Reflection on the Election

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Joe the Plumber: Modern Day Tom Joad

The plumbing is alive tonight,
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it
                   goes.
I'm sittin' down here in the cable news' light,
Searchin' for the ghost of Plumber Joe.

A Bunch of Hosers Boo Palin. What's that Aboot?

Self-proclaimed hockey mom and vice-presidential hopeful dropped the first puck at tonight's (Sat, October 11, 2008) Philadelphia Fliers game. And the native's were restless.

It's weird, because Philly sports fans are usually so gracious. Pop quiz: Would Sarah Palin prefer Pat's or Gino's steaks? Let's go to the videotape!

[Ed. Note: If you want to know about Joey Vento, ask Joey Vento. He'll tell you all about Joey Vento. Favorite highlight: Joey Vento criticizing people who cannot speak English, and then spitting out absolute word salad. ]

Campaign or Pillow Fight? We Report, You Decide.

The early part of October 2008 in the United States has been marked by the ugliest campaigning in decades. Just ask Cindy McCain. Mrs. McCain claimed that Senator Barack Obama's campaign was the "dirtiest campaign in American history" (The Tennessean via Huffingtonpost.com). [Ed. Note: Apparently Mrs. McCain was so corked on oxycotin in 2000 that she does not remember Bush₂'s South Carolina primary campaign against her husband, during which Bush₂'s camp claimed that Mrs. McCain was a drug addict and that their adopted Bangladeshi daughter was McCain's bi-racial illegitimate daughter. Either that or she thinks, you know, attacking a spouse and race-baiting is cool. Waaait a minute....]

Mrs. McCain did not mention how McCain and Palin supporters have recently taken to calling Senator Obama a "terrorist" at their rallies and even suggesting that someone should "kill him [Obama, not himself, alas]." In the days after her comment, videos of queues outside McCain and Palin rallies have captured that American tolerance that makes this country great.

McCain, however, is now feeling the backlash for the hate-mongering, as some in the media are comparing these tactics to "fascism" (Huffingtonpost.com but with sources in article). In response to this backlash, McCain now finds himself trying to defuse the hate in his crowds; on October 10th, McCain told his supporters to be "respectful" of Obama, that Obama is "decent," to a chorus of boos. [Ed. Note: At the Obama rallies I have attended, the crowd has always cheered when Obama praises McCain's military service to the country, but today, October 11th, apparently the crowd on hand in Philadelphia began booing Obama's gracious talk about McCain. Of course, no one in PA is bitter.]

Afraid that McCain was going to effectively throw in the towel now that, according to some polls, Obama has opened up a double-digit lead on McCain despite McCain's economic rescue plan that he worked out on some abacus or bought on eBay or something.

All the above is to get to this point, the crown jewel in unintended double entendre or accidental allusion or whatever: At a McCain townhall in MN, "One woman who said she had a lot of undecided neighbors said she wanted McCain to 'go to the mattresses' on in his third and final debate with Obama on Wednesday" (CNN.com). Now, my friend Brock would need go no further in his parsing than the obvious mis-quote of "go to the mat." If Brock were so inclinced, he might find a potential Freudian moment in that inaccurate quotation (or, perhaps, an unintended reference to a senior-citizen's bed time?).

However, while this Minnesotan (statistically speaking, she's probably a hockey mom but as for her being able to field-dress a moose, well, the numbers are fuzzy) mangled one cliche (coming into common usage around 1900, according the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms), she (most likely) inadvertently quoted the 1972 Academy Award-winning film The Godfather.

Sonny: No, no, no! No more! Not this time, consigliere. No more meetin's, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. You give 'em one message: I want Sollozzo. If not, it's all-out war; we go to the mattresses.

Apparently, Sonny's reference is to the 16th century practice of Italian nobility heading for safe haven in the country when violence broke out at home. In The Godfather, Sonny implies the same strategy if it's "all out war." In short, in asking McCain to stand firm, she suggested that he head for the hills. So be it. As Tom Hagen tells Sonny, "Some of the other families won't sit still for an all out war."

