Saturday, March 1, 2008
Bloomberg.com: “Gay Clinton Backers Defect to Obama.”
I don’t like headlines that make generalizations like this, but it’s interesting reading.
12:24 PM | 1 drop of oil Hillary Clinton to appear on “The Daily Show” on Monday night.
(Matt wondered aloud what guest she’s bumping. He said probably some unknown history professor with a new book. I said no, it was probably Nita Lowey.)
(Sorry, too mean?)
12:36 PM | oil me Sunday, March 2, 2008
Weird. While exploring the New York Times archives, I found this 1993 piece by historian Michael Beschloss that attempts to predict the future from the fictional perspective of 2008. It was published three days before George H.W. Bush left the White House and attempts to examine his legacy. In the process, it shows us a creepy parallel universe that echoes across a dimensional rift…
Some excerpts:
[George Bush’s] defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992 ushered in a 16-year cycle of progressive activism. During an era dominated by two energetic Presidents — Bill Clinton and his successor, Al Gore — the stature of a right-of-center chief executive like George Bush, who recoiled from using the full powers of the Presidency, was bound to suffer.
After his term ended, Republican leaders instantly disowned him as an unwanted reminder of their flirtation with ideological moderation. At their 1996 convention in Salt Lake City, when Representative Robert Dornan of California was nominated for President, Mr. Bush was not invited onto the podium. Dornan and his running mate, Representative Newt Gingrich, rushed to the retirement homes of former Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan for endorsements but eschewed all invitations to be photographed with Mr. Bush.
After Noriega’s release from prison in 1998 and Saddam’s ouster by military coup in 1999, the two men held a joint news conference in Asuncion, Paraguay, during which they played tapes of private conversations with Mr. Bush. According to the tapes, then-Vice President Bush told General Noriega in 1985: “We love your commitment to democracy. Keep it up!” During a 1990 telephone call to Mr. Hussein, then-President Bush praised Iraq as “an island of stability in a troubled region.”
In 2002, for the first time in a half-century, Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress and quickly voted to strip the funds from numerous White House-sponsored programs, such as Clinton’s National Service Corps and Gore’s Global Warming Initiative (G.W.I.). This legislative drive drew the support of perennial Presidential candidate Ross Perot and nearly all of the other 38 billionaires who declared their candidacies for the White House in 2004.
President Gore appointed [Bush] to undertake special diplomatic missions to post-Communist Cuba, the semi-autonomous republic of Northern Moscow and to Monaco, where peace talks with France inspired by Mr. Bush were entering their 16th year.
When his Hispanic-American grandson, George P. Bush, was elected to the United States Senate from Florida in 2006 on an anti-secessionist ticket, Mr. Bush was guest of honor at the South Miami victory rally.
What a [parallel] world.
4:58 PM | 1 drop of oil Monday, March 3, 2008
Antigay hypocrites in the news:
According to the Times, antigay lawyer Robert Skolrood has died.
He fought against gay rights by helping to word an initiative on the Colorado ballot in 1992 that would have barred any special protection for homosexuals. The amendment to the state’s constitution passed but was struck down by the United States Supreme Court four years later.
Mr. Skolrood helped to draft an amendment to the Cincinnati City Charter to similarly deprive homosexuals of specific legal protections; voters approved the measure in 1993.
A federal appeals court upheld the result, and the United States Supreme Court in 1998 refused to hear an appeal.
And of course,
In 2002, when he was semi-retired, Mr. Skolrood was arrested on charges of uttering obscenities and making sexual advances toward a male undercover police officer at an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He denied all the charges at a trial before a federal magistrate in Roanoke, Va., but he pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and paid a $125 fine.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the Texas district attorney who argued to uphold the state’s sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas has engaged in extra-marital relations. Because it doesn’t count if you’re straight.
10:57 AM | oil me Tomorrow the California Supreme Court hears arguments in the state’s same-sex marriage equality case. You’ll be able to watch the oral arguments online here at 9:00 a.m. California time (12 noon East Coast), or if you live in California you can find them on public access TV here. And you can read all the briefs here.
11:12 AM | 2 drops of oil Someone needs to explain to me why the fact that Hillary Clinton has won several big states in the Democratic primaries/caucuses, while Obama has won mostly smaller states, means anything. I’ve seen Clinton supporters make this argument several times and I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean. It’s mentioned here as well.
First of all, it doesn’t matter which states you win; it matters how many delegates you win. If you can win X number of delegates by winning a few big states or lots of smaller states, it’s the same thing.
Are the Clinton people trying to say that her wins in big states will make her a more viable candidate than Obama in the general election? That’s as silly as saying that Obama’s wins in traditionally red states will make him more likely to win those red states in November.
Um, these are all contests among Democrats (and some independents). There are no Republicans voting in them.
I guess Clinton could argue that her California win makes her more viable in that state in November. California had an open Democratic primary but a closed Republican primary, so independents could vote only in the Democratic primary. Most independents who voted in the Democratic primary chose Obama, but Clinton still beat him. This could mean that not enough California independents were enthusiastic enough about Obama to vote for him, and that they’d be more likely to vote for McCain instead of Obama in November. But it really means nothing, because I don’t see how Clinton could argue that she’d be better than Obama at attracting independents from McCain.
So winning a few big states as opposed to several small states means nothing. Right?
Am I missing something?
1:55 PM | 1 drop of oil And now for a personal note regarding tomorrow’s primaries.
I’m really nervous. I know, it’s silly because it’s just politics. But I am.
I’ve said or linked to a few snarky things about Hillary Clinton on here lately. If she wins Texas and Ohio and ultimately wins the nomination, then that’s going to mean that my team lost. Or, if Obama wins the nomination and turns out to be a weak general election candidate, or if he wins the election and turns out to be a horrible president, I’ll look like a tool.
I don’t think any of my pro-Clinton readers care about this, but I kinda do.
So let me just state that there are some things I like about Hillary. And there are some things about Obama that give me pause. I deliberated agonizingly about whom to vote for in the New York primary, even though I ultimately voted for Obama with enthusiasm.
If Hillary Clinton wins Ohio and Texas tomorrow, I’ll be disappointed. And then, if she gains momentum and becomes the nominee, I’ll try to put aside the things I hate about her and remind myself of the things I like about her. And I’ll definitely vote for her in November. Probably enthusiastically. I mean, she’s a Democrat and therefore I love most of her policies. I deplore some of her campaign tactics right now, but if she gets the nomination and uses those same tactics to propel her to a win — well, I still might not like the means, but I’ll like the ends.
After all, as one candidate has pointed out, we’re all on the same team.
2:23 PM | 5 drops of oil Tuesday, March 4, 2008
If it’s Tuesday, it must be primary day.
And so, as on seemingly countless Tuesday nights for the past two months, I’m going to be sitting in chorus rehearsal tonight anxiously wondering about the results, asking Matt to look them up on his Trio, then going home afterwards and switching on the TV before I do anything else.
By the way, if you’re wondering why so many states vote on Tuesdays, here’s why.
10:25 AM | 1 drop of oil Have I ever mentioned that I have a crush on MSNBC’s Chuck Todd?
2:51 PM | oil me Length of the 2000 Florida recount crisis:
Five weeks.
Time from now until the Pennsylvania primary:
Seven weeks.
It’s going to be a long spring.
I wonder if the Pennsylvania Democratic Party can somehow move up its primary?
11:34 PM | oil me Andrew Sullivan says, regarding Clinton’s Ohio victory speech:
I couldn’t watch it. Sorry. […]
I just had a Jager shot, and hope to get drunk very soon.
11:37 PM | 2 drops of oil Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Fine.
Clinton’s probably going to wind up getting the nomination through sheer determination. Florida and Michigan will hold revotes, and she’ll win them both, as well as Pennsylvania. Even if she doesn’t wind up with a delegate lead, she could wind up with a popular vote lead, and then she’ll convince the superdelegates to vote for her, arguing that she’d be a stronger nominee.
She’ll win that argument because as the weeks roll on, she’ll show that she’s right. Obama is beginning to run on fumes. This Rezko and Canada/NAFTA crap, real or not, caught him off guard. After the Clintons had to endure years of the Whitewater non-scandal, it’s breathtakingly hypocritical and cynical of them to push the Rezko thing. But they know how to get people talking about these things, and it adds to the perception that Obama hasn’t been fully vetted, even if these are ginned-up controversies. It’s meta-politics: look at all the problems you’re going to run into if you select Obama as your nominee.
As much as she pisses me off, Clinton seems to know how to go into attack mode. Obama doesn’t. God help us if we have another John Kerry who disdains attack politics and then gets clobbered by the Republican machine.
That 3 a.m. ad was good, because it played on fear and drew contrasts with Obama, and yet it wasn’t overtly negative. Obama needs to do something similar - some sort of hybrid ad. Of course, if he does that, he sullies his image, which is all he has going for him.
Clinton’s team, by its own actions, has shown the failure of Obama’s philosophy. Her team has shown that we can never reach consensus. Consensus requires cooperation from both sides, and if one side won’t cooperate, you’ve failed. Obama’s philosophy is based on the notion that the people are tired of the old politics and want change. But if majorities are falling for Clinton’s crap, then Obama’s philosophy is wrong.
We can never get past the old politics because the old politics is politics. The new politics is not actually politics. And democracy requires politics.
I feel personally wounded by all this. All my life, people have told me that I’m not practical, that I just don’t understand how the world works, that I’m naive. Or maybe it was just my parents who told me that. I wasted my law degree, I didn’t go for the high-paying job, et cetera. This just proves that people like my dad are right, that I’m an idiot, that I have no business being here.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s how it makes me feel: that you people who support Hillary are the smart ones, and that I’m a fool. Fine. I get it. Enjoy your candidate, revel in her victory, and I’ll just sit back here in my stupidity, because really, I’m just too dumb to know any better, aren’t I?
11:47 AM | 15 drops of oil Ralph Nader on “Sesame Street,” circa 1998.
“A consumer advocate’s a person in your neighborhood…”
No, seriously.
4:45 PM | 2 drops of oil Thursday, March 6, 2008
The other day I mentioned my crush on Chuck Todd.
Alessandra Stanley wrote in yesterday’s paper:
[O]n MSNBC, Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director, provided welcome restraint to the bubbly loquacity of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews; Mr. Todd, who is a whiz at delegate counting, is the designated driver of MSNBC’s political coverage, keeping his eyes on the road while the school boys get punch-drunk on exit polls.
Heheheh.
11:03 AM | oil me The extended Democratic contest won’t necessarily be bad. In fact, it could be helpful. Ron Klain gives some reasons why: it will give the party more time to make sure it picks the right nominee, it will make that nominee a better candidate, it’s a great recruiting tool for Democrats (“identifying possible Democratic voters for the fall, expanding the party’s fundraising base and substantially growing its ranks of volunteers and activists”), and it keeps McCain from making any news. (The latter isn’t necessarily important, since come September both nominees will get equal coverage.)
So, take heart.
3:24 PM | 5 drops of oil Friday, March 7, 2008
I was getting caught up on the New Yorker, reading an article about math and the human brain, and came across this fascinating passage:
Today, Arabic numerals are in use pretty much around the world, while the words with which we name numbers naturally differ from language to language. And, as Dehaene and others have noted, these differences are far from trivial. English is cumbersome. There are special words for the numbers from 11 to 19, and for the decades from 20 to 90. This makes counting a challenge for English-speaking children, who are prone to such errors as “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven.” French is just as bad, with vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nine”) for 99. Chinese, by contrast, is simplicity itself; its number syntax perfectly mirrors the base-ten form of Arabic numerals, with a minimum of terms. Consequently, the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children of the same age struggle to get to fifteen. And the advantages extend to adults. Because Chinese number words are so brief—they take less than a quarter of a second to say, on average, compared with a third of a second for English—the average Chinese speaker has a memory span of nine digits, versus seven digits for English speakers. (Speakers of the marvellously efficient Cantonese dialect, common in Hong Kong, can juggle ten digits in active memory.)
10:39 AM | 5 drops of oil God knows why there are no polls for the upcoming Wyoming and Mississippi primaries (Saturday and Tuesday, respectively). But here’s a prediction of the results.
11:02 AM | 2 drops of oil Saturday, March 8, 2008
Why does Professor Felicia Nimue Ackerman get so many letters published in the New York Times? She’s had 10 in the past year, and there’s an 11th in tomorrow’s Book Review. Jeez.
[Update: looks like I’m not the first to notice this.]
12:32 PM | oil me Monday, March 10, 2008
We saw a couple of shows last week. Both were great.
On Wednesday night, we saw Macbeth at BAM, starring Patrick Stewart. It was exciting and scary as hell, almost like a good popcorn movie. The theater looks like this, all exposed plaster and peeled paint (that’s not what the stage looks like for this production, though). I said to Matt that it would be a great place to see Follies.
We sat in the balcony, which is way, way, high up in that theater. I got vertigo as we walked down the steps to our seats. It didn’t help that we had to sit in upright rigid stools, so we couldn’t even lean back. The last time I felt such vertigo at the theater was when my mom took me to see Barnum when I was a kid and we sat in the balcony. (I don’t remember Barnum at all. All I remember is the terrifying vertigo.)
On Friday night, we saw Patti LuPone in Gypsy, currently in previews on Broadway after having transferred from the Encores production last summer. Oh my god. So brilliant. I love her as Mama Rose. And I love Gypsy. Is there a better musical? After almost 50 years it remains fresh. It was my fourth time seeing Gypsy - Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, last summer’s Encores, and this one. Patti LuPone is even better than she was last summer. Her “Rose’s Turn” is heartbreaking, and I’ve never seen the show end the way this production does (it’s different even from last summer).
There was one mishap, and it happened at a pivotal moment in Act II. Louise, played by Laura Benanti, was beginning her metamorphosis into Gypsy Rose Lee, putting on her long silk gloves, looking into the mirror, about to say to herself, “Mama… I’m pretty!”
And then a curtain came down right where she and the mirror were standing.
Benanti pushed the mirror through the opening between the curtains and tried to continue the scene. Then she stopped and disappeared behind the curtains. Then, from behind, a stagehand pulled back the mirror, which snagged on the stage right curtain and pulled it nearly all the way back, giving us a glimpse of Benanti standing there wondering what to do before it closed again. Then the curtain went back up, where we could see, too early, the “Garden of Eden” scrim. Benanti stood there, looking off stage right, and then we heard her say, “Stop the show. Stop the show.”
The main curtain went down and someone made an announcement about technical difficulties. About 10 minutes later, the curtain went back up, and the show picked up again from the mirror scene. Benanti continued as if nothing had happened, and the rest of the show went on to the end from there. Brilliant, really.
Anyway, Patti LuPone is wonderful, Laura Benanti is wonderful, Boyd Gaines as Herbie is wonderful.
God, I love this production. I may have to see it again.
12:30 PM | oil me 2:22 PM | 5 drops of oil Somehow I don’t think this is the Emperor’s Club they’re talking about.
2:51 PM | 1 drop of oil Well, this totally sucks for the state of New York. So much for political reform.
I like Spitzer a lot. But I don’t see how he survives this. Not when the Democrats are ONE SEAT away from taking control of the state senate for the first time in more than 40 years and kicking the awful Joe Bruno out of power.
I agree with Homer. We all do stupid things. The body doesn’t have enough blood to control the dick and the brain at the same time. Spitzer took a risk, and he got caught. Unfortunately, (1) this isn’t the 1950s, where the press will keep these things hush-hush; and (2) it was a prostitute (illegal), not just adultery (legal). Regardless of whether prostitution should be legal or not, the former attorney general flouted the law.
Anyway, I wonder what this means for gays’ right to marry. Spitzer is a strong supporter of marriage equality. I hope David Paterson is, too. Not that it will matter if the Democrats don’t take back the senate.
5:56 PM | 6 drops of oil Tuesday, March 11, 2008
New York Lieutentant Governor David Paterson, who would become governor if Spitzer resigned, “has typically been ahead of his time on gay issues over the years,” according to The Advocate.
Paterson has been on record in support of marriage equality as early as 1994. When Paterson was asked if he would take part in pushing through the marriage bill following his inauguration in January 2007, he told the New York Blade , “I’m not going to be in that fight — I’m going to be in front of that fight because my first day as [senate minority leader] was the day we passed the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. One of the reasons we need same-sex marriage is because the statistics for heterosexual marriage are so bad; that might be a way to upgrade some of the success rates.”
As far back as 1987, Paterson refused to pass a state hate-crimes bill that didn’t provide protections for gays and lesbians. “He was willing to let everything go down rather than to exclude us,” Sherrill recalled.
Ultimately, LGBT leaders with knowledge of New York’s political landscape suggested that a Spitzer resignation might be work in the community’s favor.
“If Spitzer resigns, it might be a blessing in disguise from an LGBT agenda point of view,” said the anonymous source. “Spitzer would likely be damaged goods whereas Paterson won’t have that baggage.”
10:01 AM | 1 drop of oil Wednesday, March 12, 2008
It often seems to be the case that when a successful but egomaniacal politician resigns from office, he’s replaced by a less dramatic, less flashy, more likable person who winds up winning public favor and getting things done. That’s what happened in New Jersey when Senate President Richard Codey took over from Jim McGreevey. By all accounts Codey was a well-liked acting governor for over a year.
It looks like that’s also going to be the case with David Paterson. Republicans seem willing to work with him in a way that they weren’t with Spitzer.
Why does this happen? Probably because in order to win the highest elective office, you need to be a bit of a dick. So you alienate people. Also, we don’t really like overly ambitious types. We’re more impressed by the person who doesn’t actually seem to want the job, who has power thrust upon him.
Not that Paterson is not ambitious. He’s a politician, after all, and he was the New York senate’s minority leader for four years. But he gave up the chance to become the majority leader, in the event Democrats took control of the senate, for the position of lieutenant governor, which doesn’t have much power or prestige.
Even if he only completes Spitzer’s term and never runs in his own right, Paterson will still be governor of New York longer than Gerald Ford held the presidency. He can do a lot of good in that time. As long as he doesn’t let himself get… steamrolled.
2:40 PM | 1 drop of oil Hmm… this makes a really good point. Maybe it would be better for Obama to let the Florida primary results stand:
Suppose the results from the January primary are allowed to stand. This will net Clinton 37 pledged delegates, and therefore Obama’s pledged delegate lead will go from approximately 161 to 124. Now, even with this hit and a big loss in Pennsylvania, it seems unlikely that Senator Clinton can get within 100 pledged delegates of Obama (the popular vote, too, looks like a long shot for her). In this scenario I see almost no chance of Clinton getting the nomination.
But, what if there is a Florida revote in June? Clinton will probably win but only net, say, half as many delegates. But she will have won another big state, not to mention the last big contest heading into the convention. Is that talking point worth twenty delegates? I think it might be. Admittedly, it’s also unlikely that Clinton can win the nomination under this scenario, but it could be more likely. Clinton needs a game-changer, and a Florida re-vote in June might be the ticket. Again, I am not saying this is necessarily the case, but if I were Obama I might rather go into the convention with a 110 delegate lead and Florida a distant memory than with a 130 delegate lead and a slew of bad headlines.
Michigan’s Soviet primary is another story, where Clinton was the only named candidate on the ballot. “The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” Hillary Clinton said this morning. My god. She is beyond shameless.
4:25 PM | 4 drops of oil Maybe Barbara Bush was right after all.
5:43 PM | 1 drop of oil Thursday, March 13, 2008
So it turns out Temeka Lewis, the woman who arranged the sexfest between Spitzer and “Kristen,” is a ‘Hoo.
No, not a ho. A ‘Hoo. A graduate of UVA. Like me.
She graduated in 1997, two years after me.
Oh joy!
2:45 PM | 3 drops of oil Friday, March 14, 2008
I don’t know if you’ve seen a successful politician or business tycoon get drunk and make a pass at a woman. It’s like watching a St. Bernard try to French kiss. It’s all overbearing, slobbering, desperate wanting. There’s no self-control, no dignity.
These Type A men are just not equipped to have normal relationships. All their lives they’ve been a walking Asperger’s Convention, the kings of the emotionally avoidant. Because of disuse, their sensitivity synapses are still performing at preschool levels.
So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp … . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance.
Maybe they’d be O.K. if somewhere along the way they’d had true friends, defined as a group of people who share a mutual inability to take each other seriously. Maybe they’d be prepared for what is about to happen if they’d subordinated their quest for immortality to the joys of domestic ridicule.
But they are completely unprepared. And in the middle of some perfectly enjoyable dinner party, a woman will suddenly find a tongue in her ear.
10:53 AM | 1 drop of oil Saturday, March 15, 2008
Queerty interviews Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, on the fall of Eliot Spitzer, the rise of David Paterson, and the outlook for equal marriage in New York State. Worth reading in its entirety. Here are some excerpts.
On politicians and the gay community:
Somehow people say [of elected officials], “They’re friends of our community because they came to our dinner or spoke to our crowd”. There’s also, “Well, they’re a friend of our community because they voted on a bill, but they didn’t sponsor it and these are our friends”. I think we’ve lowered the bar for what friends are, but even if we raised the bar ten times where it should have been, the fact that Spitzer became the first governor in the country to introduce marriage equality legislation absolutely means something.
On how introducing a marriage equality bill helped us:
We would never have gotten a vote in the Assembly for marriage equality had the Governor not made this a program bill and a priority for his administration. Had Governor Spitzer not introduced marriage equality bill, we wouldn’t have had a bill in the Assembly, a bill that had the weight of the executive behind it, we wouldn’t have had a vote and wouldn’t be 2/3 of the way to winning 1,324 rights in New York. I know people who personally voted for the bill because Governor Spitzer sent it out as a program bill. I know that for a fact, because before the bill was introduced, we had 35 on the record supporters for marriage equality and when we introduced the bill, we suddenly picked up more sponsors.
On Paterson’s pro-LGBT views:
[T]his is a guy with whom I sat with last year on countless evenings going over with him a list of Assembly members who were either on the fence or had a soft “no,” and he would help me and the Pride Agenda press strategies where we went to individuals. Paterson would say, “Okay, this person said ‘yes’? Let me call them tomorrow and make sure that’s a real yes or a soft yes”.
On the day of the vote, which I have never seen in my history at Albany, the Lt. Governor showed up on the floor 45-minutes before the Assembly debate and personally talked to the people who supported the bill and then came up to the gallery to talk to the gay community and tell them he had our backs. That had never happened before in a decade that I’ve been going up to Albany. It was really incredible.
On how he feels about Spitzer now:
… LGBT New Yorkers are not only part of an LGBT community, but we’re also New Yorkers, so when I’m wearing my LGBT hat, then, yes, he’s absolutely delivered to our community. But I’m also a New Yorker, so if these allegations are true, I’m really angry that our Governor did this. I don’t think - if he’s proved to have done money laundering and other stuff he could be charged with, I don’t think that’s necessarily somebody we want to be with. No one’s saying he’s not a friend of our community.
10:10 AM | 1 drop of oil Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Glenn Greenwald, mockingly, on the uproar over Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
White, right-wing Christian evangelical rage against America is understandable, respectable, and noble. Liberal black Christian anger towards America is scary, subversive, and despicable.
12:44 PM | oil me Barack Obama gave an amazing speech about race and religion in America this morning. Appropriately, he gave it at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, because it was a very American speech. You can read it and I’m sure you can watch it somewhere [update: here].
It blew me away. I’ve never heard anything like it from a presidential candidate. I’ve never heard a politician speak so honestly, intelligently and insightfully about the racial and religious divide in this country.
It appears to have been prompted by the Rev. Wright comments. But he used the opportunity to speak not just about Rev. Wright but about larger issues. He explained the source of Wright’s anger without justifying it. He explained what Wright has meant to him personally, even though he thinks many of Wright’s views are deeply flawed.
He said that while Wright’s views come from a place of anger, so do the views of many working-class white Americans who blame their place in life on affirmative action, or who resent, rightfully, the implication that they themselves are somehow responsible for this country’s history of slavery.
I don’t even know what part of the speech to excerpt here, because passage after passage is insightful. Here’s a taste.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS…
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
I think this is going to go down as a legendary speech, on a par with Kennedy’s 1960 speech about his Catholicism.
Obama could have disowned Wright and quit his church. It might have been the easier thing to do. He could have been that calculating. Another politician might have thrown his friend overboard. But Obama has principles. He stood up for himself and defended someone who has played a meaningful role in his life.
I wonder if Obama is too smart and insightful to be President of the United States. But then I think to myself how wonderful it is that we finally have a candidate who doesn’t treat us like idiots - who has enough faith in us to appeal to the better angels of our nature.
I don’t know if that faith is justified; it might be proven wrong. But it’s so refreshing to see a politician take that gamble.
1:26 PM | 3 drops of oil Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Many people have praised the speech Obama gave yesterday. But other reactions to it have left me depressed.
I used to be optimistic and idealistic about the power of dialogue to change the world. If we could all empathize with other people more, I thought, the world would be a better place. (Empathize: identify with, and understand, another’s situation, feelings, and motives.)
I used to think that only children were in thrall to their fears and emotions, and that when they grew up into adulthood, the fear would go away, and it would be replaced by understanding.
But it strikes me that so many adults in this world are actually just children in grown-up bodies. They are people who can lift heavy objects, and reach the top shelf, and drive a car, and hold down a job, and make a living, and raise a family. They are people who can generally function in this world day to day, independently. And yet so many of these people haven’t really grown up. They’re still too much in thrall to their fears and emotions. And it prevents them from understanding the world. From knowing the world. From knowing the people in it.
Obama gave a wonderful speech yesterday — a speech, by the way, that he apparently wrote himself. (That shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, he wrote a highly-praised, nuanced and deeply felt book back in 1995, when he wasn’t a politician and wouldn’t have had motivation to use a ghostwriter. And he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, so he’s not exactly an idiot. Maybe he received input on the speech from others — I haven’t seen it reported that he did, but maybe he did — but even if he did, the thoughts were his. It’s not like someone pushed a sheaf of paper in front of him and said, “Read this.”)
It’s not an easy speech to digest. You have to do a little more work to understand it than you have to do with most politicians’ speeches. It’s only words, but it demonstrated a fine understanding of the racial divisions that contribute so much to mutual suspicion and animosity in our country today. And, not incidentally, Obama also did a fine job, I thought, of explaining that sometimes, you have emotional ties to people in your life who may say things and hold beliefs that you profoundly disagree with. You might choose to shun these people. Or you might choose not to shun them, because even though you disagree with them, they’ve become like family to you, and you prefer not to shun family.
And yet some people think it’s their place to judge Obama for the choice he’s made.
I was particularly frustrated by a comment to a post on Eric’s blog. (I don’t know Ryan, the commenter, so I take issue only with his words, and only because those words are representative of what other people have written elsewhere on various blogs in the past 24 hours. I don’t mean to criticize the commenter himself.)
Ryan wrote:
I did read the speech. And I still don’t care. Actions speak louder than words and as a gay, I walked away from hateful religon, so can Obama, esp. when “unity” is his buzz words. So the world being complicated doesn’t “cut the mustard” so to speak. Wright is wrong. Obama sat and listened to his spew for 20 years. There’s no excuse. None.
[…]
Obama’s ACTIONS have spoken louder than any fancy speech his writers write. He supports hateful Wright, for whatever reason Wright is angry. I care not.
Hate is wrong. Wright preaches hate. Obama supports that hate by donating to his church, by attending his sermons, by naming his book after one of those sermons, by bringing his daughters to hear him preach.
End of discussion.
End of discussion?
That’s a level of certitude I can’t imagine holding. About almost anything.
I’m tired of reading comments by people who think it’s their place to judge how another human being handles a particular situation. As I said, I’ve seen similar comments on numerous blogs in the last 24 hours, and it frustrates me to no end. People are coming to a situation with their preconceived notions, and they won’t let anything change their minds.
I’ve been guilty of this myself, of course. In this political season, I’ve felt a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton over the last couple of months, and I’ve expressed it on this blog. I’ve been trying to combat that dislike. I can’t presume to know what’s in her heart or her mind. I don’t think she’s an Ambitious Dragon Lady; I think she has deeply held, deeply felt beliefs about health care, and about children, and about making this country a better place. I don’t know if she has the political skill to achieve her goals as president; she might be deluding herself, as all politicians do (including, perhaps, Obama). And I think she’s made some dishonorable political choices in this campaign. My primal instinct is to hate her guts and hold her in contempt for the way she’s conducted it. But I’m trying to get past that, because, really, what the hell do I know?
“What the hell do I know.” I wish more people lived by that creed instead of feeling secure in their certitude. I try to, even though I’m not nearly as successful at it as I’d like to be.
There have always been wars and there always will be. There have always been dictators who weren’t loved enough or secure enough as a child, and there always will be. Throughout history, a large portion of the human population has remained childlike, and a large portion of the human population always will.
Why bother with the dialogue and the words? What good can it do? Damned if I know sometimes.
While writing this, it was pointed out to me that tomorrow would have been Mr. Rogers’s 80th birthday. (In his honor, tomorrow is “Won’t You Wear a Sweater?” Day.)
I adored Mr. Rogers as a child; sometimes he seemed to be the only person in the world who wouldn’t judge me, who would accept me unconditionally. He taught us some of the most emotionally healthy lessons there are. Here are some:
Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them … ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That’s what the world needs.
You know, you don’t have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable.
I have a very modulated way of dealing with my anger. I have always tried to understand the other person and invariably I’ve discovered that somebody who rubs you the wrong way has been rubbed the wrong way many times.
If more people were like Mr. Rogers, the world would be a better place.
1:50 PM | 5 drops of oil Thursday, March 20, 2008
I’m still depressed about the state of politics and the state of humanity and the state of human communication and the state of human mutual understanding. I’m letting it all get to me too much.
Animosity and intolerance and prejudice and prejudgment are all part of the human condition, along with love and joy and solidarity. I don’t know why I should expect any of this to change.
I should probably disengage. I know I won’t, because I’m such a politics junkie and love clicking on website X or Y all the time to see the latest news. But I should at least try. Or if I can’t disengage, I should at least stop trying to expect perfection from us human beings and accept the messiness of the world.
3:57 PM | 2 drops of oil Last night, the cast of Battlestar Galactica presented David Letterman’s Top Ten List.
8:59 PM | 2 drops of oil Saturday, March 22, 2008
Here’s an 8-minute recap of Battlestar Galactica seasons 1 through 3. [Via Tim. Back atchya!]
See also: 8 minute 15 second recap of Lost, seasons 1-3.
5:34 PM | oil me Monday, March 24, 2008
The New York Times discovers college a cappella.
“There’s something about a cappella that rubs a lot of people the wrong way,” said Mr. Coulton, who performed on world tours with the Whiffenpoofs and on an album called “Take a Whiff.”
“When you’re in it,” he said, “you do think you’re a rock star. But you have to ignore the majority of the population who don’t want you singing jazz standards at their dinner.”
Here’s my college a cappella story, by the way.
2:31 PM | 1 drop of oil I don’t know WTF this woman’s problem was on the New Jersey Transit train this morning. I take NJ Transit every morning from Penn Station to Newark. Each row of seats on the train has five seats — two on one side and three on the other, with an aisle in between. Nobody ever sits in the middle seat of a three-seat section unless there are two or three people traveling together. It’s just an unwritten rule. Nobody does it.
So this morning I’m one of the first people on the train and I take a window seat on an empty group of three seats. I put my bag on the middle seat next to me, because, again, nobody’s gonna sit there. It just never happens.
A few minutes later, a guy comes by and sits in the aisle seat, leaving an empty seat between us. That’s fine. Standard procedure.
Then, a couple more minutes later, this woman comes by and asks the guy if he can move down so she can sit in the row too. WTF? Why can’t she keep walking down the aisle and into the next car to see if there are any other empty seats? She’s not elderly or disabled or anything. She’s about my age. Anyway, like a mindless automaton, the guy moves over to the middle seat to make room for her. So I’m cramped up against the window. It could be worse — I could be stuck in the middle seat like the guy next to me. But she’s broken a social rule, dammit.
I notice that there’s only one person sitting in the triple seat in front of us, next to the window. So I point to the empty aisle seat in that row and say (nicely and helpfully, I thought), “You know, there’s an empty seat there if you wanted to make some more room.” She looks at me as if I’ve insulted her grandma and responds, “It’s going to be a crowded train anyway,” or something like that. What the hell? It’s going to be a crowded train anyway? Who is this person?
Sure enough, a minute later someone comes by and sits in the row in front of us. And sure enough, none of the other additional people getting on the train goes to any other row to try to take a middle seat or make anyone else take a middle seat. No, only the stubborn mule at the end of the row I happen to be in.
And the stupid peon sitting next to me in the middle seat just sits there dumbly and suffers in silence. Thanks a lot, jerk. So much for solidarity. You just sit there and passively accept your fate? What is this, the Soviet Union?
When we pull into Newark I’m the only one of three of us disembarking. So both of them have to get up so I can get out of my seat and off the train.
Hah! I sure showed them. They both had to get up for me!
I take my victories where I can find them. Walter Mitty would know what I mean.
3:37 PM | 5 drops of oil Worth reading. I really, really, really wish I could write like Digby.
As a liberal who’s been watching all this take place over the course of half a century now, I am thrilled at the prospect of crossing those boundaries with an African American or female president. But the sexism and racism we’ve seen in the campaign so far is a reminder that these things don’t happen by magic or positive thinking. (Look at the racial make up of the prison population or the gender pay gap for illustration.) They happen because people are always out there fighting for it, over time, vigilantly manning the barricades against the conservative aristocrats (there aren’t any other kind) and the people they purposefully manipulate with fear to keep full equality and true liberty from coming to fruition.
And sadly, those who do that fighting are often considered to be “unamerican” and “unpatriotic” because by demanding that America change, they are making a case that America is not perfect. For the chauvinist, nationalist, exceptionalist right, (and the mindbogglingly provincial thinkers in the village) that is something you are not allowed to admit.
5:20 PM | oil me Tuesday, March 25, 2008
At an MTVU forum last week, Smith College journalist Lily Lamboy challenged Bill Clinton on his decision to sign DOMA in 1996. The former president defended DOMA, basically saying that if not for DOMA, there would be a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage nationwide today.
BC: Let me ask you this: do you believe there will be more or fewer efforts to ban gay marriage constitutionally around the country if a Massachusetts marriage has to be sanctified in Utah?
LL: I -
BC: Yes or no. Answer the question. We live in the real world here.
LL: Sir, I understand. It’s a political backlash.
BC: No, not a political backlash. As a substantive backlash: the lives of gay people. Will there be more or fewer gay couples free of harassment if the law is that every gay couple in America could go to Massachusetts, get married and it would then had it recognized in Utah?
LL: But when is that going to change if you’re not going to set a firm stance.
BC: So you don’t care what the practical implications are?
No mention here of the other part of DOMA, the one that entirely bans federal recognition of an individual state’s same-sex marriages.
Also, Clinton’s argument that he signed DOMA in order to prevent a federal amendment seems like reasoning after the fact. David Mixner, former advisor to Bill Clinton on gay issues who later broke with him, stated last year:
First, [Hillary] Clinton’s claim that DOMA was passed so it could help defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) eight years later is absolutely false. As we all know, the FMA wasn’t really a threat until 2002, and the two pieces of legislation had distinctly separate origins. While having DOMA on the books might have been a factor in the FMA’s defeat, it was passed for political reasons in an election year. In fact, after proclaiming to the community how painful it was for him to sign it, President Clinton’s reelection campaign had ads up in the South touting the legislation within two weeks!
Indeed, a federal amendment didn’t appear to be a threat in 1996. It’s not mentioned in this article, “President Would Sign Legislation Striking at Homosexual Marriages” (May 23, 1996):
The White House said today that if Congress passed a bill to deny Federal recognition to same-sex marriages, President Clinton would sign it, although such unions are not yet legal in any state. The announcement, intended to remove any potential controversy with Republicans over a divisive social issue, infuriated gay rights groups…
Mr. Clinton has long opposed the concept of same-sex marriage, and his spokesman, Michael D. McCurry, hinted broadly last week that the President would sign the “defense of marriage” act co-sponsored by his presumptive Republican rival, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. The bill, which has not yet passed either house, would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and would deny Federal pension, health and other benefits to same-sex couples.
A federal marriage amendment isn’t mentioned in any of the other DOMA articles in the Times in 1996 either.
In October 1996, the Times reported on a Clinton ad touting the fact that he signed DOMA:
In a radio advertisement aimed at religious conservatives, the Clinton campaign is showcasing the President’s signature on a bill banning gay marriages in spite of earlier White House complaints that the issue amounted to ”gay baiting.”…
Mr. Clinton signed the law early on a Saturday morning, minimizing news coverage. He said he had long agreed with the principles in the bill but hoped it would not be used to justify discrimination against homosexuals…
The Dole campaign was critical. ”This is a President who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in the middle of the night so it wouldn’t be news, but now he does paid advertising to promote it,” said a Dole spokesman, Gary Koops. ”This is a President who has never supported any restriction on abortion, but now, 20-plus days before the election, he does ads touting the fact that he now says he supports restrictions.”
Clinton wasn’t trying to prevent a federal marriage amendment. He was trying to get reelected. And as John Aravosis pointed out last year, it wasn’t the last time he supported using gays as a wedge issue.
11:31 AM | 1 drop of oil Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Jim Neal is an openly gay Senate candidate in North Carolina, running for the Democratic nomination. He has one major rival for the nomination, and the winner will face the incumbent, Elizabeth Dole, in November.
I’ve been asked to help promote fundraising houseparties for him; for more information, go here. Here’s his Wikipedia page, and here’s an article about him in today’s Charlotte Observer.
9:54 AM | oil me As of today, there are 300 days left in the Bush presidency.
9:57 AM | oil me NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, is 84 years old and has an approval rating below 50 percent. But he’ll probably still get re-elected this year, because these are his potential opponents.
New Jersey Republicans are an odd breed.
5:27 PM | 2 drops of oil Thursday, March 27, 2008
What does it take to qualify as one of the worst movies ever made? Joe Queenan says:
To qualify as one of the worst films of all time, several strict requirements must be met. For starters, a truly awful movie must have started out with some expectation of not being awful. That is why making a horrific, cheapo motion picture that stars Hilton or Jessica Simpson is not really much of an accomplishment. Did anyone seriously expect a film called The Hottie and The Nottie not to suck? Two, an authentically bad movie has to be famous; it can’t simply be an obscure student film about a boy who eats live rodents to impress dead girls. Three, the film cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever, as this is cheating. Four, the film must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like Hilton. Five, the film must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas; like the Black Plague or the Mongol invasions, it must be an impending disaster of which there has been abundant advance warning; it cannot simply appear out of nowhere. And it must, upon release, answer the question: could it possibly be as bad as everyone says it is? This is what separates Waterworld, a financial disaster but not an uncompromisingly dreadful film, and Ishtar, which has one or two amusing moments, from The Postman, Gigli and Heaven’s Gate, all of which are bona fide nightmares.
Six, to qualify as one of the worst movies ever made, a motion picture must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it, a fear that they may one day be forced to watch the film again - and again - and again. To pass muster as one of the all-time celluloid disasters, a film must be so bad that when a person is asked, “Which will it be? Waterboarding, invasive cattle prods or Jersey Girl?”, the answer needs no further reflection. This phenomenon resembles Stockholm Syndrome, where a victim ends up befriending his tormentors, so long as they promise not to make him watch any more Kevin Smith movies. The condition is sometimes referred to as Blunted Affleck.
[…]
There is one other requirement for a movie to be considered one of the worst ever: it must keep getting worse. By this, I mean that it not only must keep getting worse while you are watching it, but it must, upon subsequent viewings, seem even worse than the last time you saw it…
3:39 PM | oil me Friday, March 28, 2008
Jesus. Does Matthew Murray ever like going to the theater? I think 90 percent of the reviews I’ve ever read by him have been negative.
Seriously, why go to the theater if you get no joy out of it and hate everything you see?
11:46 AM | 3 drops of oil Playing around on Google Maps, I found the apartment building in Tokyo where my family lived when I was in high school: the Homat Sun, in the neighborhood of Roppongi. (My dad worked for his company