Um...Ol' South Beach Charlie's recently turned over a new leaf. No, not the one on the visiting Michaelangelo's “David” statue, you sillies. Rather, it would appear that as the fine folks at AmericaBlog simply described it, “Florida Governor Charlie Crist is engaged. To a woman.”
Charlie Crist Getting Married So He Can Pretend To Be McCain’s Vice President Until November
Orange-skinned Florida “bachelor 4 life” Charlie Crist is the latest in Florida's long line of moderate Republican politicians who live swinging, middle-aged male lives without women. But he apparently really wants to lose with John McCain this fall, so he has announced the impending tinkle of little wedding bells!
Charlie was married for like five days way back in 1980, but that didn’t work out so well, due to differences between Charlie and the lady, whoever she was. He had some fake girlfriend last year; we don’t remember what happened to her.
This little spectacle is kind of sad to see. The warped self-loathing and denial—while supporting every possible gay-bashing piece of legislation his party mounts (pun unintended—seriously) is enough to give anyone whiplash—especially a “known” quantity like the Orange state's Crist. But this level of game-running for mere ambition's sake is just this side of stunning. It's called “being true to yourself” Charlie. And if you can't do that, the idea of play-acting while mocking marriage (be it of the straight or gay variety) is pretty damned craven in it's ugly-ass self Chucky.
Which put me in the mood for a fine pop recording...albeit with a bit of a twist...
How come he don't come and go D.L. with me... Down at “The Birdcage” any more? And how come he turn off the Liberacé... And hang that new lock on the back door? We call and we call.—“He's done” they say. Heeeeyyyyy what could make a boy behave this way?
He's spurned the old times now, and every time... His hands don't flutter when he talk. And it's true! It's true! He sure has acquired... A kinda new and contrived sorta swagger when he walk. Where's his hanky and his snug blue jeans? If this ain't reality, then it's some kinda scheme.
Fact is... Chuck C's In Love. Chuck C's In Love. (Love, love, love...) Chuck C's In Love. Chuck C's In...
...But we don't believe 'cause he's playin' for VP... This is something I gotta see... Is he here? We look in the Boy-Bar. Is he here? We look in the plant store. This is queer... No, he don't come here no more.
I'll tell you what, I saw him... He was neckin' stiffly with some girl—outrageous! And whatever is that he got up his sleeve... I'm sure it's quite advantageous. What's her name? Is that her there? Christ, I think he's even stopped using Nair™! Hangin' with her...runnin' a game. Oh, it's never going to be same. But mum's the word... We know what's wrong— 'Cause Chuck C's in love with the chance McCain'll maybe drag him along.
Don't you know... Chuck C's In Love. (Yeah, yeah) Chuck C's In Love. (Love, love, love...) Chuck C's In Love. (Yeah, yeah) Chuck C's In... Chuck C's In Loooo-ooove. Chuck C's in Loooo-ooove...with bein' VP!
UPDATE: From our good friend and longtime reader from Ye Olde News Blog days Matthew Saroff, we have this—the results of an online poll from The South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper. The question? “Do You Think Gov. Crist's Engagement Is Politically Motivated?
The results? For Charlie, Not very fa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-bu-lous!
Number of known contacts between convicted criminal Jack Abramoff and George Bush (President)
Despite vociferous denials by White House officials of knowing Jack Abramoff... For the second time, an investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), confirmed extensive communications between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is now serving a prison sentence, the White House and President George Bush. A September 2006 report by the same committee identified 485 contacts between Abramoff and the Bush Administration over the brief career of the scandal-tainted lobbyist; the new report identifies 70 additional contacts. Watchdog Blog
This is a criminal administration. They have committed numerous criminal acts. They have committed more crimes than Boss Tweed. It's really quite stunning.
There's more...
Even The Dour Poe Looks Happy Beside The Besieged Bush.
“And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate. (Ah, let us mourn!–for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.”
“The Haunted Palace” poem from Edgar Allen Poe's “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”
Patience is a virtue. So too can one's being incredibly busy. Both of those factors figure into this story, as I'd actually begun to write this tale two weeks ago . The main “arc”? Merely the brutally obvious unraveling of the world around President George W. Bush like it was a stray thread-yanked whirlwind of revelation to even his staunchest defenders that his presidency was not the lovely burnt sienna toned painting they'd deluded themselves into believing it was,...but rather, the earthy, brown bed-shit of a two-term disaster.
The bullet points of the tale?
T'was to begin with the embarrassing, five-hour FBI raid on the home and Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, whose “job” was to investigate federal whistle-blower complaints, and other deeply internal Federal probes of in-house wrong-doing. Issues like digging about for “Hatch Act” (of 1939) violations by one Karl Rove, who in his possible (and patently obvious) law-breaking was using federal monies and employees as a taxpayer financed, campaign workforce—patently illegal under the “Hatch Act”.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.
More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.
----------------------------------------
Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politiciang his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.
To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues. Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.
When Eliot Ness and his G-Men roll up into a Bush appointee's office, shut down the in-office network, knock out the e-mail system, and grab everybody's computer and the file server, then hit his house and grab his shitty Dell Inspiron with every piece of porn and Pure Prarie League music in it because they caught wind that he'd been clumsily calling “Geek Squad” guys to purge files from all of his and his staff's computers—that is a big-ass deal. This is the kind of stuff that was dealt with in the heady “We are the grown-ups!” years, in the dead of night, by shady people called in on the Red Cheney-Devilphone™ to bring the shredders and lead-lined safes to clean up a messy situation.
Those days are long gone, as months are short, scores left unsettled are coming a' cropper, and fewer and fewer seem to fear the hoarse, feeble quack of our crutch-wielding duck of a president.
Feds bustin' in the door and snatchin' ever'thang from a Bush appointee?
Could that have possibly gone down in 2003? '04? '05, '06, or even early '07?.
Yeah, I thought not.
The story's second bullet point was to be the odd, open-air bus-crushing of another Bush-picked toady-in-trouble, one Lurita Alexis Doan. You remember Doan, don't you? She was the Powerpoint-hypnotized head of the Governmant Services Administration busted for the aforementioned crime of using her office as a de-facto arm of the RNC as opposed to a free-standing government agency. When caught out there on her CLEAR violations of the “Hatch Act” she was reduced to a laughable, spluttering paranoid mess in front of Henry Waxman's congressional committee. She was a textbook case of Bush's “Heckuva Job” cronyism exposed at its worst. Unable to be defended. Rank in its stupidity. And of course...tolerated up until this month in spite of clear evidence of wrong-doing, even after being told to resign or face criminal charges. This is the kind of person Bush used to snigger at us all about as he backslapped them and told the world how Jonas Salk and MLK weren't fit to wipe these people's posteriors. No more.