Probably the Best Sports-Politics Article of this Campaign Season

ESPN trades in part on an antagonism with LeBron James. Bron-Bron appears in ESPN ads, Bron-Bron puts rear-ends in La-Z-Boys in front of NBA games broadcast on ESPN, Bron-Bron graces the cover of ESPN: The Magazine, and even when Bron-Bron was a high-school student, ESPN carried news about the Ohioan wunderkind on SportsCenter.

Yet, ESPN will, once a season or so, run a "news" segment on James's politics. As in, his lack of them. During those segments, ESPN contrasts Bron-Bron with Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown, whose careers as professional athletes are inextricable from their politics, and compares him to Michael Jordan, who infamously said, "Republicans buy sneakers, too." Overall, the suggestion is that Bron-Bron has a pulpit, and he should use it.¹

Nevermind the apolitical hypocrisy underlying the fact that the ESPNzone in Denver, site of the 2008 DNC, still shills an ESPN-brand tee in the window featuring a simulated ballot with three options: a donkey, an elephant, and ESPN (which happens to be checked).

However, Joseph White, writing for the AP, has written a thoughtful article on the effect the current Obama-McCain contest resonates in NFL locker rooms, where no one present except maybe the boy shoveling up sweaty jocks into a laundry bin will save money under Obama's tax plan, while everyone (except said possibly-non-existent laundry boy) will save around a cool million under McCain's plan.²

While NFL players are all too often portrayed as frivolous or unintelligent, White's article shows how this race resonates in a meaningful way with many of them:

"We're right in the middle," said Washington Redskins veteran Philip Daniels. "We've all got family members that are not doing so well. Democrats would help them out, but Republicans would help us out." (Post-Gazette.com)

There it is in a nutshell. The article is fascinating in that is shows how some players who have come from modest beginnings hold onto that class awareness despite their astronomical contracts, while others have fully immersed themselves into a new social class (which may or may not fully accept them based upon race--for example, how many eyebrows would be raised if Jeff Feagles teed off at Augusta? How many if Adam Jones?).

Read the article.

---

¹ If one were inclined to cynicism, one might problematize ESPN's credibility on the subject: They want a kid who was pushed through high school, used as a cash cow for the St. Vincent-St. Mary high school athletic department, and drafted first overall into the NBA to offer his insight on national politics. It's a bit like asking Doogie Howser how to pick up chicks. [Ed. Note: This is a reference to a fictional child prodigy skipping his adolescence entirely and entering economic and professional adulthood, not some coded reference to NPH, which upon further consideration makes me think I should have just gone with a Tom Hanks-Big simile.]

² Yes, it is problematic that "save money" is synonymous with the much more general "benefit" in this discussion. As in, although you may pay more in taxes under Obama's plan, the lower- and middle-classes will receive much more help, making it less likely that some desperately marginalized lumpen will break into their (the players') homes on game day or gun them down outside an apartment building. Full disclosure: The editor believes a distinct and meaningful connection exists between the anxieties of poverty, the perceived and real lack of opportunities for so many Americans who earn the least, and the rage one feels when confronting the widening chasm between the material reality of most Americans and the wild extravagance exhibited by those who are paid to catch a football or baseball or to shoot a basket.

McCain Takes Presidential Debates Hostage

In an unprecedented move, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona, Presidential hopeful) has suspended his campaign and withdrawn from the first scheduled presidential debate citing a need to return to Washington D.C. and work on the "historic" financial crisis (cut him some slack for forgetting about 1929's Great Depression; he wasn't even born until 1936).

A cynic might wonder, "After a 29-year career as a U.S. Senator, why is McCain suddenly getting to work on the economy?" My inside source (i.e. my brain) tells me McCain's decision is based on three major premises.

1. He will "lose" every debate. The September 26th debate scheduled to take place at the University of Mississippi is supposed to focus on National Security, a topic that the media consistently claims is McCain's strength [Ed. Note: I was a child for ten or twelve (okay, 29) years, but I am not an expert on children.]. However, with the Dow behaving like a Six-Flag's Thrill Ride, the debate would have to include talk about the economy, the topic that polls now show matters most to the electorate. Coincidentally, Obama is hammering McCain on the economy, with a new Washington Post-ABC News national poll suggesting that among likely voters, Obama now leads McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. (Now, remember: A "likely voter" is someone with an actual voting record; thus, all polls of "likely voters" do not count the hoards of new voters that Obama has drawn into the process.)  Knowing that his moment of "strength" will become an hour of liability, McCain is extending the Palin-Cone-of-Silence to his own person, and he's using the debate as leverage to rush through a governmental economic bailout that most Americans do not support.
2. He is trying to project an image of someone who can help the economy. McCain has made more gaffes and mistaken comments about the economy than he has about Sunnis and Shias and Czechoslovakia and the Iraq-Afghanistan-border-that-most-everyone-else-calls-Iran combined. As per the Washington Post-ABC poll, McCain knows the American people think he's economically inept [Ed. Note: He did marry well, which should count for something. However, as is well-known, Cindy McCain’s assets are kept separate from her husband’s as per a prenuptial agreement. In my most despondent moments, I find glee in a potential campaign ad that might say something like, "McCain's wife won't trust him with her money. Why should you?"]. By presumably putting pressure on Congress to act—although, honestly, with Obama up in national polls across the board and the writing on the wall about who will win a debate between them, the Republicans know a debate will put the nail in the coffin and the Democrats know that Americans will see through McCain's political theater, so who really feels any pressure?—McCain thinks he can recast himself as an economic problem solver. To me, he seems like a political terrorist who is taking the process hostage. As Americans, we have a right to see the candidates debate, and as a sometimes-intelligent human, I want to know that a president can juggle two things at once, especially if one of those things is only standing up and talking about his or her ideas.
3. He is trying to save money. Part of McCain's "suspension" involves pulling his advertising. Consider this: Obama out-fundraises McCain. By huge margins.  In fact, if Obama wanted to run an ad in every major market every 10 minutes from now until the election, he could probably afford it, and if he couldn't afford it right now he could probably get people to kick in enough money to do it. But he isn't doing that. So, with this fundraising, one has to expect that the week before the election will be an Obama-thon in every contested market, and McCain just doesn't have those resources. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of August 21, 2008, Obama had $77,404,118 cash on hand, while McCain had only $36,370,792. I'm no math guy, but Obama had over double the amount of money then, and he continues to raise money like he has a license to print it. When a few days remain and Obama wants to spread his message (or drown McCain's), he'll have the resources to do it.

Ultimately, the voters will decide what to make of McCain's emergency suspension to deal with this crisis. However, with McCain-Palin's recent track record with the media, I'm pretty sure I have a sense of how this move will play. Swan song, anyone?

[Update: Now, the McCain camp suggests that the Biden-Palin debate be postponed to accomodate McCain's cut-n-run. So, point #4 might be that Palin is having trouble learning the playbook.]

File Under: Irony (or, likely, racism or sexism)

Today, DNC Platform Committee Person and former Hillraiser Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared that she plans to support Senator John McCain for president in the 2008 general election.

 

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.

Who better to have her finger on the pulse of the masses, on Mr. and Ms. American Middle-class Strap-hanger, than a woman who is a CEO of a multinational corporation, who is wife to an entitled international banker from the Rothschild family, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

Oddly, when one searches Google for the "Rothschild Coat of Arms," an image of the actual coat of arms is displayed.  Somehow in all its plenitude, Google has no listing for an Obama coat of arms.

Truly, if anyone has a right to reject elitism is Lady Forester de Rothschild, related by marriage an international banking dynasty dating back to the 18th century and ennobled by Austrian and British governments.

Not that I condone the use of wikipedia, but the reverent entry on Sir Evelyn de Rothschild should help convince the masses that the Rothschilds feel their pain:

Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild (born August 29, 1931) is a British financier and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England.

