 shoes is grating demagoguery. But if demagoguery inflames Hitchens--left-wing demagougery particularly gets him riled. I missed the Hitchens column protesting the GOP's unfortunate recasting of arugula, Honest Tea, and Hyde Park.
Look, like most journalists of my ilk, I have great, great respect for Hitchens. He was tackling Kissinger, when my only concerns were small feet, fat asses and tight jeans. And yet when I read him now, it feels like the chronicles of a jilted lover. He seems not so much a dude who believes in conservatism, as one who's deeply angry at the left. And yet anger can be as blinding as ideology. Indeed, even "the liberal who lives to expose other liberals" is a kind of ideology, no?
Wolfson on Obama
Hmmm, this is interesting. When I read this I moved immediately into criticism mode, but I want to back up and think on it for a second. I do wish he had said more, but I think he also earns points for being candid. Read it yourselves folks. Lemme know what you think.
UPDATE: I basically agree with what's said below, and think Wolfson gets points for being straight. It feels like what he's saying is they never took Obama seriously. Whenever you see a huge upset, that's mostly the case. My buddy Jelani Cobb explains it this way, "Clinton was Tyson. Obama was Buster Douglass." It's not that Obama was unbeatable. But he came up with a perfect strategy--one that still would have probably failed had the Clinton campain been in top form. Having never thoroughly studied your opposition is like a boxer not adequately training.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