It's the Bush administration's special approach to accountability: stand staunchly beside an administration official as the allegations pile up and his or her credibility dwindles to nothing, and then months later -- long after the administration could derive any credit for the deed, and it is widely assumed that they are content to let the official fester in office for the duration -- the official abruptly and inexplicably resigns. So it was with Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales. And yesterday General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan stepped down.
But Doan, who gained mucky prominence for her clueless cronyism, wants everybody to know that she's not stepping down voluntarily. She was fired. And not only was she fired, but she was fired because she refused to cave to political pressure. Or something.
“I would rather get fired for something I believe in, and a cause I was willing to fight for, rather than to believe in nothing worth being fired for.” That's what Doan told Government Executive Magazine in an email last night. It's far from clear precisely what this "something" she believes in is.
Under fear—and that's really all it was—of deeper, more embarrassing investigations as he fades into the post-power phase of his presidency, Bush canned Doan's ass like Aunt Luberta's syrupy peaches. What made the firing doubly damaging was its un-typically messy handling. Normally the members of Bush's “Losers Brigade” are eased out the door, borne aloft on a sedan chair with rose petals and florid lies strewn before the press eunuchs carrying them out. This was an ugly departure, missing only building security flanking her on the walk-out and a pat-down for filched Post-Its™ and boxes of Sharpies™ at the front door. Although, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitty Xerox of Doan's White House ID card photo with a hastily scrawled “Do Nott Let In Bildeng!” on it behind the security desk at 1600 Penn.
Those two recent incidents were my main bellwethers indicating the spreading cracks in the foundation of “The House Of Bush”. Then there was to be a window-rattling return to the newly smoldering potboiler of Karl Rove's legal troubles with the resurgent Don Siegelman case as handled by our own Hubris Sonic:
WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Bush's former chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.
Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to the resignation last year of Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.
Let the 45 day countdown begin. It was a mistake for Rove to leave the White House, he has little protection now and can get no help from the president's lawyers. They didn't release Siegelman because they thought he was guilty, it must have been really obvious to the appellate judge that he was railroaded.
Rove has since tried to hide behind plans for a legalistic stall, and even been forced to do his favorite thing in the whole wide world—outside of skulking about maternity wards for wriggling, downy-haired snacks—which is to go back and re-tell a story when his web of lies tightens about his scrotum.
While watching him flinch and squirm from those constricting canards pinching at the short n' curlies, other Bushian roof tiles and siding have begun peeling from the edifice at an alarming rate.
I dashed out of the house yesterday morning, watching only the local all-news station for the weather, so I missed much of the morning's TV, although while walking east on 23rd street to an appointment, the big screen TVs in the appliance store had an interesting and additional depressing Bush news flash that made me laugh, and probably made Bush chuck a Moussy bottle at the ol' Philco.
Apparently John McCain was so deathly afraid of being seen by the wider public with the two-term tragedy Bush at a downgraded fundraiser in his home state! (moved to a private home in Arizona making it a gold-plated “Tupperware” party instead of the planned big-room event), that the only extant visual evidence evidence of it was blurry “Bigfoot”-grade video of Bush and McCain sitting in the back of a limousine at the Phoenix Airport.
About 15 seconds worth, thank you very much.
How embarrassing is that? It's “What's Eating Gilbert Grape” embarrassing, that's what. With McCain in the neurotic Johnny Depp role and Bush in the part of the house-bound, “Oh-my-God-we-can-not-be-seen-with-her-she's-a-mess!” mom. Minus mom's good-hearted-ness and any reason for sympathy, that is.
And then I stopped at a diner for a light breakfast and almost Danny Thomas-ed my coffee over what I saw on the large TV screen near the door.
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the public with a “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush, aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.” McClellan said Vice President Cheney was “the magic man” who steered policy while leaving no fingerprints.
--------------------------------------------
News of McClellan’s tell-all book seems to have soured White House officials’ impression of him. Current Press Secretary Dana Perino said McClellan was obviously “disgruntled”, while Fleischer said he was “heartbroken”, and Bartlett called the book “total crap”.
MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:
CORKE: I have heard on background they are upset. I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word they used, and it is not the word I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat out angry about what transpired here. I heard the word “traitor” and “Benedict.” I think another person said to me, not far from here, it was like a shot to the gut when you are not looking. […]
O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background—they used the word “traitor”?
CORKE:“Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.
That sound you heard wasn't thunder. It was the fucking chimney on the house falling down. “Boom!”
Not the roof just yet—but a major part of “Manor Bush” is severely structurally compromised.
What—if I may paraphrase Mr. McLellan—the fuck happened?
I think it was this:
McLellan was put out in front, every day for months without so much as a fly-swatter to fend off questions about the veracity of his boss and peers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His job was to beat the wolves back, and to change the tenor of the story around the leak and the subsequent lies about it.
I believe he knew he was lying for the boss, but that they were “good soldier” lies of necessity.
Unfortunately, the sordid mess he was tasked with smoothing over was impossible to finesse, and he became identified personally with the stumbling and bumbling in the cover-up. He was clearly frustrated with this particular project, and on several occasions pretty much threw his hands into the air in exasperation and resignation over what was a hopeless situation for him. He of course, left before the Libby trial and its negative verdict, but the damage had already been done. His inability to spin bug-eaten straw into 14-karat gold was held against him, I think. His being unable to stand and lie with the cool authority of Tony Snow—and thus take some heat off the White House—made some in the White House not like him. “How dare he not effortlessly play the 'true believer' role as we need him to!”
“Fuck him. He's dead to us.”
Note that McLellan got no hook-up at FOX, or at the Journal, or any other bastions of walk-in wingnut welfare.
And even before that, but it didn't take a genius to see it coming. Just a casual student of political history and human-fucking-nature:
(LM) I too, have come to if not a belief in "cyclical" patterns, a belief at least in "the law of averages". So much skullduggery -- and yes, patently evil acts have been perpetrated by this administration, particularly in the name of this war and all of the wrangling of people and facts involved in it that THEY'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH, that the law of averages just seems to be coming into play now. They're the lean whip of a guy who had the fast metabolism seemingly forever, snarfing down burgers by the bagful -- shakes by the gallon, and now thirty-plus years old, BOOM!, the jello-shaking gut appears, he can't get up the steps anymore, and his chest is always hurting him now. Bad news is on the horizon for this "fella".
3.) A major whistleblower who produces documents detailing Bush admin misdeeds. Call me an optimist, but there's always somebody who just...breaks under conscience's weight.
There is always somebody who gives it up. Always. If not necessarily for conscience, at the very least to cover one's ass. McLellan was pooh-poohed as hyping the book based on a juicy editor's pull-quote or two at the time. Now? Not so much. He's got people running around the West Wing with their faces a rich “Buchanan Purple” in rage. Got 'em tossin' around words like “Traitor!”, “Benedict!”, and “Shot in the gut!”. It severely damages Bush's desperate legacy rebuild as he staggers drunkenly into the political sunset—brass-knuckle-clad cock-punching the reasoning for his horrific war from the deep, deep inside, and it also pimp-slaps John McCain's campaign dead in the grille as he's running on the prosecution of this heinous, misbegotten conflict. It ties McCain to Bush as surely as if he were Slim Pickens' Major Kong lock-straddling that big, dumb bomb all the fucking way down to the white-hot heart of a doomsday mushroom cloud.
This is NOT the way Bush wanted this thing to end. He was hoping for a “skate”. He wanted to ride out on a sea of platitudes, shaded by an election involving personalities that would distract from him. Steve back in the day always spoke of how he expected Bush to go out spittin' and shittin' with teeth a' grittin' as the hounds tore at his ass. I never believed that. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the skatin' away ain't gonna happen. And while I don't think there'll be an episode of “Cops” featuring a sweaty, tank-topped Bush being dragged off to the hoosegow, he will almost certainly not leave 1600 Pennsylvania intact. There will be bruises and scars.
Picture the belligerent drunk stumbling out of the bar at closing time.
He's on his way out at least. Loud and stupid, yes. But thank God that son-of-a-bitch is almost out the Goddamned door.
Then you catch a whiff of something awful, and realize he's shit in a booth.Not the bathroom—but a booth in the bar proper. Some heinous shit—pardon the pun. So instead of letting him just walk out the door on his own, the bouncer kicks him dead in the middle of his back as he staggers out for good measure. “Boom!”
McLellan's book and its subsequent firestorm is a bouncer's swift Size 13 in the back. A vicious move by a one-time friend. A one-time right hand man. And a sure sign added onto the rest of the exiting drink-tosses, face-spits, and leg-out trips that the end won't be pretty. He'll leave with his popularity at Nixonian levels. Nix-fucking-onian. His original posse, gone—save for Dick, and who the hell knows where his ass is these days. I'll bet there's a layer of dust on the swivel chair in his White House office. It leaves only a lonely “Baron” in a tumbledown manor. With parapets leaning and stones pulled free—letting in a chill wind. Echoes in an empty house. “The centre cannot hold, and things fall apart”.
The Baron sits bolt upright—there's a dagger in his back. Who would do such a thing?
There are numerous “Poe”-isms from his works that'd cap that off. Stuff from “The Raven”, or “The Premature Burial” come to mind. I like to close things like this out with musical codas. The obvious musical punchline would be The O'Jays “Backstabbers”. But I think another tune from the “City Of Brotherly Love” seems more apt...
I know it's no surprise to anyone who doesn't live in the beltway, but.
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush stepped up his attack on House Democrats who support terrorism surveillance legislation that would deny immunity from lawsuits to telephone companies. The Democratic plan poses a threat to the safety of the U.S., the president said.
The President is a liar and everyone knows it, and Nancy Pelosi just called him one.
QUESTION: Don't you think the president is lying? PELOSI: Am I saying the president is lying?
QUESTION: Yes.
PELOSI: That's the same question I got in 2001 when they asked me -- when I said the intelligence on Iraq does not support the threat of -- an imminent threat to our country that the administration is contending.
That's what they said to me then. They said, "Are you saying the president is lying?" I said then and I say now, "I am stating a fact."
Question is, will the White House respond? I mean, the Speaker of the House has just called the President a liar. Everyone knows it's true, he is a liar. Will the media report it? Of course the answer is no. I just thought I would point out, this is where we are at. Just a reflection.
There's more...
CentCom Commander Fallon: Attack On Iran ‘Will Not Happen On My Watch’
Earlier this year, the Bush administration deployed a second Navy group carrier into the Persian Gulf. Vice President Cheney referred to the move as an attempt to send a “strong signal” about the administration’s commitment to confronting Iran.
In February, Newsweek reported that the Bush administration was planning to ratchet up the pressure even further by deploying a third carrier group into the Gulf. Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, warned that some Bush advisers secretly wanted an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” she told Newsweek.
IPS reported yesterday that the administration’s attempt to send the third carrier group was vetoed by the new head of the U.S. Central Command Admiral William Fallon:
Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM.
Fallon’s resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration’s Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.
One source said Fallon sent a memo that “insisted there was no military requirement for” for an additional carrier. Fallon private conveyed around the time of his confirmation hearing that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.” IPS notes, “Fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it.”
Fallon was recently the subject of an article in Esquire, which suggested he would be relieved of command before his tour was up, over his policy differences with The White House. (READ THE ESQUIRE ARTICLE.)
In announcing Fallon's resignation, Secretary of Defense Gates said:
Fallon resigned because the fall-out from the article. Gates said Fallon told him: “The current embarrassing situation, public perception of differences between my views and administration policy, and the distraction this causes from the mission make this the right thing to do.” Gates said he approved Fallon’s request to retire with “reluctance and regret.”
[Video available at Think Progress.]
Last week, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino downplayed Fallon’s possible retirement, decrying “rumor mills that don’t turn out to be true.”
A reporter noted to Gates there was a “line in that Esquire story that said basically if Fallon gets fired, it means we’re going to war with Iran. Can you just address that?” Gates responded, “Well that’s just ridiculous.”
UPDATE: Sources at the Pentagon said that Fallon was worried the White House would “perceive the magazine piece as a challenge to the president’s authority, and insisted that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
UPDATE III: TPM has Fallon’s statement here. The Agonist also has more.
UPDATE IV: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has issued this statement:
I am concerned that the resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and a military leader with more than three decades of command experience, is yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts’ views are not welcomed in this Administration.
The Bush Administration said recently:
A reporter noted to Gates there was a “line in that Esquire story that said basically if Fallon gets fired, it means we’re going to war with Iran. Can you just address that?” Gates responded, “Well that’s just ridiculous.”
In other words, yes, we're going to war.
The Bush/Cheney administration lies. Always. About everything.
They won the off-Presidential (2002) election with the Afghanistan War. They won the Presidential (2004) election (okay, they cheated in Ohio, but got close enough the cheating worked) on the blood of the Iraq war and OBL conveniently doing 60 second TV commercials for Bush.
Then the Bush/Cheney administration got their ass kicked in 2006... over the WAR. They didn't have a new product. No fresh blood. People had time to think.
They will not make that mistake again.
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." —George W. Bush, June 18, 2002 (Bushisms - 2002)
"I became totally inebriated with hitting the big one." --George W. Bush, on his oil drilling days, Texas Monthly, May 1994 (Bushisms - 2000.)
We are nuking Iran this summer (peak driving time; lots of opportunity for gas prices to blow SKY HIGH for their oil tycoon friends) or just after Labor Day, when everyone is paying attention, can freak out, and go rushing to the polls for McCain.
LISTEN UP: AIN'T NO ONE GIVING CONTROL OF THE NUCLEAR FOOTBALL TO A BLACK DUDE OR A WOMAN DURING A NUC-LEAR WAR.