The son of Anthony Gustav de Rothschild (1887-1961) and Yvonne Cahen d'Anvers (1899-1977), he was named after his uncle Evelyn Achille de Rothschild who was killed in action in World War I. Evelyn de Rothschild spent several of his boyhood years in the United States during World War II. He studied economics at Cambridge University but, with no desire to go into the family's banking business, he dropped out before obtaining his degree.

Born into great wealth, Evelyn de Rothschild became one of England's most eligible bachelors, spending his youth travelling, socialising, driving exotic sports cars, enjoying thoroughbred horse racing and playing polo. It was not until age twenty-six that he decided to join N M Rothschild & Sons banking house to be trained in the family's business. In 1961 his father retired as head of the bank and cousin Victor Rothschild took over as Chairman.

Now that's a story that unemployed auto workers can relate to....

Messenger, DOA

Does anyone remember the 2000 election, when the voting public acknowledged that then-Governor Bush did not seem like the brightest possible candidate but was likely to surround himself with great people and that those great people were as important as the president himself? [Exhibit A, Exhibit B]

Well, the Bush administration has been a ship afire for years, and few of his staff can be confused with "the boy [who] stood on the burning deck / trying to recite 'the boy stood on / the burning deck.'"¹ (But plenty have been left still stammering.)

However, with the publication of former Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan's book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, those closest to the president have stopped just short of calling McClellan a traitor.

In an e-mail to McClellan, former Senator and presidential hopeful Bob Dole wrote:

There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues.... No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique. (CNN.com)

While Dole may be right in his assessment of McClellan, his invective speaks to something much more nefarious. Dole suggests (perhaps rightly) that McClellan should have spoken up at the time, that it was McClellan's responsibility to do the right thing. More incredibly, Jack Cafferty, a conservative commentator on CNN, suggested that had McClellan spoken up at the time, he could have "saved a few lives."²

Thus, the right-wing of the conservative party is painting McClellan, not the Commander-in-Chief or the administration that perpetrated the deception that McClellan ostensibly reveals, as a cause of dead soldiers. In this administration where the buck never stops, this is hardly surprising, but it is deplorable and as disrespectful of the soldiers' sacrifices as can be conceived. Moreover, the ones who are ultimately accountable for this war are being let off the hook (not only by these commentators but also by the mainstream media, an industry that seems to have forgotten investigative journalism when it comes to George W. Bush).

While it seems obvious that the administration engaged in some manner of misinformation regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (remember them?  the reasons we went to war in the first place?) and Iraq's role in aiding anti-American terrorists, and while such misinformation is likely impeachable, Senator Robert Wexler's (D-Florida) call for McClellan to testify under oath might just be the move that mobilizes the imperiled Republican party and creates a stiffer fight for the democratic presidential nominee.

---

¹"Casabianca," by Elizabeth Bishop

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

²CNN Tuesday, May 27, 2008.

Sobchak 2008

As the Democratic Party's Rules Committee prepares to convene in order to resolve the situation in Michigan and Florida, the mainstream media is ramping up the spin. Whether the spin favors Obama, Clinton, or ultimately John McCain, what the spin never favors is American democracy.

Every political party in the United States has the sovereignty to set its own rules for its elections and nominations; however, the language used in most mainstream media reports on the DNC's stance on the invalid primaries in Florida and Michigan make those rules and the exercising of that sovereignty appear like whims, not rules for the good of the party and for the fairness of the democratic process.

Very few articles also mention that the Republican National Committee (RNC) also penalized Florida and Michigan for moving their primaries by cutting in half their delegations to their national convention. Republican primaries are "winner take all" contests, unlike Democratic primaries which allot delegates proportionately with the vote; had the Republican race been tighter (i.e. had Huckabee decided to take his bid into June or to the convention), the penalty could have effected McCain's lead. However, after Huckabee withdrew from the race, the RNC's appropriate penalization of Florida and Michigan ceased to be an issue.

