Lots of backandforth on why there is so much horse-race coverage in the media. I think that the general sense that horse-race stuff is a little easier than mastering the math on, say, health-care is right. Moreover, journalists sometimes pull the objectivity stunt, not to honor their craft, but to avoid being tainted as bias. Still, I think Ezra is basically right:
This is the market getting more efficient. This is the market learning
how to deliver more of what people want (Sarah Palin) and less of what
they don't want (the difficulties of adjusting Medicare payment rates).
If policy stories begin swamping servers, people will hire more policy
reporters. But there's not much evidence of that happening. That's not
to say there's no room for substantive policy coverage. But the more
eyeballs matter, the less substantive coverage there'll be, and I don't
think it'll be the fault of reporters. A lot of the policy coverage
that happens right now exists not because the audience wants it, but
because the media decides they need it. As the market becomes
competitive, that type of reportorial paternalism will become less and
less viable.
Tough medicine. It's always more comforting to think that some all-powerful being (rich white men, the media, big business etc.) has brainwashed "The People." But when you start delving into this stuff, you realize that often those institutions are performing in the service of actual human beings, many of them not so rich, and not so powerful.
"The People" aren't noble. And they aren't evil, either. After dealing with my own writing, with my own family, and with my own person, I find it difficult to muster the energy to master the details of climate change. And I write for a living. But damn if I can barely keep my living room clean.
I thought about this last week while attempting to follow through on a promise to my family, to cook more. I grew up in household where my Dad cooked. My cornbread game is not to be slept on. But cooking right, and cleaning right is hard work, and takes a lot of time. There is a reason people go to McDonald's every night for dinner. Perhaps the reason isn't a good one, but it's not stupid or pathological.
Ditto with political coverage. The shouting heads exist for a reason--we invented them.
Via Andrew, here's Greenwald striking the perfect tone in response to the news that Dubya's daughter is going to be a reporter for NBC:
They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press
with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah
Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all
bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that
the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for
anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They
can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark
Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi,
and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of
self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can
provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that
matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from.
Meh, we're too busy focusing on issues. Like Black Panthers who steal elections...from black people. Or why William F. Buckley had "half a point" when he claimed that the "White community" in the South was "the advanced race." Seriously, move along. Nothing to see here.
Open Thread At Noon
The title is what it says. Please folks, if you have something you're dying to say, save it for here. We all think a Spiderman/Snow White crossover would be fascinating. But injecting it into a thread about race and gender, is like walking into a conversation, talking over everyone, and demanding they talk about what you want to talk about. Saying, "this is totally off-topic" doesn't make it better.
Sorry for the call-out. This has been happening a lot over the last week. From here on out, I'm going to just delete. I know it's only a virtual dinner-party. But I'm still a prick when it comes to manners. Even on the net.
No Black People On Seinfeld, Please
I think last night's Mad Men, again, made the case for how you talk about race on a show like that. You don't have Hollis and Hildie making out after work. You don't attempt to "address" race. You don't make speeches You make the world as believable as possible. It's not about the text, it's about the subtext--even when it seemingly isn't.
The most important part of that black-face scene, wasn't the scene itself, but the conversation between Don and the bartender. Don walks away, not so much disgusted at Sterling's racism, as at the whole pageantry and stupidity. But the conversation with the bartender, the sense of being outside, of not being able to use their bathrooms, is so black, and so black to me, of course, because it's so human. The scene between Peggy and her secretary, when she gets that the older woman is scared for her, was like watching Obama run for president. It was all of us talking to our parents.
I don't say this to take away from anyone. The class implications are clear and powerful, and I'm sure there are people on the web analyzing them. The gender implications, and the conversation between two generations, almost two styles of feminism (an ongoing conversation Peggy repeatedly has with older women,) is incredible and profound. And I'm sure people will weigh in on that too.
I don't racialize those moments to take away anything, but to say this--I am fucking sick of hearing about black people in the 60s. At least I am sick of hearing about in the way we discuss, like only Abraham Lincoln happened before Martin Luther King, like everyone marched on Washington, or grew an Afro. I am just tired.
I want to hear about white people, now. Not their mythologizing and blind glamor, and not their cynical, infantile backlashing against that blind glamor (No more whining about how much the suburbs suck, please.) I want to hear something humble about a world I can't even envision, because here is the thing: If you tell me about that world, if you tell me something I don't know, and tell me about it in all its lush beauty, and rank hypocrisy, I will see myself in you. You don't have to show me my pedigree. Just show me yours. Don't try to be "inclusive." Just try to be human. Just tell me a story.
Dick Cheney
I don't think I would have gone so hard at Chris Wallace, but Dick Cheney arguing that even agents who violated the Justice departments own guidelines on torture, the Bush administrations guidelines, says so much:
The former vice-president of the United States is here backing torture
techniques that even his own hack lawyers believed were illegal. He is
basically saying that the law had no salience or relevance in his
program of torturing prisoners. He is attacking the rule of law in its
entirety. Let that sink in: we had a vice-president who had contempt for the rule of law.
More than that you see that the Justice department's loose standard was really a sham. When the sham is exposed, you just disregard the whole enterprise and say we are bound by no laws--except the particular argument made at this particular moment.
Spoiler Warnings
This is the last one anyone will ever get on this site. If you aren't up to date on a show, don't read about it on this site. It's not my responsibility to guard your eyes. That said, there is a Mad Men post incoming. There will be most weeks, after the show. If you haven't seen it, don't read the post. It's that simple.
What Black Is...
UPDATE: The anecdote about Harvard is not supposed to be about today. It's supposed to be contemporaneous with the rest of the discussion about the origins of the stereotype--that being the first half of the 20th century or so. I understand that there are likely plenty of white Southerners at Harvard eating fried chicken today. More power to them.
I knew about watermelon, but I really need a scorecard to figure out what's southern and what's black.
This:
As a Southerner, I just have to
reiterate that most of the food that is stereotypically "black," just
seems Southern to me. I live in the midwest now, but whenever I go
home, I have to get me hands on some fried chicken, watermelon, Banana
pudding, collards, macaroni and cheese (homemade Southern Mac and
cheese is something specific) etc.
I used to think that food was just sort of "regular food" that you could buy at a diner or gas station. No more.
While I'm sharing my irrelevant observations, when the hell is the
rest of America going to figure out Barbecue? For God's sake. I didn't
think it was that complicated.
I'm not holding out much hope for the iced tea up here.
This:
Another white Southerner here, lifelong Memphian. Frankly I didn't even
know about "racially stereotyped" foods until I was a teenager, it was
all just... food. And the term soul food is just as pointless as
southern food--there's so much variation from city to city, state to
state that it's pointless to try and paint them all with one brush.
This
This whole "stereotype" always
confused the hell out of me. I'm white - and we had watermelon all the
time growing up - especially in the summer. And yes, we sat on the
front porch and ate it and spit the seeds out, etc. etc.
When I first heard about this "stereotype" my thought was "well of course they do... who doesn't like watermelon?"
The same thing with the fried chicken "stereotype". Maybe it's
because I'm southern but who DOESN'T like fried chicken? Are there
really people out there that don't? I've never gotten why that's a
"black thing". It just goes to show you how bizarre stereotypes can be
sometimes.
I generally get this response whenever I infer that anything on this blog is black. I think we should begin by stating that categorical ethnic definitions of virtually anything will always fail, and almost always be reductive. If you plumb the depths of any group's traditions, you will almost certainly find some other group's. I'm out of my range here, but I deeply suspect that if you do the math on Italian cuisine you'd find some people who aren't very Italian. Whatever that means. The point is that enthic descriptors are always, always limited, just like words are limited. They attempt to describe the world. They are only somewhat successful.
Beyond that, and to the specific case of black people, it's worth considering the large numbers of white people in this country who come in contact with Southern cooking exclusively through black people. During the migrations of the first half of the last century, millions of black people left the South for the North, relocating in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington. Most of these cities either didn't have large pockets of Southern whites, or the Southern whites didn't stay Southern for long. The repositories of Southern culture in the North, were, de facto, black depositories. Thus if you were a white Southener, in the 1960s, and came to New York looking for a taste of home, you'd probably need to catch the A train to Harlem. Even today, that's generally true. In New York, in D.C., in Baltimore, in Chicago, Southern food is, as they call it, Soul Food. That may not be true in Birmingham or Atlanta.
There is also, I suspect, something else. Southerners have been suspect to stereotypes about their intelligence, laziness, and all around backwardness. One way of resisting those stereotypes is to put them off on other people, who you may share some relation, but who you think of as less than. Hence, I suspect that, say, the Southerner in his freshman year at Harvard might avoid the fried chicken, might even disdain it as nigger food, even if his momma makes the best of it. Smarter people than me can break this down--but it wouldn't surprise me if the fried chicken and watermelon stereotype was the work of white Southerners or white Northerners.
I'm having a fight with my wife over a seemingly stupid issue.
We're having friends over soon for a barbecue, and in planning the
menu, I said we should have watermelon for dessert. She objected
because some of our guests are African American, and she thought they
might take offense. I said it's not racist to serve watermelon to black
people, and she agreed. But she thought that, to avoid making our
guests uncomfortable, we should be sensitive to stereotypes. Is she
being hyper-politically correct, or is she right that people might
think we're projecting racial stereotypes onto our guests?
H. R., Philadelphia, Pa.
Dear H. R.,
Well, it sounds like we're in for a very relaxed barbecue. Are you
serving existential angst for an appetizer? To borrow from Freud,
sometimes a watermelon is just a watermelon. My suggestion, though, is
for you to serve cantaloupe, or honeydew, or another member of the
melon family, or perhaps a selection of berries, not because watermelon
would necessarily offend your guests, but because its presence would
destabilize your excessively thoughtful wife. And we'd like her to
enjoy the barbecue too.
This is interesting. If I were black I would take zero offense--though I'd spend most of the desert ribbing the hell out of my hosts. Oh they'd be sick of me.
The real problem with serving watermelon for desert is that so much of it sucks, nowadays. Unless you're pulling it off a pickup track with red clay on the tires, I generally don't want any part.
Dude needs to man up and get his cobbler-game going. Want to impress your black friends? Bake the hell out of some peach cobbler. Or some banana pudding. If you pick watermelon we probably won't think you're racist. We might think you're cheap, though.
Who Goin Check Me, Boo...
I can't figure out why I can't stop watching RHoA. I'm not a snob. I'm not someone who believes that 50 Cent's image is "bringing down the race." But I really didn't expect to be interested in this show. It was good to see Eric Snow, who I loved from his days in Philly. It's good to see a show set in Atlanta, a kind of Mecca for the black bourgeois. But RHoA isn't about housewives (this season, only two out of the five women qualify.) It isn't particularly real (much of the set-up feels scripted.) And it isn't about the elite world it claims.
It's more Sister Carrie, than anything. What you are watching is five people, most of whom are possessed by a thin ambition. There really isn't much else going on, and yet I can't look away. I'm sure someone here will tell me why. I gorged on the first season like a box of hot glazed from Krispy Kreme. I think its the deeply sinful thrill of watching people who have no idea how much they don't know. Think about Ne-Ne (real name "Lenitha") calling Kandi "ghetto." It's just the spectacle of it.
That said, I don't know if I can stick with it. There is something about the dynamic between Kim (the only white woman on the show and the other women that's really uncomfortable. Almost all of the women now hate her, and it's a little tough to watch three black women gang up (sometimes literally) on the show's only white cast-member. There's something about the casting and the scripting that is really uncomfortable. Kim isn't just white, she's a kind of caricaturized embodiment of black women's worst thoughts and stereotypes of white women. If you could draw a picture of the mythical white temptress that steals black men, she'd look a lot like Kim. Big fake blonde hair. Fake boobs. Botox at 29. Vaguely pretty. And sleeping with a married man.
And then there is the larger notion of punishing naughty women. I'm thinking about torture porn, and the slasher flicks, where the first girl to catch it is always the kind of pretty buxom white girl, satirized by Drew Barrymore in "Scream." Kim is a kind of cartoonish version of America's "traditional" beauty standard. And when you watch her squaring off with someone like Ne-Ne, who isn't that, it feels like an effigy-burning. There's the pure physical threat of blackness, the "I'll kick your ass," that comes from all of the stereotypes about us, which undergirds every interaction between the other Housewives and Kim. I'm almost sure this is intentional.
It should be said that Kim is no more moral than anyone else on the show. But watching her treatment leaves me feeling like they're punishing her, like they're humiliating her, and her self-worth is so low, that she keeps going back for it.
The pivotal moment for me was when Shiree tugged her wig, and attacked her for having fake hair. "Your's is fake too," Kim charged. "No, it's a weave, boo," Shiree retorted. That exchange says so much.
Holder notified the White House that he was reluctantly leaning toward
naming a prosecutor to review whether laws had been broken during
interrogations -- the very thing Obama had said he wanted to avoid. And
the word Holder got back, according to people familiar with the
conversations, was that the decision was up to him.
The back story to Monday's appointment of a career prosecutor to
review CIA interrogation methods illustrates Holder's influence in the
new administration and sheds light on the emerging and delicate
relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. In
this and other big battles, including the decision to release memos
this year by Bush administration officials giving the green light to
harsh interrogation tactics, Holder and his Justice Department have
prevailed over strong objections from the CIA and the intelligence
community. Holder hasn't won every one of those battles, but he has won
many.
Also this:
The just-announced review by career prosecutor John H. Durham is being
closely followed by the intelligence community for clues about whether
it will remain fixed on the low-level CIA employees and contractors who
may have stepped out of legal bounds. Once Durham starts digging, some
analysts said, the veteran prosecutor could uncover evidence that leads
him higher up the chain of command in an inquiry that grows broader
than the what the Justice Department outlined Monday.
As much as I'd like to see charges, I really just want to know what happened. I want to see the footprints.
Black Hair
This Times article reminded of my days back at Howard. I came in insistent on only dating honeys that knew Fanon, rocked Black Uhuru, and most obviously, had natural hair. Meh, that lasted all of a year. By next September, I was standing outside the School of B handing out my card.
"Those cultural chicks are crazy," I'd snort. "Give me a Chicago honey, who can fry a chicken, and needs a touch-up every couple weeks." I ended up somewhere in between. Got the Chicago. Got the natural hair. The fried-chicken and the touch-up, not so much.
Anyway, my sense is that this really isn't the debate it was thirty, twenty or even ten years ago. White folks got dreads now. The Times piece takes it a cue from some Freepers who thought Malia's hair didn't rep for America. I think the very fact that you need Free Republic to make the case against natural hair, pretty much proves the point.
We aren't perfect, but I think quite a bit has changed since Kane was on that, "Sexy young ladies of the light-skin breed," tip.
August 27, 2009
Really How Hard Were You?
The general consensus among hip-hop twenty years ago (yes it's been that long) was that the music was a rebellion against soft, over-synthesized, mushy R&B. De La called it Rhythm and Bullshit. PMD said, "Hardcore, no R&B singer." This is simplistic, I know, but I definitely saw myself as part of some sort of hardcore music movement. And yet when I look back at what I was actually playing back then, and what's endured, a lot of it is joints like "Jamaica Funk," "Never Too Much" or even "Candy Girl." Or Starpoint...
Commenting
The Spam filter has apparently gone nuts. We got someone advertising "Cougars" yesterday. Anyway, I know we've got some pretty hot 40-year old women trolling this site, and some game 20-year old dudes, but it really ain't that kind of party. At least not before noon. And not without a finder's fee payable to the "Coates College Fund."
All kidding aside, we should be back to normal in a bit.
UPDATE: Also, keep commenting please. I'll publish them as they get trapped until we get this figured out.
U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins offered encouragement to conservatives at a
town hall forum that the Republican Party would embrace a "great white
hope" capable of thwarting the political agenda endorsed by Democrats
who control Congress and President Barack Obama.
Jenkins, a Topeka Republican in her first term in Congress, shared
thoughts about the GOP's political future during an Aug. 19 forum at
Fisher Community Center in the northeast Kansas community of Hiawatha.
In response to inquiries by The Topeka Capital-Journal, a Jenkins
spokeswoman said Wednesday the congresswoman wanted to apologize for
her word choice and to emphasize she had no intention of expressing
herself in an offensive manner.
Jenkins told people at the Hiawatha forum the nation could benefit
from inspired leadership of a group of "really sharp" young Republicans
in the House, particularly Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. Cantor was mentioned
as a possible GOP vice presidential candidate in 2008 and is thought to
be interested in seeking the Republican nomination for president in
2012.
"Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope,"
Jenkins said to the crowd. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned
about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican
minds in Washington."
Now to be fair, there are virtually no non-white Republican members of
congress, so in suggesting that the party's future hopes rest
essentially on white talent Jenkins was arguably just stating the
obvious. Joseph Cao
has basically no chance of being re-elected, and that leaves the GOP
with white people and the South Florida troika of Ros-Lehtinen and the
Diaz-Balart brothers, none of whom are really going places.
Sarcasm aside, again, the problem is that Jenkins hails from a party that has, historically, scorned talk of "diversity," believes political correctness has run amok, and thinks that the worst discrimination happens to white people. When you don't practice talking to people who aren't like you, you tend to not be very good at it. This didn't mean much twenty or thirty years ago--Who cares about a few Negroes in Harlem or Atlanta?--but the country is changing. The GOP, as we all know, isn't changing with it.
I can imagine some defense of the phrase "great white hope," as a kind of generic tag. But any politicians whose spent a portion of their career talking to black people, who knows the racist history of the phrase, or has some inkling of what it means to have a first black president, would know that invoking the phrase is a bad idea.
All of that said, it's worth noting that Rep. Jenkins apologized for her words--as opposed to apologizing "if anyone was offended by her words." It's a shame that we have to give people points for that.
Open Thread At Noon
It's yours...
Joseph Mitchell On The Web
Matt and my old colleague Josh Tyrangiel make the point that long-form isn't really working on the web:
This reminds me that something I've come to understand in my years
in the business is that probably the greatest privilege that writers
for traditional magazines have is that nobody has any idea who's reading them.
Instead, they get to sort of operate with this mental image of things
working very differently from the guy reading blogs instead of filling
out his TPS Report. Maybe you're relaxing in your easy chair, smoking a
pipe, lovingly devouring each and every sentence of that 6,000 feature.
Nice to think of your writing getting that kind of loving care from
readers.
But if you think about how magazines actually work, it's really not
like that. I subscribe to The New Yorker because it's a great magazine.
But do I read every article that's in every issue of the New Yorker? Of
course not. In fact, some weeks I barely read any articles at all. And
as best I can tell, the same is true of most New Yorker subscribers.
And certainly almost nobody reads more than a trivial percentage of the
content The New York Times puts out on any given day. But in print,
nobody can really tell what's being read or when or why or by whom. You
just know that the gestalt is selling. Which gives editors and writers
a lot of flexibility in terms of what they put into the gestalt. Which
is fun because in my experience people get into writing and editing
periodicals primarily because they enjoy doing it rather than because they're genuinely interested in being responsible fiduciary agents of profit-maximizing shareholders.
On the web, there's much less wiggle room and much less room for
self-deception. You need readers who really and truly do click over to
your site each and every day, not "subscribers" who may or
may not be reading any given issue. And you know the--unflattering--truth
about when they read you. Generally at work, and with intermittent
attention.
I'd agree that knowing exactly who is reading you is a revealing experience. I'd also agree that, in the sense of generating constant repeating eye-balls, long-form isn't working on the web. But as a guy who's worked on the web, and in print, I'd back this analysis up and add something else--long-form isn't working particularly well in magazines.
Now, perhaps my view is skewed by my own history as a guy who A.) Spent much of my life around people who don't read the New Yorker B.) Started in on magazine journalism in 96, with the internet was becoming a factor in journalism C.) Has never worked at a magazine/alt weekly that wasn't having money troubles, and didn't make it known to the writers.
I know for some magazine journalists there was a Mad Men-ish hey-day, when their work was glamorous and a marker of status. I think the image of "magazine writer" centers around some dude dressed like Gay Talese, enjoying three-martini lunches. It's never been like that for me, or any of my colleagues, and I wonder if it ever really was. Moreover most of us are very clear on why it's not like that--very few people care about your work. You're not making movies. You're not on TV.
It's obviously true that traffic metrics are more precise than
subscriptions. But that really hasn't altered what and how I write. I'm going to write about the Civil War, the Dallas
Cowboys, Negroes, and the occasional visit to the Met. And sometimes, I'm going to write long. It's quite possible that this combo could cause traffic to plummet, and I'll get fired. I wouldn't like that, but there isn't much I can do about it. It's not like Iike I'm capable of writing with any degree of passion about much else. That acquaintance with rejection, and with the distinct possibility of failure, didn't come from my traffic numbers--it came from my time in magazines.
I think only a select group of magazine writers believe that there's a reader somewhere lovingly poring over their prose. More common, from my experience, is the sense that no one really gives a fuck. Magazine writers often have family members who wish that
they would grow up and get a real job. They spend a great deal of time
around people who aren't really clear on exactly what they do or how we
make a living doing it. They spend their afternoons stalking editors, and fretting over unreturned e-mailed and unanswered pitches. They aren't simply aware that the audience doesn't care, they're aware that most editors don't much care.
This is the final year that Grassley is eligible to serve as ranking
member -- the most powerful minority member, and, if Republicans retake
the Senate, the chairman -- of the Senate Finance Committee. His hope is
to move over as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, or failing
that, the Budget Committee. But for that, he needs the support of his
fellow Republicans. And if he undercuts them on health-care reform,
they will yank that support. It's much the same play they ran against
Arlen Specter a couple of years back, threatening to deny him his
chairmanship of -- again -- the Judiciary Committee. It worked then, and
there's no reason to think it won't work now.
This is interesting, especially because I never factored pressure of any kind into Grassley's outbursts. I just wrote him off as crazy.
Ted Kennedy's Agenda
Fresh Air replayed a pretty great interview with the late Senator, yesterday. Plus there's a Jason Bateman interview in there too. The fact that those two things are connected in my mind shows you how twisted I really am.
August 26, 2009
Inauspicious Beginnings
I've been reading through the Kennedy obits today. I think Tim Noah's is the best that I've read:
Talk about inauspicious beginnings. At the tender age of 30, the
youngest sibling of President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy seemed pathetically unqualified to enter the U.S.
Senate. Teddy was the runt of the Kennedy litter. Suspended from
Harvard after he'd gotten caught having a football teammate take a
Spanish exam in his place, Ted had subsequently been steered by his
father away from service in the Korean War, serving instead as a NATO
honor guard in Paris and never advancing beyond private first class.
"We tried to keep everything more or less equal," a somewhat apologetic
Rose Kennedy later said
of Ted's upbringing, but you wonder if the mother and father aren't
quite tired when the ninth one comes along. You have to make more of an
effort to tell bedtime stories and be interested in swimming matches.
There were 17 years between my oldest and youngest child, and I had
been telling bedtime stories for 20 years.
When I First Got Into Arcade Fire...
...or the Flaming Lips, can't remember which, a buddy of mine told me I really needed to listen to the Pixies. He was kinda right.
Expanding The NFL Hall Of Fame
Len Pasquarelli (whose column I love) makes the case for expanding the Hall to include assistant coaches:
Maybe it's time to address the fact that the Hall of Fame has inducted
no one who gained his celebrity predominantly through his contributions
as an assistant coach or in some similar capacity. The issue was raised
at the annual Hall of Fame selection meeting in February, and is
gaining some traction among the people who vote for enshrinement.
"I think it has [gained some support]," said Hall of Fame vice
president Joe Horrigan. "Certainly we realize the important role that
assistant coaches have had. We're all wiser to the dynamic of what
assistant coaches mean to the game...."
I think what you're seeing is a Norv Turner problem--the notion that if you're truly a great assistant, you'll one day be a great head coach. But the two jobs are very different. I don't know how much, but I suspect quite a bit. I always thought Bud Carson deserved a nod for authoring the steel curtain and then coming back and actually improving on Buddy Ryan's defense.
Open Thread At Noon
Take it away...
Our Drop Squad Guy
About that dude toting the AR-15 to the Obama outside the Obama town-hall. He belongs to a church that claims the country is "run by faggots." Oh, the pastor also prays for the President to die and go to hell.
This is what Bush and Cheney truly achieved in their tragic response
to 9/11: two terribly failed, brutally expensive wars, the revival of
sectarian warfare and genocide in the Middle East, the end of America's
global moral authority, the empowerment of Iran's and North Korea's
dictatorships, and the nightmares of Gitmo and Bagram still haunting
the new administration.
But what they did to the culture
- how they systematically dismantled core American values like the
prohibition on torture and respect for the rule of law - is the worst
and most enduring of the legacies.
One political party in this country is now explicitly pro-torture,
and wants to restore a torture regime if it regains power. Decent
conservatives for the most part simply looked the other way. Unless
these cultural forces in defense of violence and torture are defeated -
not appeased or excused, but defeated - America will never return the
way it once was. Electing a new president was the start and not the end
of this. He is flawed, as every president is, but in my view, the scale
of the mess he inherited demands some slack. Any new criminal
investigation which scapegoats those at the bottom while protecting the
guilty men and women who made it happen is a travesty of justice. If it
is the end and not the beginning of accountability, it will be worse
than nothing.
I'm almost certain it's the end, and not the beginning. I just don't see the political will, nor the political backing among the people, to take this to the top. What I expect is that the authors of the torture policy will siuffer no legal consequences, while the agents who didn't follow the exact per-gallon parameters for water-boarding will take the hit.
But I'm more interested in the notion of culture. Did Cheney and Bush really do this to us? Or did they just reveal what's always been at our core? Leadership is about, not simply doing the people's will, but trying to coax them toward things that you believe to be in their interest. So certainly leaders bear responsibility. But I'm very interested in where the average American sits in that equation. How much responsibility do we bear for this?
The Death Of Ted Kennedy
I wish I had something substantive to say here. But the fact of the matter is, beyond a superb American Experience doc on the Kennedys, I know very little about his life and accomplishments. Still, it seemed right to acknowledge his passing. I'm hoping some of astute commenters can fill the void. Be nice to hear something beyond a litany of bills he passed. How did he get that lion of the senate title? What were the nuts and bolts he screwed with to get business done? What's the why and how?
August 25, 2009
The Good Morning Burger
At least Homer Simpson's vision had bread. KFC has a sandwich that replaces bread with fried chicken. We're all going down. To be sure, there will be chocolate spraying from waterhoses, sex with surgically altered twins, and guns like Neo in Matrix. But the general trend is the same.
Echoes Of The Crack Age
Outside of my Moms, this was probably my first contact with any sort of feminism. I wonder if they even called it that then. It's weird watching this, I'd forgotten how much South Africa was on everyone's minds back then. I think the fall of Apartheid changed some of our thinking here in America too. Anti-Apartheid imagry used to be all over hip-hop, from YZ's "Thinking Of A Masterplan," to 3rd Bass's "Gas Face."
Pity The Rich--The Black Rich That Is
Bijan Bayne is miffed at the constant portrayal of blacks who vacation on Martha Vineyard as snobs:
Blacks who make the island off the coast of Cape Cod their summer
home have not felt this misunderstood since Lawrence Otis Graham's Our Kind of People
cited intraracial class division and snobbishness, and name-dropped the
rich and powerful. As a lifelong Vineyarder, I can tell you that
neither writer captures the nuances of the island's appeal to black
Americans. If you haven't been there before, you might think that black
Vineyarders are all elitist, insensitive and economically monolithic.
People bring their own perceptions and personal context to Martha's
Vineyard.
You know me well--ain't nothing elite about the kid. But I'm actually really sympathetic to this argument. Part of the problem, I assume, is that most rich people--like most people--value their private lives. Moreover, I'm going to guess that most rich black people aren't particularly interested in looking like bougie Negroes.
I suspect--though I do not know--that very few "elite blacks" were pleased with Graham's book, ostensibly an expose about the black upper-crust, which exposes the very little except the authors inability to get out of the way of his own snobbery. Ditto for the unnamed person who called Michelle Obama "ghetto" in Toure's article. If you're the sort of person who wants to talk publicly, or even anonymously, about who's "too ghetto" for Martha's Vineyard, the very fact that your talking probably makes you atypical.
I thought of that this weekend, when me and Kenyatta plowed through the first season of the The "Real Housewives" Of Atlanta. It's a very hard show to look away from--but it isn't what it claims, and if you're a real house-wife in that elite class in Atlanta, you probably wouldn't be on the show. As with Oaks Bluff, what you get instead is certain slice of your society talking, and it tends to be those who verify the stereotypes. I think the old saying fits well here--those know don't tell, those who tell don't know.
"It's bulls***. It's disgraceful. You wonder which side they're on," he
said of the Attorney General's move, which he described as a
"declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."
"It's a total breach of faith, and either the president is
intentionally caving to the left wing of htis party or he's lost control
of his administration," said King, the ranking Republican on the House
Committee on Homeland Security and a member of the House Select
Committee on Intelligence.
This is about what you'd expect from an Exceptionalist--he thinks it's OK for the CIA to threaten non-Americans with drills, and implicitly threaten the rape of their family members, and if you disagree you are on the side of the terrorists. Nothing new there.
I'm more interested in the sense that Obama, not Holder, is behind this. Isn't Holder allegedly independent? Wasn't this his choice? Could Obama have stopped him? And if he tried, wouldn't there have been a conflict of interest there?
Open Thread At Noon
It's Yours...
A Little More On Virginia
For the Civil War buffs among us, it's really worth spending some time over at Kevin Levin's blog, Civil War Memory. I can't act like I discovered the place--some readers brought it to my attention. But it's a great blog dealing in exactly what it's title claims.
Anyway here's some response to my visit, last week, to Petersburg:
What I can say with confidence in response to Coates's thoughtful post
is that landscape of Civil War memory has shifted dramatically over the
past few decades even if it is difficult to see after a short visit.
The NPS at Petersburg
and elsewhere has expanded its interpretation and programs to cover a
much broader swath of Civil War history. [A visit to the new museum at Gettysburg is a perfect place to begin.] You can see it in the planning and early programs of Virginia's Civil War Sesquicentennial programs.
Even a cursory glance of recent Civil War titles reflects a reading
public that now has an appetite for more sophisticated studies,
including a brand new book on the Crater that focuses a great deal on the USCTs and race. including a recent flurry of popular Reconstruction titles.
I don't want to exaggerate these changes, but it is hard to deny that
perceptions have not shifted. I could go on and point out a host of
other examples, but the point is made.
Levin goes on to note that there still is a lot of work left to be done. I meant to mention this last week--it was very clear from my visits to Shirley, and to Petersburg, that someone has been down there fighting the good fight. The visitor's center at Petersburg was stacked with info on the town's black history, and had a lot of info on the colored troops. The flag above is actually on the wall at the visitor's center. Beyond that, Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic Of Suffering really does a great job at interweaving black troops into the broader narrative. That really was my only critique of Battle Cry Of Freedom.
I wanted to point this out because I don't want people reading this stuff, and getting the sense that I'm just parachuting in and ignoring the hard work people have been doing since I was a kid. It's true that there's still more to be done. But it's also true that a lot has already been done.
We cannot take for granted the fact that our homeland has not been
attacked since September 11, 2001. That has occurred only because of
the constant vigilance and unflinching efforts by those brave
individuals in our military, civilian homeland security and
counterterrorism agencies, and the intelligence community. These public
servants must of course live within the law but they must also be free
to do their dangerous and critical jobs without worrying that years
from now a future Attorney General will authorize a criminal
investigation of them for behavior that a previous Attorney General
concluded was authorized and legal.
This is really silly. As I understand it, Holder is only after agents who somehow managed to go beyond the parameters established by the Bush administration. From Marc:
...Lieberman apparently doesn't quite appreciate Holder's dilemma: the CIA
admitted that laws were broken, and behavior that wasn't authorized by
a previous attorney general appears to have been an operational norm.
The CIA's inspector general report, on page 255, concludes that the
"Agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal
challenges as a result of the CTC Detention and Interrogation program,
and the inability of the U.S. government to decide what it will
ultimately do with terrorists detained by the Agency." The IG
specifically found that agency officials were aware "of interrogation
activities that were outside or beyond the scope of written DOJ
opinion." That is, even if you think the DOJ's legal options were
transparent tarps to cover for illegal behavior, agency operations
often exceeded those limits, as well. Laws were broken, in other words.
But Lieberman thinks even those guys shouldn't be investigated. Incredible.
Plax On The Shooting
Just an excerpt on ESPN. I'm not sure what I think of this. One thing I will say is that it's very easy to make an abstract judgment, having not seen the person tell their side. That doesn't mean the abstract judgment is wrong--see mine, here--indeed, the test of the judgment seems to be whether it holds up.
I think prison is tough. I think it's hard for me to reconcile that fact with the amazing stupidity of carry a gun in your waist-band, into a packed club. In short, I'm conflicted--not that people are waiting on my legal brief.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.
Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department
prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the
sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not
complete.
Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to
look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale
criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have
broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest
CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism
suspects for four years or more.
Doesn't look like you'll see anything going beyond a few agents. I think the way this is going, and the general lack of outrage from Americans, says a lot about what we value. I really have no doubt that we could--indeed would--start torturing again, in the event of another terrorist attack. Maybe not under Obama, but certainly the take-away is that the executive is going to get a great deal of lee-way on these cases.
So I know I've been BSing on this, but I am going to go ahead and set up the pick 'em league. But first we need conversate a bit. I've never done this before, and only vaguely understand how it works. I'm a die-hard fan, but I've sneered at fantasy for years.
Still, I think it could be fun and break some of the depressing talk about slaves and health care. So my questions are legion. Is there a site I should use that's better than others? I'm been messing around with Yahoos. How intense is it for the commish? And is there any cap on the numbers that can get in?
Gov. David A. Paterson
lashed out on Friday at critics who say he should not run for election,
and he suggested that he was being undermined by an orchestrated,
racially biased effort by the media to force him to step aside.
The governor, on a morning radio talk show, said that Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, the only other African-American governor, was suffering similar treatment, and he predicted that President Obama would, too.
"We're not in the postracial period," he told Errol Louis, a columnist for The Daily News and the host of the radio program, on WWRL-AM. "My feeling is it's being orchestrated, it's a game, and people who pay attention know that," he added.
Probably not. It's hard to take that line when given that most black New Yorkers want Paterson to step aside:
With Mr. Paterson's approval ratings remaining low, some Democrats
have suggested publicly that he should make way for the popular
attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, in the governor's race. Especially worrisome to the governor's supporters is his flagging support even among black voters; a Siena College poll
released last month showed that black voters, by a 46-to-38 percent
margin, would prefer someone other than Mr. Paterson as governor.
Black politicians were measured in their responses on Friday.
"I
do agree with the governor's statement that we do not live in a
postracial society and that there is a degree of media bias that does
adversely impact communities of color," said Assemblyman Hakeem
Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat. "But the governor's problems are very
complex and cannot be attributed to any one particular issue."
Assemblyman Karim Camara, also of Brooklyn, said: "It's hard to
pinpoint why he is struggling. I don't believe there is any one reason.
I believe there are a multitude of factors."
Keep in mind that this is the first black governor in New York's history. I can't see how he could possibly think he could win with his base unsecured.
When
the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general's findings to
prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution.
But Mr. Holder's associates say that when he took office and saw the
allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other
cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider.
With
the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at
least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the
appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing
significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too,
for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda.
August 21, 2009
Echoes Of The Sushi Age
One more Arcade Fire joint for the road guys. Gotta love this. I really wish they let Regine sing more. I love her voice. Arcade Fire was one of the first groups I got into, shortly after I moved to New York, and started moving away from hip-hop. A lot of they're music felt like a natural bridge for me. I don't know enough about music to tell you why.
Cataclysm
Attention. It's about to get really extreme in this thread. If the words "goblin" and "worgen" don't mean anything to you, I suggest you keep moving.
UPDATE: For the record, I'm underwhelmed. Dorf mages, and troll druids. Meh...
The Wit And Witticism Of Slaves
For those keeping track, I'm reading Weevils In The Wheat: Interviews With Virginia's Ex-Slaves. This is part of the bounty I brought back from Petersburg. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, as it's really specific, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
One of the challenges of writing about slavery is to get the reader to not see slavery as a static, unchanging thing which affected every black person, every where in the same way. Slavery changed depending on the time. It changed depending on the state. And it changed depending on the plantation, the master, or the disposition of the slaves themselves.
For instance:
De history books is wrong. 'Twas Abe Lincoln an' Jeff Davis dat met under de ole apple tree. Lincoln stuck a shot-gun in Jeff Davis' face and yelled, "Better surrender, else I shoot an' hang you." Davis tole him, "Yessir Marse Lincoln, I surrender."
Hmm, well I guess that's the abridged version. That's Jimmie Green, born in 1845, of , Lawrenceville, Virginia. I got a kick out of reading that. I got an equally perverted kick out of the slaves who praise their masters and talk about how well they were treated. Yesterday, I was reading about Mildred Graves, a slave-woman who was a midwife to a lot of the white people in her area. Her master made a fortune hiring her out, and would give her a small cut. In this story, a prosperous white woman who lives a few miles away is in child-birth and about to die. Graves is summoned in the middle of the night and...
I went and when I got dare she had two doctosr f'om Richmond, but dey won't doin nothin fer her. Something was very wrong wid Mrs. Leake dey say, an' dey want to call another doctor--min' you dere was two dere already. I tol' dem I could being her 'round, but dey laugh at me an' say, "Get back darkie, we mean business an' don' won't any witch doctors or hodoo stuff."
Mrs Leake heard dem and she said 'tween pains she want me; so dey said if you want her fer your doctor we would would go. I stayed an' wulked f'om bout one o'clock to eight o'clock. I tell you dat was de toughest case I ever had. I did ev'ything I knowed an' somethings I didn' know. I don' know how I done it, but anyway a son was born dat mornin' and dat boy lived. Even de doctors dat had called me bad names said many praise fer me.
De baby was named Andrew and he was my chile. After he got older hee us to steal over to Mr. Tinsley's to see me. He would bring me things--eats, money, candy, an' purty earrings. One I wore in my ear 'till de Yankees come an' stole em. He use to teach me to write my name 'an I learn lots o' things f'om dat boy. He tol' me his father tried to buy me, but Mr. Tinsley wouldn' sell me. Den he went to war an' dat blessed chile was kilt; I knowed he died fightin.
Now I hate how they transcribed this stuff--I think the dialect conceals more than it reveals, on the page that is. There's a way of capturing the rhythm of how people speak without going there. But that said, I loved this story. I just thought it said so much about the weird intimacy between whites and blacks in the South back then, and maybe even now. Language says so much about us.
And then there is this from Robert Ellet. His father refused to be whipped, but his whole family, by his testimony, were high value slaves because, despite their refusal to submit to abuse, they all worked really hard. The master wanted to sell the Ellet family. But they actually belonged to his wife, who'd inherited them. A clause in the will said they couldn't be sold, except to other family members. So the master was stuck. He couldn't sell them. He couldn't whip them. And he couldn't kill them--they were too valuable.
Anyway, here's Ellet's account of himself as a boy, and then as a young man:
I grew up with the young masters. I played with them, ate with them, and sometimes slept with them. We were pals. Because of my unusual strength and spirit, I would let none of them beat me at any game or in any wrestle...
My master was a Garett and an old devil. He was the meanest man out, but father wouldn't let him beat him. I've seen him time and again try to beat my father and I always heard my father say, "I'll die before I'll let you beat me!" I was the same way and still am, even though I am lying here in this bed. No white man or black man ever beat me. No sir. I could just get these two fingers in his throat and wham him with this fist once, down he goes to the ground, and I walk on him...
At that time I was the strongest man in this state. Ask these people around here. They can tell you. I could almost beat a horse running and could make ten miles anywhere inside an hour. I could lick any two men....I sailed in the Peabody Firm for two years. I remember the time when I stood on the levies at New Orleans and took a cotton hook and stuck it in a bale of cotton and raised it chest high alone....
A little bit of an MC, no? But he has such a beautiful voice. I think it works better without the dialect.
Virginia
IV. The Wilderness
By Saturday, Virginia is overwhelming. It is clear that some things will have to be missed for now--Berkley, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg. There is a cemetery, just south of Richmond, filled with USCT dead. I want to go there and say nothing, since I believe in the nothing of death, even as I am pulled to all of these bloody places with beautiful names--Chaffin's Farm, Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, Cold Harbor, The Wilderness.
Still it takes time, and I know how I am, how I never understand that I've been hit, until I'm on my ass. It could be several months from now--I'm out at a beautiful bar on 81st street, friends all assembled, Walking Wounded playing in the background, and I'm crying in my third martini. Kenyatta feels things with more immediacy, and I take my cues from her general disposition. She cares about Civil War history intellectually, but she isn't compelled. And yet Petersburg was a punch to the gut, and she hasn't fully recovered her form. Which means I have not recovered my form, but I'm too male and macho to know.
We will make this one last stop. We cross 64 again, and head up 95. We stop at Wa-Wa and laugh at our attachment to their coffee, lemonade and sandwiches. Samori punches some keys, and a woman will hand him an egg sandwich. We make it in 90 minutes, with traffic, and I wonder where people in Virginia have to go, and then note how quickly I've become an arrogant New Yorker.
The drive gets good toward the end, just before Plank Road, where the highway gives out, and the box stores give out, and there is tall grass, barns, and bales and bales of hay. I want to keep driving until we collide with Blue Ridge, until we fall into the Valley.
We pull up to the welcome center, which is nothing but a few maps, some charts, and a shaded bench area where a ranger is taking refuge from constant sun. It is almost 90 degrees today, but it feels so much better than 90 in the city, where the buildings and subways pump out hot air. Out here, the shade has actual meaning.
On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure
progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a
dry technocrat who talks of "bending the curve" but has only recently
begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama's explanations of
his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a
simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they
were written by a committee.
Meanwhile, on such fraught
questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has
dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush
administration policy.
And then there's the matter of the banks.
I
don't know if administration officials realize just how much damage
they've done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the
financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government
supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I've had
many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the
stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out
that they're really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus --
but that's a distinction lost on most voters.
So there's a
growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank
Rich suggests, been punked. And that's why the mixed signals on the
public option created such an uproar.
I don't quite understand why progressives would feel punked. Perhaps, I'm just a cynic but I voted for Obama in the primaries, because I thought he was most likely to beat John McCain--not because I thought he was to the left of Hillary Clinton. Obama always struck me as a very talented and cerebral politician, with a left-ish bent. Again, maybe I'm a cynic, but his flip-flops don't really surprise. Isn't this what politicians do?
Having said that, I'd like to make two point. 1.) Not being shocked at Obama's flip-flops doesn't mean that people shouldn't object to them or apply pressure. 2.) I think Krugman's general point about credibility is persuasive.
I sensed some of this early on when Obama's folks kept putting projecting themselves as "pragmatists." Chris Hayes' piece in The Nation really put the lie to this idea that all great things flow from the minds of serious, sober-minded pragmatists and dreamy, starry-eyed liberals just get in the way.
But it really hit me yesterday when Obama claimed that health care reform "shouldn't be a political issue." Really? Then why did he hand it off to a gaggle of politicians? Why is he even talking about it? Then Obama shouted out Chuck Grassley, who has aided the spread of death panel rumors, as an example of a Republican whose been "working very constructively." Grassley returned the favor by calling Obama "intellectually dishonest."
I have no idea what will happen, ultimately. Moreover, I'm not sure that most voters are bothered by any of this. still, it this whole escapade smacks of Obama being too clever by half--of an Obama who can't get over his own high-mindedness and holds out the bipartisan spirit as a kind of fetish, a gimmick. It's all so unserious.
August 20, 2009
Echoes Of The Sushi Age
The coolest thing about getting old is liking things, that you didn't think you ever would. I don't even know what this is. I can't even begin to name what Arcade Fire does. But I love them. Fuck a name.
The Brett Favre Problem
I think Cold Hard Football Facts make a good case that Brett Favre--the Brett Favre of today--is not a very good quarterback. I had actually forgotten how many big games Favre has blown in recent years. Moreover, I knew the dude through a lot of interceptions--but the most in a single season in over twenty years:
Favre ended the disastrous 2005 season with 29
INTs. Since 1980, only Vinny Testaverde has thrown more picks in a
season (35 in 1988)...
It's all part of a four-year trend of
substandard play for Favre. These are Favre's cumulative numbers over
the past four seasons (three with the Packers, one with the Jets):
His volume numbers are great - attempts,
completions, yards - which means that teams still believe they can win
by letting Favre gun the ball all over the field. His completion
percentage is actually pretty strong, too.
But the all-important efficiency numbers - the
numbers that mean the difference between victory and defeat - are
mediocre to bad. In an era when a 2-to-1 INT-to-TD ratio is considered
great, Favre's nearly 1-to-1 ratio is pretty pathetic. His passer
rating is slightly below average. And his yards per attempt are
slightly below average.
The reality: The Packers have a
shot to reach the conference championship game for first time since the
1997 season if they beat Rams in the divisional round.
The Favre apologist fantasy: The 12-4 Packers were no match for the 14-2 Rams
The Cold, Hard Football Facts:
The Rams edged out the 11-5 Eagles by just five points in the
conference title game and lost to the 11-5 Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The Packers easily could have beat the Rams if Favre had not thrown 6
picks - tying the single-game NFL record for postseason picks
last matched by a passer back in 1955.
The 2006 season
The reality: Packers climb back to respectability with an 8-8 record.
The Favre apologist fantasy: Favre helped the blind to see.
The Cold, Hard Football Facts:
Favre had trouble focusing on the field, with a 72.7 passer rating that
was among the worst in football that season. The list of quarterbacks
with a better rating in 2006 included some of the most widely ridiculed
passers in football: David Carr (82.1), Michael Vick (75.7), Alex Smith
(74.8) and Rex Grossman (73.9)
Jan. 20, 2008
The reality: The 13-3 Packers were favored at home against the 10-6 Giants on one of the coldest nights in Lambeau Field history.
The Favre apologist fantasy: The Packers ran into a buzzsaw and lost to the eventual Super Bowl champs.
The Cold, Hard Football Facts:
Favre, and the Packers offense, suffered one of the most colossal
collapses in history. In the fourth quarter and overtime, Favre
completed 4 of 10 passes for 32 yards with 2 INTs. Green Bay's final
four drives, with a Super Bowl appearance easily within its grasp, went
for 0, 7, 0 and 2 yards. Favre's final pick, on the second play of
overtime, led directly to the Giants' game-winning field goal.
But at least he's a gunslinger!
Seriously, how do you throw six interceptions in a playoff game?
The Problem With No TV...
...Is that I can't catch Real Housewives Of Atlanta. They announced this show, I believe, just when we were thinking about cutting off the cable and tossing the box. I was, and am, really curious. Helena Andrews says I'm not missing much. Meh. Wasn't like I was expecting much. Still, equality means the right for black people to publicly act a fool in all the ways that have been denied to us for so long. I was looking forward to seeing us overcome.
Open Thread At Noon
Take it away...
A Question Of Freedom
R. Dwayne Betts guest-blogged here last month. His bracing new memoir which chronicles his time in prison, and how he came to writing is now out. I have a rather natural connection with his story. I did no time, but like me, Dwayne comes to writing very organically. It's not something we fell in love with in class. Anyway, here's a clip of the excerpt we have up on the site:
People went crazy in the hole. There was no air-conditioning in the
summer, so I would strip down to my boxer shorts and pour water on the
bare mattress and then lie in it and wake up dry but covered with
mosquito bites. There really was nothing else to do about the heat,
just endure it or lie in water. The library cart didn't come around but
there were plenty of people down there you could get a book from. Just
like in population, inmates we called housemen cleaned up and helped
pass out the food. I didn't notice them much when I was in population,
but they were almost our lifelines in the hole. If not for them and
fishing we wouldn't have been able to pass food, books, notes. All the
stuff you needed. The housemen were in population, so they could bring
word back and forth to keep that communication flowing.
I was back there on my first real charge, and honestly, I felt
better in the hole; it was calm. There wasn't the pressure you feel
when in population, the constant tension in the air. You disgraced
yourself by "checking in"-- asking to be placed in the hole for
protective custody. So I'd never thought of going to the hole as a way
of being able to relax. The crazy thing is, you're supposed to be safe
in prison; instead, prisoners who are unwilling or unable to fight
require special arrangements: checking in. I wasn't in the hole for
protection, but I wasn't complaining about having a few months where
all I had to worry about was what book I'd read next. In population,
there were too many young dudes running around shackled to too much
time and for sanity's sake my time in the hole did me good.
In the hole, once I realized I could just call out on the door for
books, I was reading a book a night. Reading more and getting some time
to write my thoughts out, to process what people I walked the yard with
said to me ...
Progressives are waiting for Barack Obama and his team to work the kind of political magic they seemed to work in 2008--except when they didn't. Cutting through all the mythologizing of the Obama campaign, the real keys to his stretch-run success last year were his legendary calm ("No Drama Obama"); his confidence in his own long-range strategy; his ability to choose competent lieutenants and delegate to them abundantly; and his grasp of the fundamentals of public opinion and persuasion. There was zero sense of panic in the Obama campaign itself late last summer, because they stuck with their strategy and organization and didn't let the polls or news cycles force them off the path they had chosen.
The administration's demure approach should thus not be terribly surprising, nor a sign that it has lost its heart or its mind. Obama has not, presumably, lost the qualities he showed in the tougher moments of the 2008 campaign. As it planned its legislative agenda for 2009, Team Obama knew health care reform was going to be challenging, and also knew they could probably get away with blaming the economic emergency for paring it back or slowing it down. They decided this was the right time to act, and it's far too soon to assume they were wrong.
But it should be said that we're talking about two different things. One involves convincing people to vote for you. The other involves pushing complicated legislation through Congress. I don't know enough to make any predictions. But I'm surprised that Obama and co. have been seemingly caught flat-flooted by the death panel "critique." I thought Obama's best asset was his ability to sell complicated ideas. It almost looks like they didn't take the scare tactics seriously. Big mistake.
Plaxico Down
Burris pleads guilty. Gets two years in the pen. I don't get these guys. Why risk a multi-million dollar investment?
August 19, 2009
In The Mail Today...
Daniel Walker Howe's What God Hath Wrought. So many damn books around this place. I swear I'm becoming my Dad. When I was a kid, there wasn't a single room in our house--save the kitchen and the bathroom--without bookshelves, and books on them.
Anyway, here's my plan--Get to The Glorious Cause next, then Empire Of Liberty, and finally What God Hath Wrought. At that point, I expect to have some basic understanding of this country's early history. I also expect to be able to levitate, move tables with my mind, and make women fall out in ecstasy at the mere sighting of my big, sexy, chess club brain. OK, so levitating tables might be a stretch.
Also, based largely on the response to this post, I signed up for a sketching class. I don't expect to get very good. But, as you can imagine, this Civil War stuff has flooded me with imagery. I need to get some of it out, in some noticeable form.
What are you guys reading, these days?
Telephones, Opera House, Favorite Melodies...
Man I've been blasting this lately. I'm driving my family crazy. There are some beautiful lyrics on this one. So many people.
Open Thread At Noon
Sorry, I'm late. Release the hounds...
Virginia
III. Shirley On The James
I came to Virginia determined to see a few things and finish a few things. I have spoken of what I needed to see--plantations, battlefields, memorials. But the finishing belonged to Edmund Morgan's landmark study of the origins of slavery in Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom. This is a hard book, and I'd actually put it down until a few commenters demanded that I finish. I managed this feat on my second day down South, a warm Friday afternoon, after viewing primary evidence.
Shirley Plantation on the James is majestic. All the ancient detail--the smokehouse, the outdoor kitchen, the flying staircase--is there. Until you stand in front the big house, staring out at the approaching main path of gravel and dirt, until you observe the trees on each side standing green guard, until you note that, though the path connects to a bigger path, it seems to disappear into nothing, devoured by the woods, you really have no sense of the magic inherent in a Southern Road. Back home, a road gets from Jamaica to East New York. But in this deeper home of mine, from the aspect of the slave, a Road is a star-ship, a tesseract from half-man to man.
I came, again, with my gaggle of family. Pops, my brother Damani, and sister Kris were in meetings all morning. So I piled a pack of nephews into the minivan, qued up Thriller on the Ipod, and led a two-car caravan up I-64. Once there, I gave a modified "don't embarrass me in front of white folks" speech, ("Don't disgrace your ancestors.") My nephew Christian (left with the Nike cap) had rode with his mother (my sister Kelly) and father. He walked over, having missed the lecture, and made a joke. "Come on Christian," said one of the kids " This is serious!"
Inside we got the grand-tour and at every stop the kids riddled our guide with questions. I had that love-hate thing again--deep admiration for the family who'd preserved the place for 11 generations, and the heir who still lived in the house. And then anger for the slaves, and anger for the Native Americans.
UPDATE: Cris Carter goes berserk. That's the old player in him talking.
Echoes Of The Crack Age
Man, En Vogue takes me back to puberty--or rather the onset. It's something to be a young boy, to like girls, and then to start to fully feel what "like" means. TV On The Radio compares it to lycanthropy.
Don't get me wrong--this is a great song. But I saw this video, those skirts, those curves and thought, "I know everything about the world. It's all right here." Of course I was wrong, but I was overcome by their sheer physicality. There's a young guy in "Door In The Floor" talking to Kim Basinger before they commence their affair. She's asking him about sex and says something like, "I guess that's all young men want." And he simply says, "Yes. Before I die."
There in New England, somewhere. But that line captures being a 14-year old male, in West Baltimore in 1989. "Yes. Before I die..."
Rumors Of A Warcraft
Something about Dwarf Shammies just doesn't smell right.
As you both took exception to my comparison of the President
with Felix the Cat, my favorite cartoon character, implying it was racist and
recommending I consult Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., I have now done so. He
has taken the trouble to consult others in the field of African-American
Studies, including our colleague Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois
Professor of the Social Sciences, and has written to me as follows:
"None of us thought of Felix as black, unlike some of
the racially-questionable caricatures Disney used. Felix's blackness,
like Mickey's and Minnie's, was like a suit of clothes, not a skin color. ...
You are safe on this one."
As he has made clear, you are free to publish this on your
blogs. I hope that you will, and that you will also add an apology to me for
the imputation of racism as well as, in Paul's case, the gratuitous and
puerile accusation of "whining" (i.e., defending myself against a
slur). I remain of the view that you took this line to avoid engaging with my
central points that President Obama's administration has no visible plan
for stabilizing the finances of the federal government even over ten years, and
that Congress will likely impede whatever steps he may take in this direction.
I think the fact that Ferguson dared Fallows and Krugman to print this,
and apparently thought it would make him look better, says a lot. Wisdom isn't intelligence. It's cliche to say this. But it's so true.
Calling in an official Black Spokesperson is so 1986.
Open Thread At Noon
Go head ya'll...
As For Health-Care...
I said I wouldn't say anything, but this post from Ezra struck me as really well reasoned and argued:
Rachel Maddow called it "a collapse of political ambition." The
problem, she said, is that "Democrats are too scared of their own
shadow to use the majority the American people elected them to in
November to actually pass something they said they favored." The
question, writes Chris Bowers, is whether Obama is "more willing and able to pressure
the Progressive Block in the House or the Conservadem Block in the
Senate." Ed Schultz said the president needs to "start doing some
arm-twisting with some folks that aren't listening to him."
The unifying idea here is that someone can just go into a back room
and torture Max Baucus and Kent Conrad.
But how? Rahm Emanuel isn't a
shrinking violet. Neither was Clinton or Carter or Nixon or Truman or
FDR. But none of them managed to get health-care reform past the
Congress. There's not really a record of presidents being able to bend
committee chairmen and wavering centrists to their will. Even LBJ, the
master of this stuff, decided to go for Medicare rather than full
reform. He thought the latter too ambitious. The history of health-care
reform is the history of health-care reform failing. If there was some
workable presidential strategy, or foolproof negotiating lever,
presumably someone would have used it by now, or at least mentioned it
in public
The Charles Rogers Mystery
Some great reporting from Jemele Hill on Charles Rogers' fall from NFL grace.
<
August 17, 2009
Virginia
II. Richmond
I neglected to mention, yesterday, the source of that family reunion story. The chaplain's name is Garland White, he served with the 28th USCI, arguably the first (it's disputed) regiment to set foot in Richmond when the Confederates took flight, after the fall of Richmond. White's letter can be found in the book A Grand Army Of Black Men (p. 175.) For the serious civil war nerd, this book, a massive collection of letters written by black soldiers during the War, is indispensable.
What you see above is the train of Rebels fleeing the city, as the Union troops enter from the other side. I was thinking about the Richmond yesterday, and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." For those who are unfamiliar, the song is a mournful ballad about the fall of Richmond and Petersburg. I'm told that it's a great song, and I don't so much doubt this, as I doubt my own magnanimity.
I'm reminded of one of my father's favorite quotes, "The African's right to be wrong is sacred." Or Aaron McGruder's line, "I reserve the right to be a nigger." I can no more marvel at The Band then a Sioux can marvel at the cinematography of The Died With Their Boots On. I wouldn't fault the man who could, but it's not me My empathy is a resource to be rationed like all others. My right to be wrong is sacred. My right to be a nigger is reserved.
I started to play the song yesterday, and stopped myself. Again, I was angry. Again, another story about the blues of Pharaoh, and the people are invisible. The people are always invisible. "These motherfuckers," I mumbled to myself. Kenyatta came in from work and caught me rambling. This is just what you want to hear after coming off the late-shift--your past-drunk spouse ranting about some group you've never heard of.
And again, I was tempered, and had to laugh. The expectation that someone else will tell your story for you, will write your ballads for you, will reconcile your history for you, is foolish and vane. This isn't about proprietorship--much of what I know of black history, I learned from white historians. It's about the expectation that everyone will see the world the way you see it, and honor what you honor. The Band has their myths. I have mine.
I'm no Robbie Robertson, but I do carry the words of my old, magical people.
I have just returned from the city of Richmond; my
regiment was among the first that entered that city. I marched at the
head of the column, and soon I found myself called upon by the officers
and men of my regiment to make a speech, with which, of course, I
readily complied. A vast multitude assembled on Broad Street, and I was
aroused amid the shouts of ten thousand voices, and proclaimed for the
first time in that city freedom to all mankind. After which the doors of
all the slave pens were thrown open, and thousands came out shouting and
praising God, and Father, or Master Abe, as they termed him. In this
mighty consternation I became so overcome with tears that I could not
stand up under the pressure of such fullness of joy in my own heart. I
reftred to gain strength, so I lost many important topics worthy of
note.
Among the densely crowded concourse there were
parents looking for children who had been sold south of this state in
tribes, and husbands came for the same purpose; here and there one was
singled out in the ranks, and an effort was made to approach the gallant
and marching soldiers, who were too obedient to orders to break ranks.We continued our march as far as Camp Lee, at the
extreme end of Broad Street, running westwards. In camp the multitude
followed, and everybody could participate in shaking the friendly but
hard hands of the poor slaves.
Among the many broken-hearted mothers
looking for their children who had been sold to Georgia and elsewhere,
was an aged woman, passing through the vast crowd of colored, inquiring
for one by the name of Garland H. White, who had been sold from her
when a small boy, and was bought by a lawyer named Robert Toombs, who
lived in Georgia.
Brothers and Sisters, I have two words for you. Drop. Squad. I got the car running. Who's rolling with me?
Race And Mad Men
I thought the first episode of Mad Men, was just fine. It's really hard to know what will happen, or even judge anything one episode in. That said, there are a couple of developments that could ruin the show relatively quickly:
Although Draper has a gift for engaging and seeing through marginalized
types--the unwed mother, the Jewish heiress, the closeted gay man--in the
case of the black characters, the relationship never goes beyond
shallow conversation. Mad Men takes on a number of cultural
controversies, yet race is treated with politeness, distance,
restraint, and a heavy dose of sentimentality. For a show that takes
place in the early '60s, as race riots are breaking out, this is a
glaring omission.
I actually think it's a beautiful, lovely, incredibly powerful omission. Mad Men is a show told from the perspective of a particular world. The people in that world barely see black people. They're there all the time--Hollis in the elevator, women working in the powder-room, the Draper's maid, the janitors, the black guy hired at Leo Burnett--but they're never quite seen. I think this is an incredible statement on how privilege, at its most insidious, really works.
I was never one of those people who wanted to see more black people on, say, Friends, or felt that Seinfeld was too white, any more than I wanted to see more white people on The Bernie Mac Show. I think we have to careful. I don't watch Mad Men to get a lesson on gender--though I sometimes do--I watch to see a good story. I understand, given the times, the desire to have the show take on race. But I don't want to see Mad Men "take on" anything. That's for bloggers, and historians to do.
To the extent that we get these other social issues (class, gender, sexual orientation etc.) it's all gravy. But great characters before everything. Great narrative before anything. Mad Men is one story about the 60s. It isn't the definitive story. I don't even know there should be such a thing.
"No Men Ever Fought More Bravely To Keep Themselves In Bondage..."
Awesome usage of satire by the folks over at Of Battlefields And Bibliophiles. I really need to update my blogroll.
Open Thread At Noon
Go for yours...
Virginia
I. Petersburg
I was slightly mad driving through Virginia last week. The roads around Richmond are littered with markers delineating the regions singular place in American history. It took all I had not to swerve wildly off to the side and read the signs, like this one, every five minutes. To the chagrin of my son and nephew, I was rarely successful. And then there are the roads themselves which, despite being fitted for car traffic, still have that old country aspect. Standing there, you can imagine regiments marching by.
I was in Virginia for a makeshift mini-family reunion. My Pops, brother and sister (they work together in the family business) were there for a conference. My other sister and me decided to crash and bring our respective families. Our residence was American genius--a hotel attached to a water-park. There were pools, chutes and slides everywhere. The basement was an arcade. They served sliders and onion rings across from the main lobby. Kids ran through the floors waving custom-fitted wands, while playing something called Magiquest. This was amazing to me--all my cult hobbies (fantasy, sci-fi, comics, hip-hop) have morphed into big business.
I mostly stayed in my room reading slave narratives and oral histories, and poring over maps of Virginia. Then I'd gather the willing and push my rented minivan through the Wilderness or off to Shirley. I was there for the family dinners, and a breath-taking trip to Wal-Mart. (You have to be a New Yorker to understand why.) But by the end, my sister Kris calling me anti-social, and Kenyatta was tired of standing by the pool, fielding the "Where's Ta-Nehisi" questions.
We arrived before the rest of the fam--Kenyatta, Samori, my nephew Chris and myself. We drove along New Market Road. We got breakfast. Then we headed drove South to see the last stand of the Confederacy.
There were cannons across the park, markers where batteries once stood, trenches, abatis and mortar. The Petersburg Battlefield gift shop took me for $130, mostly in books, but too, for three McClellan caps. At night in my room, I'd put on my cap while reading, trying to channel the old spirits, but mostly looking silly. We took a car tour through the park. We were the only black people in the group, but Chris and Samori could have cared less. They were full of questions about soldiers and muskets. There was guy in old Confederate grey. When the Park Ranger ordered us to our cars, he said, "What's a car." The group looked around nervously. "It was a joke," he deadpanned.
For me, it was all history through the veil, yet again. I felt robbed of something--like I couldn't see Petersburg, the way I might see Pearl Harbor, that I was more like a Jew surveying the cemetery at Normandy. The group asked questions, mostly concerned with tactics and strategic errors, which the ranger dutifully answered. It was like listening to a doctor discuss with great interest and curiosity, your grandmother's cancerous tumors. This is why I can never be a Civil War buff. I am not fascinated. I am compelled. I would turn away, if I could.
I was working on this long post about seeing Virginia. I was trying to save it as a draft. It apparently went live for a second. It'll be back up in a few hours.
I guess this is a good time to say I'm glad to be back. Hope you guys didn't miss me too much. It looks like Michael Vick was guest-blogging here.
August 14, 2009
It Really Is Your House
At least until Monday. Have at it.
August 13, 2009
This House Is Your House
Be honorable while I'm gone. Otherwise have fun.
August 12, 2009
The South Rises Again
Light posting today guys and through the weekend, as I ready the fam for the trip to Va. I think this will be one for the ages. I've been reading so much about the Civil War, slavery, and Virginia particularly over the last few months. It's very much like being a kid again and being obsessed with the Dragonlance, or the X-Men. Except this time you get to Krynn. You get to visit the Mansion. Being an adult is a lot better. I am going to walk the Wilderness. I am going to see the Crater.
Niall Ferguson Plays The Racist Card
Niall Ferguson offers up the following defense to the Huffington Post, under the headline, "Why My Comparing Obama To Felix The Cat Was Not Racist." It's worth quoting Ferguson's post in full:
So it's racist to compare President Obama with Felix the Cat? Oh
dear, the seemingly dead body of political correctness just twitched.
Let's try logic, shall we?
1. Black cats are proverbially lucky.
2. Felix the cartoon character was a black cat, not an
African-American cat - in other words, he was not one of the (quite
numerous) 1920s figures in popular entertainment that mocked the
mannerisms of the descendants of slaves.
3. Obama is a lucky president -- so far. Compare his first six months with Carter's and Clinton's if you don't get that bit.
4. As for the word "black", it's the same one used by the
Congressional Black Caucus and the Harvard Black Alumni Society, among
others.
The piece made an important point about the biggest threat to
Obama's presidency: the seemingly uncontrollable deficit. That's the
issue the Huffington Post should be focusing on, not politically
correct claptrap.
The problems with this post are rather incredible. It's nice to know that Ferguson's comparison wasn't racist. Of course if you click through the link you'll see that HuffPo accuses him of no such thing. But Ferguson is too good to let the facts stand in the way of flamboyant argument. Hence, the Racist Card.
Look, it's not so bad to say something stupid. Writers who work at high volume are bound to do so from time to time--the expectation of perfection is absurd. Less absurd is the expectation of intellectual honesty, of a writer saying "You know what, I had a point, but I blew the lede." Less absurd is the expectation of respect for the reader, of the writer engaging critics without lying about the actual criticism. Less absurd is the expectation that the writer actually understands the tropes he's employing, that he knows the difference between a four-leaf clover (good luck) and a black cat (bad luck).
I understand the impulse to double-down when you're under attack. But I don't think it's too much to ask people, fortunate enough to think for a living, to do their job. I don't think it's too much to ask writers to refrain from intellectual cowardice. I don't think it's too much to ask Niall Ferguson to, for God's sake, stop digging.
UPDATE: I've been informed that in some cultures black cats are lucky. So, I'd rectract the point about tropes. I still find his defense incredibly dishonest.
Open Thread At Noon
And they're off...
Ranking Tony D
A few commenters (OK one) found it interesting that when I did my off the cuff Top Ten running backs list, I didn't rank Tony Dorsett in the group. It's even more interesting because Tony Dorsett is probably my favorite football player of all time. I became a Cowboys fan when I was five--the year we lost to the Eagles in the championship game. I can still here my Dad (Philly native) trash-talking me.
Anyway, I loved Tony Dorsett and found the sight of him in a Denver Broncos jersey to be an abomination against God. The problem is I was watching him at such a young age, and couldn't really get a handle on his game. Even now, Dorsett highlights don't stick out the way Barry Sanders, Earl Campbell, Jim Brown and Gale Sayers do. He reminds me a lot of Eric Dickerson in that way--you basically just see this guy outrunning fools. That's not to demean him, so much to outline the difficulty of getting a handle on him.
He also doesn't have something like, say, a 2,000 yard season. He was much faster than Emmitt Smith, and much more of a break-away threat, but he doesn't have a "separated shoulder" game. He doesn't have a game like Payton's 270-yarder. Dorsett was just a great running back for a very long time. But his greatness is deceptiive. At the end of this clip there's a 99.5 yard scamper which, at the time, was the longest offensive play in NFL history. There's a moment when Dorsett is surrounded by, like, four guys. And then they all seemingly disappear.
Anyway, wherever he ranks, he was an incredible running back. Also, dig him catching bombs out the back field.
According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), a North Carolina polling firm, only 24%
of self-identified Republican voters in the state believe Barack Obama
was born in the United States. 47% do not believe that Obama is
American born, and 29% of Republicans aren't sure.
One part of PPP's data might reassure sentient readers somewhat: 7%
of those who voted for John McCain do not believe Hawaii to be a part
of the United States. Now perhaps this is just another irrational
expression of Obama hatred. But, it may also be older voters who never
quite absorbed the news that our 50th state is indeed our 50th state.
Sadly, even if the latter is the case, it doesn't explain very
much. Last November, Obama carried North Carolina by just 14,000 or so
votes out of about 4.3 million cast, the second closest state contest
in the nation after Missouri. Each candidate received a shade over 49%
with minor party candidates picking up the rest. So 7% of the McCain
vote is just 3.5% of the total state vote. McCain received about 2.128
million votes. 3.5% of that is-back of the envelope about 74,000 votes.
I'm not even shocked, anymore.
August 11, 2009
The Perils Of Moving On Up
Jason Z is surprised that Niall Ferguson thinks Obama is a lot like Felix The Cat. I'm not. I think the key to how this happens is hinted at in this comment for Dave:
Stupid stuff by Ferguson, who, as
you note, is not stupid. I suspect this comes from the pressure of
writing a regular column for a non-academic audience, and Ferguson
trying to force a shot this week when there was nothing there. You
would know more about this than me, but why can't a newspaper editor
say something like:
"We're hiring you to write a regular column every X, but if for
some reason you come up empty that week (or month, whatever), that's
OK, just let us know. We'll publish one of our outside submissions
instead and just not pay you for that column. We'd rather have you
write less frequently but write consistently good columns than try to
force it."
I don't know what's in Ferguson's head, but I do have some understanding of how the process works for people who are paid to think deep thoughts.
When you are a young writer, editors are often skeptical of you. They generally don't believe you, and they shouldn't. Not in q "you're lying" sort of way--though there is that. But in a, "Are you really capable of doing what it takes to make this thing great" sort of way. If you are lucky this takes the form of them giving you room to write short, medium and long, but kicking the crap out of you the whole way. If you're unlucky, it just involves a lot of kicking.
Should you stay at it a while, and build some sort of name, editors generally back off. Part of that is trust--you're a known quantity. But part of it is also a change in the relationship. A guy like Niall Ferguson is a brand in a way that, say, Ian Parker isn't. I love Parker and will now take this opportunity to link, yet again, to his gorgeous Alec Baldwin piece. I am sure there are people, like me, who read the New Yorker waiting to see what Parker is going to do next. But not the way people wait to hear what Ferguson has to say. For whatever reason, there's a bigger audience for opinion journalism than there is for narrative journalism. Once you're a brand, your relationship with your editor often changes. It's almost--almost--irrelevant whether you are right. Masses of people will flock to hear what you have to say about the world. Plus, a lot of writers
Lastly, once you become a brand, you feel the need to feed the beast. But the beast isn't natural. You don't have something important to say each and every week. And you certainly don't have something important to say each week, at 800-1000 words. Yet the demand is still there. Look, I'm a sheep-herder in this wonderful corner of the grand meadows of Bradley-land. But I regularly get requests to speak on issues that I know very little about. I can't imagine what it's like for a star Harvard professor.
There are people whose whole business revolves around Big Ideas. For those folks, there is immense pressure to talk--and talk a lot. But "Big Ideas" are hard, and some days--nay, most days--you've got nothing. And the next thing you know, you're telling the most powerful man in the world that what he really should be doing is paying more attention to a cartoon that no one watches, anymore. Tough business, eh?
The first time I ever watched Star Trek was in the wake of a
very difficult breakup several years ago. I went to visit my friend
David, who shepherded me through a weekend when I was too stupid with
grief to function. On the last day of my trip, he showed me "The
Measure of a Man," the episode where Data's humanity is placed on
trial. Something about that structured argument, Data's struggle to
assert himself through the rationality of programming, and the
confusion of an attack on his right to control his life, snapped me
back to myself. For recovering nerds like me, Data feels like another
self, one who reflects back how foreign human behavior can be, even to
smart, analytical people. When Data tells his girlfriend that he's not
sure what he's doing wrong because "I'm drawing on various literary and
social resources to help define my role," it's all too familiar. But
it's also kind of a relief. If the smartest robot in the world can't
just figure out human relationships, we're off the hook for not getting
it right immediately. But if an artificial human keeps trying to be his
best self, we have an obligation to keep trying too.
Two things.
1.) Alyssa's blog is great. Over the past month this space has heavily leveraged books, meaning less opportunity for link-love. I'm working to get the balance back.
2.) This post reminded me of the intersection between love and Star Trek. Young nerds out there--people who say Star Trek turns off women, are talking about the wrong women. When I was young, a preliminary knowledge of Mr. Data was not a bonus, it was a requirement. Come on now--Ya'll don't know about Marcus and the barest essence of the Trek?
No, That's Not Demeaning At All
Via Fallows, Niall Ferguson has taken to calling Obama, "Felix the Prez." I'll allow the Harvard professor to explain why:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the
best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black.
He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th
president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just
over six months in the world's biggest and toughest job.
I'm sure Ferguson has the sort of brain-power that could extinguishes galaxies. I read this lede, and said to myself "I shouldn't be so offended, so politically correct, that I don't actually read the guys column.
I don't think that was a smart decision. I found the piece to basically be a long-winded concern-troll. And then it ends with this:
Even Felix the Cat's luck ran out during the Depression. His creator
Pat Sullivan drank himself to death in 1933, baffled that audiences now
preferred mice like Mickey and Jerry. President Obama should take note.
Right. Obama should take note. From a cat. Because, you know, the cat is black too. Like Obama.
Some Respect For The Enemy
Jim Johnson died a couple weeks ago. For those that don't know, he was the defensive coordinator for the Eagles, and for my money, the best in the league over the past five years or so. I hated Johnson. Arguably no man ruined more Sundays for me over the past decade.
The thing I love about sports, though, is there's always this moment when hatred transitions into respect. I was happy when Darrell Green got into the Hall--mostly because I remember him running down Tony Dorsett. And come on, dude played cornerback at 42! Anyway, I feel the same way about Johnson. I felt the same way about LT and Cunningham. If you're honest with yourself, and not just a fanboy, you come to know who on the opposing team is 'bout it and who's faking. Jim Johnson always brought it.
The over-arching tone of moral superiority really gets me. The
patronizing tone telling Mr. Sullivan that he's British and he didn't
grow up around these folks so he wouldn't understand. I've heard this
type of talk before only it wasn't the left talking about the right it
was bigoted white folks where I grew up telling tourists from other
places they didn't know anything about Native Americans because they
didn't grow up around them.
The false comparison and the presentism really chafes as well. As if
it was only a portion of Americans who believed in Manifest Destiny
instead of a majority. Comparing present day republicans with people
who were responsible for genocide. Often it was well meaning
progressives who helped to start the movements in Native American
Education that were responsible for some of the worst abuses of what
should probably be termed cultural rape or genocide. Woodrow Wilson, a
racist by anyone's estimation the man who saw Birth of a Nation in the
white house and said It's all true, was a progressive and yet he was
the guy who mandated segregation in federal employment. As TNC so
eloquently pointed out upthread Roosevelt started the policy of
Red-lining.
There is also a false believe in one's own moral superiority in this
note. A holier than thou attitude that is elitist, self-righteous, and
unreflective. A habit of looking down one's nose and saying I'm so glad
I got my act together look at those stupid, ignorant people over there
on the right I'm so glad I'm better than they are. There is nothing
wrong with populism properly portioned out. After all William Jennings
Bryan was a populist, and before he was a part of the scopes monkey
trial he was one of those people who stood up for the little guy.
Bryan's ideas about basing the value of the dollar on the value of
commodities was finally realized when Roosevelt did something similar
during the New Deal when he took America off the gold standard. Burton
K. Wheeler is another one of these populists, for all his willingness
to stand up against the Anaconda Copper Company, his support of labor
and willingness to reform the railroads, he helped to lead the
opposition to U.S. involvement in WW2 before Pearl Harbor.
People are complicated, and it really bothers me when I hear people
who think that one side has always been on the side of truth, justice,
and the American Way while the other side has been the upholder of all
that is wrong with America. No matter where they come from they need to
stop drinking the kool-aid.
Yeah, something I missed is how the writer subscribes to the "hijacking of America" theory. It's very comforting to think that, as Sorn says, only a nefarious minority are responsible for all our ills. The the truth is so much more tangled. You can't act like housing segregation and red-lining wasn't a manifestation of popular will. "The People" are sometimes noble. But sometimes they're foolish and acquisitive. Like all people.
House Jews And Field Jews
I never liked Malcolm's "House Slave/Field Slave" dichotomy, or the attendant notion that the underclass would be the most revolutionary. Sometimes the underclass is the most conservative. It follows from the whole nobility of oppression bit. It also ignores the fact that the privileged class, having seen what's possible and having been availed some education, are often the most troublesome. There's a diary entry, which Bruce Levine quotes from in Confederate Emancipation, where a white mistress notes that seemingly the first slaves to run for Union lines, are the ones they hold in the most esteem.
That's beside the point of this post. Adam sees parallels between the House Slave/Field Slave analogy and the criticism of lefty Jews:
What makes this kind of argument particularly
interesting however, is how much it resembles intraracial arguments
between black folks about loyalty and authenticity. In the eyes of
those who support all of Israel's actions uncritically, the "Juicebox
Mafia" are "House Jews": Jews whose positions on Israel are motivated
by their internalizing longstanding anti-Semitic myths and identifying
with those who seek to oppress the Jewish people. These Jewish
conservatives are, ironically enough, embracing the same kind of
bare-knuckle identity politics as the blacks they love to hate...
As Randall Kennedy writes in his 2008 book
"Sellout," there should be a high threshold for accusations of racial
betrayal. Accusations of selling out should be reserved for those who
actively work against the interests of the community--not those who
simply disagree about what is in the group's best interest. Those who
accuse Jewish liberals of "self-hatred" aren't offering insight. They
most resemble what Glenn Loury calls those "self-appointed guardians of
racial virtue" in the black community who enforce a dangerous and
enervating form of "black political correctness." Like black partisans
who accuse any conservative black intellectual of being a "sellout,"
the Juicebox Mafia's detractors are simply trying to shut down debate
over Israel's actions, which is hardly in the long-term interest of
Israel or the Jewish community in the Diaspora.
I think this is about how nationalism always works--there's a line from House Slave to Juicebox Mafia to Swiftboating. Nationalism relies on essentialism. Thus there always is great temptation among nationalist (of all stripes) to dismiss their adversaries as, not simply people they disagree with, but people who endanger their very existence.
But that's not the real problem. The real issue is a shocking lack of imagination among the Jewish people. Seriously, how could those who gave us Phillip Roth and Michael Chabon also give us a phrase as unliterary, and unevocative as "Juicebox Mafia?"
We blacks have our problems. But we have long set the bar for how to demonize other black people who you don't agree with--"Oreo," "Uncle Tom." "House Slave," "Michael Steele." These are phrases that sting, visceral and poetic. In light of our sacred alliance, you guys can't do better than Juicebox Mafia? Weaksauce. It sounds like the name of a gaggle of overweight first-graders in a Pixar movie.
Whatever happened to "Self-Loathing Jew?" That one was so great I started calling black people I didn't like "Self-Loathing Jews."
Wait.
Was that anti-Semitic? Can I not say that? Was I not supposed to say that??
Open Thread At Noon
Sullivan's chilln, McArdle's chillin, What more can I say top billin...
Heh. Didn't quite work did it?
You Hope The Little Black Boy Grows
I've got two boys staying with me right now--my son, and one of my beloved nephews. My son is nine, and my nephew is eight. This is our second week together, and I'm having flashbacks of my Dad, and how much he used to make us read at that age. The boys have been arguing, as boys in a small New York apartment are wont to do.
Luckily, I have powerful weapons at my disposal--Linda Brent's Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl and David Blights A Slave No More. Whenever they bring the ruckus, I just toss one at each of em, and have em read for 30-40 minutes. Then we talk.
I was once with a Jewish family, who said that they wouldn't tell their kids about the Holocaust until they were 16-17. It's a more immediate trauma, so I understand. Plus, while there are many wrong ways to raise kids, there is no right and only way. I think that's the key. It's been hilarious breaking out the books, and watching their faces sink. I remember those days.
Hall Of Fame Props
It's worth saluting this year's class. Props to Bruce Smith, who I hated in all the right ways. Props to Rod Woodson, who seemingly could do anything in the secondary. Props to Bullet Bob Hayes, who altered the Wide Receiver position. But more than anything, props to Derrick Thomas' family. Good God was he a force of nature--especially early in his career. I still remember that game against Dave Krieg. It was terrible to lose him the way we did. His son looks just like him.
For Most Of Your Time In America...
I don't agree with everything in this letter--it's a little too sweeping for me. But the core of it, that there are things, having grown up here, that you see which people who come from other countries miss, really struck me:
Your obvious shock and dismay at the sheer angry ignorance
of the health care teabaggers reiterates my largest problem with your
rosy immigrant's view of America. You have often underestimated just
how poisonously dangerous the American populist right is.
I
don't blame you. You came to America after the rise of Reagan. Most of
your life in America, you have lived under different Republican
presidents who placated these folks with platitudes and campaign
rhetoric. The one period when the populist right didn't feel they had a
fellow traveler in charge was when Bill Clinton was elected (thanks to
the reactionaries splitting their votes). You remember, no doubt, the
level of crazy Clinton had to defuse and dodge, and this was a man who
had the advantage of being a Southern bubba who has dealt which such
people all his life.
For most of your time in America, this insanity has been muted
by the success of conservative politics. Since you live in Washington,
you probably saw daily the face of the successful conservative
political establishment that milked the populist right, and by milking
them kept their bitterness at a manageable level. That safety valve was
stuffed up by George Bush's failed presidency.
So now, these people are facing their worst fears; actual change. A
political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes,
and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of
intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British,
Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't
grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and
potent part of the American political landscape they are.
It's worth reading the whole thing. I've often wondered how much of Andrew's conservatism, and really the politics of the "serious" left (TNR, Slate, Washington Monthly, a chunk of the Atlantic) is rooted in an utter disdain for the late 60s--the riots, free love, the drugs the Panthers etc. It's understandable, but obviously very weird for me. Anyway, read the whole thing
August 7, 2009
The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down
Or drove down to old Dixie, rather. I'm going to Virginia next week in hopes of making all that I've been reading real. Or at least some of it. I have some ideas about what I'd like to see. But I'd love to hear some suggestions on battle-sites, and slave plantations. I have a few days. I wanna take in as much as I can.
Only Built For Civil War Nerds
If you were, at all, interested in my last post on Black Confederates, I highly recommend this lecture from Bruce Levine, taken from his stellar book Confederate Emancipation.
For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is, what are they angry about?
There
was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene
Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if
they "oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care."
Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those
present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.
Now,
people who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably
aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may
believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are
spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia
for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House
Republican leaders.) But they're probably reacting less to what Mr.
Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing,
than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town
hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's
behind the "birther" movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship.
Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care
protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the
protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a
substantial fraction.
But how "right" is he? In other words, can we say that John Edwards would not have gotten a similar response? And even if he would have, is part of it based on the idea that "national health care" really will cover everyone? Historian Ira Katznelson outlines how Roosevelt was able to past the New Deal in part because Southern senators were able to cut their black constituents out of the "deal."
And there is the fact that never in this country's history have people admitted to being racist. Even the Confederate white supremacists insisted that they were looking out for black people. They were as cynical as any Senator today.
And then I got this via e-mail today:
Yesterday evening I was to attend to the
Health Care summit with(D) Rep Betty Reed and(D) Rep Kathy Castor, I'm a
Precinct Captain (203) in Tampa and we received our talking points to rebut any
NEGATIVE GOP talking points on healthcare. I never made it in the building. I've
never in my life really experience outright racism in a public place. Signs
of Obama hung in effigy, racial slurs on signs, people chanting negative words
( too many to list) and outright screaming at Obama supporters. The hatred was
in their eyes and they actually scared me for a moment. At first I was shocked,
then a little scared and then I got outright mad in the span of 1 minute..............
I actually left (the "hood" would have come out). I was
totally blown away it was a mad house. I'm kinda mad at my self now,
because I left. I'm still shaking my head in awe....................I'm
still cold inside.
One thingto keep in mind is that race, and racism, have rarely ever acted alone. One of the best points that Phillip Dray makes in his classic history of lynching is that epidemics of lynching often coincided, not just with an expansion of black rights, but with increased labor mobility among white women. So fear of white women, and their independence, as well as fear of sexual competition, all worked in concert. It wasn't simply "I hate niggers"--it never is. It was "I don't much like black people, and prices are going up, and I have to let my wife work, so I can survive, and I'm scared she won't stay with me if she's not dependent on me and I'd die if she left me for a black guy." Or some such.
Ditto for the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't just racism--it was class also. In the South you had this black middle class that always had to be deferential to the most poorest white person in the world. The prospect of losing that deference, of already being lower than the white aristocracy and now also being lower than a class of blacks too, wreaked havoc.
I don't know if the response to Obama involves a similar mix--I still don't know what to make of that Joker face. But it's worth noting that, to the extent that this is complicated, it's complexity is not new. The ingredients may be--but not the complexity. Americans have almost never admitted to being racist, and to the extent they've been racist, it's rarely been reducible to a simply "I hate black people." There's always been something more. It's always been hard to figure out what the "more" was.
Open Thread At Noon
What can I say, but, go?
Sotomayor And The Hispanic Vote
Andrew has a rather amazing chart up. Nate thinks that the fact that so many GOP Senators with relatively high Hispanic populations are voting no is a fluke. Possibly. But it also could be that a substantial Hispanic community, but not majority, provides breeding ground for Minute Men-types. We saw this with black voters and Barack Obama, last year. Or it could just be a fluke
There's something more tragic to the fall of William Jefferson. Maybe
because he was the state's first African American congressman since
Reconstruction or maybe it's because he's a Harvard-trained lawyer. A
lot of excitement greeted his election. After all, he took over the
seat once held by House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and his wife, Lindy
Boggs, the mother of ABCNews's Cokie Roberts and venerable lobbyist
Tommy Boggs. Jefferson's arrival in Congress in 1991 was another sign
of the rise of biracial politics in the South even if the district had
been made still blacker to all but ensure the election of an African
American.
"In an effort to honor the life and service of Strom Thurmond,
Senator Lott made some comments that he probably wishes he had phrased
differently. I do not believe Senator Lott meant to be malicious or
racist with the comments he made. I believe he was merely honoring a
great American on his 100th birthday [...] I do not believe he harbors
racist sentiments in his heart," - Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), December 13, 2002.
"There is no other way you can interpret [Sotomayor's "wise Latina" speech]. She thinks that a woman
with her experience can make a better conclusion than a white male -
and to me, I consider that racist," - Inhofe, August 4, 2009.
Gravity
I didn't make it over to the Met today, was busy helping clean up the remnants of a slumber party. But I was there on Tuesday, and got to spend about an hour and half wandering. When I was young, I was, as all of you know, a hip-hop head. I consumed everything I could about the music, poring over liner notes, laying on my bed trying to pull something--anything--from the cover art. This was before the internet, and so when you got a new album you were, for the most part, left only with the art.
I remember looking at the cover for Illmatic and wondering, What is he trying to tell me? Likely not much, but it was nice to imagine that there was some kind of deeper revelation waiting to be uncovered. It was nice to not know and spend the time trying to figure it out, and when you couldn't figure it out, imagining. When the culture of celebrity changed, and hip-hop morphed into that culture, my relationship with it changed--suddenly I knew too much. I miss the old "not knowing," and have gotten some of that feeling back in my time in the museum. There is so much to imagine. So much to wonder about.
This is Massacre of the Innocents, by Navez. I saw it last week, and it stayed with me, and then, a few days later, my Bible reading took me to Herod, who killed all the male children in his kingdom, in hopes of staving off the coming of the Messiah. I hope I have that right. Anyway, with the lore in hand, I wanted to see the painting again. I hoped the colors would mean more, that they would be deeper to me.
This was easier said the done. The Met is a universe, and each wing is a galaxy, and in each galaxy there and stars and planets tugging at the imagination. You come in with your heart set on seeing Hercules shooting his bow, but instead you end up staring at a nomad queen's golden crown.
Toward the end I finally made it there, but I had to push myself, and it is true, I did see more, but I'm not sure I saw better. I guess it was nice to know what the painter had in mind, and I did hone in on details that I'd missed before, but the story really didn't feel essential to me.
Whatever. The painting is gorgeous. The woman in the back futilely trying to shush her young son, is just arresting. I love this piece.
Also, I suspended my account on Facebook. I think the voices are right.
Open Thread At Noon
Go for it, all.
People Who Claim That Women Don't Like Them...
Usually mean that the women they like, don't like them. From Sodini:
Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the
US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me
attractive.
This is almost certainly false. But it's the self-indulgent, self-pitying aspect of "nice guys" the world over. Leaving aside the fact that people who call themselves "nice guys" are often assholes, the "girls don't like me" notion has deep resonance, especially given the inroads made by nerdism.
I'm thinking of Freaks and Geeks, where the geeks lament that they can't get laid. But what they really mean is that they can't get laid by cheerleaders. I'm thinking of rappers who swear no girls liked them until they got rich. But what they really mean is that the drug-dealers girlfriend types didn't like them until the got rich. The worst part of the "nice guy" lament is that it attacks the shallowness of women, with it's own implicit shallowness.
It isn't a male thing, either. Mo'Nique made this movie whining about how no one thought overweight women were beautiful--but her ideal is this dude who's built like a NFL cornerback.
People Who Claim To Hate The Media
Usually just hate that the media doesn't love them. Sarah Palin lunching at Michael's is ridiculous and predictable.
What Probably Needs To Be Said
I think I was wrong for implying that yesterday's rampage was strictly the result of racism. I did not say that--but it's very strongly inferred in the post. It's worth noting that at the time I wrote the post, the dude's blog was down, and so all I had was what I quoted. That doesn't excuse anything I wrote. It just gives you some idea of how it happened. It's very clear that the dude was crazy. It's also very clear he was racist. It's also very clear that he was a misogynist. Again, I hate weighing these things against each other. But I think, given the victims, dude's sexism, at the very least, deserved more prominent billing. We will talk later about how these two forces often intersect.
It's worth pointing out a few things. There is, I sense, an accumulating frustration around what we call racism, and what we don't, or what we name as racism and what we don't. I think Obama's approach to this sort of thing has been helpful for me, as he really knows how to explain both sides with some sincerity. I'm envious--he's speaking from what he knows, and having been raised in a largely white family helps him in this business.
I don't have that same reservoir. I grew up exclusively around black people. Until I was 20, all my friends were black, and everyone I'd ever loved was black. All the women I've ever dated are black. Every neighborhood I've ever lived in has been black. When I was young I was proud of this. Now, I don't much care--it's who I am. But I try to understand my limits, that I am, in many ways, a white guy who's lived in the neighborhood all his life.
It's not a mistake that my experiences have been as they are. Racism is part of it. But a larger part is, there is no other way to say this, a deep-seated fear of white people. To white ears, this may sound crazy. The obvious retort is that, given the murder rate, we should be scared of each other. But we are talking about two kinds of fear. One is the individual fear--this guy might kill me. The other is an existential fear--these people really wish I'd just disappear.
I'd humbly submit that this existential fear permeates all of our conversations, it most certainly haunts this blog. A lot of my readers may find that bizarre. These days, James Byrd is the exception not the rule. This is not the Red Summer. This is the age of Obama. And yet a large number of us are only a generation, or two, removed from the worst kind of family stories--grandparents run off their land, uncles shot for sassing white people, great-grandmothers raped and no prosecution. The violence of the past lives in our very genes. We see it when we look in the mirror, when we comb our hair. I think often about Germany, font of Western philosophy and high-mindedness, and none of it stopped them from industrializing the destruction of a people, none of it stopped them from trying to make a people disappear.
Black people aren't just a minority--they are a historically despised, presently marginalized relativey small portion of the population. (85 percent of people in this country are not black.) Moreover, this is a nation filled with people who are armed to the teeth, and I wonder about their disposition toward us. When I hear about some dude shooting up a joint and listing as one of his reasons, his inability to compete with black men, I get scared. I hear the old ghosts of history howling, and I respond in kind.
That is not very smart--you tend to miss out on other things when you're focused on your own fears. But I'm human and replete with my own prejudices and limitations. What you get here, is not the world as it should be, but naked thoughts. It's self-serving to say this, but it's why I constantly urge people who comment here to start their own blogs. My perspective on the world is as constricted by history as anyone else's. I would ask folks, who don't share that history, to try to understand that as they read--much as I must work to try to understand the same about them.
Why do this?? To young girls? Just read below. I kept a running log that
includes my thoughts and actions, after I saw this project was going to
drag on.
November 5, 2008:
Planned to do this in the summer but figure to stick around to see the
election outcome. This particular one got so much attention and I was
just curious. Not like I give a flying fcuk who won, since this exit
plan was already planned. Good
luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him.
Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good! In light of this I got ideas
outside of Obama's plans for the economy and such. Here it is: Every
black man should get a young white girl hoe to hone up on. Kinda a
reverse indentured servitude thing. Long ago, many a older white male
landowner had a young Negro wench girl for his desires. Bout' time
tables are turned on that shit. Besides, dem young white hoez dig da
bruthrs! LOL. More so than they dig the white dudes! Every
daddy know when he sends his little girl to college, she be bangin a
bruthr real good. I saw it. "Not my little girl", daddy says! (Yeah
right!!) Black dudes have thier choice of best white hoez. You do the
math, there are enough young white so all the brothers can each have
one for 3 or 6 months or so.
The words of one of the commenters here haunt. The worry isn't that Obama will get killed--it's that a lot of other people will get killed because these thugs can't get to Obama. It is, on the one hand, shocking that white people are dying over white supremacy. And then, when you think historically, it actually isn't.
In The Name Of White Divinity
It recently occurred to me that in order to really understand the Civil War, and the people living in that era, I would need some familiarity with the Bible. I know as much about as much about the Bible as I know about opera, car engines, and construction. But I can't see myself really understanding the era, without an, at least basic, understanding of the Word.
I finished my fourth daily reading this morning, and what I'm left with is the incredible stupidity of converting slaves to Christianity. Stupidity is too strong a word--but you can see the racism implicit in the notion of conversion, the presumption that the slaves, themselves, would not interpret the religion in their own way, that they would not, themselves, await God's winnowing fork, and then see it in this late unpleasantness.
I've been thinking on this verse:
For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives.
That brings so much to mind--Niebuhr, Bacevich, and probably over the years, as I get caught up, much, much more. But for the moment it brings to mind the South. You can read those lines all kinds of ways. I am the son the slaves, and so when I hear that think about the vanity of spreading a net in the sight of birds, I think about what Robert Hayden calls the "deep, immortal, human wish\the timeless will." I think about the ultimate vanity and ultimate futility of slavery.
What occurs to me is that some time around the early 19th, late 18th century, a portion of this country decided to make themselves into Gods. They were not the first. And they aren't the last. But I can't get past the simple thrill, the utter charge man gets from dominating man. Southerners referred to white supremacy not just in economic terms, but as a lifestyle. Slavery did not just mean the right to exploit another man's labor, it meant utter and complete dominion over him, his wives, his children and all of his friends.
You could end his life in all manner of ways. Kill him, then take his woman as your own. Sell him, then take his woman and his daughters as your own. Keep him there, and do the same. It oversimplifies things to say, their would be no repercussions--but no one could stop you. In your own eyes, by birth-right, you would be Godkin. And even if you were born with no slaves--as Nathan Bedford Forrest was--you could have rights reserved to you, that mortals did not.
In Bruce Levine's stellar Confederate Emancipation he discusses the thinking behind Jeff Davis, Patrick Cleburne and Robert E. Lee, when they were considering arming slaves to fight. Modern Lost Causers, who mostly see blacks as "black confederates" as jewels in their tainted crowns, see this decision as evidence that the war wasn't about slavery. Their right. It was about white supremacy. And even as Cleburne is telling Davis to emancipate and arm the slaves, he's also telling him that the South can define what, precisely, "emancipate" means.
The new focus on a bogus document from an anonymous source has riven
the small community of activists who are trying to prove that Barack
Obama cannot be president of the United States. The day after the image
appeared online, prominent "birther" attorneys and activists worried
that Taitz was doing real, irreversible damage to their movement. As
she's become the public face of the "birther cause"-on Monday, MSNBC
labeled her a "leader" of the "birther movement"-other figures in the
"birther" community are distancing themselves from her work and from
this document.
"If this turns out to be a bad document that she's posted, I think
it gives the non-birthers an argument to say: 'See, these people don't
know what they're doing,'" said Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney
who filed the first "eligibility" lawsuit
against Obama one year ago this month. "If this document turns out to
be a phony, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the non-birthers put
it out there."
Right. The "non-birthers."
WoW Talk
Sorry guys, spent yesterday clearing out a couple things. I wish I could say I spent it WoWing it up--but my server didn't come up till 9 EST. Did manage to have some fun clearing out three wings of Naxx. Also did the new instance this morning. The fascinating thing for me is how far we've come from Blackrock Depths, when an instance could stretch endlessly. I've actually never finished BRD. Just for kicks, I'd love to get a party of 60-ish players and try to run the whole thing. Anyway, I got me some new legs. I ain't complaining.
August 4, 2009
Bitch's Brew
I'm late on this, I know, but I'm trying to figure out what the hell Dana Milbank was thinking. With few exceptions, the "bitch joke" is the marker of a male mind confronting its own limits and a formidable woman, at the same time. It is the fuel gauge on the dashboard sagging past "E."
I won't attempt to separate the sexist from the stupid, here. They may well be one in the same. But I imagine it must be grating to be lectured to on what is/isn't sexism from a beneficiary. That said, I will offer this--when a man starts reaching for the bitch jokes, you've probably won.
UPDATE:Let it go boys. A HuffPo commenter nailed it--"The trick is to stop digging."
Blogger Down
Sorry folks. A little overrun today. Take this as your open thread. Play nice. I'll catch you in the morning. If I'm lucky, later this afternoon.
August 3, 2009
Refighting The Civil War (Blue vs. Gray)
Down below I'm engaged in a bitter war with a gang of fools who won't acknowledge the awesomeness of Emmitt Smith. I should ban them all from comments, and subscribe all their e-mails to the Dallas Cowboys newsletter.
But lo, I am a merciful Lord. And even in the presence of blasphemy, I offer only the light. It occurs to me that I have warred with this scurrilous band of heathens before, and hath smote them all. Since they've returned for more smoting it's worth offering a dose of the knowledge I gave them but only a year ago:
Let me say right out the gate that Barry Sanders was an incredible
back, and the most exciting player of his time (I actually rank Deion
Sanders and Randall Cunningham right after Barry). I particularly love
the move Barry put on a Patriot d-back where he spun the guy around in
a circle. It took a while for me to write this post, in part because I
was trying to find video of that move. No dice.
I'm going to
make a very short critique of Barry, mostly because I don't want to
nitpick. Furthermore, it is true that Barry played for a bad team with
a mediocre coach. Having said that, I just want to enter into the
record that Barry Sanders holds the NFL record for most yards lost,
and that he was running on a home field (the Silverdome) that was
simply butter for running backs. I think that accounts for some of his
more lackluster playoff performances (only one touchdown in six playoff
games), as the Lions were rarely playing at home. Like I said, I don't
want to rip on Barry--I think he's either the fourth or fifth greatest
back of all time (yeah, I'm hedging some on Dickerson).
Anyway,
my case for Emmitt Smith relies on straight up consistency. Emmitt was
less exciting than Barry, but constantly, constantly great. People love
to note that Barry played for the marginal Wayne Fontes. But
Emmitt--after a relatively short stint with Jimmy Johnson--played for
the likes of Barry Switzer, Chan Gailey, and Dave Campo. I also hear a
lot of people saying that Emmitt was running behind arguably the
greatest o-line in history and virtually anyone could have been running
in that situation. It should be noted that Emmitt Smith actually racked
up most of his yards post-1995, after the Cowboys began to decline and
after Jimmy Johnson was gone. In that period, Emmitt racked up six
straight 1,000-yard seasons. It also should be noted that as good as
the Cowboys line was, there probably is only a single Hall of Famer
(Larry Allen) among them. That's the same number of HOFers as the Lions
in the Barry Sanders era (Lomas Brown). Emmitt was great running behind
the Cowboys line at its peak, but as they declined he stayed great and
consistent. He was the constant, not the Cowboys O-Line--if anything,
he made them look better than they were.
I'm taking a wait and see approach with this idea that upwards of 70 percent of Southern whites don't believe Obama is a citizen. This is a case, where, I think, either side could be right. Given my current reading, it really wouldn't shock me if the numbers bore this out. But my experience with opinion polling tells me to take a wait and see approach.
There probably is something to be said about birthers in general, and the fact that, even if the 70 percent number is high, the belief seems to be pretty concentrated in the South. I'll be writing later this week about the weight of white supremacy on white Southeners, and the problems of trying to erect a populist aristocracy. Obviously, essential to that is class of peons. With that backdrop, I can understand why a disproportionate number of white Southerners (if not 70 percent) can't seem to accept what's happened. The peon is king. What does that make you?
UPDATE: From comments, more data coming in--only 32 percent of white Virginia Republicans believe Obama is a citizen.
Also a note on the populist aristocracy. I was trying to craft a term to sum up the dreams of white supremacy. I think the basic aim is to offer a kind of nobility (literally) to all white people, on the basis of skin. The way that nobility is demonstrated is through power over a peasant (?) class--blacks. Bear with me. I'm working my way through it.
Open Thread At Noon
Have At It...
Speaking Of Art
If he ain't better than Jim Brown, he's the closest one...
How We Look At Art
For obvious reasons, I found Michael Kimmelman's piece in The Times, this morning, very interesting. Kimmelman is concerned that people are happy to look at photos of great art, but not very interested in sitting with the work itself:
Almost nobody, over the course of that hour or two, paused before
any object for as long as a full minute. Only a 17th-century wood
sculpture of a copulating couple, from San Cristobal in the Solomon
Islands, placed near an exit, caused several tourists to point, smile
and snap a photo, but without really breaking stride.
Visiting
museums has always been about self-improvement. Partly we seem to go to
them to find something we already recognize, something that gives us
our bearings: think of the scrum of tourists invariably gathered around
the Mona Lisa. At one time a highly educated Westerner read perhaps 100
books, all of them closely. Today we read hundreds of books, or maybe
none, but rarely any with the same intensity. Travelers who took the
Grand Tour across Europe during the 18th century spent months and years
learning languages, meeting politicians, philosophers and artists and
bore sketchbooks in which to draw and paint -- to record their memories
and help them see better.
Cameras replaced sketching by the
last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded
emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to
look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an
image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because
it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was
a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.
There's a lot here I agree with, and a lot that I don't know about. I can really relate to the self-improvement part. Again, these recent museum visits have been religious for me. But I'm less disturbed by the idea of us losing something due to the proliferation of photography. I can't speak for everyone, but the web, a photo, or a post-card simply can't replicate the feel of an original painting.
More than that it can't replicate the majesty of seeing that painting at home in a gallery, and as part of a broader family of other painting. My experience is limited here, but what I love is how the pieces at the Met come together to tell a broader story--not so much a narrative, but a story. I don't want to see Cot's "The Storm" (pictured above) alone. I want to see it as part of a tradition, a lineage, a bigger thing. But that's my feeling. I'm not sure it has to be everyone's
This isn't so much a critique of Kimmelman, but I'm always skeptical of nostalgia--even if I fall victim to it myself, at times. I think we spend too much time hand-wringing about the present, as opposed to adjusting to it. I come to what is classic from all the art of the now--Chris Claremont, Raekwon, Randall Cunningham and Double Dragon. They've helped shape my sense of what is beautiful--but they don't limit it.
I imagine that it's true that there are those who are simply happy with a post-card. If ever it were different, I think that this says more about man's options, than his essential nature. Moreover, I think the older I get (and really in the last year or so) the less I care about "man" in that generalized sense. It's not out of callousness, but out of an inability to know where anything is going. I think--though I do not know--that maybe art touches who it's supposed to touch. Everyone won't see it as deeply as everyone else--whatever we take that to mean. Maybe they aren't even supposed to.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