The Football is going to the Fighter Jock ex-POW, high-temper and all. Frightened white people will NEVER vote control of launch codes to a nig**r or a gi*l.
“If Bush/Cheney nukes Iran (or starts a war), initially, can a black or woman win?”
No. Another edition of Short Answers to Foolish Questions:
McCain would win by 10-15%.
Assuming there even is an election, and we're not under martial law due to either radiation, riots, or retribution. (If Bush is stupid enough to cause a State of War to exist between Iran and the United States, for the first time since World War II, the war will end up being fought for DECADES on American soil. Our children's children will be legitimate targets of war, in the viewpoint of the Iranians.)
This entire idea is insanity.
Yet to make certain Dubya lives on through McCain...
If 6.66 million camel-jockeys (and their wives and children) must burn alive in explosions bringing nuclear winter to the world (fuck you, Al Gore and Global Warming) in order to scare shit pouring down the legs of every soccer-mom in America, cause testosterone poisoning in every man 8-80 in the U.S. of A., and put a goddamn yellow ribbon back on the rear window of every SUV on every highway just as Jesus intended (plus $10 gasoline), well by Gawd then we'll nuke the little fuckers into glass like Bush 41 lacked the balls to do.
(“Look Daddy, I'm more of a man than you!”)
Ain't nobody stopping this here permanent Republican revolution, no Sir. More importantly, ain't nobody nailing Dick Cheney or George W. Bush for war crimes. Nobody named President John McCain, that is. That's the deal. [Video at the link.] McCain already said clearly and publicly he won't be going after them: “I do not agree with your sentiment that there has been widespread corruption. I just don't accept that.” So no justice for what's happened, and how would he have time? Not when he's busy fighting a Global War on Terror with weekly attacks in huge LIBERAL cities all across the United States by actual terrorists major league pissed 'cause we fucking turned Iran into a glass parking lot.
Nothing like a weekly 9/11 attack to cause Americans to Rally Round the Flag, Boys, Rally Round the Flag like nothing else on earth. The flag of Jesus Christ, the United States of America, Purity Balls for Daddy's Little Girls to keep her sacred [you know] safe from everyone but Daddy, and the triumph of Republican Party for 1,000 years, Amen and Amen.
And if you think Bush/Cheney won't nuke anyone, remember...
No one including their parents and the Draft Board has ever told these folks "NO" and made it stick.
They are going to set the Middle East on fire.
Get your passports ready.
Prepare to get your families out of the United States. Fast.
BET's Bob Johnson and the House of Representatives' Charles Rangel, the Clinton camp's most vocal African American backers scan to the untrained eye as reasonable enough “chaps” of distinction in the Black hierarchy and have for decades.
They're the “old” guard.
Ward heelers.
Black folk of standing thanks to their length of tenure and connections. And ultimately, they're a pair of players who were never more powerful than during the Bill Clinton heyday of 1992 to 2000. They've waited patiently for Clinton Re-booted—where their patrons could again bestow great power upon them, and an Obama presidency would derail that gravy train they've waited so long for at the station. To that, they've emphatically said “Hell to the no.”
So, they say what the Clintons can not, and will not...but don't mind hearing voiced—especially by dusky proxys who they feel can not be assailed because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately, Bill and Hillary suffer from a touch of “lockstep myopia” in their thinking about how folks “around the way” would actually react to Johnson's and Rangel's coarse words.
“And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book —when they have been involved...”
Hoo-boy.
Johnson is considered by many in Black America who know his name...as something of an embarrassment. Yes, he is a billionaire a few times over, a financial success story who founded Black Entertainmant Television, a major media arm jacked directly into the culture-consumption vein of the Black community—but for the better part of a decade, Black folks openly and brusquely questioned the quality of just what it was he was pumping into the Black community. The network was harshly criticized for its ugly messaging insofar as its video content—a super-reliance on lowest common denominator marketing of the dopiest elements of Black music, in addition to a willful shunning of using the station to do anything culturally or intellectually challenging. Ask Black folks about BET and you'll get a lot of head-shaking and hear words to the effect of “a waste”, “lost potential”, “an embarrassment”, or worst of all, “a joke”. Johnson would eventually cash out, selling the net to Viacom a few years ago for a few billion dollars and of course, enriching himself while giving up an actual Black-owned broadcast network. Not a crime in itself, but something indicative of the level of importance he actually placed on Black folk having some control over their media image. This heavy-pocketed, self-centered apparatchik now has the nerve to rent himself out (he also supported Bush's killing of the estate tax and gutting of Social Security) as a mouthpiece to trash what Obama did in his community as a teen. The one thing I've heard more than a few Black folk say post his slam on Obama is “Johnson's got a lotta nerve talking about somebody damaging the community considering what he let his network become.”
Beyond the “Black Enterprise” subscribing set, his reputation is considerably less than stellar. And his dunder-headed slam on Obama—who rails against the very negativity Johnson championed through his network's bent merely confirms the retrograde image that too many Black people have of him. The end result of his idiocy? Bad press, a re-focusing on his many negatives, and finally, a sheepish public apology to Obama to stem the blowback the Clintons found themseves facing as a result of employing him as a dusky stalking horse.
In a candid interview on "Inside City Hall," Rep. Charles Rangel calls Barack Obama "absolutely stupid" for attacking Hillary Clinton for remarks she made about President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
How race got into this thing is because Obama said ‘race,’" Rangel tells Political Anchor Dominic Carter. "But there is nothing that Hillary Clinton has said that baffles me. I would challenge anybody to belittle the contribution that Dr. King has made to the world, to our country, to civil rights, and the Voting Rights Act. But for him to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid. It’s absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law.
I swear to God, I just love watching Ray Bolger do his scarecrow dance in “The Wizard Of Oz”, don't you? All that flying straw. “Sigh.”
Rangel is a different, and more deeply ironic story. He would wield almost unprecedented power should he end up as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee under a payback-ready Clinton administration. As an old-line Dem with 35 years in the House, he's something of an institution in D.C. Democratic circles, and an Obama presidency where his loyalty to the Clintons when they were under siege would not be as well rewarded is anathema to him—and his attack on Obama only serves to highlight another bit of “Twilight Zonie-ish” irony that is utterly lost on a lot of non-New Yorkers.
The man who held Charles Rangel's congressional seat for the twenty three years before him was perhaps the greatest political figure in terms of “getting the job done” for African Americans and the poor that the country has ever known, as well as an activist Civil Rights leader and one of the century's finest orators—the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Without Adam Clayton Powell, there is no Operation HeadStart or Guaranteed Student Loans, or government-sponsored college grants. He passed the bills that officially made lynching a federal crime, challenged the racist southern “poll taxes”, and increased the minimum wage. There is no federally-funded education for the disabled, federal school lunch program or EEOC as we know it without him. Powell ascended from 1944 via tenure to one of the highest spots under old House rules that a congressman could achieve, as head of its Education and Labor Committee. He was the Alpha and Omega insofar as impactful power in the hands of a person of color in Washington D.C.—the closest thing to an actual “Black President” that there has ever been. And he wielded said power with a fierce hand and a sense of justice unseen ever since. But he was also a protest and march leader outside the halls of Congress and in effect, was the near-perfect hybrid of King's dynamism and LBJ's legislative clout. Powell's progressivism ran him afoul of certain White leaders of the House, as did his living out loud as a functioning voluptuary, a proud indulger in all of the finer things in life. (much like many of his White colleagues) The House leadership came after him vengfully on a trumped-up charge (libeling a known Harlem numbers dealer who would later be proven to be just that), and they expelled him from the House. Powell sued and won his case and was re-elected but he lost all of his seniority—and a House rules change fixed it so NO member could amass power as Powell had. He was after 23 years, a back-bencher again. Still a media star, but no longer a power broker.
A group of Harlem Democrats took that opportunity to grab Powell's seat from under him, playing off his depression and yes, disinterest after being politically castrated.
The young man they ran against the established old lion? One Charles B. Rangel., age 40. Powell would lose that election after being derided as old, out of touch and from another generation.
And here we are, some thirty-six years later, and it is now the establishment representative Rangel practically celebrating the atrophying of the mating of activist action with governmental muscle while screaming bloody murder at the new guard that threatens to displace him in the Black political power firmament,
Damn.
One of the most tired clichés in Black America is the whole “If Dr. King were here today, what would he say?” thing. Idiocy like these naked toadying attacks by Johnson and Rangel (Who also apologized when his broadside backfired—surprise, surprise!) makes even me think about that hoary meme. And when I do, Aaron McGruder's controversial “Return Of The King” Boondocks episode comes to mind. Minus perhaps the rougher invective from a revived MLK, but retaining his visceral frustration with the squandering of so much of his sacrifice.
But alas, the King “dream” of eventual equality is a tough road to hoe, and if you're a power broker into more superficial things—well...onto the ttrash pile it goes, mixed in with all the other silly, surface, racial garbage. And then, adding insult to injury, the class garbage dumpster gets emptied out as well, as Johnson and Rangel represent that old-school Black Bourgeoisie intent on milking everything it can from the power structure they've invested in for decades. They are NOT going to be cheated out of their golden years “golden parachute” by some jitterbug kid who “hasn't paid his dues”
Johnson's post-gaffe/pre-apologia words on Obama strike an odd chord when you listen to them closely:
A day after his remarks about Sen. Barack Obama helped fuel a rancorous debate about race in the Democratic presidential contest, an unapologetic Robert L. Johnson escribed how frustrating it is to be on the other side of a candidate he compared to Teflon.
"We've always said we need a perfect, well-spoken, Harvard-educated black candidate who would prove we've transcended race," the billionaire African American businessman and supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) said in an interview yesterday. "Well, now we've got him and nobody knows how to campaign against him."
So...the candidate you always longed for has come along, and now you're pissed because you don't know how to campaign against him?
Which is it, br'uh? “And who the fuck is this we you're talkin' 'bout, Kemosabe?”
Did you really “want” a candidate like that knowing the odds against one coming along were going to be tough, and then when one actually did, (be careful what you wish for...) found he wasn't down with your okey-doke?
Looks like, Bobby. You too, Charlie.
Thanks to the MLK “gaffe”/surrogates flap we then find ourselves covered in (as opposed to standing in a puddle of) the slag and scrap of race and class bickerage in this campaign season. All while the slag-gers and scrap-pers desperately fear the coming of something new on the horizon. NuNegro 2.0, the rewrite that threatens to overwrite the standby operating system of Negro 1.0—walking away from all that old code and feature set, and perhaps most alarming to the old heads, dragging along a new, younger and more diverse user base. A totally different “class” than these fellows are used to getting their votes from. Thus, Johnson's and Rangel's need to kick Obama back down into the ghetto.
The ghetto Johnson alluded to in his craven “neighborhood” statement. And the ghetto he shamelessly pandered and condescended to with BET's shitty programming. It's also the ghetto Rangel tried to intellectually relegate Obama to with his “stupid” statement. A real-life ghetto Rangel's sadly also done piss-poor little for in his last twenty years of representing it in congress.
I can say that—as a consumer of BET “product” from its inception, and as a child of Harlem who lived there during the transition from Powell to Rangel, and even after my family moved away, still went to school there, did business there, lived it up and “loved” it up there, and in adulthood moved back there.
Now we're deep in that dark alleyway, and all that's left is to stumble over the reeking dumpster contents of sexism. Thank simple fatigue, political cageyness, and a misogynistic media as exemplified by the spluttering Chris Matthews for sticking out a leg and sending us staggering face-first into the pile.
Mrs. Clinton's “tears” over the question posed to her at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire didn't read to me as an act. I've been burnt-out enough after extended, over-the-top stress to where I've been at the same point and done pretty much the same thing. I've seen others do it too. You get...melancholy. Fact is, she never cried, really. She just sounded weary and burnt out...like an amped-up Fred Thompson, I guess. But the fact that her voice dared quaver, like Romney's has at the drop of a hat on the trail, or House Minority Leader John Boehner's (minus the glycerin tears) was red meat to the “gurl-maddened” nutbars in the media and society in general. It sent them over the falls of sense and into paroxysms of raw estrogeneous fear. All of a sudden, everyone was Tom fucking Hanks in “A League Of Their Own”, bitching about “No Crying!” when none had occurred. (And few noted Clinton's gathering herself immediately afterward and returning to the attack).
It played to the worst in women-haters of prominence, and helped galvanize female support for Hillary—and as a good politician would, she milked it for every vote once it became a factor. Useful idiots like the aforementioned über-trogolodyte Matthews couldn't help themselves and waxed clownishly, almost salivating at a chance to wave a flaccid pecker at those icky, troublesome girls. It was just an awful display that Matthews has yet to truly apologize for and may yet face reprimand over. (His rambling, half-assed mea culpa last week sounded like somebody put an acid suppository up his ass from upstairs) Now, add that bit of polarizing arsenic into the roiling stew of the race and class issues—taking time to note that anything that feminizes Mrs. Clinton works very much against Obama in terms of his ability to confront her...especially as he'd just been re-racialized thanks to the MLK scuttlebutt (an angry “race man” going up against a freshly feminized White woman is a battle the “race man” can never win in America's simplistic racial eyes, while also being the sort of battle a muckraking media feeds on) and you have the mess we're in as of now.
There we stand...in that dark alleyway. Covered in the sludge of the un-discussion of race, slathered in the rotting leftovers of classism, and knee-deep in the reeking mounds of sexism.
Us.
So-called Democrats. So-called “Progressives”.
In 2008. Backsliding into the same stupid-ass addiction to the dog-whistle opiates that have strung America out since...forever. Old defense-mechanisms were mounted against shady-assed offenses–real and misconstrued. And we pretzel ourselves, with able help from a bloodthirsty media aiding with every tuck and bend, becoming double-jointed contortionists, kicking our own selves dead in the ass—and then reacting with an idiot's shock, looking around saying “Who did that?”
It's a slow-motion radiation poisoning as a result of the not-so-low grade nuclear war within our so-called coalition. A nuclear war that can only end as all nuclear wars must—with a sad, mutually assured destruction.
So, instead of seeking peace and actual understanding...we—the fearful pragmatists—just declare a silly, self-serving “detenté” when the stupidity threatens to burn us all into ash.
But of course, the message of positivity is now old hat in a mere span of days. Long live pragmatism's horn-rimmed, fidgety, stuttering ass.
We haven't backed out of the alley inasmuch as we've just put a bulb in it so we can see a bit better, and maybe picked up some of the garbage. Put it back in the dumpsters...that won't get emptied. That have NEVER been emptied...not for 135 years at the least.
Before The Civil War, the most prominent spokesman for equal rights for Blacks—runaway slave, and self-taught scholar Frederick Douglass, and the most famous and fervent advocate for Women's rights, Susan B. Anthony, would become friends, and eventually alllies against the racist and sexist mores of the day—and against those who supported those disgusting, life-limiting tropes.
Those, as in...you know, scared, retrograde White dudes of means. The "Man", if you will. Douglass, a true Progressive of his time, was the only man to attend the first Women's Rights Convention headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an Anthony mentor in 1848, and was the driving male force in the then nascent Women's movement. Anthony would become a loud and leading voice in the steamrolling Abolitionist movement when she joined the Anti-Slavery Society of New York State. In fact, speaking at the Womens Conference a decade later, she would say, "Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the Saxon man get his power to deprive all women and Negroes of their inalienable rights?"
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You see, Douglass and Anthony became friends. Close enough friends that he delivered the eulogy for Anthony's father upon his death in 1862. But that friendship would never be quite the same after 1869 when the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were up for ratification. The 15th Amendment would have given Black men the right to vote, but not women just yet, which infuriated feminists, and Susan B. Anthony particularly, moving her to rally hard and heavy against it. And that angry rallying against it put her in close quarters unfortunately with some of the most vehement anti-Black demagogues of that time. This was even after the Equal Rights Association, a coalition that fought for the right for Blacks and Women to vote, and in which Anthony was a member of some prominence, opted to back the 15th Amendment.
The two friends, and compatriots in arms for the struggle against discrimination saw their friendship damaged in ugly ways. Susan B. Anthony would pretty much abandon her vocal support for equal rights of Blacks after the 15th Amendment passed, to push exclusively for Women's rights and suffrage. And in spite of Douglass' return as a strong voice for Women's suffrage after the Constitutional change (He called for another amendment that would give women the vote the following year and would write editorials advocating for it—one entitled “Women and the Ballot”), the Women's movement's time had seemingly peaked, and passed.
That "peaking and passing" was key, because it happened to coincide with the "Holy shit! What have we done?" head-shake and re-focusing of state-sanctioned hate that was Civil War Post-Reconstruction, where Blacks would again get the back of the hand of hard, naked racism, after getting a helping hand upward to quasi-equality. This duo—Anthony & Douglass, working in tandem was an F-5 strength, potential juggernaut for equality. But once they were pitted against each other, their collective strength was effectively diminished, and the power structure itself was able to buy extra decades of pretty much unchallenged hyper-dominance over both Blacks and women. It's worth noting that there was a great deal of voyeurism and much whipping up of the differences between these two giants of the political stage at that time. You'd almost think that certain people had a, you know... vested interest or something, in busting that coalition to keep shit just...as...it...was...?
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whatever their "differences", are being actively set against each other here in '07 by forces that very much need ...their relative positives and powers stripped away from the Democratic field. Attractive things like Obama's fire, and his injection of excitement and new life into the staid "yawn" that is the "optics" of what we've come to know as a real candidate these days. And other things like Hillary's seasoning and gravitas, as well as her solid "name branding" and unique "optics" as a candidate as well. For all of their wedded-ness to certain elements of the status quo, they represent something new, challenging and in the heart of hearts of the descendants of those shit-stirrers of the mid 1800s, arma-fucking-geddon.
Black man. White woman. Dictating terms? We'll see about that!
Of course, Barack and Hillary are absolutely not the firebrands and apple cart-flippers that Douglass and Anthony were. In their own ways, they are so tied in to the establishment that it's laughable. But it is how they change "optics" of what the President looks like, and how that might empower others who look like them to reconsider their influence on government that is so very dangerous. It's why Matthews, and Blitzer, and the whole passel of so-called entrenched media folk are wearing out their elbow joints in the fevered circle jerk that is the coverage of the largely-pushed-by-them, "spat".
To you the candidates—Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton—you're both reasonably intelligent people, so I would have thought that you'd know better than to get sucked in as totally as you have on all this. But Goddammit, you have. I don't know if it's your personal vanity, or blinding ambition or what, but evidently neither of the two of you have readabout the Douglass/Anthony situation from that parallel time. I emphatically suggest that you do. Maybe looking at what your candidacies mean in the grand scheme of things, comes across as taking your eyes off the prize you both so crave. Perhaps you think that it weakens you, and turns you into respectively, a dusky and a brassiered pair of latter-day Adlai Stevensons. You'd be wrong. Wrong as all hell, in fact. Nobody's asking the two of you to drop everything and tour the country in road companies of "My Sweet Charlie" and "A Patch Of Blue", but the least you can do is consider that there are people—probably very close to you and advising you who are either so single-minded that they can't see the long-term ramifications of this silly pissing match, or worse...actually do see them and simply don't give a fuck about the damage it can do in the long run. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing on policy. Every candidate is an individual. But when you're on the playground at 3:05 and you're about to scrap with that other kid over shit that seems fuzzy, at best—it behooves you to take a look around at the knuckleheads cheering on the rumble the loudest. If they're the ones who were running to you both with dirt, and then broadcasting that "dirt" to everyone who'd listen...you might wanna think twice about "throwin' bows"..
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Differ. Disgaree. Doubt if you must. But cut the dumb shit that demeans the two of you. Because if you don't—neither the results, nor the spyglass of history when it looks back on your actions will serve you in good stead. That is all. Now enjoy your rubber chicken and ill-flipped pancakes as you beat the red, white and blue hustings for votes.
I shouldn't have had to say it twice. Shouldn't have had to say it once.
“Play in trash, come up dirty.”
Unless they just don't care and have decided to simply say, “fuck it.”
And if that's the case, no one gets to cry when voters and non-voters opt to exercise their right...to say the same Goddamned thing.
There's more...
As the campaign season heats up and attrition has winnowed the Democratic field of participants down to the seemingly inevitable two and the potentially kingmaking one, we are headed—like it or not—for an ugly place indeed. Down that dark alleyway ending at a brick wall and filled with the stinking detritus from three overturned dumpsters in said alley.
Dumpsters labeled “Race”, “Sex” and “Class”.
Don't breathe in too deeply...you'll retch from the recent stink.
There is no outlet, or side exit in the alleyway. The only way out is back the way we came in. But it seems people don't want to leave the alley unless they can manage to leave their opponents sprawled unconscious in it—covered in the muck from those dumpsters a ways in.
Hell...we're not even going there. We're in it now. Post-Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada—knee deep in the trash and stinking to beat the Goddamned band. How the hall did this happen? How do we get out? Well again, we'll have to analyze just how we got here, who led the way, and who shoved along and then try to pick our way back accordingly.
FLASHBACK: It's just after the Iowa Caucus and there isn't a box of Depends™ to be had within a 20 mile radius of the Beltway or a Clinton campaign office. Barack Obama's stunning victory in the 94% White state's caucus (pun not intended) has set sphincters a' quivering and caused odd pattern baldness where pundits and supporters alike have scratched their heads bald and bloody. His stirring victory speech, hitting all the magical kum-ba-ya notes of togetherness, change and near-religious fervor in the attendees and TV viewers further shifts the landscape, placing a brand-spankin' new exit off The Hillary Clinton Highway To Anointment. Welcome to “ObamaLand”—a shiny new amusement park that has all the kiddies pounding the seat-back and screaming “We wanna get off heeeeere!”
The talk shifts from the “inevitabilty of Hillary” to the possible end of her quest, at the hands of a personality who can do something she cannot—move with the word. And at this juncture, the word is all the candidayes have to establish themselves. So what happens? Disarray. Talk of firing key advisors and campaign bigwigs to stanch the bleeding and get on a new, more Hillary-friendly tack. Somehow, the Obama express train of “Hope and Change” had to be derailed. That's a playing field that does not work to Mrs. Clinton's strengths. I described her problems here:
Hillary's handicap (and no fault of her own) is that we've seen her for what is to many, too long. “Stand By Your Man”, and “Baking Cookies” and the black headbands, and a million interviews and their clipped-out soundbites over the last fifteen years (!) have glazed the eyes of enough people it seems where they've grown tired of her. What price extended limelight? In spite of the difference and change seeing a woman as President should engender, because the woman is the almost over-known Mrs. Clinton, she almost transcends difference and change entirely. That's a horrible irony.
So what to do? How do you get everybody away from that narrative and onto something sticky and gooey and messy that'll gum up the works just enough to divert from the glittering “Hope and Change” message taking hold?
You look to the pundits narrative from that fateful night and there it is. The youth and ideallism—not to mention the wife and two kids alá JFK . The soulful, rallying spirit and challenge of the status quo of an RFK. The oratorical ability to captivate and move to action of an MLK. The answer was clear. They had to throw rocks, mud and anything else available to scar the facade of the newly sprung Camelot/Eyes On The Prize hybrid edifice.
Anything to move from the newly viral “Hope and Change” message.
Thus the clunky, un-artful LBJ vs. MLK remark. And the Clinton campaign staffer griping about Obama as being the country's collective “hip, Black friend”. Add in their Black surrogates attacks—the idiotic Bob Johnson's “Obama as 'round-the-way corner-boy” smear and Charlie Rangel's “stupid” crack and a cunning, sublime attack becomes crystal clear to anyone with eyes. Obama on that Iowa night was attempting to transcend race—and the only thing that would counter that was to move the conversation back to race—the great, fallen 400-year old redwood across the road of American discourse.
Now, does that make the Clinton camp (Bill included) racist?
I honestly don't think so. It's such an amazingly freighted word and is so easy to abuse when more precise language should be used. What I think the Clinton camp is is not above using America's longstanding issues with race in politics as a distraction to put another candidate off his game and distract would-be voters from Mrs. Clinton's exposed flaws when matched against a Barack Obama. These people are first and foremost, political operators as skilled and gutter-capable in campaign theory as anyone—including Karl Rove. (The gamesmanship in Nevada with the Cuilnary Workers Union is marked “Evidence Sample One”) It was a move to “muddy the waters” (pardon the pun) if you will, trotting out established Black politicos and luminaries to do the facade-sullying, and the mangling of the King/LBJ power dynamic was a distaff toss off a match onto a fireworks barge. Casual enough in appearance, but destructive nonetheless.
And with that strategy, we were off Main Street and down that dark alleyway in a flash.
Note how the media, always at the ready to pimp a race story, bit at the hook and took it all the way down the gullet, tearing their innards on the way. And note also how the Obama camp, eventually, and in spite of trying again to “transcend” the dynamic, found itself forced into responding (and in some respects over-responding) lest it come off “soft”. Once those two things happened, it was on, and the prevailing “Hope and Change” narrative shifted to the thorny, poisonous one of race.
Now, if I may put on my Chris Matthews “stupid motherfucker who obsesses on pure politics like a dysfunctional 17-year-old does on Dungeons and Dragons” hat, let me say this:
It was a canny fucking move on the strategy tip. Stripping away propriety, decency and class, as a strictly strategic move, it was the shizznit. But...the Chris Matthews “stupid motherfucker who obsesses on pure politics like a dysfunctional 17-year-old does on Dungeons and Dragons” hat has an inner band of sandpaper, is tight and leeches mercury into the head of the wearer, so I can't wear it for long. And in taking it off, thoughts of propriety, decency and class return...leaving me and I think anyone else with a shred of those things to just shake our heads and go “Damn.”
It initiated a pissing match that neither side could win—one could only lose less. Which in the end meant both sides would lose something, and that beats the living hell out of just one side (Clinton's) losing.
First, a little context. At Saturday night’s debate, Clinton warned of the dangers associated with “false hope” Yesterday, Obama told a New Hampshire audience that he rejects that kind of thinking, and alluded to the 1960s as an example: “Dr. King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the magnificent crowd, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, ‘Sorry guys, false hopes, the dream will die, it can’t be done, false hope.’ We don’t need leaders who tell us what we can’t do, we need leaders to tell us what we can do and inspire us.”
Asked to respond to Obama’s comments, Clinton told Fox News:
“I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”
Now, as I sit here on this, the official celebration of Dr. King's birthday, I realize that though I was but a child at the time it all went down, I'm hip enough to the history (which directly affected folks like me) that Mrs. Clinton saw playing out in real time to have a slightly more nuanced understanding of what was really going on. The Kennedy comparison was an unfair one to make as he was a little pre-occupied in what would have been the fourth year of his term, what with his being um...well, dead from an assassin's bullet months before. There's no telling what he would have done as the Civil Rights landscape was shifting under the government's feet—Birmingham's Bull Connor had just done the infamous water cannoning/dog siccing and those images being beamed across the world changed everything. We saw the beginnings of national civil unrest springing off from the intransigence in granting full civil rights to Black folks, so the notoriously pragmatic LBJ didn't necessarily take John Brown pills and wake up with bursting rays of Negro love.
She apparently forgot that Johnson was a main saboteur of the earlier 1957 Civil Rights Act that was anathema to his fellow segregationist Dixiecrats at the time. He back-room gutted it of much of its power to appease southern segregationist Dems wanting no part of radical or for that matter, incremental change.
And she was also clearly unaware of his old-school, back-room arm-twisting during the '64 convention to prevent the MFDP, (the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) from knocking any of his Dixiecrat buddies out of the box. The Mississippi rank and file Dem party callously excluded Blacks from delegate membership (Senators Stennis and Eastland repped the status quo and backed that segregation) and found itself at odds with the national party because of this racist stance. When it became apparent that some members of the integrated (mix of Blacks and rural White poor) MFDP might unseat some rank and file Dixiecrats at the Dem convention in Atlantic City (who were backing Hillary's boy Goldwater and bucking the more progressive national party) the renegade southern bloc threatened to side with them for Goldwater if LBJ didn't allow them to seat their exclusionary Whites Only slate.
LBJ went to his old senate bag of tricks and skullduggery pre-empting a televised speech by the MFDP's Fannie Lou Hamer with one of his own (her famous “Is this America? cry). It failed. Enough Americans had heard her speech and expressed support. Johnson then pressured liberals like Hubert Humphrey to come up with something to “not split the party” The compromise pushed for was granting the MFDP two powerless non-voting hush-up delegate “seats” (while allowing the segregationists their full voting power and televised seating). The Dixiecrats would have to abide never again seating a delegate block that practiced segregation in its selection process. All members but four of the all-white regulars walked out. Johnson desperately tried to twist MLK's arm to have him “get his people in line” when the MFDP tried to take the abandoned seats of the spiteful “regulars” and then finally sicced Hoover and the FBI on the MFDP where they were put under, “ahem!” agency surveillance. The tragedy is that the best chronicle of this history lay in the seminal documentary “Eyes On The Prize”, presently not commercially available. A viewing of that, particularly Episode Five lays this out in great detail. The segment that still makes my blood boil is one focusing on opposition to the MFDP's efforts. Here's one of the people whose interests LBJ was so Goddamned anxious to protect. From Eyes On The Prize I—Episode 5
Judge Tom P. Brady Mississippi White Citizen's Council: I don't want the nigra as I have known him in contact with him in my lifetime as a class...to control the making of a law that controls me...to control the government under which I live.
Interviewer: Would you feel better then if then if there were some legal means of keeping all negroes off the rolls?
Brady: i'd feel better and I think this country would be better off if all nigras were removed from it because I think...it is a potential source of racial strife.
LBJ was the guy in charge as all hell was about to break loose in '64, not some magnanimous friend to “the race”. The above Judge Brady and his noxious views and policies did not lose out to presidential “courage”. They were protected. Clinton's ham-fisted verbal relegation of Dr. King to “dreamer” as opposed to the “do-er” status of the—to say the least, extremely complicated LBJ smacked of more than a bit of condescension.
It's like giving a catcher all the credit for a no-hitter the pitcher's thrown. Yeah, he did his part, but the dude on the mound is the catalyst for everything that occurs in the fucking game.
King got the Nobel for his work...not LBJ. King risked his life and took a blade in the gut marching for equality...not LBJ. And King would eventually pay the price with his life...not LBJ. To diminish—and that's exactly what her statement did, like it or not Dr. King's import in getting that legislation as well as civil rights in general moved to the front burner was a red flag in the face of every Black person hip to the history of the time. Her clunky words inflamed and thus, were the perfect prompt for shifting the discussion.
Race and the Clintons (And I pair the two of them as a Rosey Grier/Ray Milland-ish campaign team) is a complicated relationship indeed. They—Bill primarily—are used to being the “blackest” (by policy stance and proximity of influential friends) people in any campaign they're involved in. Their odd pedigree via adoption by Black folks has been a boon to their success and a wellspring of support for them. But a Barack Obama upsets that delicate porcelain mask of Mailer's “White Negro” that Bill Clinton wears with aplomb and Hillary claims via her sporting her “I'm with the pseudo-Black guy” t-shirt of marriage to him. Clinton's absorption/adoption of and into “Negrodom”.is a badge of honor. Mailer himself said of that absorption/adoption the following:
"The hipster has absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro, and for practical purposes could be considered a white Negro. To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself - one must know one's desires, one's rages, one's anguish, one must be aware of the character of one's frustration and know what would satisfy it".
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“The bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro, and the hipster was a fact in American life. If marijuana was the wedding ring, the child was the language of Hip for its argot gave expression to abstract states of feeling which all could share, at least all who were Hip. And in this wedding of the white and the black it was the Negro who brought the cultural dowry.”
But in the “community property” of the marriage, Mailer fails to note that the “White Negro” is allowed to keep the “cool” he gets in the union. He or she may cross back into their own world thanks to skin privilege and keep that “cool”. The Black however by dint of his appearance is never allowed to change really and cross over and about. He is who he is.There you have the two of them...the “White Negro” and the actual “Negro”.
Guess which one can't duck catching hell? (And by all means, enjoy a chuckle at the “marijuana wedding ring” reference.)
It was a macabre bit or turnabout at play though—the post-Iowa Obama excitement . It was, a freaky circle completion. The Black 50's R&B artist puts out his record. The hip, White guy appropriates it, covers the tune as per usual and it goes higher up the charts than the Black artist's recording ever could. But then, imagine the Black artist coming back and doing the song again, mixing the best elements of his original, and copping the buffed edges of the cover and setting the word afire with the “new” sound. The kind of thing that'd put a major Georgia kink in ol' Bill Haley's cowlick.
Obama's real crime though, is calling attention to the Clintons “White Negro-ness”. He does this by his very presence on the same stage. He cannot help but supercede their aura of White Negro “cool”. Say what you will about his level of Blackness, but when the rubber meets the road and they are poised opposite him, Obama becomes in the eyes of most people, “the blackest guy in the campaign”. And in so doing, in stealing back that “cool”, he takes away a major plus the Clintons had in their favor.
Don't think that hasn't infuriated them.
It sotfly shoves them back across the aisle with all the White folks they benignly mocked as “uncool” forever. And yes...more then a few of their longtime “uncool” opponents are getting their jollies over the double-edged irony visiting them now.
They're put in the uncomfortable position of having to slay an actual vessel of the cool they've appropriated for decades. So, how to stick the knife in him without their fingerprints on the blade?
Enter the hit men. Enter...the surrogates—Former BET head Bob Johnson and Charlie Rangel.
(Sung to the tune of Rickie Lee Jones' “Chuck E's In Love”) 
There's more...