Yet the spotlight is solely on the Democratic party, and the language used diminishes the responsibility of the Florida and Michigan legislatures who knew the rules they were breaking as they approved the movement of their respective primaries. 

Consider the following excerpt from a CNN.com article written by Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston:

Clinton has argued the primary results of two of the nation's largest states should count because otherwise millions of voters are being disenfranchised. Obama has said he is willing to work out some compromise.

But he is insistent the primary results are invalid since the two states failed to follow party rules and the rules are the rules.

The DNC has not seated the Florida and Michigan delegates because the two states violated party edicts in holding their primaries early.

The three paragraphs above exemplify all that is wrong with current mainstream media reporting. It seems as though CNN has adopted the "hands-off" rhetorical position of FOXnews: "We report, you decide." In the first two paragraphs above, Griffin and Johnston summarize the positions of senators Clinton and Obama, but they do so without context or commentary, and in fact the article seems to suggest that the opinions of the contestants are somehow more important than the sovereignty of the rules by which they are bound to compete. Most readers do not know the rules of national political parties; most readers do not know precedents when those parties have been forced to uphold their rules through penalization; most readers do not know the authority given to national political parties to conduct their own business.

Moreover, Griffin and Johnston call the DNC's rules "edicts," a word that is used incorrectly due to its denotation and used rhetorically due to its negative connotations. an edict is an order or command made without any legal authority but with the force of law. One follows an edict simply because one feels like it or because one fears an unjust reprisal; moreover, one can ignore an edict without expecting a justified punishment. If national political parties' rules were simply edicts without actual authority, would U.S. courts (in Florida, no less) continue to dismiss lawsuits filed against the DNC, stating that political parties have the constitutional right to determine their own rules for selecting delegates in nominating processes (Tampa Bay Online).¹

Should responsible media outlets abstain from providing for their readers the appropriate tools to interpret the "facts" they typically present out of context? Do we want a media industry that absolves itself of any responsibility to interpret based upon fact? Few would disagree with the news-consumer's right to make up his or her own mind about the facts of a story, but in order for such a decision to be valid, for it to have the weight of rational decision making, it must have access to the pertinent information. It seems that the "no ideology" position openly proclaimed by FOXnews is in fact a more-insidious ideological tactic--by providing decontextualized "facts," the media is able to manufacture consent among its audience that seems even more authentic because we have "made up our own minds."

Although this may be a new type of Godwin, allow the hypothetical use of Robert Mugabe as illustration for a moment. If U.S. news outlets reported that Mugabe claimed the results of an election should stand despite the election itself being moved to an illegal time and despite the fact that his opposition was not even on the ballot in 50% of the area in question, would anyone in America say, "Sure, Robert. Sounds reasonable to me?" No, because as a nation we claim to believe in the sovereignty of rules, in insuring fairness in competition, and such actions as moving an election, as arguing for the legitimacy of a ballot that does not include the competition would be unfair and, more importantly, un-democratic.

So our choice, as the Griffin and Johnston would not have us believe, is between affirming the beliefs we claim to hold dear and placing blame not on the DNC but on the legislators broke the rules and disenfranchised their own voters or accepting as legitimate an un-democratic process in the name of (somehow) fairness.

Oh, and never mind the fact that Senator Clinton, who has found yet another voice in this campaign and become a crusader for voting rights, agreed to these rules and supported the DNC's decision to strip Florida of its full delegation.

But that was when she was winning.

---

¹ The person filing the lawsuit, Victor DiMaio, did not even vote in his primary. Of course he still has the right to file the suit, but the circumstances are nothing if not ironic: "Every vote is sacred, but I had other things to do on election day!"

Hello, Democracy

The DNC Rules Committee (scheduled to meet on May 31) has an opportunity to preserve democracy and educate voters in Michigan and Florida, as well as pundits, journalists, and talking heads, about the true nature of the illegitimate primaries in Michigan and Florida.

While the DNC (and Howard Dean, specifically, as though the DNC was a one-person show) has been given the blame for the current situation, the real culprits—the legislatures in Michigan and Florida, specifically the individual legislators who voted to move the primary dates—receive next to no attention.

2008 does not mark the first time a political party's national committee has established rules by which legitimate elections and primaries can be conducted, so the very presence of these rules is itself not problematic, nor is the use of sanctions for states who break those rules.

Moreover, 2008 does not mark the first time that Michigan has attempted to move its primary against DNC rules. In 2004, Michigan Democrats attempted to move their primary against standing DNC rules. In 2004, however, Howard Dean was not the DNC chair (Dean was, in fact, running his own campaign, which was unbelievably derailed by poor sound engineering). The chairperson of the DNC in 2004 was Terry McAuliffe. You know him...he is currently serving as Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, and he is among the most outspoken about the DNC's rejection of the illegitimately-moved primaries.

How did McAuliffe deal with Michigan in 2004? One need only to consult McAuliffe's memoir, What a Party! (2007), for his personal account:

"I'm going outside the primary window," [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.

"If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses," I said. "We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost."

He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.

"You won't deny us seats at the convention," he said.

"Carl, take it to the bank," I said. "They will not get a credential. The closest they'll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it."

We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it.¹ (325)

In McAuliffe's defense, he did use a co-writer (Steve Kettmann) when completing his memoir, so perhaps he doesn't remember writing (or having) that conversation with Levin. Or, less in his defense, McAuliffe remembers his use of sanctions as a threat, how he seems to take pleasure in that threat, instead of his simple enforcement of the rules.  Either way, McAuliffe is either a hyprocrit or guilty of a Clintonian "mis-speak."

Either way, Clinton & Co.'s continued suggestion that the DNC is responsible for the illegitimacy of the Michigan and Florida primaries is disinformation. Unfortunately, this disinformation hurts her party in more ways than one.

First, by placing blame on the DNC, she paints the entire party as being anti-democratic and their continued observance of the rules as a choice fueled by a fire to disenfranchise two key states (that the DNC has such a desire is ludicrous). Second, she places blame on the Obama campaign, which only further weakens from within the party's likely candidate. Obama's campaign has objected to several proposals, not because they want to suppress Michigan or Florida, but because the proposals have not been fair to both candidates.

Consider Michigan's current "compromise proposal" to send the Michigan delegation to the convention in Denver with a 10-delegate edge for Senator Clinton. Remember, Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, so the "compromise" is presumptuous at best. However, if the Obama camp rejects this plan, you can guarantee that the Eternal Campaign will label him obstructionist.

Through all of this, though, the real message is lost. Republican-controlled legislatures (with bipartisan support) in both states voted to move the primaries with full knowledge of the potential ramifications from the DNC.

Consider the following from a New York Times article date August 22, 2007, called "Michigan Joins the Race for a 'Me First' Primary":

The matter is likely to boil over this weekend, at least for the Democrats, when the states meet with the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. The party wants to rein in the scheduling anarchy and punish those violating party rules that bar all but a handful of states from voting before Feb. 5. Florida is the chief delinquent, and Michigan could be another.²

So, four and half months before the primaries in question, the state DNC's were reminded of the consequences of their actions. They broke the rules anyway.

Voters in Michigan and Florida should not be outraged at the DNC. They should not be outraged at Obama. They should be outraged at their local elected officials who gambled with the legitimacy of their constituents' votes and lost. In fact, those voters should praise Dean, Donna Brazile, and the rest of the DNC Rules Committee if they are seated at the national convention at all.

---

¹Transcription prepared by Mark Nikolas at PoliticalBase.com.

²It is interesting to note how Clinton and Edwards are mentioned in the article, but Obama is not.

From the Mind of Mencia: Ah, the Old "I Was Joking" Defense

There is an old Saturday Night Live sketch starring Eddie Murphy that satirizes then-dominant cultural assumptions about black and white race relations. The premise is this: Eddie Murphy goes "undercover," wearing make-up and wardrobe meant to disguise him as Caucasian. In costume, Murphy is given a free newspaper at a newspaper stand and discovers that the MTA bus becomes a swinging club when all the passengers are presumably white. The skit works because it hyperbolizes white privilege and institutional racism, and while the viewers who are white know they are watching a farce, they are likely to reflect on what, if any, differences they are aware of between racially homogeneous and heterogeneous groups.

In the 21st century, American culture is beset with Carlos Mencia, a "comedian" who utilizes racist stereotypes not to debunk them or to make dominant culture reflect, but to placate those who have power. For example, in some of his stand-up routines, he makes fun of white Americans who cannot tell the difference between "a Hindu and a Muslim." In the sketch, available on the Mencia site here, Mencia adopts a presumably mental-disability-based accent in order to denigrate tolerance before announcing that he pities Hindus because they are often mistaken for (implicitly stigmatized) Muslims. Mencia gets away with this because he is "ethnic," and his brand of "in your face" humor is defended by suggesting that you, the viewer, have a problem if you object to the sketch. In short, because he is a "comedian," he is not being racist; he is being funny.¹

When the line is so blurred between racism, sexism, ableism, and any of the negative -isms, those who do the actual blurring encourage the dominant culture not to know the difference.

Consider State Senator Shawn Mitchell (R, and white), who, when addressing the President of the Colorado State Senate, Senator Peter Groff (D, and black), mistakenly called him Senator Gordon (D, and white), who was also at the podium. In response to his mistake, Senator Mitchell said, "Excuse me, Mr. President. You all look alike to me" (DenverPost.com).

Now, there probably isn't a single sentient American alive who does not know that this "punch line" comes from the racist stereotype that black Americans look alike (in fairness, Bill Cosby uses this stereotype in Himself, when he tells his son that he will kill him and "make another one who look[s] just like [him]"). Senator Mitchell contends that he meant to suggest that all Democrats look alike to him because of their liberal politics. Regardless, the claim is still racist. Here's why.

Mitchell is relying on the audience to understand that within his normative gaze, the objects upon which he looks are marginal, trivial, and that he enjoys the dominant, hegemonic position: i.e. Democrats are indistinguishable because one trait overwhelms all others when he, the empowered, gazes upon them. The reason that the audience understands his comment as a put down, even if they've never heard the term "hegemony,"² is because it invokes that same discrediting, stigmatizing, attitude that was so and remains prevalent among many white Americans with (no?) respect to black Americans.

The point is, Mitchell's joke only works if you can reference a bigoted, racist attitude toward black Americans and index it within the context of the partisan Colorado State Senate. Thus, even if you take Mitchell at his word (and as a politician his word is sacrosanct, no?), he needs you to think like a racist in order for the "joke" to come off at all.

In his own defense, Mitchell explains:

"My attempted joke was that a tall black man and a short white man look alike to me because of their liberal politics," Mitchell said to a reporter later in explaining his remark. "If someone tries to turn that into a racial issue, they're just playing cheap campaign games."

One might counter, by denying any racial element to the statement, Mitchell is playing a cheap campaign game. In fact, by suggesting that criticism of his remark would amount to politics, he is suggesting that common decency is a political issue. If that is the case, we are headed for an even "greater depression" than most of us thought.³

---

¹ This defense worked well for Don Imus.
² This is the Colorado State Senate. Anything is possible.
³ As a rider or earmark, if you will, to this story, consider this description of local Denver television coverage of Senator Groff's rise to the Senate Presidency: "Earlier this year, a Denver television station ran a news story about Groff's historic ascension to the Senate presidency. However, the station inadvertently ran a picture of Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, another black lawmaker, during the story." Awesome.

Senator Clinton Vows to Make Your Head Explode With Cognitive Dissonance

First, I'm a supporter of Barack Obama's presidential campaign and a delegate to my county convention on his behalf. Having said that, though, I feel like my take on the democratic nominees' TV ads over the past three days is not biased, but objective. As objective as a sentient being can be, I suppose.¹

Consider the following from CNN.com:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign unveiled an ad Wednesday that took aim at Barack Obama for turning down an offer to debate her in Wisconsin before the state’s February 19 primary, tying the decision to his stands on other issues.

Obama’s campaign struck back the next day with a spot that responded to Clinton’s, calling the original ad an instance of "the same old politics of phony charges and false attacks."

Today, Clinton’s campaign debuted ‘Deserves,’ a response to what it called “false attacks” in the Obama spot.

"Barack Obama still won't agree to debate in Wisconsin,” says the announcer in the 30-second ad, which will also air in Wisconsin. “And now he's hiding behind false attack ads.”

I quote an old Letterman schtick: "My head feel like it wanna bus' open!" Even in hide-n-seek, which is predicated on people hiding while one non-hiding person seeks, the term "hider" and the act of "hiding" are spoken as insults. I imagine in national politics, the rules remain largely unchanged.

Wednesday: Clinton Ad

Thursday: Obama Response Ad

Now, I may have missed the day in high-school civics when Mrs. Martha Smith taught us that a political ad which claims your opponent is ducking a debate with you is not an attack, especially when that same opponent is renowned as a modern-day political Orpheus who packs arenas with rock-band sized crowds, but the first ad seems particularly "negative." Consider: Obama and Clinton have already participated in 18 debates, and they have agreed to two additional debates. Thus, it seems more than a bit disingenuous to suggest he's hiding from her.

Of course, both of their motives for the not-to-be Wisconsin debate are political. Her campaign is not raising money like Obama's (it seems that Obama has the star power that the Clinton's typically enjoy), so another debate gives her another one-and-a-half hours of free airtime. Obama is leading Clinton in the Wisconsin polls, has debated or will debate her 20 times, so he, I imagine, is less-likely to do anything that might diminish his lead. No one can blame either of them (except it's curious that Clinton would use her resources to go negative, as she presumably wants to debate "policy" if such a debate would take place).

As for countering Obama's ad with a charge of "false attack ads," Clinton's campaign seems equal parts absurd and desperate. Clinton was the first to go negative as they campaigned in South Carolina, and now that she has authorized this ad, Obama played immediately into her hands: Instead of headlines that account for Obama's juggernaut since Super Tuesday, we are reading the name Clinton.

---

¹This photo, however, is not unbiased.

Gauntlet, Thrown

On the eve of the Potomac Primaries, Senator John McCain used his victory speech as an opportunity to mark the territory for his supposed campaign against now-frontrunning Senator Barack Obama. Characterizing Senator Obama as ego-driven and messianic, claiming that:

The American people don't send us to Washington to serve our self-interest, but to serve theirs. They don't send us to fight each other for our own political ambitions; but to fight together our real enemies.

Moreover, Senator McCain attempted to co-opt Senator Obama's message of hope, reflecting that:

Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men's hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience.

Senator Obama is not averse to challenging Senator McCain in his stump speeches--we've all heard the wheels falling off the Straight-Talk Express countless times--but McCain's attacks on Senator Obama are not based upon fact, but upon misrepresentation. For example, McCain intentionally portrays Obama as a self-serving, ego-maniacal politician when he claims that,

When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest ambition, and that all glory was self-glory. My parents tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life....

While McCain calls Obama's promises mere "platitudes," we are supposed to forget that Republicans for years have campaigned under the platitudes of God, Country, and Apple Pie, often avoiding the plight of working men and women by recharacterizing their struggles as struggles inherent to democracy. In fact, such politicking, as Senator McCain inaugurated last night during this campaign, is simply disinformation designed to promote the dominant ideology that keeps the disenfranchised and powerless in place and allows the hegemons to fill their coffers. And our nation's coffins.

Hopefully, Senator Obama and his hopemongering will continue to take the high road, countering Senator McCain's empty rhetoric with a discussion of policy, a discussion which can only reveal how bankrupt McCain's beliefs truly are.

McCain, John. "John McCain's Feb. 12th Speech." New York Times. 13 Feb 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12text-mccain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin