Ta-Nehisi Coates

Lost in the City. Trapped in the public school reform debate.

Thu,02 Jul 2009 21:05:28 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

Two months into my first real job teaching poetry at a middle school in Southeast D.C. the English teacher whose class I took over once a week got hit in the eye while breaking up a fight. Two weeks later, after the student who'd struck her hadn't been expelled, she decided not to return. This was a seventh grade English class, first quarter of the school year. So early that the kids sneakers were still uncreased, the chalk still at the edges of the blackboard. I hadn't yet learned every child's name. The end of this story? The school never hired another teacher - I watched a rotating cycle of substitutes come in and hand out worksheets to students that ran the gamut from on grade level to barely reading.

If you read this in a major newspaper the headline likely would read: school overrun by violence. Teaching at the school has taught me that it's more complicated than that, but I've also learned that the struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy in the classroom push good teachers away. One of the best young teachers I worked with is off to Kipp, and most of the other good young teachers in public schools across the city are finding reason after reason to go work in charter schools or private schools - even when it means working more hours and longer school years.

This is where James Forman Jr.'s essay "No Ordinary Success" comes in. In "No Ordinary Success" Forman looks at two models of school reform, Geoffrey Canada's Promise Academy based in New York and the Kipp Charter Schools that are in 19 states across the country as he tries to answer his own question: How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? I highly recommend the article, which you can find here.

As a starting point, Forman talks about Richard Rothstein's 2004 book Class and Schools. I mention it for the same reason Forman does. Rothstein concluded that "the challenges facing low-income students meant that they would always do worse, on average, than their higher-income peers." It reminds me of the Boston Review article by Patrick Sharkey in which he asserts that "almost three out of four black families living in today's poorest, most segregated neighborhoods are the same families that lived in the ghettos of the 1970s." His article, The Inherited Ghetto, can be found here.

The point is, of course, that anyone jumping into school reform has a fight on their hands and if what Rothstein says is true, and what Sharkey says is true....

There's no real reason for me to rehash the details of the article, except to say this: Canada's model looks to transform an entire neighborhood. That is to say that he started Harlem's Children Zone (HCZ) a complex network of parenting classes, health centers and tutoring spots to serve about a 100 square foot are of Harlem. Initially, Canada used the HCZ to aid the schools, and he had people in schools to support the public schools. He found the public school's didn't support his efforts, and that his efforts weren't producing the expected results. So he started Promise Academy. Canada makes a point to take all students, no matter their reading levels, no matter how problematic their behavior is, and looks to transform lives. Canada does this, too.

Kipp's model is a little different. David Levin and Michael Feinberg began working in the Houston schools with teach for america and when they weren't getting the support they expected - and after a few disturbing incidents that you can read in the article - they began Kipp. Kipp relies on rigorous standards and teachers who are willing to work longer hours and students who are in school for longer hours over longer periods of time and commit to two hours of homework each night. Kipp has been able to sustain achievement over the 19 states and 66 schools.

But this is the trouble with this manner of school reform - only a limited number of students have access to these kinds of programs. What of the other students? When Forman brings this question of pockets of success to Jay Mathews, author of Work Hard. Be Nice., a book about Kipp's history, contends that a school like Kipp proves the idea that kids from low income neighborhoods can't achieve success is a lie. The assumption behind his statement is that the underlying reason money, resources and time aren't put into public school systems is because the larger society sees them as hopeless. I tend to think a large number of the public, especially the educated public, believe this. It might very well be a false assumption but it seems the American myth of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps infects many minds, to the point that Mathews would even assert that there is a need to "prove" students from low-income neighborhoods can succeed. But that's the narrative of the underdog - do it to prove you can do it is what people are sold again and again when the evidence says that the solution goes way beyond a lack of work ethic.

In the end, Forman believes that Kipp and the Promise Academy should be seen as viable models, but not the only model. He argues that they work, in part, because of the hyper dedicated people they bring around them. Specifically citing Kipp's HR department's ability to attract talent. Forman doesn't really answer his question directly. He gives us more than enough examples to show that it's possible to improve the life prospects of young kids in poor neighborhoods - but it seems that finding the answer he sought, led him to reveal to us a more troubling problem: How do we create environments where average teachers, even just good teachers, can excel in a school system that provides a quality education - if we aren't going to acknowledge all of the complex needs and issues that are part and parcel with a student's success and independent of homework?

Even tackling that question will keep us from arguing about the need or lack thereof for charter schools that, by their nature, can only provide services for a limited number of kids in any community.

Scarlett & Jo

Thu,02 Jul 2009 19:50:18 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

Since it's apparently Lincoln Day here on the blog, I thought I'd dive into the Civil War fray, but from a somewhat different perspective. There's no question that racism is the primary social issue at stake in the war and Reconstruction, but the abolitionism also laid the groundwork for the campaign to give women the right to vote, and the war was, like World War II, profoundly disruptive to women's social roles. It's no accident that two of the greatest portraits of women in modern literature come from Civil War novels. Gone With The Wind's Scarlett O'Hara and Little Women's Jo March live on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line, come from different backgrounds, and their personalities evolve in different directions. I'm not sure they would have liked each other very much. But I love them both, and re-reading both novels in recent weeks, I've been struck by how much they have in common.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Scarlett is a privileged planter's daughter whose main talents for are manipulating men and, in a nice bit of foreshadowing, for mathematics. Jo is the second-oldest of four daughters in a once-comfortable family left poor by their father's poor financial decisions, and without a reliable income when he decides to join the Union Army as a chaplain. Gone With the Wind is much more explicitly a novel of the Civil War than Little Women is, and as such, Scarlett has direct contact with combat and an enemy army, while Jo lives her life far from the front lines in Massachusetts. But in both novels, economic survival comes into direct conflict with both Northern and Southern expectations of femininity, and Jo and Scarlett both forge solutions that make them semi-kindred spirits.

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"She had never in her life been out in the sunshine without a hat or veils, never handled reins without gloves to protect the white skin of her dimpled hands," Margaret Mitchell writes of Scarlett. "Yet here she was exposed to the sun in a broken-down wagon with a broken-down horse, dirty, sweaty, hungry, helpless to do anything but plod along at a snail's pace through a deserted land."

Scarlett's hands become a symbol of her shifting worldview throughout the immediate post-Civil War period of Gone With the Wind. On her arrival home, Mammy, the slave who helped raise her, expresses shock at the blood clots and callouses on her hands from driving a balky horse for almost an entire day. That concern represents, to Scarlett, Mammy's inability to see that their circumstances have changed forever: "In another moment, [Mammy] would be saying that young Misses with blistered hands and freckles most generally don't never catch husbands." For a woman who has been raised with the sole skill of catching men, Scarlett's abandonment of that ideal is a significant reversal.

In Little Women, the scene of Jo's sacrifice provides a comedic break in a sad and tense section of the novel. The girls' father is wounded, and their mother must go to Washington, D.C. to visit him in an Army hospital. She sends Jo to borrow the money she needs to make the trip from Aunt March, a wealthy relative who thinks (semi-correctly) that her brother has little sense and is responsible for his family's poverty. Jo works as Aunt March's companion. But when she's faced with the humiliating prospect of begging from the older, Jo, a confirmed tomboy, sells her hair to a wigmaker to earn the money instead. When she comes home with a shorn head and $25, one of her sisters cries "Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty." It's kind of funny, but Jo's desperation is real, as is some of her humiliation: she had to convince the wigmaker to take her hair even though he didn't think it was pretty or fashionable enough to sell.

Those steps away from feminine ideals of beauty are the first that Jo and Scarlett take as they venture into male-dominated working worlds. It's a transition that is easier for Jo than for Scarlett: Lizzie Skurnick had a great post at Jezebel last week in which she argued that the value of work is at the core of both the March family's and the novel's values. In contrast, the fact that Scarlett's mother taught her nothing whatsoever about work makes her incredibly angry, and is one of the main reasons she ends up rejecting her mother's entire set of values, throwing out a lot of good things in the process. "'Nothing, no, nothing she taught me is of any help t me! What good will kindness do to me now?" Scarlett thinks as she prepares to try to save her family's plantation. "What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!"

But she emerges from that despair an almost terrifyingly competent businesswoman, much to the consternation of her second husband, Frank, who finds after their marriage that "her voice was brisk and decisive and she made up her mind instantly and with no girlish shilly-shallying. She knew what she wanted and she went after it by the shortest route, like a man, not by the hidden and circuitous routes peculiar to women." She borrows money to buy a mill and ends up with a thriving lumber business, and after Frank's death in a Ku Klux Klan raid (Scarlett is undeniably racist throughout the book, but she's not particularly attached to slavery as a concept, thinking it's not worth the war, and she takes the consistent stance that the Klan is impractical and stupid.) she runs his store far more competently than he did.

Jo, on the other hand, has always been prepared to work. One of the earliest scenes in the book is of her heading off to Aunt March's as her older sister, Meg, heads off to her governess gig for an unhappy wealthy family. The girls all mend, cook, clean, etc., though not all with overwhelming competence. But after the war, Jo begins to take on a significant part of the financial burden for her family. She starts selling occasional short works of fiction, and after two serious personal disappointments, moves to New York City, where she takes a job as a governess (acceptable female employment) and starts writing thrilling and macabre adventure tales for the gloriously-titled Weekly Volcano (decidedly not acceptable female employment, though Louisa May Alcott wrote thrilling newspaper tales herself). Unlike Scarlett, who came close to starvation, and is driven beyond all conventional bounds of propriety by the need for security that experience gave her, Jo isn't necessarily writing to keep food on the table. But she is writing for her sister's life: Jo's fiction buys a winter coat for her dying sister, and a trip to the seaside that she hopes will save her.

Work is really the point at which Scarlett and Jo's lives begin to move in opposite directions. Scarlett's work makes her an outcast because she isn't willing to work within feminine ideals. While other Atlanta women do acceptable things to make money, whether painting ugly china or baking pies to sell to the occupying union army, Scarlett refuses to play within acceptable boundaries. Not only does she work within rough industries, but she chooses deliberately unacceptable methods, hiring convicts to work in her mills, and letting one of her supervisors kill several men in the name of profitability. It's a neat character sketch: Scarlett is considered coarsened partially because of absurd societal expectations for women and their proper roles, but her character is also really damaged by what she decides she can do for money.

Jo, on the other hand, finds a path through writing and work to be the kind of woman she found it so difficult to be in the earlier sections of the novel. Her friend and eventual husband encourages her to write a sensitive memoir instead of trashy fiction. When Aunt March leaves Jo her grand house, Jo founds a school for boys (and the occasional girl), which is the subject of Little Men, a setting that gives her the opportunity to be a mother figure, but also to encourage her female students to be strong, and her male students to be something other than macho archetypes.

Lest this get TOO dour, both books have hilarious sections about gender and expectations. In Gone With The Wind, when Rhett Butler saves the lives of the Atlanta men who are in the Klan by sneaking them through Belle Watling's whorehouse, one of the men, the highly respectable Dr. Meade, is shocked to find out his wife wants to know what the whorehouse looks like:

"Are there cut-glass chandeliers? And red plush curtains and dozens of full-length gilt mirrors? And were the girls--were they unclothed?"

"Good God!' cried the doctor, thunderstruck, for it had never occurred to him that the curiosity of a chaste woman concerning her unchaste sisters was so devouring. 'How can you ask such immodest questions? You are not yourself. I will mix you a sedative."

"I don't want a sedative. I want to know. Oh, dear, this is my only chance to know what a bad house looks like and now you are mean enough not to tell me!'"

And in Little Women, Jo gets into a terrible comedic snit over the fact that her friend Laurie's tutor has stolen one of her sister Meg's gloves in what she believes is a piece of steroetypically lover-like behavior. The descriptions of the girl's attempts to play out exaggerated male and female roles in the plays they put on in their living room and attic are amusingly subversive, too.

I don't know that either novel is exactly feminist. Margaret Mitchell has a very, nasty funny crack in a section on Scarlett's drinking about women "who were insane or divorced, or believed, with Miss Susan B. Anthony, that women should have the vote." The fact that the sublime sexual experience of Scarlett's life is an instance of marital rape is horrifying. Scarlett is deeply dependent on the attention of men, and to say she's a repeat girl-on-girl crime offender is an understatement for a woman who marries her own sister's fiancee and lusts after the husband of the woman who she belatedly admits is her best friend and her moral compass. There's a required repression of emotion in Little Women that is troubling--as Lizzie points out, Jo isn't even really allowed to be angry when her younger sister burns her novel. All of the sisters who live end up married and living out fairly conventionally female lives.

But Jo and Scarlett remain vibrant, viable characters decades after they first appeared on the page because they transcended the boundaries laid for women of their times. Scarlett's fierce will to survive and prosper are compelling in any period, even when her 16-inch waist and apple-green afternoon dresses became anachronisms. Jo's struggles with her temper, her intellectual passion, and her writing are not tied to any age, even if the expectations of what she would do with them are. The Civil War created the opportunity, and the need, for both Scarlett and Jo to defy convention, and the literary world is a richer place for them.

Andrew On Blogging

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:45:03 GMT

I've done two panels since I've been here at Aspen. One was interviewing Andrew, and the other was interviewing Larry Wilmore. I'll get you guys video, as soon as possible. It's funny because I spend so much time arguing here, but I'm actually much more comfortable asking questions. Here's a clip of Andrew discussing his time as a blogger.

The Lincoln Connection

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:42:12 GMT

There's a lot to think about in Adam's post below. I think his invocation of Lincoln is especially powerful--Battle Cry Of Freedom caused me to back off of a lot of my rather simplistic impressions of Lincoln. Likewise, I've done my best to give Obama lee-way to be exactly what he is--a politician. The fact is that idealism and the business of politics often don't work well together. That said, for a writer like me, there is as much risk of falling into a trap of petty criticism as there is of simply excusing some of Obama's more erroneous stances as "politics."

I will stick with what I know. There's an argument that his invocation of black homophobia, is good for gay rights, and ultimately doesn't hurt black people much. There's an argument that his pose as the Host of Soul Train while wagging the moral finger, and then his pose as president of All America when asked about policy questions is, in fact, good for black America. (Please bear with me on the clumsiness of that sentence. I'm still working out my thinking.) Booker T. Washington would often go before white patrons, invoke the alleged cultural inferiority of blacks, and then proceed to make darkie jokes about the very people he claimed to be trying to help. As Adam says, Lincoln was not above peppering his speech with niggers.

But what can we say? Tuskeegee stands proud and strong, to this day. Once they were in the field, Lincoln stood for black soldiers, to the point of sacrificing the lives of Union POWs, in the name of their dignity. His assassination has haunted the country ever since. Obama is a truly, truly gifted politician. Who knows what he may ultimately do? And should the lives of black people be better when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will), should gay Americans enjoy more rights when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will) than what do the critiques of a couple minor-league bloggers really matter?
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That slave's vision was a radical one. At the onset of the Civil War, the notion that the war was about slavery, and the idea of fielding black troops were radical ideas, dismissed by "serious" politicians, and pragmatists. And not without reason--both sides really believed that it would be a short war. The idea that it would become a remaking of the national citizenry, and that it would ultimately require the black troops, was a notion embraced only by slaves and silly radicals who deigned to speak on their behalf.

Politicians are essential. But they're caught up in the grinding work, if they're good politicians, of building consensus and keeping shit moving. The politician is practicing the art of the possible. People like me are trying to expand the very nature of the possible. Baraka Obama was catapulted to the U.S. presidency by his stance on the Iraq War. It's often noted that he took pains to distinguish himself from the usual anti-war crowd. But the fact is that it was that crowd which organized the rally where he made his famous speech. They expanded the possible.

I can't speak for other bloggers, but my work here is principally about coaxing people, indeed coaxing myself, toward respecting humanity. The black homophobia boogieman is anathema to that work, not simply because it is a lie, but because it is rooted in an ugly history of loading the sins of this country on to the backs of its least popular minority. Black America has historically functioned as this country's moral sewer. Indeed, there is a direct line from temperance reformers in the late 19th century blaming their failures on the ill-conceived votes of ignorant niggers, to drug reformers in the early 20th century and the notion of the "cocaine-crazed Negro brain," to Reagan's invocation of shiftless welfare queens, right up through the idea that 7 percent of California's population is the real reason we don't have gay marriage.

Progressive and conservative America has a long ugly, history of insisting that the problems of the majority, are mainly the problems of the minority. My work in "expanding the possible," is concerned with destroying the politics of black pathology. To the extent that Obama participates in that tradition, I have to speak up. It does not mean that I'm pushing a third party. It just means that I think he's wrong.

WaPo Salons Sell Access to Lobbyists

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:28:17 GMT

[Gautham Nagesh]

I'm rarely shocked by the news these days, but this story in Politico today did the trick:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" -- Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer -- which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters -- is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

Unsurprisingly the WaPo had no comment, though sources told Politico that the marketing flier "may be getting ahead of what the newsroom is prepared to deliver". According to this email sent to the newsroom staff today, that seems accurate:

Colleagues,

A flyer was distributed this week offering an "underwriting opportunity" for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate.
The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation.

We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.

There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values.

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The attempt to pass this off as a conference is disingenuous. It is true that news organizations have had to turn to hosting events and creating other revenue streams as advertising dollars have dried up. But those events are generally open to the public, on the record and relatively transparent. Most events charge an entrance fee, but there is vast difference between charging someone $150 to attend a public event as opposed to $25,000 for a private, off-the-record chat over cocktails in Katherine Weymouth's sitting room. The very fact the event is off the record is telling. What kind of news organization would stage an off-the-record event and require its editorial staff to attend? The concept is completely at odds with our mission as journalists.

I'm sure in the coming days we will find out that this was the brainchild of Weymouth or one of the other suits that have little if anything to do with the daily news operation. But that's what makes it so reckless and irresponsible. With one poorly-worded flier they have left their editorial staff vulnerable to questioning as to whether sponsors will have an influence on their reporting, questions that no reporter who is simply doing their job should ever have to face. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Post's editorial department and I applaud their response. But someone upstairs should have to answer for this, preferably before the first Washington Post Salon on July 21st.

Update: That was quick. The Post has canceled plans for the Salons:

"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."
Moments earlier, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a separate interview that he was "appalled" by the plan, and he insisted before the cancellation that the newsroom would not participate.
"It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase," Brauchli said. The proposal "promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post."

Brauchli was the author of the email I posted above. This is good new but my sense is the damage from this incident will be more directed towards the business side of the Post rather than editorial. It just reeks of desperation, which is not exactly the best message for a newspaper to be sending at a time like this.

For the Fathers Work that We Forget

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:00:31 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

There are poems that last because they sound good, and then there are poems that last because they say something that we need to hear. I've always been a fan of Robert Hayden - but this poem in particular reminds me of the importance of fatherhood. Just say the last two lines to yourself again and again, and though it's about fathers - the lines apply fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, lovers. Read it. Then read it again.

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT E. HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

Obama, Lincoln, and Gay Rights

Thu,02 Jul 2009 11:33:43 GMT

[A. Serwer]

Sean Wilentz's lengthy book review of several Lincoln biographies isn't up on The New Republic's website yet, [actually it is, my bad] but his criticism of several books on Lincoln--and his general objection to the "two Lincolns" narrative that rejects the fact that Lincoln was anti-slavery to begin with, may offer some insight into President Obama's perplexing stances on gay rights.

Wilentz objects to an academic trend he sees as priviledging radicals over politicians, which he feels fails to take into account the exigencies of politics and what brilliant politicians are able to accomplish. More specifically, in one part of the review, he takes Skip Gates to task for taking Lincoln's words at face value only when it suits his preconcieved narrative of who Lincoln was:

He takes Lincoln's words at face value when it suits his own arguments--such as his remarks to the Chicago ministers in September 1862 about black military incompetence--but he is unable to see Lincoln for what his finest biographers have shown he was: a shrewd leader who could give misleading and even false impressions when he wanted to do so, and made no public commitments until the moment was ripe.

Lincoln made a number of statements, that, viewed out of context, would cause us to question his commitment to ending slavery, most notably his statement, responding to liberal Republican editor Horace Greeley that he was determined to save the Union whether it meant freeing all of the slaves or freeing none of them. Wilentz points out that this statement was meant to shore up Lincoln's right flank during the election, but did not actually contradict his anti-slavery views or goals--Lincoln had already secretly begun drafting the Emancipation Proclaimation.

]]>What Obama "privately believes" about gay rights has been the subject of great speculation, and I think there's reason for that. We are, I think, if only by virtue of greater access to information, far more scrutinizing of what politicians say. So it's worth noting again that Obama's position on gay marriage, which TNC parsed the other day, doesn't actually preclude Obama eventually supporting marriage equality:

I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.

This is at least as noncomittal about the extension of secular marriage rights to gays as Lincoln's statement was about emancipation. And yet it gives the impression that Obama is opposed, which may be precisely what it is meant to do.

It's possible that I am parsing out of wishful thinking, so I'm going to quote from Obama's speech the other night:

So this story, this struggle, continues today -- for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot -- and will not -- put aside issues of basic equality. (Applause.) We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love.

And I know that many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough, and I understand that. It's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.

Like Lincoln's statements on slavery, these statements give contradictory impressions, but they are not, in matter of fact, contradictory. Obama's invocation of black rights and "basic equality" cannot be read as anything other than a rhetorical endorsement of full rights for the LGBT community.

It's worth noting that Lincoln was, as Wilentz writes, pretty adept with the racist joke or occasional n-bomb on the campaign trail. It was a different time, and Lincoln could use bigotry to maneuver himself into a favorable position in a way in which Obama can't or shouldn't. Likewise, it's possible for us to divine in hindsight that Lincoln's anti-slavery ambitions preceded his presidency, and that they were in fact sincere, because of how much he accomplished. Obama really hasn't done anything yet to where his cautiousness on gay rights can be read as part of a larger political strategy. That administration's frustrating foot-dragging on DADT in defiance of public opinion may have to do with internal administration politics, or it may be an indication that everything I am reading into his stance is wrong. At the same time, his incremental moves--extension of federal benefits to same sex couples, appointing John Berry to the Office of Personnel Management--mirror Lincon's baby steps towards emancipation and recruitment of black soldiers.

But I think it's possible, indeed probable, that Obama's slow progress on gay rights may be the kind of political maneuvering Lincoln displayed prior to the Emancipation Proclaimation or the recruitment of black soldiers. Earlier, TNC wrote this:

I've heard it said, many times, on this board that Obama is actually pro-gay marriage, but that he can't come out all the way. If that's the case, then we must conclude that he is lying about his stance. Moreover, he's invoking his relationship with religion, and his God, in that lie. Perhaps worse, he isn't being fully honest with the very audiences he wants credit for addressing--the very audiences, that by his logic, would most benefit from that honesty.

Wilentz writes that current trends in history privilege "idealists who they imagine were unblemished by expedience and compromise" rather than the "scheming, self-aggrandizing political professionals" who are decisive in "the achievement of America's greatest advances."

I think he has a point. We love radicals because they can afford to be honest, they can afford not to compromise. Preferring the radicals over the schemers makes us feel better about ourselves, but if we're being honest we'll admit that there is more of the schemer in our radical heroes than we would like to believe, MLK was not merely an idealist. But honesty is not necessarily a virtue in a schemer or a politician, except when it can be used in pursuit of a larger goal. It is the job of public voices and radicals to be honest--it is the job of politicians to create favorable political circumstances by all available, appropriate means and seize the opportune moment.

Now maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe Obama is merely two-faced, and there is no skillful maneuvering here. I'm certainly not arguing that advocacy organizations should cease pressuring him. I just think it's not that far fetched that Obama, like his hero, sees himself as carefully laying the groundwork for full equality and that he genuinely believes that someday, we will judge him favorably "not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises that my administration keeps."

UPDATE: I should acknowledge, that at the end of his essay, Wilentz spends a great deal of time explaining how Obama isn't Lincoln. I think this is basically a straw man--I'm not arguing above that Obama is "like" Lincoln but rather that he may be imitating some of his methods. What's really ironic, I suppose, is that Wilenz attacks Obama for disdaining politics during his campaign in the same manner as academic historians, while practicing the same dirty politics all along, in order to achieve his goal of winning the primary. Forgive me, but isn't that the exact kind of thing Wilentz argues effective politicians do and why it makes them able to accomplish great things? If anyone has failed to misunderstand politics in the manner Wilentz describes, it isn't Obama.

Also, isn't it about time to get over Hillary Clinton losing?

How Street It Is...

Thu,02 Jul 2009 01:15:10 GMT

[Neil Drumming]

(I've been delinquent with this particular post. Fortunately, I don't think time is of the essence in this case.)

So, last week, my wife and I were watching "So You Think You Can Dance" (shut up) and the first couple of the evening performed a dance routine to the current Jadakiss hit, "By Your Side" (not to be confused with "By My Side," a way more enjoyable Jadakiss song off of a previous album.) The couple, Karla and Jonathan, were dressed in costumes reminiscent of those in Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" video. And, not surprisingly, their routine was categorized by the choreographer as "smooth hip-hop." The number was admittedly pretty forgettable, but I found myself simultaneously amused and dismayed by the judging panel's critiques.

This, from the program's patriarch, Nigel Lythgoe, a soft, cuddly version of Simon Cowell if ever there was one:

"It feels like it's been sort of ironed-out, that there's no excitement in the routine. And the one great thing for me with hip-hop is fear. There's this great thing that I'm on the edge of my seat whenever you talk about gangsta, or hip-hop, or b-boying, there's a fear there. 'What are they going to do?' It's gonna be really exciting. 'What's going to happen?'... If you drop her you drop her, but that's the danger. There was no danger in it."

I'm not looking to rant here, but I always feel a little queasy when I hear these odd parameters that arise around anything hip-hop. It would seem to me that any of the styles danced on this show -- whether it be salsa, jive, disco, contemporary, or my fave, the Viennese Waltz -- that include lifts, flips, somersaults, and other gravity-defying acts would include the same element of fear and danger. I mean, what the hell does Nigel want to be afraid of whenever somebody dances to hip-hop? That a fight will spontaneously erupt on stage like this is the Source Awards? That his overly-loud co-host Maggie Murphy might succumb to a hail of bullets like Biggie and crumple in the seat next to him, thereby ending her eardrum shattering shrieks of praise forever? Who knows.

But if you think Nigel's kooky... well, he is. But so was the following expert evaluation from the guest judge, Toni Basil. Now, Basil is apparently some sort of renown choreographer. Like me, you probably know her better as the grown woman dressed as a cheerleader who made that "Oh Mickey" song a long time ago. At the top of the evening, she mentioned that she would soon be receiving something called the "Living Legend of Hip-Hop Award." I didn't know such a thing was being given out, but I sincerely hope, seeing as how Basil is up next, that KRS-One, Rakim, De La Soul, Snoop, Ralph McDaniels, Big Lez, Scoob and Scrap Lova, Bobbito the Barber, DJ Yella, and Chi Ali, have already gotten theirs.

Here's what Toni Basil had to say about Karla and Jonathan's "smooth hip-hop" routine:

"Hip-hop is a series of steps that the choreographer draws from many millenniums of dance styles - but mostly street. And street has to have a groove and a funk. And if you're gangsters, and you don't have a ghetto groove, it's just gonna feel store-bought."

I don't actually know what that means. Am I not hip-hop?

Torturing Women

Wed,01 Jul 2009 21:26:34 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

So, I went to see Public Enemies last night, and ended up being far more deeply touched by it than I expected. It's certainly the best movie about banks, or bank-related malfeasance I've seen since the financial crisis started (for more details, see this piece just up on The Atlantic's homepage about Hollywood and the financial crisis. Some spoilers if you don't know much about John Dillinger, I guess). But there was one scene in particular that got me thinking in a way I hadn't anticipated.

In that scene, a loutish young F.B.I. agent is beating Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard) to try to get her to give up information about where the Bureau can find Dillinger. Her lip is split, her face is bruised, and the agent won't let her leave to go to the bathroom, and hits her again when she wets herself. It's a horribly uncomfortable scene, relieved only when Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the man in charge of the Chicago F.B.I. office returns, other agents stop the young man from hitting Billie, and when she can't stand to walk out of the office, Purvis picks her up and carries her, urine-soaked skirt and all. It's meant to be gentlemanly, except that earlier, Purvis and his agents were beating a man injured in a shootout at a bank, who had a bullet lodged above his eye and was screaming for painkillers, to find out where Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly were staying. Clearly, Purvis has different standards about torture when it comes to ladies, even if they do have big eyes and questionable tastes in boyfriends.

In pop culture, depictions of torture often seem to focus on the victim's (who are usually men) fortitude, rather than the torturer's depravity. Take Star Trek. When Eric Bana and his henchmen shove a slug down Bruce Greenwood's throat that will manipulate his brain, we already knew Bana's character was a monster, so the takeaway from the scene was Greenwood's bravery. In "War Stories," the episode of Joss Whedon's sci-fi Western in which two of the show's main characters are tortured by a sadistic crime lord, the villian isn't much of a presence: the focus is on how the two men keep each other alive.

Waterboarding someone 183 times in a single month is--and ought to be--horrific no matter their gender. But I do wonder whether the public debate in America over torture would be different if there were prominent female victims who had been identified and were part of the conversation. I'm not sure I think that would be a good thing; relying on women's perceived delicacy to say that torture is wrong, or saying that it's worse for a woman than for a man to be pushed into a wall repeatedly, at minimum relies on faulty logic, and at maximum reinforces dangerous gender stereotypes that could be used to say it's all right to torture men, because they can take it. But I do think that moving the debate over torture away from the fortitude or lack thereof of a person who suffers it, and towards the morality of the person who commits it, is an important shift to make--and more difficult to make permanent than we might think.

The Madness of Monica Conyers

Wed,01 Jul 2009 17:21:52 GMT

[Gautham Nagesh]

Greetings folks, it's an honor to be part of the team for the week. I spend my days covering federal technology for Nextgov and have also written for National Journal. My main interests are sports, government waste, fried foods and anything involving my home state of Michigan.

One note on Neil's post: I actually interviewed for a job with Vibe when I was in college, where I was asked to name my three favorite rap albums of all time. At the time I replied Ready to Die, Aquemini and Midnight Marauders. Apparently that was not the right answer, because the interviewer did a double take and I didn't get the job.

My topic for today is the ongoing train wreck that is soon-to-be-former Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers. Conyers announced her resignation from office this week after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a scandal over a city sludge-hauling contract. If that makes her sounds like a character from The Wire, then you've got a pretty good idea of what kind of politician Conyers has proven to be. From the Detroit News:

]]>Conyers faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty Friday in federal court to allegations she sold her vote on a $1.2 billion sludge hauling contract to Synagro Technologies Inc. for a pair of $3,000 bribes. Federal officials say no other council members will face charges in the 2007deal.

The News was also kind enough to put together a brief highlight reel of some of Conyers' most memorable public mishaps:

Conyers, the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, made headlines even before taking office when she allegedly got into a fight during a birthday party and slugged a woman. No one was charged in the incident.
During her tenure, Monica Conyers put an aunt and her son on city payroll, used city police to escort her to Atlanta and Florida, had police officers chauffeur her children to private school in Oakland County and had spats with colleagues, including an infamous one with Kenneth Cockrel that ended with her calling him "Shrek."

Yes, that's the same Congressman Conyers who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. John Conyers is now facing scrutiny himself after his wife's former aide and political consultant Sam Riddle told the Detroit Free Press on Monday about a letter Rep. Conyers sent in 2007 to the EPA in support of an effort by Detroit businessman Jim Papas to build a hazardous waste injection well in his district. Conyers had previously opposed the well publicly in 2003 and 2004 citing environmental concerns, but that was before Papas indirectly contributed $10,000 to Monica Conyers.

It seems unlikely that John Conyers will meet the same fate as his wife, mostly because it's hard to believe even if he did play some role in her dealings that he would be similarly cavalier about the possibility of getting caught. The Synagro case has been going on for over a year and yet during that period of time Monica Conyers has done nothing but draw attention to herself by causing controversies on the City Council and fiercely attacking her many opponents.

She even launched her own show on local television, "Ask the Councilwoman", where she takes calls from her supporters and admonishes her critics. I've been watching the show on YouTube whenever possible and I have to say my favorite episode was June 9, when she interviewed Princeton University professor Cornel West and dissed Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as too conservative and unaccomplished. Conyers graduated from the University of the District of Columbia's law school but has reportedly failed the bar exam four times and does not practice law.

Now that she's facing three to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, here's hoping voters have seen the last of Conyers, who hinted at a mayoral run even as the prosecutors circled closer. Her name will remain on the ballot in the August 4th primary for the Detroit City Council, where it will hopefully serve as a warning to others seeking to enrich themselves on the city's dime.

After spending the last couple years embroiled in the saga of disgraced former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (whose mother Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is also a Congresswoman and under investigation by the House Ethics Committee), the city deserves leaders interested in something besides lining their own pockets. Another Council member, Motown singer Martha Reeves referred to the Council as her "second job" in an interview with the BBC this week. Hopefully this fall's elections will produce some candidates more interested in fixing the city than dancing in the streets.

Update: Commenter Erik Love provides a link to this classic Monica Conyers moment, where she loses a debate to an elementary school student. It starts with bonus footage of the infamous meeting where she dubbed Council President Ken Cockrel "Shrek":

A Break for a Bad Man

Wed,01 Jul 2009 16:26:15 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

The day job's got me running all over Baltimore today. But I went to a midnight showing "Public Enemies" yesterday, and while I've got a piece on it forthcoming so I won't say much here, it reminded me of how much I love David Wagoner's poem, "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934." So if you need a lunch break, and are in a mood for soulful gangsters, read it, here and continued below the jump.

Chicago ran a fever of a hundred and one that groggy Sunday.

A reporter fried an egg on a sidewalk; the air looked shaky.

And a hundred thousand people were in the lake like shirts in

a laundry.

Why was Johnny lonely?

Not because two dozen solid citizens, heat-struck, had keeled

over backward.

Not because those lawful souls had fallen out of their sockets

and melted.

But because the sun went down like a lump in a furnace or a

bull in the Stockyards.

Where was Johnny headed?

Under the Biograph Theater sign that said, "Our Air is

Refrigerated."

Past seventeen FBI men and four policemen who stood in

doorways and sweated.

Johnny sat down in a cold seat to watch Clark Gable get

electrocuted.

]]>

Had Johnny been mistreated?

Yes, but Gable told the D.A. he'd rather fry than be shut up

forever.

Two women sat by Johnny. One looked sweet, one looked like

J. Edgar Hoover.

Polly Hamilton made him feel hot, but Anna Sage made him

shiver.

Was Johnny a good lover?

Yes, but he passed out his share of squeezes and pokes like a

jittery masher

While Agent Purvis sneaked up and down the aisle like an

extra usher,

Trying to make sure they wouldn't slip out till the show was

over.

Was Johnny a fourflusher?

No, not if he knew the game. He got it up or got it back.

But he liked to take snapshots of policemen with his own Kodak,

And once in a while he liked to take them with an automatic.

Why was Johnny frantic?

Because he couldn't take a walk or sit down in a movie

Without begin afraid he'd run smack into somebody

Who'd point at his rearranged face and holler, "Johnny!"

Was Johnny ugly?

Yes, because Dr. Wilhelm Loeser had given him a new profile

With a baggy jawline and squint eyes and an erased dimple,

With kangaroo-tendon cheekbones and a gigolo's mustache

that should've been illegal.

Did Johnny love a girl?

Yes, a good-looking, hard-headed Indian named Billie Frechette.

He wanted to marry her and lie down and try to get over it,

But she was locked in jail for giving him first-aid and comfort.

Did Johnny feel hurt?

He felt like breaking a bank or jumping over a railing

Into some panicky teller's cage to shout, "Reach for the ceiling!"

Or like kicking some vice president in the bum checks and

smiling.

What was he really doing?

Going up the aisle with the crowd and into the lobby

With Polly saying, "Would you do what Clark done?" And

Johnny saying, "Maybe."

And Anna saying, "If he'd been smart, he'd of acted like

Bing Crosby."

Did Johnny look flashy?

Yes, his white-on-white shirt and tie were luminous.

His trousers were creased like knives to the tops of his shoes,

And his yellow straw hat came down to his dark glasses.

Was Johnny suspicious?

Yes, and when Agent Purvis signalled with a trembling cigar,

Johnny ducked left and ran out of the theater,

And innocent Polly and squealing Anna were left nowhere.

Was Johnny a fast runner?

No, but he crouched and scurried past a friendly liquor store

Under the coupled arms of double-daters, under awnings,

under stars,

To the curb at the mouth of an alley. He hunched there.

Was Johnny a thinker?

No, but he was thinking more or less of Billie Frechette

Who was lost in prison for longer than he could possibly wait,

And then it was suddenly too hard to think around a bullet.

Did anyone shoot straight?

Yes, but Mrs. Etta Natalsky fell out from under her picture hat.

Theresa Paulus sprawled on the sidewalk, clutching her left foot.

And both of them groaned loud and long under the streetlight.

Did Johnny like that?

No, but he lay down with those strange women, his face

in the alley,

One shoe off, cinders in his mouth, his eyelids heavy.

When they shouted questions at him, he talked back to nobody.

Did Johnny lie easy?

Yes, holding his gun and holding his breath as a last trick,

He waited, but when the Agents came close, his breath

wouldn't work.

Clark Gable walked his last mile; Johnny ran a half a block.

Did he run out of luck?

Yes, before he was cool, they had him spread out on dished-in

marble

In the Cook County Morgue, surrounded by babbling people

With a crime reporter presiding over the head of the table.

Did Johnny have a soul?

Yes, and it was climbing his slippery wind-pipe like a trapped

burglar.

It was beating the inside of his ribcage, hollering, "Let me

out of here!"

Maybe it got out, and maybe it just stayed there.

Was Johnny a money-maker?

Yes, and thousands paid 25¢ to see him, mostly women,

And one said, "I wouldn't have come, except he's a moral

lesson,"

And another, "I'm disappointed. He feels like a dead man."

Did Johnny have a brain?

Yes, and it always worked best through the worst of dangers,

Through flat-footed hammerlocks, through guarded doors,

around corners,

But it got taken out in the morgue and sold to some doctors.

Could Johnny take orders?

No, but he stayed in the wicker basket carried by six men

Through the bulging crowd to the hearse and let himself be

locked in,

And he stayed put as it went driving south in a driving rain.

And he didn't get stolen?

No, not even after his old hard-nosed dad refused to sell

The quick-drawing corpse for $10,000 to somebody in a

carnival.

He figured he'd let Johnny decide how to get to Hell.

Did anyone wish him well?

Yes, half of Indiana camped in the family pasture,

And the minister said, "With luck, he could have been a

minister."

And up the sleeve of his oversized gray suit, Johnny twitched

a finger.

Does anyone remember?

Everyone still alive. And some dead ones. It was a new kind of

holiday

With hot and cold drinks and hot and cold tears. They planted

him in a cemetery

With three unknown vice presidents, Benjamin Harrison, and

James Whitcomb Riley,

Who never held up anybody.

Race, Superstition, and Marriage Equality

Wed,01 Jul 2009 15:04:24 GMT

[A. Serwer]

So like Ta-Nehisi, I've been pretty frustrated with the way that many on the left have simply embraced the idea that black people are standing in the way of marriage equality. The coverage in the fallout of proposition 8, which relied almost entirely on a CNN poll which had a sample of black men so small it couldn't be measured, but showed 70% of black folks voting for the measure, basically gave the entire press a pass to blame Prop 8's passage on black people. Nate Silver's analysis showed this interpretation of the results to be factually incorrect. Ironically, it was only a few months earlier that conservatives had latched onto the Community Investment Act to try and blame the financial crisis on black homeowners--an explanation liberals ridiculed--rightfully so--as racist. And yet this is pretty much the same thing.

I decided to cover the fight for marriage equality in DC partially out of sheer frustration with the way black voters had been portrayed as an anonymous, homophobic hive mind in the aftermath of Prop 8. It haven't attempted to sugarcoat homophobia in the black community--rather my intent was to make sure that there were names and histories attached to the people fighting on both sides, so at the very least, when we were talking about this issue, we would be talking about people, about individuals. They say journalism is the first draft of history--this time I wanted to make sure that the people involved in this fight had a history people could look to. I'm not the best reporter in the world, I'm really pretty new at this. I also don't have TNC's reach, but no one can say the information isn't out there.

Frank Rich though, is another story. Let's take a look at that statement again:

]]>Some speculated that the president is fearful of crossing preachers, especially black preachers, who are adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage.

"Some speculated"? This is--and I don't use this term lightly--a construction of Michael Goldfarb-like dishonesty. "Some speculated"? Rich isn't an investigative reporter, he's not talking to anonymous whistleblowers inside the government, but he can't put a name, let alone an argument, to this evaluation.

There's a reason for that--the argument doesn't even make sense on its own merits. Obama's two most high profile religious supporters in the black community are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both of whom are on record supporting marriage equality. And you know what? I'd be surprised if either of them could get Obama on the phone--let alone the anonymous "black preachers" of Rich's fantasy. Understand though, the "black preachers" aren't people with individual opinions, they're part of the same anonymous mass of black homophobia that single-handedly passed Prop 8.

Rich's analysis also just completely ignores the prevailing political dynamic in the black community, really, in the country as a whole right now. Barack Obama is the most popular black political figure in history--there's a reason why black religious figures opposed to marriage equality evoke his personal religious statements against marriage equality rather than criticizing him for his promises to repeal DOMA or DADT. He's popular--and while he's popular throughout the country, he's still on another level when it comes to support from black voters. Obama isn't running for reelection this year--the people Frank Rich is talking about need Obama more than he needs them. Can anyone name a single "black preacher" Obama has appeared with since the election by name without googling it? There's a reason why, despite Obama's silence/dismissiveness to questions about the specific problems black folks are facing, you haven't seen any black civil rights organizations criticize him. Maybe they should. But there's a reason they aren't.

Is marriage equality just another bargaining chip for the administration to advance other elements of its agenda? Maybe, but there's no evidence black people are the reason for that--seriously, we can't even get Obama to answer a direct question about what he's doing to address problems in the black community, let alone dictate to him what he should do when. The downside of being this consistently loyal to the Democratic Party is that they don't have to care what you think--and that was true even before Obama. Politicians are beholden to the people whose support they are seeking, not those whose support they already have.

I've heard scientists complain about intelligent design because it's essentially anti-science: it substitutes superstition for scientific inquiry. The belief that black voters are the major obstacle to LGBT rights is essentially superstition; it fills the gaps in our knowledge with what we already want to believe. Superstition is no more forgivable for a journalist, or an opinion columnist--than it is for a scientist.

Marion Barry, Ex-offenders and the Human Rights Bill of 1977

Wed,01 Jul 2009 12:17:29 GMT

[Dwayne Betts]

You can't live in DC and not be impressed, on some level, by Councilman Marion Barry's political staying power. And if you asked about the source of that power, you would probably get ten different answers from ten different people. Earlier today I got a glimpse of how Barry maintains his relevancy. Barry is introducing a bill to have the Human Rights Act of 1977 amended to afford protection to ex-offenders. Let me say that again slower - Barry is introducing a bill to amend the Human Rights Act of 1977 so that it affords protection to ex-offenders.

If passed, the amended bill will in part read:

It is the intent of the Council of the District of Columbia, in enacting this chapter, to secure an end in the

District of Columbia to discrimination for any reason other than that of individual merit, including, but not

limited to, discrimination by reason of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal

appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression familial status, family responsibilities,

matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, disability, source of income, arrest record, or conviction record and, status as a victim of an intrafamily offense, and place of residence or business.

Barry's full bill is here: http://www.dccouncil.us/images/00001/20090210104039.pdf

Politically, this is a good move for Barry. It makes it look like he's ahead of the curve, but really he just hears a train that's already coming. Providing protection for ex-offenders guarantees nothing anyway. The important work of the legislation, if it passes, will be to create an atmosphere where someone who has been to prison can walk into a room without feeling the need to confess to his crimes again and again.

]]>

The amending bill still maintains that employers have the right to deny employment because of a felony conviction if there is a "rational relationship" between the arrest or conviction record and the job. This makes absolute sense. The thing is that if employers and universities have to think about the existence of a rational relationship, they will be less inclined to discriminate just on the basis of a checked box.

Barry's bill is important because it is the kind of stance that ex-offenders cannot make on their own. Right now, any university or employer can deny you a job or deny you admittance to a school without a hearing, without a valid reason. They can deny you and pretend that it's based on something other than your felony - or they can say it's because of your felony. Of all the collateral consequences that come with a prison sentence this shutting off of opportunity is the most dangerous. At the end of the day, I feel like, no matter his reasons, Barry's proposed amendment is an acknowledgement that society works better when all the members who can contribute are given the opportunity.

TNC You're Dead Wrong

Tue,30 Jun 2009 22:35:46 GMT

You all know it, so I should say it. This..

More seriously he invites attacks from people who think his notion that Palin is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs" is fairly ridiculous. Indisputable to who? The underlying argument holds that anyone whom the author doesn't deem attractive, is somehow disputably fertile.

...is an erroneous reading of Purdum. I stand by the broader conclusion, but that particular claim, on reflection, doesn't hold up. More likely, Purdum was (as many commenters have pointed out) simply alluding to Trig's recent birth.

If You Think You're About To Say Something Sexist...

Tue,30 Jun 2009 20:47:30 GMT

Then you're probably right. Here's Todd Purdum on Sarah Palin:

Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin's record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.

I think some more thinking could have helped this graph. A lot. It is, in my estimation, certainly arguable that Sarah Palin's appearance has played into her reception. My sense is that it's helped.

Purdum thinks the mere mention of this notion invites attacks from people who spend their days waiting to accuse people of sexism. He is wrong. They invite attacks from people who wonder why he's speaking as though there have been a parade of women who have scaled the national political heights. In the literal sense, there has only been one other--Geraldine Ferraro. Thus Purdum is basically arguing that Palin is better looking than Ferraro. A more charitable interpretation throws Hillary Clinton into the mix.

More seriously he invites attacks from people who think his notion that Palin is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs" is fairly ridiculous. Indisputable to who? The underlying argument holds that anyone whom the author doesn't deem attractive, is somehow disputably fertile.

What we are talking about is who is fuckable, and who isn't. Frankly, speaking as a man, I'm always skeptical of the "fuckability" concept. I've seen to many men step to with women carnal intent, and then deny it later. Usually after rejection and dismissal, but sometimes after success.This game of fuckability, or "indisputable fertility," is exactly that. It allows men to assert control over a situation, in which, most frighteningly, they often have very little

Hillary Clinton haunts the dreams of no less than half the men who rag on her appearance. And should she ever step to any of them, there'd be very little dispute of any kind. Indeed, it would offend the senses of a polite society were we ever to honestly contemplate exactly how large a portion of womankind men regard as "indisputably fertile." Some of them are scientifically infertile. But brothers don't really care. Let's not act like we do.