« November 2008 | Main | January 2009 » December 2008 ArchivesDecember 31, 2008Burris not backing down on the race issueMan, oh man. This has all the feel of a kind of Last Stand. It's amazing to see people invoking a struggle that stretches back to cotton and chains, simply in pursuit of naked power.Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy A good comment.Buried down below, here's Deva on the reaction in Chicago. I'd like to hear more from my Illinois people on this if I can:
Bobby Rush on CNNHere's Rush arguing for the importance of a black senator. To which I respond--Nigga, please!!I don't know if I've shifted politically or what. But after watching a black man named Barack Obama--who couldn't get into the Democratic convention eight years ago--win Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico and Colorado, my tolerance for Negroes claiming that we need an appointment like this--in this kind of situation--is zilch. Look, I say this as a black dude obviously concerned about race in this country. If you want a black senator go out and do the work to get yourself one. Build the organizations, build the fund-raising, do a black version of Emily's List, if need be. At some point, you have to stop bitching about the track. You have to stop bitching about your hand-me-down spikes. At some point, you just have to go out and run. I have little tolerance for the racial grievances of upper-middle class blacks. Do for your damn self, and speak for your damn self. Keep my name out your mouth. UPDATE: It is amazing to hear Rush make this argument, given that if left to him, there would be no black Senators anyway. Rush backed the very-white Blair Hull against Obama in 2004. Are these people serious? UPDATE #2: After thinking about that update, I just want to reiterate--with authority--Nigga please!! The Cracker-Ass-Cracker VoteHere's the Chris Rock clip here. The whole thing is gold. The part I reference starts about three minutes in.Some thoughts on Blago and BurrisThis is a sickening display--especially Bobby Rush's invocation of God. Rush\Blago\Burris's race argument is rather incredible. I've been thinking about this for awhile as a political move. It strikes as a kind of suicide bomb. Blago is going down. Burris has nothing to lose. And Rush has never been on great terms for Obama. It's very easy, as a young black person, to be really angry about this move. Trust me, the old generational anguish is stewing in the heart of a lot of young black Chicago folks this morning. More on that later.My immediate reaction is that Rush is overplaying his hand. He's basically arguing that a pol should fear the black backlash should they oppose Burris's appointment. But there's one problem with that logic--Barack Obama is on the other side of the table. Rush's logic basically asks politicians to chose between the will of a corrupt governor, and the will of the first black president of the United States. I don't know, but it would seem that now would be a good time for Obama to flex some muscle and make it clear that folks support this move at their peril. I really, really, really hope the CBC doesn't back this move. But I wouldn't be surprised if they did. It's wrong to say that this is a move to appeal to black voters, because it isn't--it's a dogwhistle for a certain sector of the black vote, an older portion of the commuity that was responsive to Rush's charges against Obama, that is still angry past injustices, and is deeply distrustful of all this "change" hooey. This is--to paraphrase Chris Rock--the an appeal to the "Cracker-Ass-Cracker" vote. I suspect that this move will be divisive even among black folks. Certainly there will be Blago apologists and political cynics. And there will be people, likely still angry over Jeremiah Wright, who will rally. But there will also be that section of black folks who will this for the ugly pandering that it is. I'd remind folks that Blago--who once had strong support in Illinois' black community--now has a 32 percent approval rating among black voters. That's higher than the overall state numbers--but when you consider just having a D in front your name gets you a baseline of support among black folks, it's still really really low. People expecting a rather reflexive black backlash should remember Sarah Palin. The old CW was that Palin would rally women, angry at Obama over Hillary's loss. How'd that work out? I'm not saying I know which way this will swing. Chicago's an old-school town, for which I have a deep, abiding affection. But the "Cracker Ass Cracker" contingent in black America is still strong. But Corey Booker did win. Anthony Williams served two terms. Adrian Fenty won. Who knows what will happen here. December 30, 2008Roland Burris in effectHere he is. The shortsightedness of grown men is amazing. Below Sg notes that this is brilliant political move by Blago. I guess that's true--in the most cynical, and immediate sense of the word "political." But in any sort of higher sense--in terms of actually getting anything done, in terms of attaching your name to an issue, in terms of doing anything beyond keeping your job--Blago ceased to be political brilliant a long time ago.Obama's campaign this year was brilliant, in the sense that he kept his adversaries on defense. But it was also brilliant because it was in service of something--an argument for universal health-care, for an exit from Iraq, for an end to liberal defensive crouch. Now, one can agree or disagree with those issues. But the point is that Obama was not merely fighting for his job, but for actual issues. Which leads me to Bobby Rush. Look that "lynching" statement is exactly what it is--crass and silly. One good thing about having a Barack Obama around, is that that sort of tactic doesn't become the face of black politics. That said, can we kill the phrase "Race Card?" Is that statement by Bobby Rush actually going to scare anybody? All the black people who see a racial angle in this, please post here. I desperately want to hear from you... Blago names a senatorAmazing. But more amazing is that he found someone to actually accept an appointment. And of course the dude had to be black. Damn, Jeana. Video of Blago's announcement below. I didn't catch all of it but I did hear him say something like, "Don't see myself resinging, even if these feds house me\Big up to Jesse Jr. Big up to Jan Schakowsky..." And then he dissed Common.The real problem with black on black crimeIt's clearly gangsta rap, or lack thereof. Seriously, I'm always amused by people who blame gangsta rap for black crime. Anyone who knows hip-hop knows that when the music was most conscious--late 80s, early 90s--the streets were insane. And when the streets were most sane--mid to late 90s--any fool who could gun-talk was going platinum. Proper Talks points us to this helpful graph.![]() Whatever. I don't need no visual aids to tell me what I've known for years--niggers done loss their minds since Dre fell off. The shocking rise in black homicideI got a lot of e-mails from folks about this story yesterday, and frankly, I didn't know what to make of it:The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.People are used to the idea of black people coming out on the truly horrific end of stats--and for good reason. We live poorer and die faster. Our SAT scores are lower and our dropout rate is higher, and so on. But that sense of black folks bringing up the rear, in addition to an uncritical allegiance to thin stats, is blinding and leads to fools talking super-predators and the Apocalypse. There's a thin line between understanding that black people are in a bad way, and believing every awful thing you hear. I didn't know why someone telling me that homicide rate for black tens had jumped 34percent struck me as wrong--I just heard my bullshit meter going off. Somewhat predictably, So did Steven Levitt: The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period. I don't want to be glib about a very real problem. But the nature and tragedy of black on black crime doesn't excuse inflation and exaggeration. I've learned my lesson about this, after hearing people--black and white--parrot inane foolishness like "they're more black men in jail than college." Or better still the "70 percent out of wedlock" stat which every intellectual likes to whip out to show how gangsta rap destroyed the Negroes. Glib cuts both ways, you know. That said...Richard Cohen actually takes the Rove Reading Challenge seriously:Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong.Yes, as opposed to something more columnish. Tis the season...Blogging will be slow today. I'm sorry guys, some holiday ghosts--but not spirits--are still haunting the Harlem manse.T. December 29, 2008The "Wasn't Me" Defense.Fairness says that I must note that several Republicans have denounced the Barack the Magic Negro episode. I think Newt basically had it right. That said, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that this GOP apparatchik in the video below is just lying. To defend Limbaugh and his Magic Negro anthem, she cries Sharpton, claiming the song makes fun of Rev. Al saying that Barack isn't black enough. Please tell me when exactly Al Sharpton said that. I don't make a habit of defending Al, but I don't recall him ever saying that. But I do recall someone else questioning Obama's blackness:Hey, Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry. "As a Halfrican American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry's support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans.That would be Rush Limbaugh talking. The same Rush Limbaugh who we are to believe was defending Barack Obama from this mythical claim by Sharpton. Amazing. In what universe are we to take satire about black people from Rush Limbaugh? Here is the thing--if you made your career crusading against the Veteran's Day, don't expect people to laugh when you make a "satirical" joke about the Army. An issue close to my heartJim Webb is going to try to do something about prison reform.The war on KwanzaaAn annual ritual begins anew:Right, unlike Christmas which has survived on the basis of its spiritual purity and strict avoidance of commercialism.... Meh, I don't celebrate Kwanzaa. My Dad was a Black Panther, so I wasn't exactly brought up to think of Karenga (call that Negro "Ron") as heroic. I didn't celebrate Christmas either, and the general consensus in my home was that Kwanzaa was throw-away for people who couldn't deal with not getting gifts. But so what? Seriously, this idea that Kwanzaa is fundamentally different from other holidays is silly and unreflective. Debating the holidays, is like debating sex acts. Dude, there's no clean or dirty, only what you're into or what you're not. Do we really want to do the knowledge on Christmas here? Seriously?? I could have Peter King's jobI don't think I've ever seen a Cowboys team underachieve more than this year's team. The only solace I can take is in thinking we were overrated from the start: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.I've got some difficult emotions to grapple with--I can't believe Jerry is keeping Wade. Still, not as many emotions as this guy. 0-16 is a special thing. I almost would trade places with the Lions. At least they have our draft picks to comfort them. Thanks Roy Williams What's beef...Yglesias points us to Peretz chest-thumping analysis of Gaza:Message: do not fuck with the Jews.Trash-talking from across an ocean. That'll show em Marty. It's wrong but I've almost--almost--stopped reading about anything dealing with the Israel-Palestinian beef. It just feels like nothing changes. I've never understood why anyone in their right mind would accept us as an honest broker, given our declared allegiances. But more than that, I wonder why it's incumbent on us to broker at all. Lately, our judgment hasn't exactly been the greatest either. Karl Rove on Bush's readingSeriously, this is laughable:
Really Karl? I did that same contest at the local library--when I was six. Anyone who actually reads books knows that reading the words off the page is half the job, at best. The hard part is digesting the book, getting to its essential themes and then weighing them against your own body of knowledge. Look I love books, was raised in the
business of publishing books and printing books. But watching a pundit--or president--brag about reading a book a week, is like watching a freshly-minted 21-year old get smashed at a wine-tasting. Only a rookie would set that sort of goal--and then brag about it. Either that or, you know, someone who doesn't really read... December 28, 2008Open NFL ThreadGo for it folks. Blog returns to full strength tomorrow.UPDATE: This is why we don't regularly do open threads. Probably a worse idea to do one during the holidays when most of the adults are away. I'm never shocked by trolls. I'm always shocked by the people who take the bait. We have to do better. Comments closed and the ban-stick is in motion. December 26, 2008The best candidate for RNC chair...Is clearly this guy.RNC candidate Chip Saltsman's Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called "Barack the Magic Negro," first played on Rush Limbaugh's popular radio show.There's also a tune called "The Star Spanglish Banner." Get it? Negroes!! Spanglish!! No?? Clearly you're too PC. Seriously, where do people get this idea that the GOP is racist? It really is one of the great mysteries of our time. Oh well. Saltsman's got my vote. Even if he believes I shouldn't have one. He's still got it. UPDATE: As you guys can imagine, I haven't been checking in as much. This got nasty pretty fast. I don't know if this convo is still going. If it is, do us all a favor and give Thomas the respect he deserves. Seriously. The venom helps nothing. December 24, 2008To all a good nightCatch you guys in a few. For obvious reasons.December 23, 2008This is painful to watchIn what world must a black gay man debate civil rights a man who believes blacks should be thankful they were slaves, and once advised Nixon to link an opponent to "New York Jewish money?"Capehart went for his, did his best, and somehow managed to not catch a case. But my heart broke watching this. I am feeling like Carolyn Forche in "Return." "It is not your right to feel powerless," she says in that piece. "Better people than you were powerless." Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy On Chad PenningtonI told you so:Let go by the Jets in August after eight years of service, Pennington, 32, is having a career renaissance with the resurgent Dolphins. Winners of one game in 2007, the Dolphins are 10-5 and can claim the American Football Conference East crown by beating the Jets on Sunday at Giants Stadium. Pennington has thrown for 3,453 yards, a career best. He has completed 67 percent of his passes, and his passer rating, 96.4, is the second best in the N.F.L., behind Philip Rivers's 104.0.Sorta. Hold on, I hear somebody coming...This is James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic.Most readers know that the views expressed on Ta-Nehisi's blog are his own and don't always reflect the views of The Atlantic. Such is the case with regard to Ta-Nehisi's "analysis" of the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins. Our institution has partnered with the Redskins, and Daniel Snyder, on a number of projects, and we have a great deal of respect for Snyder's, uhm, personnel moves. We at The Atlantic do not take sides in the ongoing dispute between that asshole Jerry Jones's Cowgirls and the winning machine built by Daniel Snyder. The Redskins are historic leaders in the sports world, and Dan Snyder may be the greatest owner in history. We look forward to box seats in the future. Not sure what this meansJohn McWhorter has a piece in TNR in which he argues, among other things, that Rick Warren represents "black views" on social issues better than Joseph Lowery:That's true. Of course it's also true that Warren's view on social issues--among Americans at large--is also dominant. But it's much more important to note that the Warren view is 12 percent more dominant among a disproportionately undereducated, impoverished, and hyper-religious group which comprises 13 percent of the country. Shocking, shocking stuff. Then there's this:
Right. Because, the interwebs have been utterly silent on the role black voters in California played in passing Prop 8. And no one protested Obama campaigning with Donnie McClurkin. No that didn't happen. Jokes aside, this really is a text-book case of shifting the burden of proof. John literally offers no evidence that the scene would play out as he imagined--He just conjures it and then assumes it's true.And then of course there's the capper:
Right again. Because the black soul can be reduced to being against gay marriage. No wonder I can't dance. Of course then you read something like this...And just want to close ranks:In the 110th Congress, there were 236 Democrats in the U.S. House, 49 in the Senate, and two "Independents" who caucused with Democrats. Of those 287 congresscritters, 74 were members of the New Democratic Coalition, which is affiliated with the DLC. Overall, 25.8% of the Democratic members of the 110th Congress were openly affiliated with the DLC. An additional 31 members of Congress are affiliated with the Blue Dogs, but not with the New Democratic Coalition. If the Blue Dogs are included, the overall DLC-Blue Dog membership in of Democratic congresscritters increases to 36.6%, and 38.1% in the House.That's Chris Bowers asserting that Obama's cabinet is actually to the right of congressional Democrats. Leave aside the statistical problems of comparing a group of hundreds, with a group of 16. Leave aside that Bowers doesn't include Obama's White House staff. Leave aside that the source for that contention that half of Obama administration is the DLC, comes from Politico. And how does Politico know that half of the new administration is DLC? Why the DLC told them, of course! And the DLC has no incentive at all to inflate their importance. No, they'd never do that. Leaving all that aside, this just feels like a kind of tokenism which ultimately says nothing about policy. And where does all this head-counting leave us?. At war with Bill Richardson? Outraged that Tom Daschle addressed the DLC? Is this what it was about? Really? The center and changeI think he hits on a good point here--it's pretty hard to, at once, heal the country and then take it into a totally different direction:The Warren pick is exactly the kind of move you'd expect from a figure who rose to national prominence in 2004 by telling the country that there is not a black america, nor a white america, but the United States of America (that may be the single most italic-worthy sentence of the current millennium.) The problem is that it is not true. We want it to be and more than any politician in recent history, Obama is the beneficiary of a vision of America that we believe in but which does not exist. At least not yet...Everybody, from the right to the left, now claims Martin Luther King--but he was certainly not a centrist. Part of that is the passage of time, but another part is the mainstreaming of ideas (at least some of them) which once were thought of as radical. Supporters of gay marriage should take heart from that. Today's radical is tomorrow's normative. Time and, to be blunt, the reaper are on our side--not theirs. Of course there is another lesson to take from this. As I said yesterday, my job isn't to make Barack Obama's job easier. And--as I'm sure he knows--his job isn't to his marching orders from the bloggers who have no political capital to lose. Jelani talks about Adalai Stevenson putting segregationist John Sparkman on the ticket. I think about Lincoln promising to unite the country, blacks be damned. And now Biden defending the Warren pick. I want to be clear--in the context of who they are, national politicians, these people are not "wrong." I think Biden, like Stevenson, and like Lincoln make a solid, political case. But that doesn't make Frederick Douglass wrong either. That doesn't make black leadership wrong for denouncing Stevenson. And it doesn't make those of us who believe that a man who bans gays from his church should not be giving the invocation, wrong. Obama and co. have the job of building national consensus. We have the job of expanding the boundaries of that consensus. We are in conflict, and this is as it should be. Seriously, what is one without the other? December 22, 2008In case anyone was wonderingThis is what people are referring to in regards to Matt. I don't think I've ever seen anyone step in like that on a blog. I'm sympathetic to CAP's position, but I don't get the response. I don't think anyone thinks Ezra speaks for the American Prospect, per se. I know people don't think I speak for The Atlantic. I know CAP isn't a media organization, but still, it all seems sort of silly, and I really have no idea how they thought this would somehow help them. Here's Matt's original post. Here's Andrew responding.UPDATE: SG points us to this response by ThinkProgress, which is fine. The clarification in comments goes a little further. One thing I've found is that mistakes and hamfistedness are much more common in the world than deviousness and scheming. We often mistake the latter for the former. It's so much more likely that these guys blundered, than it is that the long arms of Third Way reached into Matt's blog. Nobody's perfect. Do we believe the Titans yet?Just asking. Oh man, Vince Young. What will you do now...Music execs are still dumber than youThis makes no sense. A music video is nothing more than a really expensive ad. It's amazing that these guys want YouTube to pay them for the right to show their videos. They should be trying to leverage the viewers into buyers. These guys are straight out 1963. They deserve whatever's coming to them in this economy.You wouldn't make it in postracial AmericaLemme be clear. If you have a black Barbie half-head doll, you need to cross the street when you see me. I'm a nice guy. I have a kind smile, but you need to know one thing about me: Ta-Nehisi is for the kids--and I will jack your ass.Here's the thing, my beautiful niece (who makes me desperate for a daughter every time I see her) requested one.It took me a moment to get past the fact that thing was called a "half head." But anyway. her parents, being black folks of this age, added the rejoinder--"The black one, please." I told Kenyatta that we should order it immediately since it could run out of stock. My partner is a beautiful woman with one fatal flaw--an unwavering belief that racism can be gamed to her benefit. I could almost see the gears turning in her head, "There's no way the black Barbies are gonna be sold out!" Well, of course she goes to Toys R US this morning and the following convo ensues: Of course I knew this would happen. The math is simple. In Manhattan, the number of liberal whites who have no problem--indeed who would brag about--buying their kid a black doll almost certainly outnumbers the blacks who have no problem giving little Ebony a blond and blue-eyed Barbie. The temptation to blame the White Man is strong--no doubt this is a part of his plot to further lower the self-esteem of this country's Aishas and Takieshas. But alas, I must be honest with myself and not shrink away from the true lesson--Negroes can no longer move on Negro time. This is postracialism for that ass. Get your weight up. Not your hate up. UPDATE: Sorry guys, the thing is called a Barbie "Styling Head." Also I think this is apropos. The AndrewsMy colleague now has his own annual Awards. Frankly, I'm hoping for the Malkin Award. Please write my name in. Better yet, why the eff does Yglesias still get an award named after him? He jumped ship! Dump his ass!!Sam Cooke--The GreatestMeh, actually, I'm a Jerry Butler guy, when we're talking about great voices. Still, it's no doubt that Sam is just a killer. One of the great sins of our time is the syrupy, wimpy, punk-ass remakes we've been made to endure of "Having A Party." I refer you to this live version of "Having A Party." That is how you shut down a club. Rod Stewart should be ashamed.Anyway, I caused a minor row by claiming, earlier, that "Change Is Gonna Come" isn't Sam Cooke's greatest song. Just my opinion. But I'm gonna go with "Bring It On Home," "That's Where It's At," "Somebody Have Mercy," or even "Touch The Hem My Garment." Cooke spent much of his career trying to mellow out his style, and so a lot of his stuff is mediocre teen-pop. Still, the man was a titan and taken too soon. Dig his rendition of "Blowing In the Wind." Sound quality is bad, but Sam is still great. Of course there's more. Like the man who now talks change, Sam Cooke was straight out the South Side of Chicago. The color of changeFrom over at Proper Talks we've got Anthony Hamilton covering Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." Of course nothing swings like the original--and that isn't even Sam Cooke's best song. But I digress, it's amazing how Obama used language that has specific meaning in the African-American context, and blew it out to encompass everyone. The paraphrasing of Malcolm is a gimme. But beyond that, the word "change" has a specific connotation among us historically, from Cooke to Haki Mahdubuti's "A Poem to Compliment Other Poems." Anyway, Hamilton ain't Cooke (who is?) but he's got the touch.Anthony Hamilton - "A Change Is Gonna Come" from levi maestro on Vimeo. A useful dissentAdam on Cloud's piece, and some of what I just wrote:By all means, gay-rights advocates can continue to compare marriage equality to the system of segregation, and to compare those who support civil unions but not marriage equality to hard-core segregationists. But they shouldn't expect anyone who knows anything about segregation, or anyone with family members who actually remember segregation, to listen to them. In fact, they can expect to alienate them fully. Cloud has said that to overturn Prop 8 activists will need to "reach out" to African-American voters. But I would counsel that comparing the first black president of the United States to a segregationist is not the best way to do that. There have always been people who, in seeking to make their cases against various forms of bigotry, have used the stories of other historically oppressed groups as props and little else. It is one of the most infuriating manifestations of racist paternalism in our political discourse. Gay couples being denied their right to marry doesn't have to be exactly like segregation to be wrong. Some final thoughts on WarrenUPDATE #2: Comments back open. I do this from time to time whenever it gets a little hot. Remember it's all love here--even when it isn't.UPDATE: Uhh, we're gonna pause for a moment commenters. Let's all take a deep breath here and dig some Sam Cooke... My old colleague John Cloud says Obama "has proved himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot," and offers a historical parallel: Obama reminds me a little bit of Richard Russell Jr., the longtime Senator from Georgia who -- as historian Robert Caro has noted -- cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, tolerant politician even as he defended inequality and segregation for decades. Obama gave a wonderfully Russellian defense of Warren on Thursday at a press conference. Americans, he said, need to "come together" even when they disagree on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he said. Russell would often use the same tactic to deflect criticism of his civil rights record. It was a distraction, Russell said, from the important business of the day uniting all Americans. Obama also said today that he is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays, which is -- given his opposition to equal marriage rights -- simply a lie. It recalls the time Russell said, "I'm as interested in the Negro people of my state as anyone in the Senate. I love them."Another, maybe more cliche, parallel is Kennedy. Had I been alive in the early 60s and heard JFK refer to himself as a "fierce advocate for equality" for blacks, I'd have grabbed the Molotov cocktail, and gone straight H. Rap Brown. Part of me shrinks at calling the man a bigot, but on its face, I think John is right. The case against gay marriage, is for my money, a bigot's case. The appeal to history is false, in the first, for the reason that all appeals to history are false. For thousands of years the dominant form of government in the world was a dictatorship--and then we "redefined government" to make democracy. Was that wrong? But more than that it's false on the the actual facts--historically, marriage has not always been one man, one woman. It's been one man and fifty women. It's been one man and--what we would consider today--one child. One man and five children. One woman and five men. And so on... No, the objection here is to gays, in particular, which brings me to Obama and Warren. I want to be absolutely clear here. Obama hasn't betrayed anything or anyone. On this issue, he is what I thought he was. One of the first blog posts ever wrote noted the amazing hypocrisy in Obama lecturing black people on homophobia, while himself, holding a position on arguably the most important civil rights issue of our time, which was essentially bigoted. It's my job to say things like that, to, at once, not just carp, but still not simply fall in line. [MORE] December 21, 2008Rahm seems to be in the clear?Seriously. Do we really care?And you always fear, what you don't understand...I gotta say I'm baffled by the drubbing poet Elizabeth Alexander is taking on the interwebs. We've talked some about George Packer's swipe, which bugs me the more I think about it. Here's Newsmax picking up the ball. And then here's Kevin Drum, inexplicably, reaching for the dagger and rather cattily requesting that Alexander keep "her poem short."I have a lot of respect for Drum. I think Packer is one of the exceptional journalists of our time. And you guys know me--and it's possible I'm taking this too far. I know I'm taking this personally because, truthfully, I learned the basics of writing--and blogging--by reading poets like Alexander, Stephen Dunn, Julianna Baggot, Nas etc. I didn't love it all, but I learned a lot. Poetry is, to me, the most elemental, the most muscular genres of literature. That doesn't mean everyone has to love it. But out of all the surely boring, and mind-numbing performances and speeches that we'll hear on Inauguration Day, I'm sort of amazed that this is attracting any attention, When you read people comparing a decorated writer to a potential senator with zero experience, when you read a post called "Affirmative Action poetry for the Affirmative Action president," you can start drawing some pretty dark conclusions. But let me allow that Alexander's critics aren't going there, and offer another explanation. Poetry is, for whatever reason, something really smart people don't always take the time to understand. And because they're really smart--and used to understanding things that other people don't--they think that this must mean there's something wrong with poetry. But in fact most of these critics don't really know what they're talking about. I'm not saying I'm much better--but then I don't go around condemning entire centuries of whole genres. The one good thing about all of this is that it's proved to me that "Wyntonism" isn't just confined to people talking about hip-hop. It is, evidently, applied when people want to dis something, but not do the work to formulate an actual, coherent dis. It's wild. Drum tries to highlight the horror of Alexander's poetry by pulling a snippet out of context. But instead he just highlights the laziness of his own post. I don't get why people can't just say, "You know what. I don't know much about poetry, so maybe I should pass on commenting on this..." I mean what if I just decided to dis opera or classical or jazz for the hell of it? What if I started opining on the vagaries of health care reform? You guys would shout me down. And rightfully so. Cats need to know when to fold em... Open NFL ThreadGo for it folks. Down goes Dallas. Down goes Dallas. Truth be told, championship football requires way too much discipline to play as Dallas did. Fans will see a defense that let the team down. I see a team that wasn't especially mentally tough. We all know whose job that is.December 19, 2008Nail to hammerMatt on the weak-sauce that is "It's only symbolic" argument:People who are upset about a politician doing something they don't like that's essentially symbolic in nature -- like the selection of Rick Warren -- often have difficulty articulating to skeptics exactly what the nature of the problem is. Simply digging up more and more quotes of the offending person's offending activities doesn't answer the reply "so what? it's just symbolism..."Heh, when its not your neck getting stepped on, it's "symbolic." Here's Ezra advancing the ball: Warren is not a symbolic figure. He's a religious leader who mobilizes his flock and leverages his public influence in order to affect electoral outcomes. The most prominent example was the Proposition 8 ballot initiative -- as opposed to, say, the Proposition 8 symbolic logo design contest -- in California. Warren used his power and prestige instrumentally, not symbolically. And Obama is giving him more power, and more prestige, which he will, quite assuredly, deploy in an instrumental fashion. The arrogance of white AmericaFrom long-time poster Stacy:I'm confused. I thought the 'electric slide' was about the whitest thing you could do. It sure seems that way at every family wedding I've ever been to. Black people don't line dance, do they?Yeah sure, steal from us and then lie about who you stole it from. Fuckers. This reminds of that scene in Back To The Future, where Michael J. Fox "teaches" Chuck Berry how to play the guitar. Or like people coming here to tell me that there was nothing "black" about the fist-bump. Damn right there's nothing black about the "fist-bump"--we don't invent slang that sounds like it looks. It's called dap, motherfuckers. A pound, if you must. Ya'll got me calling that shit a "fist-bump." Damn you post-racialism. Damn you to hell. And damn you Stacy. You can forget about that ghetto pass--and that Muslim Sleeping Pill. And because it's FridayLet's talk Elizabeth Alexander's take on the Venus Hottentot. When I read this years ago, I was struck by the sorrow and the sadness of the tale. But lately, I've been taken by this:He complainsAnd this: If he were to let me rise upI don't know how, but in my early readings of this piece, I missed perhaps the most important emotion--a kind of slow-burning rage. There are many ways to read those two quotes. But I'm black and Ta-Nehisi and what I see is the irony of science, how disciplines founded to better understand the world so often obscure the world. I've talked about this a lot here, about how, to social science, black seems to mean the bottom of the statistical barrell. Well yeah it does, but science can't tell us what else it means (how it feels for instance) and when employed without humility, it blinds us. So Cuvier doesn't know that this woman can speak all kinds of other languages, and not just other languages but languages that he's never heard of. And in that, there are many layers, because language is a short-hand for ways of seeing the world. The speaker in the poem has seen the world from many perspectives. As is often the case with people on the bottom, she knows more of his world than he knows of hers. And then the violent end, the sense that she isn't the freak, but that this dude who is obsessed with this woman's genitals, these well dressed "civilized" people who oggle at her ass, are really the ones who belong on display. That their "geometric, deformed, unnatural" hearts are really what's truly freakish. But because they are priviliged, their own human foibles, their own insanities can be hidden, while hers are paraded out for show. Deep. Anyway, what does the room think? Sweeping statements are the enemy of poetryVia Andrew, George Packer argues against poetry--and specifically against Elizabeth Alexander--presenting at the Inauguration:
There are many good reasons not to have poetry at the Inauguration. Maybe the president doesn't enjoy it. Not many people read it. And the lion-share of poetry is awful. Of course this also true of boxers, blogs, novels and magazines.But because poems are supposed to be the arena of the high-minded, bad poetry manages to come off not just as another category of bad art (like bad TV, or a bad movie) but as haughty, snobbish and elitist. It comes off as the sort of thing endorsed by people who say things like "hip-hop isn't music," or writers who condemn every practitioner of genre post-1874 as "lacking the language, rhythm, emotion and thought that could move large numbers of people in large public settings." Look, there are many counters here. The most obvious being that someone needs to hit George off with Nas, Jay or Doom. Somehow I think George would still beef with me over whether it was poetry or not. Fair enough. But if this... I drink Moet with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell Or this...
Isn't poetry, but Beowulf (which I love also) is. If this...
...isn't poetry but Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is, than I need to start driving a cab. Maybe I do need to start driving a cab, but for other reasons. Anyway, by George's own definition--having "language, rhythm, emotion and thought that could move large number of people in large public setting"--hip-hop is the most vibrant form of poetry out there today. Even if it doesn't, as I suspect, move George. [MORE] Continue reading "Sweeping statements are the enemy of poetry" » For those who missed it...Ross offers a counterpoint on torture. Thoughtful as always. If we agreed on it all, there wouldn't be much point.Franken For The WinReally starting to look that way.One thing I don't understand about this "traditional marriage"In the video below, Rick Warren makes a lot of bigoted statements--his comparison of homosexuality with divorce, and incest is just odious. I don't know if there is a special place in hell for people who say these things, but I know there is a special place in history. Anyway the one obvious thing that gets me about his argument is this idea that marriage has, throughout history, been one man and one woman. No it hasn't. That's a fucking lie. Polygamy is ancient. The idea of an old man marrying a child, which Warren raised, is ancient--it's our modern standards that, rightly, condemn the practice. I'm not up on my Bible studies, but isn't there polygamy in the Bible? Beyond that the "appeal to history" argument is particularly disgusting to me as a black person. But by Warren's logic, we should go back to slavery. It is one of the oldest human traditions, no?Look, I understand the pragmatic politics at work here. I also understand that Obama, perhaps exposing the flaws of pragmatism, doesn't support gay marriage. But watch that video and tell me how that dude is not a bigot. Even a big tent--at the end of the day--must still be a tent. You have to fucking stand for something. Where is all the Good Crazy now? Because it's Friday--And Elizabeth Alexander is greatI met Elizabeth Alexander almost a decade ago at Cave Canem, a retreat for young black poets organized by Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte. I wasn't quite good enough to get in myself, and was at that point where I was giving up poetry and moving into long-form journalism. So I was there to write a story--I'd kind of sneaked my way in, basically.What I remember about her is this. I was there covering a workshop she was doing with a group of young poets. Someone had told her I was, myself, aspiring and so before class started, she allowed me to read a poem I was working (about Kenyatta, incidentally) and have it critiqued. I was kind of floored--and the reason why is below. Elizabeth Alexander is going to present a poem at the inauguration. I don't want to disrespect anyone here with what I'm about to say. But there is an interesting parallel, here again, in the Obama and Clinton selections. Maya Angelou is a very inspirational writer who, I think, has helped a lot of young women through some tough times. But Elizabeth Alexander is a student, and dare I say, master of the craft. Her work is inspirational in a way that the Great Gatsby, or Mad Men is inspirational, in that it just says so much about who we are. When Clinton picked Maya Angelou it was revolutionary for a lot of young black kids in schools across the country--we had to study that poem in English class. Picking Alexander is a much more subtle move which I hope folks won't miss. Put bluntly, the whole "competence aesthetic" has been extended to the poets also. I'm not dissing Clinton here, or giving undue credit to Obama--this is about the moment in history. So much has changed since then. In that vein, I offer Alexander's most famous piece, The Venus Hottentot. I'm embarrassed to say that I hated this poem when I first read it. But I was young and foolish. I knew better after I read it ten more times. Folks that don't know the history can read here. This is, to my mind, one of the best meditation I've ever read on black women and the loss--and I guess reclamation--of control of their physical selves. Even that is kind reductive. Read it and weep. Seriously. Poem after the jump. Comments open this afternoon. Continue reading "Because it's Friday--And Elizabeth Alexander is great" » The only inaugaration question that mattersHas been asked by Jelani:I'm starting to wonder if Barack is going to kick off the Electric Slide on the National Mall after the inaugural. The combination of Joseph Lowery, Aretha Franklin and Elizabeth Alexander is almost enough to make me think this will be somewhere between a grand state function and the Image Awards.This really is the question of the day. I'm thinking about the ball. Are these cats gonna bust out the line dancing? Better yet, are they gonna go straight South Side and start stepping? This almost makes me want to be there. Almost. Best journalism of 2008Conor, over at Culture11, gives us a very solid list. But, from my personal perspective, one item there deserves special attention--the number Caitlin Flanagan did on Katie Couric, or rather Edward Klein, Couric's "biographer." You know it's good (peach cobbler after a blunt good, if I may) when you're still thinking about it months later. Flanagan's piece was a textbook example of how to review a book of some notoriety, but of questionable weight. I'm not the sort of dude who came up on Katie Couric (or the Today show), and I really only had the vaguest notion of what she meant to a certain set of women.But Flanagan really nailed it by using her own life and the secret lives of a particular set of mothers, to put Couric, and the Today show, in context. As the piece proceeds, Flanagan basically argues that in becoming a news anchor, Couric may have actually taken a step down. And then, in Jay-Z-like fashion, she gives Klein his half-a-bar: You're not really a huge power broker of the female variety until some bitchy man writes a nasty biography of you, a literary pap smear meant at once to diagnose and humiliate. Edward Klein, the sort of writer who prefers a book-jacket photo to show him nuzzling a tough-looking canine, would seem the man for the job. Like his earlier book about Hillary Clinton, and like Christopher Byron's book on Martha Stewart and Jerry Oppenheimer's book on Barbara Walters, Klein's Katie: The Real Story proceeds from the notion that of all the forces responsible for his subject's protean success, the least significant is actual talent. According to this logic, the star's fortunes depend entirely on how "nice" her female fans believe her to be; the idea that these famous women might have some expertise or ability of greater value to viewers than the mere force of their apparent pleasantness seems never to occur to these writers.Anyway, I say all this to note that I was, at the time I read this, struggling to write a review of a book which I thought had little merit, but deserved some sort of response. This piece helped me find a way. I know in this new-fangled age, the young whipper-snappers no longer dream of writing long hauls in places like the Atlantic. But if a few of you are out there and you still do indeed dream, that Flanagan piece is really a great place to start. December 18, 2008Owned IMOThis will leave a mark:Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time's Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. "If Politico and Halperin say we're winning, we're losing," Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters.Heh, they could add all the Atlantic blogs to the list, for all I care. I wouldn't want Tom Landry letting beat writers run his offense back in the day, anymore than I want to see David Plouffe doing long-form journalism. Or blogging. Folks need to play their position. On that note I never understood why Howard Wolfson let Drudge run his life. Media is powerful. But not that powerful. The NAACP threatens boycott of the networksAnd I bet the networks are shivering in their boots. These guys are late to the party. I started my own boycott months ago--not because I wanted more black people on TV, but because I wanted TV to suck less. There are some good aspects of segregation--namely, you get to equate bad television with white people, in much the same manner that folks equate hip-hop with black people. But the NAACP's call for more shows like "Moesha" and "The Steve Harvey Show," increasingly makes that sort of high-minded stand untenable. Fucking civil rights people. They ruin it for everyone.Seriously though, this sort of racial head-counting reminds me that all wars waged by black people, are not my wars. More on tortureCommenter Nuada hits on something I actually missed:Indeed, there really isn't much subterfuge involved in dropping a nuclear weapon on Japan--everyone knows who did it and why. But subterfuge and outright deception were key elements of this administration's policy on torture. It wasn't simply a matter of going to the dark-side. It was a matter of going to the dark-side, and then when the true consequences became known pretending that it was a matter of a few bad apples when it was actually administration policy, One lesson I've taken from all of this is to be more skeptical of power. I'm generally skeptical of the left, not out of any disdain, but quite the opposite. I consider myself a lefty and I want us to make the strongest arguments in the most convincing fashion. I'm skeptical of the left, because I'm skeptical of myself, and I've always thought that if I were skeptical of myself, then I stood a very good chance of dealing with my rhetorical enemies. But in this case, seemingly the most wildest dreams of the Left actually turned out to be reality. I was very mildly anti-war--I had a kind of "I see your point" stance--but I didn't believe that WMD simply didn't exist, that Bush and co. were actively cooking the intelligence. I thought pulling out of the Geneva Conventions was wrong, but I really didn't think it would lead Abu Gharaib. And when Abu Gharaib happened, I doubted it was "a few bad apples" but I didn't think it neccessarily went all the way up the chain. I have no explanation here--I feel like I got taken by Madoff. I'm embarrassed that I was so easily taking of my guard. Perhaps I am just a bad judge. Perhaps this redeems the politics of the left. I don't know. I think that the desire to remake the world in your ideal image is strong. After 9/11, America basically gave Bush the capitol to do exactly that, and he attempted to do exactly that with virtually no humility and no respect for his own weaknesses or the strengths of his enemies. That shoe-throwing moment was the capper--a blatant act of disrespect toward a man who yelled "bring em on," but had no answer when it was ultimately brought. Bush made a fool of himself. And thus made fools of us all. I think the incoming administration is much smarter, and more self-aware...But I've been wrong before. Our latest entrant into the blogosphere...Is the truly awesome Jelani Cobb. You guys have probably seen me link his essays before. It's good to see him taking up the sword. Besides being a beautiful writer, Jelani is also a proffessor of History at Spelman. Anyway enough starbursts. Here he is arguing for a better class of corrupt politician:Whatever the ultimate outcome of the Rod Blagojevich affair this much is clear: his primary offense is not being corrupt but in being boring and vapid. Once, in the days when women had names like Madge and men still smoked cigarettes on fire escapes, American politicians offered entertainment and charisma in exchange for their dishonesty... Indeed to my mind, Blago is disgrace to urban America's fine and respectable history of corruption. Quid pro quo or it's Senator BlagojevichSeriously, I'm launching a one-man crusade to get this Spencer Ackerman joint on urban radio. My son loves it almost as much as the original. So for the next few weeks, prepare to see this vid popping up randomly from time to time.The wild and wooly world of post-racial AmericaFrom rikyrah:
I don't know if I can function in this new post-racial America. Yesterday on the train to Baltimore I helped a white lady with her bags--and she seemed perfectly confident that I wouldn't make off with them. And now comes news that black men from the South Side are bragging about the speed at which they drop dime. Indeed, what's next? Toby Kieth covering "Rebel Without A Pause?" Jay-Z converting to HInduism? High-end chefs serving bean pie for desert? Actually that last one would be so awesome. The Muslim Sleeping Pill (hot bean pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream) gone high end. FoolsSgwhite gives us the following: Memo to all other married N.F.L. players, never EVER go to a strip club that has cameras on the inside, with your jump off, on the same night your teammate shoots himself in the leg. Jeebus, the news just keeps getting worse and worse for Antonio Pierce of the Giants. In a minute I am betting him and Plaxico are gonna have a Shaq/Kobe beef going over all the trouble Plax has got him in. But I have to ask, who goes into a strip club that has cameras in it? I can just about guarantee you that "Head Quarters" is about to see a significant drop in business. Ill just tease you with the lead to the whole story, but you GOTTA go to the New York Post website to to see just how bad the put him on blast as only the Post can.Seems Pierce went to a strip-club with another woman right before going to the club with Plax--where Plax proceeded to shoot himself. I think this is why it's hard to repeat in football. People who were tough a season earlier start thinking it was easy. And people who were always shaky reveal themselves to be who you knew they were all along. It is of course worth noting...As many commenters have said that Joe Lowery will be there too. Here's Lowery showing no mercy on a sitting president. Following that is, as many of you know, my favorite Lowery sermon.UPDATE: It's also worth noting that Lowery is fairly outspoken supporter of gay marriage. It's hell up in BridgeportYou best protect your neck:
A hamfisted moderationIt's not shocking that Obama is inviting Rick Warren to do the invocation. It just seems like a rather obvious move to embrace the "new" religious right. I find it interesting that Warren crafted this new "moderate" personality just as his old allies were going down. Maybe it's moderation. But I can't find much daylight between a dude who equates gay marriage with incest and the old right.Andrew sees the hallmarks of wedge politics. Possibly. But I don't think this is a play for the homophobe vote, in the way Reagan's Philadelphia deal, or Clinton's Sista Souljah deal were plays for the racist vote. A better--if somewhat obscure--parallel is the move by my alma mater, Howard University in 1989, to put Lee Atwater on the board of trustees. Atwater had just finished with Willie Horton, but the administration was willing to overlook that in hopes of gaining the sort of access Atwater offered. Likewise, I'd bet Obama wants access to evangelicals. Atwater eventually withdrew after Howard's students and faculty basically embarrassed the University. The lesson there is obvious, even if the means and times are different. December 17, 2008The great liberal let-downMeant to post this last week. Here's Ezra and Eve having about as sane a discussion as you can have on this topic.Liberal InterventionismFollowing up on our convo this week and last about the ethics of humanitarianism and intervention, Matt gives us the following:...when skeptics of far-flung war-fighting hear that someone or other wants to do more to prevent mass killings of civilians abroad, they shouldn't just assume that what the person has in mind is starting a lot of new wars. That is what Robert Kagan and Max Boot have in mind. And it's what some Democrats have in mind, too. But other people -- usually the people with a real interest in humanitarian issues and the crisis-afflicted regions, rather then generic Very Serious People -- are talking about actually finding ways to prevent people from being killed, not finding new pretexts for killing people.I think this is a valuable point. We shouldn't confuse people who throw on the cloak of "humanitarianism" because they like the idea of remaking the world via air-power, with people who are actually heartbroken by shit like Darfur. There certainly are right-wing evangelicals who are really concerned about, say, the effects of war in Africa. I just never got the feeling that Bill Kristol was one of those guys. In defense of tortureRoss gives us a fairly thoughtful untangling of his complicated feelings about torture. If I may, I'd quibble with one point. Ross puts Bush's torture advocacy in historical perspective, correctly point out that while torture may be a betrayal of American ideals, it actually isn't a betrayal of America's actual political tradition:For instance: The use of the atomic bomb. I think it's very, very difficult to justify Harry Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in any kind of plausible just-war framework, and if that's the case then the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities - and indeed, the tactics employed in our bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan more broadly - represents a "war crime" that makes Abu Ghraib look like a trip to Pleasure Island. (And this obviously has implications for the justice of our entire Cold War nuclear posture as well.) But in so thinking, I also have to agree with Richard Frank's argument that "it is hard to imagine anyone who could have been president at the time (a spectrum that includes FDR, Henry Wallace, William O. Douglas, Harry Truman, and Thomas Dewey) failing to authorize use of the atomic bombs" - in so small part because I find it hard to imagine myself being in Truman's shoes and deciding the matter differently, my beliefs about just-war principle notwithstanding.He then continues: The same difficulty obtains where certain forms of torture are concerned. If I find it hard to condemn Harry Truman for incinerating tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, even though I think his decision probably violated the moral framework that should govern the conduct of war, I certainly find it hard to condemn the waterboarding of, say, a Khalid Sheikh Muhammed in the aftermath of an event like 9/11, and with more such attacks presumably in the planning stages.I think this is a bait and switch. Ross's point that he can't imagine himself doing anything different than Truman, doesn't really exonerate Truman, basically because neither Ross--nor I--would ever be president. I'd argue that a leaders are not simply supposed to be carbon-copy representatives of our emotions, but that they're supposed to see more, they are supposed to be better than. Asking ourselves what we would do, were we in Bush's shoes is likely to only prove that we'd be very mediocre presidents. Much stronger is Ross's point that basically anyone other potential president in Truman's shoes would have done the same thing as Truman. But you simply can't make the same argument about Bush. Indeed, it's not even clear that every potential Republican president would have approved of water-boarding. I think you can fairly argue that Truman was in something of a historical--if not moral--bind. Some people will argue that Bush was also. But for the point Ross makes about Truman to be true of Bush, he would need to prove that Al Gore, and even John McCain, a torture victim himself, would have approved of water-boarding. I'd love to see that proof. More jungle love for the jungle lovedThis should be interesting. Jeff has agreed to discuss his weird, compelling attraction to black women (something about the neck-rolling, I think), if I'll discuss my hot Hebrew love-goddess fantasies...Wait. Oh yeah. That's next week.Ahem. Moving right along. In this week's issue of "Black and Jewish relations--emphasis on relations," I discuss my hatred of the white she-devil, spawn of Yacub, and Jeff chants "Death to the Goyim! But especially the shiksa!!" JG: You know, nowadays, in liberal Jewish circles, it's considered a little odiferous to mention that you'd rather have people stay in than go out. I can't imagine it's the same in liberal black circles, but is it? Do you get pushback when you talk about the importance of this kind of solidarity?And so on... Headed to Baltimore in the Ford ExplorerFolks,I'm traveling today to B-More today for work. I've assembled a few entries for your viewing pleasure, but things will be moving at a slower clip. Sorry guys. You all know the rules. Resist the entreaties of trolls, and don't say anything to anyone that you wouldn't say in their presence. Consider this your open thread. December 16, 2008The Irony of the American BlogosphereI wanted to pull this out of so as not to derail the thread below. Here's Cobb on liberals and utopianism:...any book that makes a broad call for caution against a kind of state-sponsored rationalist utopianism, gets a thumbs up from this Conservative. That is the fundamental lesson that we keep trying to teach. But when Jonah Goldberg says so, y'all get hysterical.Right. Because attempting to establish a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq and remake the Middle East is the height of realism. Look, you can make the case that there was bipartisan support for the Iraq War because, well, there was. But here's what you can't do: Having watched one of the greatest foreign policy overreaches in American history committed with the near-uniform support of conservative institutions, committed while conservatives controlled every major branch of government, you can't ever, in any seriousness, pretend that utopianism is somehow merely the product of a brain addled by liberalism. I find it amazing that such a charge would be made in a discussion Neibhur. Simply amazing The Atlantic should never have put me onApparently employers are being instructed to avoid WoW players:...employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc.Yeah as opposed to say 20 and 30-somethings whose drinking and bar-hopping make for great sleeping patterns and stellar focus. Or Jennifer Aniston fans who wile away the scrolling through various sites to see what her latest comment on Bradgelina. Or TNC readers who...Oh, wait. No, you guys are great. Your doing a civic duty. I'm sure your employers understand. A thought on politicians shouting NiebuhrI'm about a third of the way through The Irony of American History, and one thing I don't understand is how any national politician could ever cite Niebuhr as any sort of influence. That is too categorical. What I'm trying to say is this book seems to be a call for a national humility, a broad caution against a kind of state-sponsored rationalist utopianism, as well as caution against the sort of "American Exceptionalism" that's basically taken as a given for anyone running for president. Am I reading this wrong? It seems to be president you have to not simply be proud of your country, but believe that it virtually on a mission from God. Is Niebuhr just another MLK? Some guy people shout-out because it sounds good, meanwhile ignoring the persons more politically unpopular opinions? Again, I'm only a third of the way through. I could have this wrong.Sorry for the lack of politicsThere will be more today--reading the Senate report on torture now. In the meanwhile, Matt had a post on MSNBC's "coverage" of Blagogate which explains why I've avoided it:...this morning on MSNBC there was a lengthy discussion of Obama's involvement in Blagojevich's corruption. Of course, there was no evidence of any involvement on Obama's part. Nor, despite this being a news channel, was there any original reporting of any kind whatsoever. There was, however, a ton of time spent criticizing the Obama campaign's PR strategy with regard to this issue -- the suggestion being that had Obama adopted a better PR strategy, then people wouldn't be on television making evidence-free guilt-by-association accusations against him.I actually watched some of this on the net yesterday. In the segment I saw, the regular panel along with Ed Rendell were attacking the Obama team, not for any dealings with Blago, but for not managing "the media" well enough. I kept thinking, "But wait, that's you! You're the media!!" I was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poemsSo, I've been fooling around with the Itunes Genius. And for a cat like me who is totally out of the music-loop, it's a God-send. Music used to be such a collective experience for me. I have specific memories of hearing "Verbal Intercourse" in the efficiency on 14th and Euclid I shared with my older brother. I can see the weed-smoke, and the NBA Live flickering on the screen. And then I can remember the next day, hopping the shuttle to campus, and debating with half of Howard over Nas's verse. Everyone was banging that joint.But as I get older, music becomes a kind of singular pursuit. Usually it's just me and Kenyatta, and half the stuff we're into feels so obscure. Excepting TVOTR, we don't even know people who listen to this sort of thing. Anyway, as it happens I was listening to TVOTR the other day, and scrolling through the reccommendations. It's wierd thing advancing through your 30s. You end up rocking out with your lady and your kid, listening to shit like this. It's a long way from Mondawmin Mall. Let him inCao is the second non-black congressman who represents a majority black district. It looks like Cao is going try to get admitted to the Caucus:Now Vietnamese-American Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao, who defeated disgraced Rep. William Jefferson in Louisiana, is hinting that he might make an effort to join the CBC. The caucus should let him in, along with anyone else who wants to join. Like Cohen, Cao will be representing a mostly black district. I don't see the CBC as any different from any other Congressional group formed around a specific set of principles, and I understand the CBC's desire to keep itself focused on the unique circumstances and desires of their constituents. But people like Cao should be let in, if only because excluding them causes more problems than it's worth. Those people interested in crafting a policy agenda that caters to the needs of constituents in America's mostly black districts will remain part of the caucus. Those who are just trying to make a point will eventually leave, and once it's clear that anyone who wants to can join, it will cease being an issue worth making a big deal about. And we won't have to listen to Republican histrionics about "reverse racism."Indeed. It's one thing to have a Caucus specifically interested in the welfare of African-Americans. It's another to have a private, race-based, social club. The whole "reverse discrimination" deal has about as much truck with me as Newt Gingrich fear of "gay Nazis." But this fight is stupid on two counts. 1.) As Adam points out, tactically, you have absolutely nothing to gain. 2.) You're just wrong. HBCUs are clearly set up to educate black kids--but they don't bar white kids from coming. They just tell them to expect a heavy dose of Baldwin--as they should. December 15, 2008The arrogance of Barack ObamaSgwhite points us to this story over at Politico which was just made for bloggers:In Barack Obama's appearance last month on CBS's "60 Minutes," the conversation turned to the president-elect's long-time love of Lincoln.Let us leave aside the fact that it takes some serious semantic games to turn a comment on Obama's admiration of Lincoln into him making the comparison. Let us leave aside, Politico's "backlash" consists of two historians--one of them being Sean Wilentz. Let us also mercifully ignore that the Politco, in a shocking bit of unwitting humor and irony, headlined their own story"Strawman." No, let us focus on the authors. The name of one them--Alexander Burns--rings a bell. I wonder why? Oh yeah, Bell has written about Obama and Lincoln before. Or more to the point, he interview Doris Kearns Goodwin about the comparisons. Surely he would not have insinuated any comparison between Obama and Lincoln in that interview, would he? Certainly he had taken that opportunity to furrow his brow at the such facile, flavor of the moment comparisons, hadn't he? Hadn't he?? Start your own blogThat's what frequent poster sgwhite did. Check him out folks. I hope this doesn't mean he's cutting back. Who else will share in my despair over the Boys?Robocop RapSent to me via e-mail. Man, I had forgotten how violent this flick was...The new Wolverine movie will suck...I really, really, really wanted to write a post telling you why. It's my right, you know. But I can't do that. Not after seeing this. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yeah...Snikt!X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD It's tasteless because it isn't funnyNot the other way around. It's fine to make fun of blind people, and black people. You can even blind, black people. You can even have someone playing who's neither blind, nor black doing it. There's only one rule--Motherfucker, Be Funny. I'm sorry but Fred Armisen just isn't--and why he's playing Obama, and now Paterson is beyond me. This skit sucked. Bad make-up. Bad Jokes. Bad imitation. Just bad. Maybe it doesn't mean anything in particular. I don't lilke Keenan's Al Sharpton either. Their performances are totally external. How they can do this, after Tina Fey upped the game, is beyond me.And when I swing my sword, they all impeachableHeh, Spencer Ackerman brings the ruckus...No, seriously...Gaming addictionOver at Terra Nova, Nick Yee looks at this silly manufactured disorder:As I noted in Daedalus also two years back, taking away the game doesn't solve the problem because gaming problems are not fundamentally rooted in the technology. Calling it a "gaming addiction" distracts us from the real problems.This is a subject I know well. My first year in New York, when not writing or taking the boy to pre-school, I spent every hour playing Everquest. Addicted? Nah. My life was just a mess. I was a 26-year old kid, with a one-year old kid. I think our household income was somewhere around $35k--95 percent of it generated by Kenyatta. I'd been fired from an altie-paper in Philly a year earlier, and virtually all of my magazine pitches were eliciting little or no response. A bad time for the empire, indeed. Anyway, afterward, I walked him to West 4th so he could catch subway to the Amtrak. We exchanged a pound and then walked off. I got maybe 40 feet and then he yells out "Ta-Nehisi." I walked back and he was going through his pockets."I almost forgot, I wanted to give you some money, but I don't have any cash." He then wrote me a check right there, on the spot. I think it was, like, for $100, but back then, it felt like 10 Gs. Meh, rambling and reminiscing as usual. The point is, I was in a bad place, and I was using Everquest as a way out. But it could have been any number of other things--food, women, television, weed, strip-clubs--whatever. The point is, it was me. Everquest did suck, though... Thug Passion explainedThis deserves its own post.What goes in a Thug Passion and will drinking one give me street cred?Tom C replies: A Thug Passion sounds like some not recommended combination of Cognac and grapefruit juice.Meh, grapefruit juice--too many vitamins. Black people don't "do" antioxidants. Seriously though, Thug Passion is the epitome of drank--Alize mixed with Congac--made famous by Tupac Shakur. I loved it in college on a Friday--must of lost half my freelance checks to the stuff. Those were the days when I was still amazed that they actually paid people to write. Later I graduated to Jack and Coke. Now I'm straight Macallan. Soon there will be cigars. Then I'll write an article about how I'm not really black anymore. UPDATE: Commenter Bruce questions my knowledge of Thug Passion. In all seriousness, I googled around. Apparently there is some debate about this. Fascinating. Apparently there are two versions. One features Alize and Henny, the other Alize and champagne. Hmm, somehow I think both will leave you feeling the same way in the morning. Gingrich reaches out to Cao...Newt is offering to be a liaison to the black community for Joseph Cao. Could be interesting, I guess. Gingrich has not been without thoughts on race--he gets credit for at least attempting to craft a conservative answer to Obama's race speech. Still--even with black turn-out, depressed--I bet Cao learned a thing or two, himself, about reaching black voters.Post-racialism--the mortal enemy of my careerI don't know about you guys, but this whole post-racial thing is ruining my life. Before 2008, I made a decent living doing what all black writers do--telling white people they were racist. It was a simple life. I'd call up a one of my effete, liberal, New York, latte-sipping, preferably Jewish, editors and pitch my latest diatribe inveighing against the evils of Trent Lott, Giuliani and Vanilla Ice. I'd write it up in five minutes, send it in and a check would appear a month later. It was an easy care-free life. But this Barack Obama thing, this "from the snows of Iowa" bit, this whole "there is the United States of America" spiel, is killing my mojo.For instance, I saw this story today headlined "Many Insisting Barack Obama Is Not Black." When I read the nut graff, I thought I had a winner: Any time I see race used in the vicinity of the words like "crescendo" or "shattered assumptions," one word pops in my head--Payday. I thought I'd just write up a quick post showing how the unwillingness of White America to accept Obama as black, demonstrated that racism had truly wormed its way into all of their black hears. Then I'd mix up some Thug Passion, and invoice the Atlantic for $1000. It was going to be lovely But, then I actually read the article, and from what I can tell there are only two people in the story--one of them being some dude writing into a local Florida paper--who actually constitute this crescendo. And that's when I realized I couldn't write my post, that I wouldn't be a getting a check from the Atlantic. Which leads me to my real point, here. White folks--we have a problem. Seriously, how can I run a blog when you won't conform to the two-dimensional caricatures laid out for you by reputable news organizations like AP? What am I supposed to do now? Hey, I know! I'll fashion a career attacking lazy-ass journalism, authored by reporters who've written the nut-graph and headline before they've even picked up the phone. I don't even have to do any excoriating! These guys parody themselves! Oh man, Thug Passion all around! Naming parks after Klan foundersPublius on Tennessee's Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park:
December 14, 2008NFL Open ThreadSorry this is late. Ravens looking good.Not optimistic about my Boys tonight. I was listening to Martellius Bennett yesterday talk about the game. Not encouraging. David Gregory talks really, really fastSlow down son, you're killin em...Man, you can really see the difference between cable and network. It was his first time out. I'm sure he'll get better. He seemed...off and contentious in places, where you don't really need to be and in ways that can't really help ("And who is the governor??") December 12, 2008Thought for the dayMoments ago, I finished Bacevich's The Limits of Power. It's a great book that's left me wondering what I think about a lot of things--Obama, oil policy and humanitarian intervention. I don't know how to say this, but my instincts now tell me that it's a lot easier to condemn folks for not intervening in Rwanda, then to grapple with having to put a country back together again. I am not saying it was right to not intervene. Yet. I'm not prepared to go there. But if I'm going to do the thought experiment with the herioic rescue and Holocaust averted, I want to follow it all the way through.Most importantly though, this book just made me buy another book--Niebuhr's The Irony of American History. I feel ignorant admitting this, but I wasn't up on Niebuhr until a couple years ago. That's what the fuck I get for dropping out. UPDATE: Here's a link to a good Bill Moyers interview with Bacevich. Because It's Friday...Comments open guys on Sweet Ruin.Colin Powell shouts out the Boogie DownThis is just great...A bad time for the Empire, and other NFL talkThe worst, it seems, has come to pass:As the preseason Super Bowl favorites struggle in the final month of the season to simply make the playoffs, wide receiver Terrell Owens has expressed resentment toward Tony Romo, apparently jealous of the quarterback's relationship with tight end Jason Witten. Owens thinks Romo and Witten -- close friends and road roommates who came to Dallas in the same offseason -- hold private meetings and create plays without including Owens, according to a source who speaks regularly with Owens' teammates. Owens believes these discussions have worked to his detriment and Romo seeks to deliver the ball to Witten regardless of whether Owens is open.Sensitive thugs, ya'll all need hugs. Ed Werder is a pretty good reporter, so I'm pretty sure this is real. What a time to be a Cowboys fan. Anyway, what's everyone else looking at this weekend? And, just as I sidenote, I love Deacon Jones. A quick rantHere is an unfriendly reminder about thread-jacking. Don't do it. If you're unhappy with the selection of topics--send me an e-mail and suggest something you want to hear about. I will do my best to work it in.Rudeness is probably my greatest pet peeve, and the internet doesn't change that. The thread-jacker is a man who comes to the Christmas party dressed as the Easter Bunny, and then demands that everyone else dress as the Easter Bunny too. For the 99 percent, who've never even considered thread-jacking, I apologize for this rant. I reserve the right, every once in a while, to be an asshole myself. Because It's Friday...You guys know the drill. Tony Hoagland's lovely "Sweet Ruin" after the jump. Comments open in the afternoon.Pragmatism and evilChris Hayes offers up a must-read analysis of the Obama apparatchiks, the media stenographers, and acolytes of perceived wisdom who claim pragmatism has won out over ideology:...through a kind of collective category error, they have alighted on a far more general moral to the story: ideology, in any form, is dangerous. "Obama's victory does not signal a shift in ideology in this country," wrote Roger Simon in Politico. "It signals that the American public has grown weary of ideologies." No less an ideologue than Pat Buchanan has come to this same understanding: "If there is a one root cause to the Bush failures," he wrote, "it has been his fatal embrace of ideology."It's funny how that works. I can remember in 2003 when the anti-war nutty left was mobilizing against the war, and people like Wolfowitz were seen as the adults. And yet the lesson isn't that Wolfowitz was a nut--but that the left is still nuts. People for get that there is pragmatic, if ultimately flawed, case for torture. Anyway, the piece gradually picks up steam when Hayes puts pragmatism in historical perspective and looks at Obama in relation to his hero:
No one should ever, ever forget that Lincoln said that. Not because it makes him a bad president, but because points to the limits of naked untempered, pragmatism. Indeed the history of black people in this country offers evidence that pragmatism is, itself, just another ideology. Lincoln may well have been a great president, but on arguably the most vexing question facing this country, his record is mixed. He opposed slavery as an institution, but also opposed equality and voting rights for blacks. To my mind, his thoughts on race were pedestrian, ordinary, and unimpressive. He was, in a word, pragmatic. The true idealogue was Frederick Douglass--mostly because he really had no other choice, if he wanted to live free. Pragmatism doesn't allow you to physically resist slavery as Douglass did. Pragmatism doesn't tell you to flee North. It's principle--and what is ideology, but a core of unmoving principles--that made Douglass an abolitionist. It's principle that told Douglass he had the right to love whoever he wanted. Meanwhile pragmatism gave us one the most cowardly and shameful acts in this country's history--the retreat out of the South, which left blacks at the mercy of a thugocracy. As Hayes, reminds us, we should be skeptical of those who make a fetish of pragmatism. The scariest thing, to me, about Barack Obama's cabinet is that many of the people who are saluting him, the ones celebrating his "pragmatism" and alleged rejection of the nutty left, are the same people who were dead wrong about the greatest foreign policy question of our era. That's just a feeling, But it's the reason why I get so vexed over reporters parroting the talking points of any administration. Our job is to think, to question--not to babble on about the latest cute handle Obama has awarded to his cabinet. I think this is it for Jr.At least for now. McCain came back from Keating, so who knows. I don't know how much Jrr. knew. Hard to believe he was in the dark, and even if he was, he's responsible for people doing dirt in his name. Man, this one will hurt:As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois' next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned. Don't pump fake me now...December 11, 2008A spokesperson for a people, for a people without a spokespersonI have heard, and been moved, by your desire to be as stereotyped, dehumanized and generally strawmanned in the manner that this blog does white and black people. Why should only the blacks have a Lando Calrissian? Why should only the whites have a John Rich? Why should only the Asians have a...Oh. Wait..Anyway, my Hebros (as Goldberg would say), I have been moved. And given our common penchant for the bad end of history, I promise not to big foot you the way I did Whitey. Fuck the goyim (Wait, does that include me???) Anyway, nominations are now open. Lierberman? Silverman? Rahm the Space-Knight? Who shall lead you to the Promised Land? What if it is a lifestyle...Several people referred me to Huck on the Daily Show yesterday. Good stuff. But here's one thing that's been boggling my mind lately. The case for/against gay marriage is hung-up on this idea of choice--i.e. we should frown on gay marriage because it's a deviant lifestyle. Or we shouldn't frown on it because it isn't a lifestyle, it's a biological fact. This is where the comparisons with race come in. But I always hated this argument. Whenever people say, "You should not discriminate against people because they didn't chose to be black," I hear the mild tones of wild liberal condescension.Implicit in that logic is a kind of judgment, the notion that if I could choose, I obviously would choose to be white. But what if I just like being black? What if I could choose and would still choose black? Ditto for homosexuality. So what if you do choose to be gay? I understand that a lot of the science says you don't, but why do we accept this implicit idea that heterosexuality is, necessarily, what everyone would chose? I'm not trying to minimize the bias and trauma that must come from being out, but a basic extension of humanity, a belief that those who aren't like me actually are like me, says that to be gay has to be more than coping with living beneath the boot of the ignorant. It's always about more than getting your ass kicked, no? What if you actually love the "more than?" What if it is who you are and what you choose? Anyway, here's Huck... World of Warcraft is now allowing sex-changes...Yeah, they really are. I'm actually playing as a belf chick now, and a week ago, I would have gladly welcomed the chance to wear the pants again. But then something happened. The other day I was doing some PvP in Alterac Valley, when I got into it withe a fellow hordie who kept whining about paladins. It got pretty heated, to the point that I told him I wish I was till Alliance so I could come and kill him. Yeesh. He was prolly a 13 year old kid--at least judging by his response, which was "Get back in the kitchen. Hoes don't play Warcraft!"It then occurred to me that I, for the first time in my life, had been the target of a sexist remark. And then I started seeing the cool thing about playing a girl in an MMO, the chance to experience life through the eyes of someone else. You guys know me--I'm all about seeing the world in other ways. This is, of course, an imperfect experience--half the chicks running around in WoW are kids who want to watch the back-side of a draenei while the farm. Still--no one ever whistled at my human priest, I just wish that I could have dueled that kid. I would have sonned his ass. Or daughtered him. Whatever. Anyway, this just gives me an excuse to rock that old Xzibit joint. Your flow remind me of a blogger that I just don't feel\Same style and delivery, might as well have his grill...Please avoid if you don't like profanity. Things I should have brought to your attention yesterday...Or the day before. Anyway Chris Bowers was rather shocked to find himself used as key evidence for progressive disgruntlement with Obama:That so many news organizations would quote me and identify me as representative of a certain viewpoint without even bothering to contact me doesn't make it difficult to see that I am being stereotyped and used. If you are a "reporter," and you are quoting me--in a forum where I can't possibly respond--but not actually bothering to contact me, then you don't actually care about my thoughts on Obama's personnel decisions so far. Even though those view happen to be quite detailed and mixed, they don't care. Instead, two quotes I wrote, out of about 60,000 words I have published since the election, have been constantly recycled used to fit their established narrative. What I actually think, be damned.This is basically the result of bogus-ass "trend journalism" where you connect the dots between three places and yell "Ah-Ha!" Don't know how much shit I can talk. For the year and half I was at TIME, this is exactly what I did. Anyway, it's a weak, weak formula. That said, I'm not sure Bowers was so much stereotyped and used, as he was made to symbolize some vague amalgam known as the "leftie blogesphere." I assume that includes everyone from OpenLeft to TalkLeft to Jack & Jill to Matt Yglesias to, well, me. But all of us don't feel the same about the transition. Some of us think it's fine. Others are cautious. Still others are deeply troubled. And this is as it should be. I don't mind the scrutiny over Obama's appointments. I just disagree with a lot of it. Obama presser live...Especially the blacks and the Jews...Adam, who walks in all worlds, responds to yesterdays comparison between black and Jewish women:Blasphemy. I went through a Scarlett phase, but Rachel Weisz melts faces. And Megan Good is, well, Megan Good. That said, Saw V? Come on girl... The man who dropped dimeLooks like it wasn't Rahm the Space-Knight. Sorry I've been dying to call him that:
PTI guys on Clinton Portis v Jim ZornOne thing about Wilbon and Kornheiser as opposed to all the arguing asshats on sports TV, is these guys actually have chemistry. They worked together for years, and word is their TV shtick is actually based on how they acted in the newsroom. I guess. They always came across as more real to me then, say, that sports show where they give you "points" for being right. Give me a break.December 10, 2008JJ Jr.'s presserHere it is folks. Thoughts in a sec.Mike Huckabee scares me...A lot more than Bobby Jindal. That's mostly because I've seen more of Huckabee. Dig this interview on Talk of the Nation. I disagree with Huckabee on just about everything. But he is the sort of dude, as I've said before, that (if he weren't running against Obama) would get a solid third of the black vote. That obviously won't be the case in 2012, but still Huckabee has a lot of cross-over appeal. He makes the same pitch as most religious conservatives, but without the mean and without the sarcasm. That doesn't quite get it. I need to think more. But the guy fucking scares me.Dig this clip below where he discusses Blago and Obama. His style is, I must say, very Obama-like in this limited sense: Obama is a master at taking progressive stands, renaming them, and pushing the point forward. I remember after Katrina someone asked him if he thought Bush's response was racist. Obama smartly ducked arguing the failure was colorblind, but then pushed the case forward against Bush. The "Bush is racist" line was a loser, and the sort of thing you say when you're talking to people who already have your back. Much the same way, Hannity tries to push Huckabee to question Obama's motives in dealing with Blago. But Hannity's point is--as always--stupid and small-minded. Huckabee loses nothing by refusing to take it up. If anything, he probably gains some credibility. Think about Huckabee's answer on Wright. I think he has a good instinct for when to swing and when to duck. I study white people, I'm writing a paper on you...Here's how it's done. That's how all my commenters are, "Get away from my cart nigger, what are you looking at..." Suprise motherfuckers, you didn't know I knew about cucumbers...Racist Obama rap song..Cats are claiming this is K-Fed. I have my doubts. Anyway, I guess this is supposed to be a joke. It's pretty offensive, though--not because it's racist, but because it just isn't that funny. Jesus dude. At least hire someone to write your lyrics. Or your jokes. Or both.UPDATE: Sorry guys. Try now. There will always be booksBecause they can't electrocute you in the bath-tub. Seriously, like Matt, I own a Kindle. The thing just doesn't give the same sense of accomplishment and closure. It's like running a marathon--but on a treadmill. It just ain't right man.I'm sorry Ms. JacksonDumb, dumb and dumb. I know there's no proof that he offered him loot. But goddamn. He must have known how greasy this dude was. I really like Jesse too. Watch the video after the link. At least he's talking and not ducking behind lawyers.UPDATE: I still hope it isn't him. UPDATE #2: Thanks to Tammy for the link. That e-mail me sign is there for a reason. UPDATE #3: I think this comment, below, sums up my feelings: That's just the thing. Someone like Jackson should have known Blago was radioactive. Hell, I knew just from reading the blogs and I live on the East Coast. For someone in Ill. Democratic political circles not to know it is just as astounding as Blago's conduct.He should have kept his distance. Given the image of his father--rightly or wrongly--he should have stayed away from the dude. It sure seems like Valerie Jarrett knew the time... Flipping the script on raceA good start:"The biggest challenges we face right now in improving race relations have to do with the universal concerns of Americans across color lines," [Obama] said. "If we are creating jobs throughout this economy, then African-Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately unemployed, are going to be swept up in that rising tide."The thing that I find so appealing about Obama on race is he spins the thing forward--he talks about it in a way that enrolls everyone in the sort of progressive agenda that will ultimately help black and brown people. It's rhetoric, I know, but it's important. The worst thing to happen to this ongoing conversation around race is the creation of a kind of zero-sum thinking. We debate over whether Affirmative Action takes jobs from hard-working whites. We argue over whether welfare allows lazy black women to leach off the system, or if lax crime policy leads to the rise of young superpredators. Progressives need to stop fighting on their enemies' terrain. We need a paradigm that pitches our policies as in the self interest of all Americans. We have to start thinking of our drug laws as bad--not for black America--but for America. It may be true that the justice system is racist, but why are we fighting that battle? The bigger question is does it work? Are we comfortable being a world-leader in incarceration? How do we, as a country, want to allocate our resources. It can't be a matter of helping out the blacks--noble as that may be. I get the appeal toward social justice, and history. I just think it's a nonstarter. We have to argue from the perspective of patriotic self-interest, of doing what we need to do to compete in the world. Another one of those uncomfortable "interracial" postsMeh, I'll talk about anything. You guys know that, but this post involves two potentially embarrassing situations. First, I must preface this conversation by saying that from time to time (hourly) I google myself. That's right I said it. I'm obsessed with how the blogesphere sees me. And I don't care who knows it.That admission leads us to another issue. While googling myself this morning (Why does it feel like I just wrote "While downloading pr0n this morning...") I came across this riff on something I said a few weeks back: Black women who oppose interacial dating have different reasons than most. I think it's closer to the manner in which some Jewish women must hate the idea of a Shiksa. But even that doesn't quite get it. The opposition comes out of a specific, and yet broad, historical experience of never being held up as anyone's flower of virtuosity, but instead as un-feminine and oversexed.Phoebe over at the aptly named, Whatwouldphoebedo offers this response: I'd have to disagree with Coates and say that his comparison does "get it." Jewish women can look to a "specific, and yet broad historical experience" that's unpleasant from all angles. Jewish women have been stereotyped as whores (by 19th century European Christian men) and as prudes (by 20th century American Jewish men). Historically, oppression of Jews has led to rape of Jewish women, as has oppression of blacks led to the equivalent situation. And of course, as Coates implies, things look better for exogamy-friendly black and Jewish men than for their female counterparts.You know I pulled back on that thing about Shiksas because I frankly was out of my league. But like a lot of things about Jewish cats (Zionism/black nationalism, Kwaanza/Hanukkah, Sell-out/Self-loathing Jew etc.) the notion sounded really, really familiar. I got quite a bit of e-mail response to on the subject, some of it implying that "shiksa" wasn't the kindest of words:
Frankly folks, I'm out of my league here. I want to hear more. Is there any resonance between how black women and Jewish women see themselves? Does any of that extend to inter-ethnic dating? Which reminds. We have a spokesperson for the Whites and for the blacks. We really need one for the Jews. I think Joe Leiberman works. From the department of laying down with dogs...Honestly who didn't see this coming:Joe Wurzelbacher lashed out Tuesday at former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, the man who made Wurzelbacher famous as "Joe the Plumber."Wow. This is as a good a time as any to remind people of how "Joe" acted when the actual opposition was right there. Whatever happened to the business anyway... UPDATE: H/T to the CAP folks for the original link Blago, Blago, BlagoComplaint is here. Fascinating reading.Patrick points out the insanity of Blago thinking he was going to run for prez. Dickerson is unsatisfied with Obama's response. I'm cutting slack. For now. I'd hope these guys would be more explicit later, though.December 9, 2008I really hope it isn't Jr.I mean seriously, I really hope Marc is wrong...Can we watch Voltron now?My kid just said that to me. We're watching the pilot on Netflix, where the break the orgin story into parts. He says the way they stop in the middle makes you wonder what's gonna happen. This is ill. I can remember feeling the same way, coming home after school and rushing to the TV. And then wondering what would happen next. Also. I never noticed that Voltron hits the B-Boy Stance. The kid don't like the Sprite joints though...UPDATE: The Black Lion shoulda been Rakim. Start your own blogThat's what long time commenter KevDog did. More than a few of you need to follow. Seriously, you guys always have something smart to say. You should put that gift to use.About that Blago/Obama connect...Here's the right governor speaking of Obama, who is, evidently, made of win:He also appears to think little of the president-elect, whom he calls a "motherf***er" at one point. In the words of Avon Barksdale, Governor, they seent your ghetto-ass coming from a mile away. I wonder if this is why Valerie Jarrett pulled out. I swear the last year has been one big blaxploitation flick. Without the guns. And without the white girls... Warcraft vs. Your Girlfriendroflcopter:
Gubernatorial FailOh man this goes down into the annals of corruption:Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday morning on corruption charges, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder. Incredible. Blagojevich was already under investigation. And then he tries to sell Obama's Senate seat? I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. This dude tried to auction the Senate seat of the President-Elect of the United States. Wow. They haven't even invented a machine that can calculate the Fail Factor here. I do believe we have gone to Interstellar Fail. Intergalactic, perhaps. Again with the cucumber sandwiches...From Fighting Words:Can we stop with the "cucumber sandwiches" bit? I have never had a cucumber sandwich, and I don't know anyone who has.From KarenZ:
From DougEMI: White people, I have heard your message loud and clear. This blog has been insensitive and inconsiderate. In as much as it dismisses the lighter races as Coldplay-listening, cucumber sandwich-eating dilettantes, this blog has been grossly unfair. For nearly 400 days, it has repeatedly subjected whites to some of the worst verbal oppression every experienced in all the history of internets. We have held up the beauty of obscure figures like Nia Long and Nona Gaye, while ignoring Nicole Kidman. We have marveled at the artistry of MF Doom, while offering nary a mention of Eminem. We have tried to see the world from the perspective of black homophobes, while offering no quarter to white homophobes. Why are their so many Chris Rock jokes?? What about Seinfeld?? What does it matter the color of a homophobe. Are they not all worthy of quarter?? Now is the time to free white people from the shackles of the neo-colonial, fascist, Gestapo black blogesphere. I dedicate the rest of my life, and the rest of this blogs life, toward ending Black Skin Privilege, toward bringing the races together, toward harmony, and fried chicken and congac for everyone. Black Supremacy is the enemy. Say it with me white folks, "You are. Somebody." And now for a word from your spokesman... Goeffrey Canada on the Colbert ReportGood stuff. Almost as good as Paul Tough's great book. Canada was a little stiff, though. I wonder if his PR people over-prepped him.He's Black. Get over it.Biracial black dude Adam Serwer claps back at that silly Marie Arana item from a few weeks back:That last point can not be banged on hard enough. In the arena of racial progress, I know of only a few more destructive forces, than the black pathology disciples, the coterie of writers, editors, scholars and pundits who see black folks mainly as pure-bred descendants of slaves, and the worse end of a gaggle of socio-economic data. This isn't a left-right deal. The theory of the black automaton programmed simply by oppression, on the left, or dysfunctional culture, on the right, leaves no room for Rakim, for Zora Neal Hurston, for my woman's clear, beautiful skin, for actual humanity. This is why neither lefties nor righties can get a handle on this blacks and gay marriage thing. Instead of asking how groups who've been oppressed have traditionally behaved toward other groups under duress, they posit a black version of the madonna/whore complex, in which blacks are supposed to be this font of American liberalism, and are ripped when we don't live up to that standard. It's a trip. This country was built by white people fleeing oppression. Yet to hear these fools tell it, you'd think that experience stopped them from slaughtering the Indians and enslaving blacks. And therein is the ultimate upshot of reducing black humanity--it ultimately reduces white humanity. It pretends that whites are always perfectly rational, and that their interactions with race aren't complicated and contradictory. Dig's Arana implicit proposition, for instance, that there is some pure strain monoracial strain of black--or even white--and how it basically eradicates one of the great unspoken crimes of slavery and Jim Crow--the widespread rape of black women. Once you understand your own fraility, your own contradictory nature, once you understand (to take it back to Baraka) that you yourself are beautiful though you "sometimes fail to walk the air," once you get your own flawed genius, you'll understand ours. Because in the end, there is no fundamental difference. The Curse of Doug FlutieUPDATE: Oh yeah, consider this your NFL Open Thread.This seems as good a time as ever to bring up the doom that follows Wade Phillips wherever he goes. I'm not talking 3-13 doom, but that agonizing 12-4 lose in the playoffs because of a penalty doom. The 3-13 team knows it sucks, and has adjusted to this fact. The 12-4 team actually has a shot at the crown, and instead shoots itself in the foot. Phillips--who allowed several of his star players, last week, to skip practice right before the biggest game of the season--forever carries rain clouds over his head--with lightning striking us hapless fans: The only flakes floating around football today are the folks who no longer believe in the Curse of Doug Flutie. The Curse is alive and well and stronger than ever, casting its web of defeat around anyone who employs the architect of the Curse, Wade Phillips, and rewarding those teams that free itself of his shackles of ignorance.Word is that the Curse began when Phillips inexplicably benched Doug Flutie before the first round of playoffs. The two videos below will tell you how that ended: San Diego employed Phillips from 2004 to 2006 - a period during which the Chargers failed to win a playoff game and suffered two humiliating postseason losses at home to inferior foes. In the 2004 wildcard playoffs, Chargers kicker Nick Kaeding missed an easy 39-yard field goal in overtime, allowing the underdog Jets to pull out a shocking 20-17 victory in San Diego. Last year, the Chargers were 14-2, the AFC's No. 1 seed and undefeated at home when they suffered an improbable 24-21 loss to a 12-4 New England team that did everything in its power to lose (including three picks thrown by Tom Brady) but somehow came out on the winning end.Of course there is another possibility--Wade just isn't a great head coach. Marty, as much as I love him, was losing big games long before Wade came on board. Eyal if you're out there, I'm sorry for putting you through this again. One last non-storySusan Rice and Hillary Clinton may not like each other. How do we know this? Because of on the record quotes? Because of off the record quotes? Because of past problems? Nope. Because Rice wants her own transition team at State. Also, they visited the State Department at separate times. Oh, the horror...No more of that today guys. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of Wade Phillips-bashing, World of Warcraft, the angry left, Joss Whedon and black folks... Billy Dee Williams says, "Step away from the minister..."We are now tracking how many Sundays Obama attends church. No, seriously:President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.Here's Judis on this alarming trend: This is the kind of reporting one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network, whose editors and reporters presumably view less than weekly religious observance as an offense against God, and as a sign of moral depravity in a public official, but why is this presumably secular publication making such a big deal about it? I regard as an invasion of Obama's privacy.Or at least just incredibly, incredibly trivial. I get that these guys, in the wake of Wright, are waiting to see what sort of church Obama will join. But, come on... UPDATE: Here's Ben Smith responding to Judis: If nothing else, the tone of the responses reflect how defensive the left still is on faith. The Media Matters post was four times longer than my item, and I don't really think that a single story and a blog item constitute "such a big deal."Of course that isn't really a defense, as much as it's ad hominem. The item was, essentially, gossip. Forgive folks for expecting a little more. December 8, 2008I've lost interest......in this left versus Obama scrap. I don't quite know why. It just doesn't feel like they're fighting over much. Anyway, if you're still watching this sort of thing. Here's Obama guy Steve Hildebrand addressing some of the criticism. Here's David Sirota responding. And here's a meh article from Politico. The whole thing is starting to feel petty.UPDATE: Thinking on it some, and reading some of the stuff over at Open Left, I agree with a lot of what's been said here. "Left" is such a weak-ass, vague term. I have no idea what Hildebrand was trying to accomplish. It seems incomprehensible that he would do this without any communication with the Obama people, but TPM says they think that's what happened. His piece just seems like a march of the strawmen. If he wanted to go ofter Open Left, he should have done it. That said, I'm not enthralled by what I'm reading over at Open Left either. I can't find a single discernible, actual issue that these guys are fighting over. Again, I have no fucking idea why Hildebrand thought he was helping anyone, anywhere--except maybe Chris Matthews, and lazy-ass journalists looking to fill the blanks for their formulaic stories. Hildebrand's interview with TPM is a flagon of weaksauce. But, again, all of this just feels petty. Fear of a broke planetDavid Carr on the bad news:
I guess this means no play-dates, huh Rod?I don't know much about the Jonas Brothers. My son really likes them, and I probably should spend some time listening to their music. I'm pretty sure I won't like them, but who can really tell? Since I don't know much about the Jonas Brothers, and I don't really listen to the Jonas Brothers, I generally try not to blog about the Jonas Brothers. There is a good reason for not writing about things you don't know. You run the risk of writing something like this: As for me, I don't care what color you are, if you're a kid who listens to hip-hop, I don't want my kids playing with you. I want my kids to have consciences that find hip-hop's lyrical content and themes repulsive. Which is to say, I want my kids to have a strong and uncompromising sense of character.Rod Dreher has been very complimentary of me in the past. I appreciate this, because we live on two different sides of ideological divide and also because I find his blog to be an interesting read, and generally absent to the sort of sweeping, absolutist, all-encompassing rhetoric that is evident in the above quote. I don't really know how to address the implicit charge that kids who listen to hip-hop don't have a "strong and uncompromising sense of character," since, uhm, I was one of those kids, and presently, my son--and basically every kid he knows--is one of those kids. You guys know me well. I'm an old-head who has only a tangential connection to what is considered hip-hop today. There is no Akon on my Ipod. I haven't bought a Jay-Z joint since The Black Album. I missed large swaths of Cam'Ron's career. I'm old, and I accept that. I'm also bitter. I believe that hip-hop's once great literary promise basically hit a ceiling circa 1996. Moreover, as art-form, hip-hop's machismo has plagued it from jump, crippling it's ability to deal with the opposite sex with any real sense of maturity. I have no desire to hear about ejaculating on a woman's back. But I was 12 when Ice-T recorded "Girls, Let's Get Butt Naked And Fuck," and I hated that too. But I don't know what I would be had I never heard The Low End Theory or By All Means Necessary. I came up in the Crack Age--and in those days, the loudest, most relevant, most coherent voices against drugs and violence didn't emanate from Washington, or from the Universities, or from the NAACP, but from the street. When Chuck told us to "build ourselves with intellect," when he went Booker T. Washington, and instructed us "to evolve to self-respect\cause we gotta keep ourselves in check," it changed my life. As a conservative, I'd think Rod would appreciate that critique. That was twenty years ago. These days hip-hop has so infused itself into American culture, that you would have to go to the moon to not listen to it in some respect. Rod is riffing off of Stanley Crouch column which breaks new ground in Crouch's infinite quest to be completely incomprehensible. The column lays out hope that Obama will lead black people away from the pernicious influence of hip-hop. This despite the fact that Obama listens to hip-hop and had Nas campaigning for him. I hear the president elect rocks a little Jay-Z, but truthfully, he doesn't even have to go there. These days there are white rappers, black rappers, French rappers, gospel rappers, Republican operative rappers, cowboy rappers, Ivy League intellectual rappers, and even snobbish Jazz trumpet rappers. We've had rappers who sound like John Wayne. And rappers who sound like Barack Obama. We have characters in High School Musical who are in love with breaking and hip-hop. And soon, it seems, even the Jonas Brothers will be doing hip-hop. Which means, Rod wouldn't want his kids playing with Barack Obama's kids. Fine by me. More time and space, for me to work on that arranged marriage for Samori and Sasha. In the meanwhile, I'm off to cop that A Little Bit Longer joint. Maybe there's something to these Jonas kids... Symbols matter![]() They don't work on a big broad policy level, but you really never know how any one thing is going to strike different people. Some folks think Hip-Hop is largely responsible for the plight of black America. But when I heard Ice Cube's "Color Blind," Melle Mell's "Beat Street" or say, Nas's "One Love," I knew what I wanted to be. I have spent my adult life trying to fulfill that childhood fantasy. We never know what is going to hit who, and how it's going to hit them. But, knowing people pretty well, and knowing brothers even better, I have to believe this will hit a lot of young black boys--like the ones in that picture--in the right way. I missed this......thanks for heads up from Sarah. The end is the most brutal--the ambusher is ambushed.Video games and tortureThere's an interesting debate going on right now about World of Warcraft and the implications of torture. The spark seems to be Richard Bartle's (kind of the godfather of WoW and really all MMOs, such as EQ, Ultima, Warhammer online etc.) complaint about several quests in the new WoW expansion which basically require your toon to torture people:...Now while this means that WotLK is not yet torture for me, there is some torture involved. Specifically, this quest. Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks...Broken Toys retorts: Hmm, well a minor political issue--but a major narrative one. It's fine to note that WoW's whole point is virtual mass murder--much of it without a point. But that isn't actually a counter-argument, as much as its a change of subject. One of the least enjoyable aspects of WoW is the repetive (kill x number of these) aspect of the game, because the "killing" has no real meaning, often. Comparing one problematic feature with another, doesn't exonerate the first. But that's a core issue, that's hard to remedy. Torture isn't a core issue, and could have been dealt with better. [MORE] The case against Eric ShinsekiOne of Fallows's loyal readers does the knowledge:From everything I've heard, Eric Shinseki is an admirable and decent man and deserves commendation for his service aside from having been visionary about stabilizing postwar Iraq. In all seriousness, here's James noting Shinseki's behavior after the Rumsfeld smackdown: Here's one other point that is not as widely known as Rumfeld's and Wolfowitz's bullying of Shinseki: Despite being unfairly treated, despite being 100% vindicated by subsequent events, Shinseki kept his grievances entirely to himself. Although my book contains accounts of Shinseki's inside arguents with Rumsfeld et al, and his discussions with his own staff, zero of that information came from Shinseki. Hope all is well, kiss the plantiff and the wifey...Hertzberg knuckles up with O'Reilly. I will never understand how a guy like O'Reilly, who has one of the biggest bully pulpits in media, could be so sensitive. One interesting thing about Bill, and other conservatives, is they almost seem to crave the approval of the elite "Upper West Side/Georgetown cocktail party crew" they denounce. I don't much understand how O'Reilly took such offense--I heard jibes worse than this back in seventh grade, watching two kids crack on each other. I think Jay said it best--"Sensitive thugs\Ya'll all need hugs."P.S. A month or two ago someone noted that unless you were writing a chapter in Black Studies reader, using the term "the dozens" was expressly forbidden. They were right. P.P.S. About this entry title.., December 7, 2008NFL Open ThreadThe Cowboys must win today. I shouldn't say that given what happened with the Giants last year. Still we need this one.UPDATE: G-Men go down. I think that means more for the Eagles than the Giants. Keeps the Eagles in the hunt. Giants should be fine. I'd be more worried about no Plax down the stretch. Shinseki to Vet. AffairsThe politics and poetry of this move are stunning. Again, this seems to be about competency--or at least projecting the idea of competency. That said, besides reading a couple features, I don't know much about Shinseki. I have no idea what this means, in terms of policy.December 6, 2008Read this story...Not that anyone else should care, but it really isn't a good time to be a writer interested in the long-form. Publishers are cutting people, magazines are cutting people, and people of my age, who came in dreaming of Gay Talese, are falling down. I got laid-off from TIME two years ago, and from what I hear these days, I was lucky. Forgive the melodrama, it's just what I love. And often enough to keep me going, I'm reminded why.Here is David Samuels lovely, lovely piece on UFC fighter Rampage Jackson. Most profiles are quasi-surveys, broad maps of a persons life. They proceed rather boringly from lede to nut graff to kicker. You get to see the person do something meaningless, like pick up their kids from school. You get the writer waxing endlessly about the subject's sex appeal--like you needed someone to tell you that Joy Bryant is hot. And then you get some associate telling you how much the person has been underestimated. There's a lot of bad magazine writing out there, to which I have contribuited my plodding share. But this piece, actually unfolds before your eyes. It is a narrative in the truest sense, powered by a great writer:
Sorry for the lengthy quote. Read the piece. And then subscribe to the magazine. It's a beautiful thing these guys do. December 5, 2008And because it's FridayComments open on Ka'Ba. Also since we had nothing last week let's throw this out there from when Baraka was Leroi Jones:Goddamn--"the broad-edged silly music." Awesome. Out in the streets, they call it murderSpoliers about the Spiderman comic-book are coming...So I just finished reading the Amazing Spiderman Annual where Jackpot's ID is revealed. For those who haven't been keeping up, Jackpot is this superhero who looks like Mary Jane Watson. Anyway, she dies at the end. I didn't have any particular love for Jackpot--though that's a great name--but it got me to wondering about how easily characters are killed off in the comics. I don't watch enough TV to make an accurate judgment, but I sense the same thing is going on there. I don't have a problem with death, but if it's a character the writer has invested some energy in, it feels like it should have some place in the narrative. It just felt like they killed her because they didn't know how else to end the story. Comics have always had a lot of death--and resurrection. But it seems like there's a lot more of it today. Am I wrong? Was it like this in the 80s too? This is real talkThis summer, blogger Brian Beutler was shot. Brian is well-known amongst the DC-based blogging community. I'm in New York, and didn't know him, but I read about what happened at Megan's, Matt's and a couple other blogs. I wrote this in response, basically trying to understand white fear of black crime. As it turns out, Brian was a bad fit for the post, but it still led to the following bloggingheads, which was very enlightening for me.As always, if you're here to simply flog some shit you already think, have thought for five years, and will probably think five years from now, do yourself a favor and have a shot of Jack before you comment. Let's not rehash the 90s. Again. Because It's Friday...You know the drill gang. Here's something different. Amiri Baraka's Ka'Ba.A closed window looks downComments will open this afternoon Why botherI spent some time yesterday thinking about this post and the response, which I think on the whole, can be summed up as follows--"Nigger, what?" I guess I now have to explain that I don't mean nigger in the sense of an old Southern racist, but the way Kenyatta might look at me after I attempted to make an argument for polygamy. I guess I also have to add that I've never made an argument for polygamy. Everything on the internets must be explained down to every painstaking detail, less people think the Atlantic has hired a Klansman to blog. Or a polygamist.[MORE] December 4, 2008Water breakGetting hot in here. Man listen, I just wanna see Mike hit that lean shit. I have no idea how cats were comparing his skills to Usher. Or even Hammer. Mike is king.UPDATE: Better still... UPDATE #2: This vid was sent to me by reader Dominic Bearfield. Thanks for looking out. Spoiler TestJust noticed someone was pissed about me revealing a plot point in The Wire. When is it safe to talk about a show in its entirety?Understanding the black anti-gay marriage sentimentUPDATE: I didn't think I had to do this, given how much I've been writing about this issue, but judging from comments I do. I obviously totally disagree with the comment itself. I've said as much many, many times. But just so no one is confused, I'm not defending the comment and the point isn't to justify homophobia. I'm digging for the root of the weed, so it can be yanked out. That doesn't mean I like weeds. Heh or even black people for that matter. Yes I know. That was just wrong.UPDATE #2: Bolded for emphasis. Hopefully it clarifies things some. UPDATE #3: Closing comments. This isn't going anywhere. Part of that is probably the tenor of my post. I don't know. I think, on this blog, the whole subject could use a lengthy time-out. I wanted to pull the following comment out because I think it says a lot. It comes from the Hank Johnson/John Lewis thread below: I have repeatedly argued against the whole "the blacks stabbed us in the back" narrative. Like buying a present because you want one in return, I find it narcissistic and dishonorable. But more than that I find that it is logic hinged on a kind of quasi-racism, which does not so much see black people as human, which does not see them as one my see the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the white Southerners, the evangelicals, but as one sees an android programmed by simply by two buttons labeled "Oppression" and "Righteousness." I shouldn't make this about race, because truly the same shit is at work with people who lampoon poor whites for voting "against their interest." Nevertheless, here is the thing. People who tend not to have actual conversations with black people, think that most black folks thing having kids out of wedlock is cool. Like we have rallies and shit celebrating the latest mother on welfare who's had her tenth kid. What they don't understand is the intense, intense shame and insecurity black people feel, a sense that history has robbed us--and that we now rob ourselves--of some essential part of the American Dream. That being the ability to marry someone and raise some kids, and then be around other people doing the same. Continue reading "Understanding the black anti-gay marriage sentiment" » The politics of The Wire (again)Here's Ross and Jonah Goldberg talking sensibly about The Wire. Goldberg makes a solid argument for a conservative reading of the show, though sentences like this strike me as sloppy:To the extent many liberals try to explain all of the problems of poor blacks on racism, the show was a powerful rebuttal. I just get nervous when I read absolutes like "all of the problems." Bloggers would make for poor screenwriters. Ross rightly notes that Simon is, essentially, a liberal. But the point I like, made by both of them, is The Wire generally avoided propaganda. It was so focused on story-telling, and digging deep into character. From Ross: t's a testament to the genius of the show that its depiction of Baltimore (and by extension, America) offers fodder for liberal, conservative, leftist and libertarian readings - much like reality itself! In this sense, The Wire is the rarest and most precious of beasts: A work of art that's intensely political but rarely devolves into agitprop.I thought this was less true in Season Five, when a clear ideology did emerge, but it wasn't left or right. The ideology was nihilism. Now, nihilism was always at work in The Wire, but at the end, I felt like it just became too much. It felt like a desire to show futility of systems became the author of plot, not character. I thought that the press angle was poorly done--and saying "Yeah well it's reporters who are objecting" is a weak, ad-hominem defense. I thought the serial killer turn--particularly the way Freeman embraced it--was hastily executed. I most disliked the ease with which Marlo took over the city's drug trade. I even hated the manner of Omar's death--not that he was killed by Kinard, but that he was basically brought back into the plot, simply to be killed. He really served no major plot point. It all felt deeply cynical. Anyway, before I throw this to comments, a bit of essential concern-trolling Let me apologize to the vast majority of my commenters, but experience has taught me to handle this in advance. I know there are certain readers here who nurse a visceral dislike for Goldberg and Douthat. That's fine. But I will delete any personal flames, which have nothing to do with The Wire, directed at either of them. "Suchandsuch is right-wing prick who has blood on his hands because of blahblahblah," may be entirely true. I guess it's not that I disagree. It's that, for purposes of this thread, I just don't care. There may be people who find such trenchant insight interesting to read. But I'm not one of them. Plus it's off topic. Carry on. The bogus "Clinton people" narrativeI wrote some pretty harsh things about the Clintons during the primary, most of which I stand by. But, I always thought it was true that there is a particular sort of political animal, whose habitat spans the political range, that is just utterly infuriated by the Clintons, and wants them to fall of the face of the earth. One way people vent their prejudice is they find the most polarizing member of a group, and they hurl all the worse sort of venom at them. So things a white guy might never say about blacks, in the form of Barack Obama, they say about Pacman Jones. And things a man would never say about, say...damn my analogy broke down--men will say fucked-up shit about any woman, in my experience.Anyway my point is that a particular brand of white male was utterly repelled by Hillary, and to an extenet Bill, in a manner which I never understood. I thought Ricky Ray Rector was slimy. I thought Sista Souljah was cowardly. I thought Hillary's inability to say "I was wrong" was an act of extraordinary political and moral weakness--the kind we'd just been treated to for eight years. That is possibly indefinsibly harsh. Maybe that would have been suicide for a woman. Maybe John Edwards had wiggle-room that she just didn't. Meh I'm rambling again. My real point is that I don't get people who are utterly incensed by the fact that many of Obama's appointments have ties to the Clintons. By that line of thinking, we should have been pissed that Susan Rice was always on television during the campaign. Hendrik Hertzberg brings us some historical perspective: MORE A good way to fight black homophobia......is to refer to black people as "the most homophobic racial group in America." Expect this to be about as effective as Barack Obama campaigning in the South and calling it "the most racist region of the country." It'd be true in the most reductive sense. Meanwhile the actual story on this isn't so reductive.Among the conclusions--58 percent of all Dems think it's acceptable to have a baby outside of marriage, but only 39 percent of black Dems think so. 51 percent of all Dems think abortion is morally acceptable, only 37 percent of black Dems think so. 64 percent of Dems think sex between unmarried is acceptable, but only 40 percent of blacks do. 57 percent of all Dems think the death penalty is morally acceptable. Only 47 percent of blacks agree. What are you seeing here? Here's a hint--76 percent of all black dems attend church weekly, as compared with only 50 percent of nonblack Dems. Black Dems are actually more church-going than Republicans. A zealous religiosity doesn't explain it all, but it explains a lot. More on that explanation later today. Now here's something interesting...By now, most of you have seen this story on Barack Obama's grandfather, which notes he was savagely tortured by British thugs during the fight for Kenyan independence:Brutal stuff. And yet the subhed for the story reads: The President-elect's relatives have told how the family was a victim of the Mau Mau revolt.Yes, yes. If those Kenyans hadn't decided to fight for self-rule, we wouldn't have had to torture them. Seriously, I'm sure it was a mistake. If a weird one. December 3, 2008Obama's drug czarDon't even know why we have a effin drug czar, but this bears watching. A recovering addict weights in.Brooklyn we go hard...I'm happier for Santogold than Jay--dunno if I'm feeling the flow. What do we think? Jay-Z on iLike - Get updates inside iTunes And while we're talking football...Skins fans need to chill. Seriously. The impulse to dump your QB because a few games went bad is one of the silliest in modern sports. The only thing that comes closer is the impulse to fire a coach for not winning the Super Bowl. People always complained about Marty Schottenheimer. But I don't know a single team--excepting the Skins--that was better off after he left.FoolishnessSomehow I missed the fact that the Interconference Fail that is Plaxico Burress is actually facing some hard jail-time:In what prosecutors called "a strong case," Burress faces a mandatory sentence of 3 ½ years in state prison, with a maximum of 15 years, on each count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Benjamin Brafman, Burress's lawyer, said Burress planned to plead not guilty to both counts.Man, I hate, hate, hate mandatory minimums. But if it's one area where I'm a conservative it's violent crime. I'd let all the drug dealers go free, if we could throw the encyclopedia at them when they reached for a gat. Gun-violence ruins communities. So I'm basically with John on this...I think. What if he had killed somebody? We have to punish rank stupidity don't we? On a lighter note, I don't want to hear a single Giant fan out there ever call TO a team-killer. You guys have lost all right to talk. Everybody wants somebody...The Congressional Black Caucus speaks on Prop 8Yglesias in the club throwing elbows...at Nate Silver:I liked reading 538.com during the election season as much as anyone, and still think it's an insightful site with a lot of interesting things to say. That said, I've been kind of surprised by the post-election surge of praise for Nate Silver. You would think, based on some of the commentary, that his innovative and complicated formula wound up giving us some incredible insight we couldn't have gotten from anywhere else.I call on Nate to do a YouTube and dis Matt. More blogger beef please. Black FridayOne interesting aspect of the regrettable trampling death in Long Island, is the willingness of media to deplore a culture of rank materialism--despite being purveyors of a culture of rank materialism. From my old friend and former boss David Carr:[MORE] December 2, 2008Talking fatherhood...againHere I am with Adam Gopnik talking about Obama's impact on fatherhood. This also give me a chance to once again link (here and here) to some debunking of that simplistic "70 percent out of wedlock" stat. Obviously I'm for more Dads being more active. But my real point here is that this idea that unmarried black women are somehow having more kids than they were, say, thirty or forty years ago is false. Again, my math is so-so. I welcome folks to debunk the debunker.Where I get off the "old-school hip-hop" trainBeen meaning to post about this since I saw it last week. I'm months late as usual. As I've said I'm old. Please don't throw stones. I just couldn't let the year end without commenting on 50-year old rapper/actor/millionaire (right?) Ice T telling a 17 year old kid to "eat a dick." Please watch the two videos below. I love Power, but it really is amazing to hear a guy whose contribution to the canon include the allusive "Girls Lets Get Butt Naked and Fuck" or the meditative "Cop-Killer," tell a 17-year old kid that he's ruining hip-hop. I actually thought Souljah Boy's rant was quite sensible.Seriously why all that beef shit is played. When you're like 18 yelling "The Bridge Is Over" it's cool. When you're 50, telling someone who could be your grandson, "Eat a dick," this thing has gone too far. I mean fools ain't even making songs anymore. It's just pettiness via YouTube. That said, there's something deep about the fact that Souljah Boy is just using his webcam, cutting Ice T with Wikipedia, while the OG is working the tripod and the played-out Iverson jersey. Dredging up primary dirt between Clinton and ObamaObama swatting away that reporter caught my eye too. In a word--weak-sauce. It's true that people say things they don't mean in elections in order to win--especially about their opponents. Obama isn't the first. But it's not wrong, it's not playing games, and it's not "having a little fun" to ask what's changed in terms of Obama's view of Clinton. There are a lot of ways to answer that question--but acting like it's unserious isn't a good look. White House reporters do a lot of stupid, inane crap. For my money, this didn't fall into that category.Drive-by in the day, then murder you in the dark...Once again, the dagger of venom, not the battle-axe of doom:Although President-elect Barack Obama's decision to keep Robert M. Gates at the helm of the Pentagon will provide a measure of continuity for a military fighting two wars, many of Gates's top deputies are expected to depart their jobs, according to senior defense and transition officials...The best punch is the one they never see. But don't say he's a black guy...Even in the most ghetto-ass, chitterling circuit, Booty Call/Soul Plane-ish flick, a black president's cabinet would not be a bunch of ex-ball players. And yet here we are...
What an amazing time. Fuck a team of rivals. A team of ballers, fool. No, seriously. We got next. UPDATE: And via TNR and Yglesias Napolitano has coached basketball. Dude, when this is all said and done, I want to see a game. More on JindalMegan replies to my take:Just to take an example that Ta-Nehisi uses, did Obama make some compromise on the Democratic Party's no-restrictions-on-abortion-at-any-time-no-shut-up-I-CAN'T-HEAR-YOU-LALALALALA platform? Because as far as I know, he's still toeing the party line there. And that's just about as extreme, as far from the average American's opinion on abortion, as Bobby Jindal's.She makes a few more good points in his post. She's also right that I've never seen Jindal in person. But I think it helps to revisit the original argument--that Bobby Jindal is the Republican Obama. Here is the top half of what I wrote: The thing about Obama that people, apparently, still don't get is that thus far he has proved himself a damn good politician. He is not simply the eloquent black dude who won--although he's that too. He's the dude who reinvented campaign fundraising, who pioneered the use of social networking, who won Virginia and North Carolina, who ended 50 plus 1.I've been pretty clear about my objection to hazy appeals to precedent, not out of any love for Obama, but because I think it's weak thinking. I don't like calling Obama the next Lincoln, anymore than I like calling Jindal the next Obama. Jindal is the Republican Obama if you think that Obama is just a "fish out water," dark-skinned politician. But if you're like me, and you were thinking about politics, you'd think that a Republican Obama would have to beat the powerbrokers of his own party. He'd have to revolutionize campaign fund raising. You'd think he'd have to basically flip Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin. The point here isn't that Obama is a superior politician to Jindal--much of what I just listed is about where we are in history. But that's precisely the point. Whatever grounds the 2012 campaign will be fought on, they almost certainly won't be the same as 2008. Not only do I not think think Jindal is the next Obama--which isn't the same as saying he won't be the next president--I don't think Obama running a decade ago would have been Obama. People are unique, and the moment in time in which they compete is unique. I don't reject all analogies and comparisons. But "the next soandso..." just strikes me as sloppy. But hey, I remember when Harold Miner was the next Jordan. And all the young bucks go, "Harold who?" UPDATE: Also this from Megan: And I'm sure that complacent Democrats dismissing him as a goober with a God complex suits his current plans just fine.Ah yes, "the underestimate me at your peril" defense. I can't shake the feeling that I've heard this before--and in very, very similar circumstances. But to the exact point., saying Jindal isn't the next Obama isn't anymore dismissive of Jindal, than it is dismissive of Obama to say he isn't the next Kennedy. My point isn't that Jindal is unworthy of competitive respect, if anything it's the opposite. Want to not be dismissive? Don't make him analogous to the latest smart, brown guy who's up at the moment. From Paul Dunbar to MF DoomMan I woke up this morning, and for some reason decided to rock that Doom/De La joint, which you can hear below. I love De La, and they did their thing, but my Lord, Doom just murders this joint. It's hard to even quote because he's ripping whole verses. But this...Been on this game as long you can wheelie your Schwinn...is not only pure poetry, it's telling my story. Listen, I'm a journalist because I can't MC. I spent many years as a kid trying and I was pretty awful. But if I had Doom's handle on beats and words, I would have wrote that. It's all so visual and so familiar--getting jumped when it was supposed to be a fair one, the embarrassment of busting your ass, constantly writing, the feeling--even after some success--of still owing bills. I think the most powerful line in that verse is "Dust off the mask, whoever laugh give em head up." Students of black lit will know what role masking has played in the black community since the days of Dunbar. Traditionally the idea has been to hide your true self from white people, for fear of racial violence. But what Doom does, and frankly what I tried to do in my memoir, is he flips the tradition. So there is the masking that protects you from white people--but the more familiar mask, the one that black boys wear every day, is the one that's designed to protect you from other black boys. Now, Doom is literally referring to the mask he wears when performing. But it also works as a literary device, as the embodiment of a pose that hides pain and but projects power ("he wears the mask just to cover the raw flesh\a rather ugly brother with flows that's gorgeous.") I don't know why that verse hit me this morning. It just did. December 1, 2008How did I miss this?Dr. Z had two strokes? Here's wishing him a quick recovery. I don't know about best football writer of our time. I'm partial to Len Pasquarelli.The ever crucial Fred Barnes seal of approvalObama couldn't function without it:Clinton, for all her shortcomings, doesn't hail from the surrender-at-all-costs wing of the Democratic party.Thanks Fred. Also it's nice to see some on the left and on the right joined in this notion that there is "center-right" in the Democratic party. I could even go with "the conservative wing" of the Democratic Party. But "center-right?" It's just stupid phraseology to paper over real differences. Who thinks Hillary Clinton would be Secretary of State if McCain had won? Again, my handle on economics is wobbly. But I'm pretty sure Tim Geithner isn't Phil Gramm. At once weird and yet oddly interestingThe Blastmaster on Fox News.NFL TalkUncular asks:However, I just gotta ask (not trying to hijack a post, but).....can we please talk about football? ;)Yes. Yes we can. The Giants are murdering fools. The Cowpolks are back in it--though I only believe our corners when Newman is playing, and I don't know what to say about Donovan McNabb. One week he's sucking up the joint, the next week he's the mad bomber. Anyway, in honor of the Giants dominance, I present this humble offering. The journey into white music continues...Hmm. So I've been playing the French Kicks nonstop this year. I'm a noob Fleetwood Mac fan (feel free to recommend your favorite album) and it's clear that the French Kicks are channeling some of that sound. Anyway, the point is I stumbled across their cover of Trouble this weekend. So I went back and found the original, which was done by some guy named Lindsey Buckingham? Who the fuck is that?? Heh, just joking white folk--though not really. I had to Wikipedia the dude to find out he was part of Fleetwood Mac. Yes, yes, the ignorance is indeed stunning. Anyway, all this is to say I think I like the French Kicks cover better. Maybe the goofy video, which you can see below, turned me off.Not the way to introduce Susan Rice...Intercontinental Fail.If we all had some Hil, up on Capitol Hill...I don't have much of a reaction to the story of the day. It'll be great if it works. It'll suck if it doesn't. Profound, no? Still I imagine folks want to talk about this. So here it is my people. Speak your piece.Barack Obama CRUSH Puny Malik Shabazz!!You're supposed to say that in the Solomon Grundy voice from the old Superfriends...Moving right along, Stanley Crouch thinks the most important thing about Al'Qaeda employing Malcolm X's house slave/field slave analogy, is that shows Obama has crushed Malcolm:
Unforgivably long!!! Misleading black people!! Other Militants!!! Meddling kids!!!! It may be true that "other militants" had nothing to do with Obama's win. It is certainly true that people who said Obama wasn't black (Stanley Crouch) had even less to do with Obama's win. But as Adam points out, what is literally and demonstrably false is Crouch's claim that Malcom X "had nothing to do with Obama's accomplishment. How do we know this? Because Barack Obama said it in his memoir:
If you are writing columns on the president-elect of the greatest power in world history, who happens to be black and you can't even bother to crack his memoir, than you are more than Leeroy Jenkins. You do not simply fail in epic manner, but more like Palin, Couric and "all of them," like M.C. Hammer hounded by creditors. You are Plaxico at the bar, shooting yourself with your own gun. And in so doing, you ascend to the 37th chamber--the chamber of intergalactic fail. All bow before the master. UPDATE: Put the link back to Crouch's article in there. UPDATE 2: Tessa makes an even better point. Crouch's contention that Malcolm's "ideas had nothing to do with the ultimate form of nonviolence-voting" is also factually wrong. Given Crouch's knowledge of that era, I'm tempted to call it a blatant lie. But we'll leave it that. Look there's a lot to criticize Malcolm for, especially in his early days with the Nation. Just like there's a lot to criticize MLK for--his womanizing repeatedly endangered the movement he was leading. All that I ask is that you stick to facts. As Tessa notes, in arguably his most famous speech, The Ballot or The Bullet, Malcolm very specifically addresses the black people and voting: They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house.Come on man. Be honest with the people. A bad sign for Bobby JindalOr maybe just political journalists:Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described conservatives received their first introduction to someone many prominent members of the GOP think could be the party's own version of Obama.You don't say. Obama was the next Kennedy. Then he became the next McGovern. Or was that the next Stevenson? Now he's the next FDR. And Jindal is the next him--because he's, you know, swarthy. The thing about Obama that people, apparently, still don't get is that thus far he has proved himself a damn good politician. He is not simply the eloquent black dude who won--although he's that too. He's the dude who reinvented campaign fundraising, who pioneered the use of social networking, who won Virginia and North Carolina, who ended 50 plus 1. Obama's also the dude who's turned universal healthcare, massive public works projects, and an office of urban policy into the machinations of a centrist or a center-right Democrat. But most importantly Obama opposes dogma. He is a progressive pragmatist trying to tackle issues by creating the broadest coalition possible. Jindal meanwhile.. ...social conservatives like what they have heard about the public and private Jindal: his steadfast opposition to abortion without exceptions; his disapproval of embryonic stem cell research; his and his wife Supriya's decision in 1997 to enter into a Louisiana covenant marriage that prohibits no-fault divorce in the state; and his decision in June to sign into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, a bill heartily supported by creationists that permits public school teachers to educate students about both the theory of "scientific design" and criticisms of Darwinian evolutionary concepts.So let's see we have, covenant marriages, outlawing abortions--no exceptions--creationism, and banning stem-cell research from the public sector. Sounds pragmatic to me and exactly the sort of issues to build a broad coalition around. Why not resurrect Terri Schiavo while we're at it. This dude isn't Barack Obama. He's George W. Bush--he's a more competent George Bush. |








The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood