Your bigotry-spawned “going to ground” over what this election is truly about for yourselves and I'm guessing the majority of your co-horts in the nattering chattering class.
I thank you gentlemen for at the very least, exposing yourselves for what you are and letting the world and me know just what the twisted, fear-crafted movement inside you is that makes you tick-tick-tick.
You sirs, and your fellow travelers have removed all doubt for me. At last I know where I stand with you—or rather, five steps behind you .
MATTHEWS: Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is an Obama supporter. Senator McCaskill, did you advise Obama to go out and try to bowl the other day?
McCASKILL: Well, listen, I grew up in a small town where you learned to do two things: You learned to bowl and you learned to roller-skate. I can’t wait to challenge him to a game of bowling.
MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?
BEGALA: When people say things — I love Donna and we go back 22 years. We’ve never been on different sides of an arguments in our entire lives. But if her point is that there’s a new Democratic Party that somehow doesn’t need or want white working-class people and Latinos, well count me out.
DONNA BRAZILE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Paul, baby, I did not say that.
BEGALA: We cannot win with egg heads. Let me finish my point. We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.
President Clinton — reached across to get a whole lot of Republicans and Independents to come. I think Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both have that capacity. They both have a unique ability—well it’s not unique if they both have it. They both have a remarkable ability to reach out to those working-class white folks and Latinos. Senator Clinton has proven it; Barack has not yet, but he can. And I certainly hope he is not shutting the door on expanding the party.
(CAMPBELL) BROWN: OK. Let — egg heads and African-Americans? That’s the new coalition?
BRAZILE: First of all, Paul, you didn’t hear me right. Maybe I should come and cook you something because you’ve got a little hearing problem. I was one of the first Democrats who were going to the white working-class neighborhoods, encouraging white Democrats not to forget their roots. I have drank more beers with “Joe Six Pack,” “Jane Six Pack” and everybody else than most white Democrats that you’re talking about.
In terms of Hispanics, you know Paul, I know the math. I know Colorado; I know Nevada; I know New Mexico. So that’s not the issue. I’m saying that we need to not divide and polarize the Democratic Party as if the Democratic Party will rely simply on white, blue collar male—you insult every black blue collar Democrat by saying that. So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul, because you and I know both know we have been in more campaigns. We know how Democrats win and to simply suggest that Hillary’s coalition is better than Obama’s, Obama’s is better than Hillary’s — no. We have a big party, Paul.
BEGALA: That’s right.
BRAZILE: Just don’t divide me and tell me I cannot stand in Hillary’s camp because I’m black, and I can’t stand in Obama’s camp because I’m female. Because I’m both.
There is nothing that warms my African American heart more than being told that I am not a “regular person”—whatever that is, or that my vote is some sort of statistical anomaly, or simply having my vote flat-out discounted.
Hey, let me show you a picture.
It's a bit blurry and you've probably never seen it before, but here are some details on it. It was captured on film on June 12, 1963—the year I was born. What does it show? A two-tone '57 Chevy Sedan parked in a Jackson, Mississippi home's carport. There's a stain on the ground trailing away from the driver's side and ending in a pool at the far left. I grabbed this from a video chronicling that night.
Let's look at it a little closer, shall we?
I've highlighted that “pool” area so you can understand what it is.
That's blood.
Starting in a thin stream and then gouting from a gaping wound in a man's back courtesy of a Ernfield 1917 30.06 rifle bullet. Said man dragged himself about 25 feet from where he was struck initially and then collapsed near his front door where that pool collected.
That man's name was Medgar Wiley Evers. And he was assassinated for fighting for civil rights and most importantly near the time of his murder, voting rights for African Americans.
Yes. People put their lives on the line and sometimes—too many times—saw their lives snuffed out for fighting to obtain and maintain that right. So, when I hear the likes of a Matthews and revealingly, a Begala flushing the votes of nearly 14 million African Americans down the crapper because they don't like where those votes are being cast and for whom, I think of Medgar Evers on that night, getting out of his car, taking custom-made T-shirts reading “Jim Crow Must Go!” out of the back seat, and then a cowardly sniper's bullet ripping through his back and him bleeding out on his front steps as his wife and kids opened the door to see him there, life ebbing away with every millisecond.
Guess what? Medgar Evers was “regular people”. We are regular people. And these weak-assed attempts to chump off the Black vote when it doesn't play to conventional wisdom or fit a desired template pisses on the memory of those who fought the hardest and sacrificed the most for it. We make up 13.5% of the electorate. You court us when you need votes for “X”, then diss us when we vote for “Y” and “Y” ain't what you're down with.
“Regular people.” “African Americans and Eggheads.”
Let me ask a simple question here. If Black folk only make up 13.5% of Americans, and college educated folks make up 29% (allowing for overlap between the two groups, as well as overlap between college educated voters and GOP-inclined ones), where in the name of Dr. George Washington Carver is the rest of this nettlesome, apple-cart upsetting vote coming from? Or has the dreaded Black Genius Camp and the MIT-educated numerical wizards from the movie “21” banded together in cahoots to unfairly freaknomic-ize this year's primary results? Trotting out this patently racist sour grapes bullshit would be maddening if it weren't so sad and revealing about the people perpetrating it.
And whether you're a hard-core member of “Obamanation” or a pom-pom waving “Clintonista”, common sense should prevail and allow anyone with eyes to do the simple math and realize how specious, divisive and destructive this framing is.
The numbers don't support it. Silly people's fears and naked spite do.
““Regular People” are turning out in record numbers this year just in the primaries not as some statistical blip. It's clear that something is up in America. Gas down the block from me is $3. 91 a gallon for Regular. They're tacking foreclosure notices to houses like they were cellophaned copies of “Pennysavers”. This asinine war has infuriated people beyond belief and trust in the way “things have been” has eroded mightily. Habeas Corpus is under siege, and a government that promised to be hands-off has been revealed to be totally “hands-in”, as in up our asses judicially via manipulation of US attorneys and privacy-wise in terms of FISA. These seven and a half years of Bushian presdiential awfulness is what's driving things change-wise.
But you don't want to look at that.
That's too big a thought for your walnut-sized, political bronto-brains to digest. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's the “elites” who have fucked this thing for you. “The Creative Class”. Eggheads. And of course, the n*ggers.
I'm one of seven kids, born to North Carolinians with a family tree going back to and fading out at Pre-Emancipation. I'm also a writer, actor and visual artist as well as a former college boy. I suppose that makes me the magic and dreaded electoral trifecta of evil according to these two clowns and their co-conspirators in piss-pot punditry.
And apparently, I don't fucking count. Me, the great-great -great grandchild of slaves. People who built this country under a whip of leather and second-class citizenship. My vote and the votes of people like me don't matter a whit. A vote Medgar Evers took a bullet in the back for. Whose vote counts? Ones from the likes of those who shot him down for daring to assert personhood for 13.5 million Black folks. And if not them, then those who quietly have no problem with his murder and what it represented.
“Regular people” “Real America” The mother-fucking “Heartland”.
Thank you Paul Begala. And thank you Chris Matthews. For coming clean on how you really feel. I'm no sage, and while I may not know exactly what America herself is or is not ready for, I know what you two and your ilk are clearly not ready for. You've spent your adult public lives playing at high-mindedness, but now...you've come clean.
The mask is off and I see you for what you are. What's that old saying about “The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know”?
I know you now. Benefit of the doubt shielded you before. But no more.
“Desperation is the flashing, trembling hand that snatches away the veil of false propriety.”
Who said that?
Why, I just did.
Just your typical, discounted, influential-beyond-my-wildest-dreams, and might I say, educated Black person.
At last, I know where I stand.
And because of that, I will fight that much harder. Against injustice. Against a corrupt and twisted system. And yes, against you. Because you see, as well as knowing where I stand...I also know, and will never forget...
For a moment, I ask you to take a look at the following pair of photographs.
2004 Campaign Season—George Bush and Senator John McCain
2008 Campaign Season—Richard Mellon Scaife and Senator Hillary Clinton
There is the saying that “Politics makes for strange bedfellows”. The truth in that statement is undisputable. We've seen that cast into stark relief with the odd collegiallity in congress where seeming polar opposites on policy find themselves paired up in pushing through important legislation.
That I get.
But I posted those two pictures above for a reason—pertaining to something I do NOT get and see no reason TO get. And that something is a craven embrace of a vicious, double-dealing, sworn enemy of all you stand for in the misguided belief that that is okay to do so if it will get you ahead personally.
We have run that McCain/Bush photo here more than a few times, as did Steve whenever the idea of a person's selling his or her soul for mere self-aggarndizement came up. That picture is meant to be stomach turning, much like the infamous Lieberman/Bush “Kiss” pic, which signaled to all where “Short Ride” Joe's allegiances had settled once and for all. We used it in the “What Price The Quest” post where the “dangerous flaws” in one John McCain were documented..
Those words?
It is here, during the primary season of that 2000 Presidential election that McCain would again find his lifelong quest for respect thwarted and his very soul—his service, his patriotism, his sanity, and his family ripped to shreds by his GOP opponent George W. Bush, and the Republican hierarchy who came to dislike him for not toeing the line 100% with its conservative values.
They trashed him for abandoning veterans on POW/MIA issues and having ”come home from Vietnam and forgotten about us.”—using a trotted-out, and sketchy veterans activist to deliver the brutal message.
They then smashed him as a traitor, using his torture-obtained statement in Vietnam as a weapon against him.
And then, they attacked his family—push-polling , faxing, flyering all of South Carolina, a key primary state with rumors of his being insane (due to his POW ordeal) wife's being a drug addict, and his having fathered a Black child out of wedlock—a brutal, but effective lie playing on his having adopted a non-white daughter from Bangladesh.
His campaign would never recover from that assault and Bush would triumph in that election—with a bit of help from the Supreme Court, voting irregularities and some bused-in hooligans in Florida. And as a terror-addled populace and war-crazed GOP rallied around the fear-mongering Bush—amplifying his power many times over, and freezing out any sort of “Maverick” opposition, something terrible happened to John McCain.
------------------------------------------
The man and operation that dragged his patriotism and military service through the mud, slagged his wife, abused his child as a campaign weapon and play to racism, and then...effectively called him insane he was now practically fellating...for a bit of blessing for future considerations in that infamous “quest”. A trade of one's core integrity, a heaping scoopful of innate self-respect—handed over to the man and machine that tried to destroy him.
We excoriated McCain for that awful backtracking and sucking up to Bush after those intensely personal attacks on him in South Carolina in 2000...where Bush's team put out all manner of vicious rumors about him...
They called his wife a crackhead.
Said McCain was insane.
Hissed and whispered about him having sired an illegitimate “Black” baby.
And called him a “traitor” for his forced statements during his Vietnam imprisonment.
After all that, when McCain sold his soul and embraced the snickering little twerp who signed off on all that sh*t-slinging—literally EMBRACING HIM—
...we all said “What the f*ck?”
Flash forward four years to that second picture—the one of Senator Clinton sitting there at the editorial board meeting of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review...with one Richard Mellon Scaife, the “paper's” publisher seated at her right hand, looking to the uninformed eye to be a simple objective questioner.
But we have an in-formed eye, don't we people?
We know that Scaife used his millions during Bill Clinton's presidency to finance The Arkansas Project, the nakedly partisan investigative arm of the Scaife-backed “American Spectator” magazine as well as his chain of knuckle-dragging newspapers. We know that he backed the fomenting of such swill as “TrooperGate” (The Paula Jones “scandal”), the stale-air yammering that was “Whitewater” (where Clinton confidant Susan McDougal was unlawfully and spitefully jailed), and yes, the ultimate bit of lunacy—the pushing of the “armadillo-shell-as-hat-to-protect-from-cosmic-rays-beamed-by-aliens” level of crackpottery in the “investifations” of Vince Foster's suicide. Scaife's well-paid minions pushed the idea that the Clintons were involved in Foster's death and actually participated in it, weaving tales of infidelity, outright murder, corpse-moving and spawned half-assed CSI wannabes into commencing their own loopy investigations that wound up having the desired effect that the President's enemies managed to get these crackpot issues debated in congress.
Can we forget Indiana Repuglican Rep. Dan Burton playing a 28-cent Gil Grissom as he shot bullets into a melon to prove the Foster death a homicide at Clintonian hands?
Should we forget Scaife-funded lunatic and word-salad tosser Chris Ruddy and his book “The Strange Death of Vincent Foster” and his equally loopy theories about former Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's taking a slug to the head before having his plane crashed to cover up the seedy “murder”? How Scaife so loved those two reportorial bits of excellence that he then invested millions to start NewsMax in 1998 and installed Ruddy as said company's editor-in-chief?
And dare we exclude the millions upon millions the GOP-led congress spent investigating these Scaife-pushed claims of Arkansan evil—to where Ken Starr was even involved, looking into the shit that Scaife kicked up—including the Foster craziness that he had to issue official statements on them?
That's the “Reader's Digest” version. The in-depth dope can be found at various sources whose level of detail and dirt-digging expertise will probably leave you with your lower jaw firmly basement-dropped. Suffice it to say that Richard Mellon Scaife was the power behind an attempt to run an end-around on electoral politics, subvert the constitution, and utterly destroy a President solely because he dared re-rail a plan for Republicans Reich's lasting “a thousand years”.
And that makes that picture of Sen. Clinton sitting and chatting so fucking calmly—amiably even, with the venal Scaife so difficult to take. It is bad enough that there is an apparent cozying up to this snake who WAS THE FINANCIAL BACKER OF THE “VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY” SHE DECRIED, who worked like hell against Democrats in 2000, 2004 (aiding mightily in the “Swift-Boating” of John Kerry), and 2006. It sets my teeth on edge just thinking about it. But in attempting to be fair, maybe you say “Hey, it's an editorial board right? You have to meet with these people sometimes to get your message out...maybe charm 'em and turn 'em. Use 'em to knock an opponent down a peg or two.”
You try to give that benefit of the doubt. Maybe my enemy's changed. Mellowed. Grown up a little bit.
And then less than 48 hours later, you see an exceptionally nasty editorial mugging of a leading—perhaps the leading progressive in that very paper and it is apparent that NOTHING HAS CHANGED AT ALL...NOTHING.
“Former Vice President Al Gore says on tonight's "60 Minutes" that those who doubt man's role in global warming are akin to those who once thought the Earth was flat or think the moon landings were staged. Of course, the world should take Internet inventor Al Gore, the fella with a serious "sigh" problem, about as seriously as it would Professor Ludwig von Drake, the nutty professor from Disney's Donald Duck cartoons. It's pretty difficult to have less credibility than a cartoon character, but Gore pulls it off.”
That...is the Richard Mellon Scaife mantra as it always has been. Trash Democrats using the tiredest, lamest, hoariest tropes and spin possible. Damage the party. That is who he is and what he does. There has been no post-traumatic event values change alá Alabama's repentant racist Gov. George Wallace or a wizened reconsideration of one's past evils like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd. You don't have to like the men—but you can acknowledge that they may have indeed “made a change”.
There has been NO SUCH CHANGE in Scaife. He's the same guy. With the same agenda. Just an evil-minded creep hedging a bet and running a game.
Sorry, but that's all there is to it.
His people went to a batch of the old 2000-vintage smears on Al Gore—who isn't even running—and went way out of their way to “nad-kick” him for what? Gore's being proven right? Having the last laugh? Winning a battle the right wing looks foolish in fighting?
This troglodyte's raison d'être is simple. Damage progressive causes and people in general. Take them down and take them out. Senator Clinton could almost...almost have gotten a pass on her breaking bread with this scoundrel were it not for his immediate and pathological showing of his true self yet again a mere day-and-a-half after their meeting. He's not even a “useful” idiot. He's just...an idiot.
Cuddling up to him and his brand of progressive-damaging demagoguery is unconscionable—especially when you need only look at the man's awful track record, still being laid out as I type these words.
In my fantasy-world, that Scaife/Clinton meeting was the ultimate “Sistah Souljah” moment, where she snuggles up to him all sweetness and light and then instead of breaking bread with him, breaks a Goddamn chair over his head—figuratively, of course.
But it didn't go down like that. There was talk of how “fun” it was and what an “adventure”the visit turned out to be. A lot of word-swallowing and tongue-biting in front of the man who called you a crook, a thief and a murderer and had never apologized for those accusations long after having had them disproven. The rough words unfortunately are reserved for more seemingly unlikely targets.
This man IS NOT a friend to anyone with a “D” in front of his or her name, no matter how he portrays himself or what one may opportunistically think of him. I don't think we've been wrong in our view of him as an arch-villain of epic proportions for the last fifteen years.The gratuitous Gore slam this weekend says it all.
It reminds me of an incident in my youth. Late one night, my father got a call from an employee about another employee's having called complaining about her spouse's abusing her. It was known around the job that this woman was catching hell from her husband all the time. Shades covering facial bruises. Mystery “sick” days. Bruises, welts and swells constantly showing up on this person. My dad spoke to her about getting some help several times and her getting away from his brute, and when he got this call about a particularly bad beating, he called a few male “friends” and went to her house to help her out.
The “friends” job? To straighten “Hands-On Hubby” out. Daddy's job? To spirit her away to safe environs. I rode with daddy (to help her get a bunch of her stuff out of there) and this woman and the co-worker who called. And as we drove the bruised victim to a relative's house for sanctuary I remember her going on and on emotionally about how yes, her abuser had indeed been beating her senseless, but we didn't understand how good to her he was “when he was good”.
I sat next to Daddy in the passenger seat as his hands ground into the steering wheel, his teeth squeaking as they gritted back and forth and his jaw clenching as this human punching bag tried to justify the black and blues marring her face. After one particularly loony statement, daddy looked hard in the rear-view mirror at her and tersely said...
“You know...just 'cause the devil puts down his pitchfork every once in a while—that doesn't make his ass an angel.”
I looked in my own rear-view mirror at her and saw her mouth open to say...something to rebut that statement...and then her mouth closed. Her eyes sank and shoulders slumped. She looked out the rear passenger-side window and I remember seeing the streetlight reflections playing off her tear-stained and fist-scarred face.
“Just 'cause the devil puts down his pitchfork every once in a while—that doesn't make his ass an angel.”
Forgive? Okay. That's your choice. It may make life more livable. But Forget? Forget? Absolutely not. You put yourself in harm's way pooh-poohing the evil of those who seek to destroy you.
I'd like to think Senator Clinton would know this already—in fact, I'm sure she does—but I'm going to say it anyway. To remind her of the facts in the event that a bout of amnesia has temporarily stricken her and to let her know if no such malady has befallen her, that we remember who this man is, what he does, and will hold no truck with this ugly opportunistic cuddle.
You equivocate on this enemy-embrace chicanery at your own damned peril.
End. Of. Story.
UPDATE: Or not quite the End. Of. Story. I elevate this from the comments because it so eloquently encapsulates why Scaife isn't someone progressives should have any reason to be all “bygones be bygones” with. From our ironically-named, but brilliant “Mr. Stoopid”:
The awful shit he (Scaife—Ed. note) helped foment in the 1990's did not just happen to Bill and Hillary Clinton. It happened to this country as a whole. Strike that. It was perpetrated upon this country as a whole.
While half our political class was chasing leads to indict the President and First Lady for murder/drug dealing/fraud/extramarital oral sodomy, and the other half was busily defending and shielding the good the administration had accomplished from that imbecilic shitstorm, real problems were ignored and allowed to fester.
Scaife is more than emblematic of what's wrong with this country: He's the nitrous in the Right Wing Loony Racer's tank. When he kicked into action, the stupidest, meanest, most destructive elements of what we now call political life in this country were elevated to positions of prominence. Ann Coulter is Scaifenstein's monster. And not the only one.
That's all you need in Campaign Season 2008 to create election-influencing media.
The $1000 dollars will get you a decently powered computer bundled with near-pro level audio and video editing and compositing software. The broadband internet access allows one to gather the raw digital media for the creation and then distribute the finished product to the masses. The handle on pop culture, tropes and visual, emotional shorthand enables a content creator to know just enough— just e-damn-nough to make the produced piece grab the eye and psyche. And finally...an agenda.
Oh my...an agenda. That's the driving force—the solid rocket booster that launches the piece from a mere “that'd be cool to do” meandering to a crystallized, will-to-power-ed reality. Be it employed for good, or evil, a hard and fast agenda added to those other elements is the catalyzing force behind what people are able to do today producing ads that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to crank out a mere ten years ago.
In the entertainment community, there's a lot of debate about this paradigm—the hyper-democratization of the process where high-end art/product is created, and there's an equal amount of discussion/consternation about the same situation in political circles. A Goldwater “Daisy”, or Atwater-esque “Willie Horton” ad can be whipped up in a matter of a day—hours if you push, and uploaded to YouTube in minutes for millions to see and be influenced by.
That's the world we live in—an exciting, almost instantly receptive and reactive one, fairly vibrating with readiness for our (“our” being anyone with an agenda and the easily accessible technology) “art”.
The following is one such example of that “art”—albeit a toxic one. A crudely done one in fact. But again...that agenda thing, and access to the media to manipulate gives a motivated party power. The power to influence,
To re-cast.
To pull from the recesses of the mind, imagery and emotions that move people to think, and act
Observe.
It's two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of what I'll call “trope-o-lining”—bouncing up and down repeatedly on well worn audio and video snippets that go to the heart of White America's fears of in-your-face (meaning non-deferential) “Negritude”, and it's crafted by a hard-core “grunt” for the right. The creator, a former producer for the chalkboard scratching that is “The Laura Ingraham Show”, named Lee Habeeb is a freelancer basically just doin' his kuh-ray-zee wingnutty thang on his own. A loose cannon if you will. But, give the devil (I don't know the color of his eyes) his due. It is an effective ad. Not necessarily because it's well done. You could toss off a lookalike ad on a seven year old 500 mhz G4 Mac. What makes it “effective” is its maker's dedication to wringing every drop of gut-level, fear of the non-pink paranoia out of its target viewers—namely White folks on the verge of cutting loose some serious racist ballast in even considering a Black person for the office of President. This ad was designed to bring the “waverers and considerers” home if you will. It plays to people of a certain age. Boomers who grew up in the first “saturation” media age of the 1960's when the visual media of television took hold. Insofar as it who it targets—it uses the perfect loaded images and sounds. And if we as progressives are to defeat the right this year, we'd damned sure better develop a discerning eye for this stuff and be able to dissect it—one, so that we can better “SDI” it (“Star Wars” it and blow it up before it detonates in our backyards), and two, so we can master the techniques ourselves and mount people-powered media counter-offensives against them.
So, let's “ad-topsy” this thing shall we?
From the start, there is an over-arching narrative this ad is fighting against. A powerful narrative that Obama has worked hard to cultivate and has some serious staying power.
Obama is, in spite of his people-rallying ability, is what you'd have to call a “cool” presenter. Even at his most animated and exhorting, Barack Obama is decidedly NOT what one would call the blazing firebrand. In his rhetoric and approach, he is a “cool” persona. That flies in the face of what his GOP opponents need him to appear as to spark the base's racist turnout and to tip tightrope walkers back to the rocky earth of fear-based voting patterns. Thus the deployment of the fiery, and decidedly “hot” Jeremiah Wright's words to his flock in the video. He is NOT Obama, but he is someone close to Obama—someone Obama trusts and evidently values, and that is good e-damn-nough to get the job done. As Obama himself refuses to play the badass “Stagger Lee” and give the soundbites that so inspire White fear (a.k.a. a carte blanche to hate without compunction), this ad's creator cannily used—as Obama's better-funded and more professional detractors will—Wrights hard, “Liberation Theology” (more on that in another post) words. They ARE hard words. Spat, cried, growled and laced with the hurt of centuries of subjugation, but in their shorthand form—chopped and clipped with the scrubber bar of editing software—“God damn America” is a soundbite-perfect call to arms to the yellow car-magnet brigade, and other such rhetoric literalists for whom slogans mean far more than actions.
It is in fact, an attempt to re-cast him. To move him from the amiable, palatable “Cliff Huxtable” Black guy you'd gladly welcome into your home and buy a pudding pop from...to the dangerous antithesis—the jumpy, volatile “Richard Pryor—the “brotha” you can't really trust because he just might call...“a spade a spade” and deal with those inconvenient truths that make you squirm in your oh-so-comfortable seat.
Wipe away the silly, nonsense Cosby gobbledygook that raises a chuckle. Goodbye to “Hey, hey, hey!” and all of that. And say “Heyyyyyyyy, bay-beh!” to “That N*gger's Crazy”, unpredictability and getting called out on your shit—all with that twitch in the face and yes...the rough words. The hell with post-raciality, this is a forced re-n*ggerfication. And there is nothing more fear-inducing in America than a so-called angry, agitated n*gger. Even a fictional one. Joe Klein long before he shredded his credibility with bloggers, tore his ass with Black folk with his jumpy, paranoid pronouncement that Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing's” ending riot sequence would spur homeboys to “wild out” in frustration at ...the man. A real angry man, albeit a non trash-can tossing Rev. Wright's brash imagery and words kick the video off. Others pick up the ball and run with it deeper in. More on those in a minute.
But pair Wright's verbal molotovs up with the editing trick in the video that digitally blunts Obama's greatest strength—his ability to express himself verbally—where he is made to stutter and stumble in the cut-and-pasted “call and response” technique used in the piece and you have a well-deployed, if disingenuous bit of media manipulation.
Now, toss in three healthy shakes of “HateAmerica” spice. Shake One: Wright's words. Shake Two: The stuttering chop-up of Michelle Obama's “First time I've been proud of this country as an adult” comment. Shake Three: The statement of Obama's about the superficiality of sporting the “flag lapel pins”, and the semi-artful mash-up of the debunked “Pledge of Allegiance/National Anthem” stance of his. Tis a bitter seasoning indeed. It plays to the truism that it only takes a typically callous dose of good, old American racism to unearth in many Black folk—a not deeply harbored enmity for Mother America's superficial pledge of “equality for all”—which IS America as far as racism's perpetrators are concerned.
The insidious barb in this “play” is that the factual aspects of that African American cynicism are downplayed by the very parties who catalyze that cynicism with their daily deeds. They deem that anger, that bristling as irrational and unjustified.
Which leads us to the most hackneyed, yet wannabe poisonous images in the “ad”. Immediately after the “Pledge of Allegiance” section the video cuts to the classic shot of 1968 Mexico City Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos in mid “Black Power” salute on the medal podium after their Gold and Bronze medal-winning performances in the 200 meter sprint.
...and replete with Mexico City badges and Smith's name in the sneaker. Ironically Smith stood on that podium shoeless to symbolize American Black poverty. Now, the gesture is seen as a perfect example of “fuck the man” cool. But back then, in an America roiled with anti-war protests and a barely stable society thanks to exploding racial struggles (MLK and RFK were both assassinated in the six months before Mexico City) it was a black-gloved, black-handed slap across the face of a culturally hypersensitized U.S. of A.
This blog's dear friend, a reader, commenter and damned fine writer in her own right— Maggie Jochild breaks down the historical context personally and forthrightly:
During the early 60's, Mama kept trying to explain the Civil Rights movement to me, to all of us. She would not allow my grandmother, her mother-in-law, to perform her allegedly hysterical routine of a colored lady trying to place a long distance call. She forbid the use of any term for blacks in our house except Negro -- which, given my father's family, meant battles that caused a permanent rift in our connection to that side of our heritage.
This is all preface to let you know how shocking it was when, during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos thrust their fists into the air on the medals stand in the Black Power salute, my mother went berserk. She called it a slap in the face to all Americans, an unforgiveable betrayal of our country, and she added “If that's where Black Power is headed, then it's lost my respect.”
I was thirteen years old. Her rearing had already shaped me, because my reaction when I saw what they did was “Cool!” I kept it to myself, however. Both reactions, my own and my mother's abrupt snap, revisited me when I saw that extremely brief clip in the Habeeb video. And in that instant, I understand how calculated this assemblage of manipulative images and sounds was, how completely devoid of human decency but demonstrating a keen understanding of which buttons to push.
It was...a cultural thunderclap, shooting eldritch fire and touching off the dry brush of conservative defensiveness and jingoism in the face of the uncertainty whether this country would make it past that rollercoaster year. I remember it. I also remember that the hated International Olympic Committee head Avery Brundage then expelled Smith and Carlos from the Olympic Village and rescinded their medals as punishment for their silent, poetic intransigence. (those medals have never been reinstated to this day) How dare they stand there and with a simple gesture challenge America, the flag, and apple-fucking-pie? Representing that scary-ass “Black Power” that empowered Black folks to no longer go for the okey-doke, and let White folks know there was a new, and assumption challenging order in place?
Now you KNOW what that photo was chosen for the spot. It doesn't work so well on the kids and “cool” folk who'll snap up those commemorative Pumas, but for that older generation who thought the whole damned country was gonna go up like an M-80 dropped into a bucket of kerosene...it can be a powerful and soul-churning image of a tenuous time when it all nearly came apart. Dog whistle, kids.
And then...then there's maybe the most subtle, but well-executed series of images in the video—the cutaways between Rev. Wright and Malcolm X, juxtaposing their words “America's chickens coming home to roost.”
Wright's usage pertained to the U.S.'s callous foreign policy stance—equal parts condescension, bigotry, provocation, bullying and neo-colonialism contributing to our enemies hatred of us, and their over-the-top violent lashing out against us. Malcolm X's usage was maybe even more incendiary considering its context. It came in the days immediately following the assassination of JFK. He was commenting on an American government that had covertly participated in the assassination of elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba three years before and looked the other way as its own law enforcement people actively brought the hammer of racial violence down on its Black “citizens” (Medgar Evers assassination and the infamous 16th St. Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama—both unpunished—had taken place in the mere twelve weeks leading up to Kennedy's Dallas shooting) seemingly every day.
Malcolm X spoke bitterly of Kennedy's death and cited America's government-sanctioned violence blowing back onto the Presidency itself, He noted America's “chickens coming home to roost” in Kennedy's assassination. It was a gut-kick to a stunned and grieving populace. It was intemperate and to many, nakedly disrespectful—including higher-ups in the Nation of Islam who suspended Malcolm indefinitely for the cold-hearted statement.
Both Wright's and Malcolm's statements are spun in this spot as a canny “it has always been thus” mantra of Black hate against white-bearded, forthright Uncle Sam himself. But the underlying dig—and I don't think it's accidental—is the spinning of Obama into that weave by comparison to Malcolm X. Again, it doesn't play to the younger voter who sees Malcolm as another avatar of nose-thumbing cool. It's set up to dredge up those who know that tale of the days after Kennedy's death. Those who sat in darkened rooms watching John-John salute the flag-draped casket rolling by, and would despise that uppity, mean-mouthed Negro who dared not genuflect in those dark days. Those who were offended.
The superficial “image” leap from Malcolm to Obama is a short one to be quite honest. Those who compare him to Martin Luther King in his presentation and style utterly miss the boat. While his rhetoric is quite King-esque, Black folks see much more Malcolm in him than Martin. Tall, ascetic-seeming men, both of obviously mixed heritage (Malcolm's mother was a Biracial Grenadian who could pass for White), gifted orators and not far apart at all in age (Malcolm was three months shy of forty when killed—Obama himself is forty-six), they also share a strikingly similar vocal timbre, delivery style and even physical gestures (the thoughtful chin on hand pose is kind of eerie) at the ever-present lectern. As someone who's seen and heard more than a little bit of Malcolm X's speeches over the years (enough to do a passing impersonation) and heard more than a few Black folks comment on their (Malcolm's and Obama's) similarities. (Down to their hard midwestern “twangs”), I don't think I'm overstating this. And Habeeb, the ad's crafter is just hip enough to know exactly what he's doing with this juxtaposition.
“Show old-school firebrand young Black orator with Jeremiah Wright—does he remind you of the new school young Black orator he pals around with now?
And think not for a second that the audio background deployment of the bangin' Pubic Enemy track to this section was an accident in any way. “Fight The Power” was a near anthem of the late-eighties “Afrocentrism” boom while also being the signature cut from the then-politically incendiary group itself. Wouldn't you know that it was also the main title music for Spike Lee's aforementioned Joe Klein diaper-filler“Do The Right Thing”, featuring a scowling Rosie Perez dancing/shadow-boxing the camera furiously to the song's booming beat.
Oh yes...the song was also the lead single from P.E.'s 1990 album entitled...wait for it...“Fear of a Black Planet”. Only one of the most controversial albums by one of the most controversial groups of the end of the Reagan “era of innocence”. Some twenty years hence, the old soundtrack is cued up again by Habeeb, and the well-trained, Inverted Pavlovian response kicks in—instead of salivating at the mouth, these soured ex-yuppies and one-time “Reagan Youth” crap their pants. Or rather...their Depends™.
In discussing this with Doc Wendel, he summed it up by saying:
“This was was clearly put in to slaughter the demographics for people 50-55 and up, everyone who is of a certain age who hates the Dirty Fucking Hippies.”
Indeed. Those who hate the so-called “DFH's” and the people they palled with, stood up for and air guitared Jimi at Monterey (down to the incendiary finalé) and The Chambers Brothers' “Time Has Come Today” with too.
But there's a secondary dynamic at play here. There is the target audience Jesse notes pointedly—and then, there's of course...the subtle shit that equally hamstrings Obama and by extension, many in the party that ostensibly supports him. Take it away Maggie...
One of the not-enough-acknowledged dynamics of the current Presidential campaign is the racism of how many Democrats (and especially independents/Republican crossovers) perceive Obama as an “alternative” black. He's not like Jesse Jackson, or Martin Luther King, or Al Sharpton—he wasn't raised in the U.S. during his most impressionable years of racial conditioning (Hawaii is outside the U.S. norm for this imprinting), his father was not an American black, and his mother, that source of our most intense identity training as children, was white. We can tell the difference. I think much of the rhetoric about how “hopeful” he is originates from white people who are using acceptable liberal racist code for “he doesn't sound like other black people”. And he doesn't.
I think the makers of this video understand how Obama's “alternative” black mythos has been to his advantage, and have figured out how to deliberately use it against him -- all too effectively. Dropping the "secret Muslim" smear, they're now going for “not really American” blended with “ungrateful, angry blacks”. (A potently evil cocktail —ed. note from LM) Malcolm X is a figure who fits both of those categories in the minds of most whites, so he's used. Wright “damns” America, so he's good as gold for both categories as well. King, Jackson and Sharpton, all ministers, fit the “ungrateful and angry” meme but not the “unAmerican” one -- they are all TOO American black, reminding whites of our legacy of racism, so they do not appear in the video.
Um. Ding! Seeing that he flies in the face of the stock, hackneyed memes for Black politicos, and that his “alternativity” to those well-mud-slung norms works for him, said “alternativity” must be neutralized. This scene from Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing” sums the phenomena up nicely:
PINO: Twenty minutes.(To caller, then he hangs up the phone. To Mookie)How come you n*ggers are so stupid?
MOOKIE: If ya see a n*gger here, kick his ass.
PINO: Fuck you and stay off the phone.
VITO: Forget it, Mookie.
MOOKIE: (To Pino) Who's your favorite basketball player?
PINO: Magic Johnson.
MOOKIE: And not Larry Bird? Who's your favorite movie star?
PINO: Eddie Murphy.
Mookie is smiling now.
MOOKIE: Last question: Who's your favorite rock star?
Pino doesn't answer, because he sees the trap he's already fallen into.
MOOKIE: Barry Manilow?
Mookie and Vito laugh.
MOOKIE: Pino, no joke. C'mon, answer.
VITO: It's Prince. He's a Prince freak.
PINO: Shut up. The Boss! Bruuucce!!!!
MOOKIE: Sounds funny to me. As much as you say n*gger this and n*gger that, all your favorite people are “n*ggers.”
PINO: It's different. Magic, Eddie, Prince are not n*ggers, I mean, are not Black. I mean, they're Black but not really Black. They're more than Black. It's different.
In the end though, Pino goes to “core”, and in spite of himself—his superficial self that can half-“appreciate” that otherness—that beyondness—just isn't enough to dilute his racism. He buys into the old tropes and then twists them, as Habeeb does in the ad to hoarily slam the “beyonded”—but-still-too-tan-for-prime-time Obama.
This ad's job? To stoke that uneasy “core”. To prompt that queasiness. That discomfort at the gut level to overcome that hopeful, aforementioned otherness—and beyondness before it seeps to the core and cannot be dislodged. What happens when you transcend that? When people in living their lives in America and actually having to deal with folks see people as people and NOT as monolithic hordes to be feared or relegated to the backwaters of our collective psyche?
You get...a connection. You push past the old bugaboos and set this land on it's way to living up to that mantra of a “more perfect union”, and not the ugly bifurcated thing that serves the evil and narrow-minded. You get a real chance at America The Beautiful, and not “Americo—A Subdivision of Megalocorp LLC—Maintaining The Bullshit Status Quo Since Sixteen-Twenty-Fucking-One, A.D.”
The ad works hard at maintaining that status quo through manipulation. It's not a high-end attempt. But it doesn't have to be anymore, because the walls have come down. The ghost has sprung from the machine and it's spreading ectoplasm now inhabits countless other devices owned by eevryone it seems, and NOT just the cackling mad scientist on the hill. The torch-bearing “peasant” can now create right alongside ol' Doc Frankenstein. And the peasant's monster is just as capable of wrecking the countryside as the Doc's—mayve moreso.
So, fuck fearing the monster. We need to break his ass down. Go to blueprint for every bolt and wire—every sinew and bone. Dissect it so that we may know how to fight it when confronted with it and if we must, use what we've learned to craft our own fearsome answers back.
This is how it goes now with ads like these. To paraphrase the old Eric Burdon and The Animals tune, “Don't Let It Be Misunderstood”. We can't just go to raw emotion and scream “That's bad!”, “That's racist!”, or “That's a lie!”” any more. To counter this stuff we've got to understand it—where it comes from, what it's about and why. And once we nail that stuff down...
We can mount our own “grass roots” assault against the Habeebs and his deeply thankful—and deeply pocketed enablers and patrons.
Get your tools ready folks. We've got work to do.
NOTE: Updated to add a section (on P.E.) that got lost in the draft/editing shuffle—Best, LMThere's more...
I Am The Eggman. I Am The Eggman. I Am the Douchebag!
“You know, just when I think you're the shallowest man I know, you somehow manage to drain a little bit more out of the pool.” Elaine to Jerry—Seinfeld, Episode #59, “The Implant”
I know not to expect anything remotely resembling class from a bottom-feeding miscreant like Matt Drudge, what with his track record for blaring, and then cowardly running away from self interest-serving lies, operating as an unabashed smear hit-man for the right, and of course covering the asses of his wingnut benefactors through widely disseminated push-back (written by them). He's a disingenuous hack, masquerading as some sort of next-wave “journalist”, when in the end he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper back if his pen had a diamond tip. The key to his “success”? It is in no way related to the quality of his “reportage”. It merely is the manifestation of something my father used to tell me all the time about seeming unfairness and how merit oftentimes does not win out.
“Sometimes son...it isn't about being good. It's about being FIRST.”
Drudge? Merely the dude with an idea and a faster baud modem than his pre-histor-internet peers.
Add to that good timing a petty, and vindictive personality and his having all the scruples of a rabid jackal loping about the unguarded newborn wing of a hospital and you get the man in whole.
However, give the devil his due. The one thing the marble-mouthed cyber-thug has going for him is a well-cultivated network of snitches and lapdogs waiting with bated breath for his every gutteral utterance.
Thus, when he breaks a story—regardless of how damaging—it can hit with the force of a stray spark in a vapor-filled gas main.
He did just that late last week when he blared in a banner headline the till-then-clandestine presence of Britain's Prince Harry's serving with his fellow British troops in Afghanistan. Clandestine because of known threats against the young Royal's life, and his unit should his location become known.
Tsk...tsk...tsk... The 23-year-old prince was posted in mid-December to the restive Helmand province of southern Afghanistan under a cloak of secrecy following an unusual agreement reached between the media and the army.
However, the arrangement collapsed after news was leaked on the US website, the Drudge Report, yesterday.
The ministry said the decision to withdraw the prince, who is third in line to the throne, was taken primarily because “the worldwide media coverage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan could impact on the security of those who are deployed there, as well as the risks to him as an individual soldier.”
So, this lunk-headed bomb-tosser basically jeopardized not only Prince Harry's life, but that of his unit-mates just-fucking-because? I am no fan of war—it's a disgusting, life-coarsening thing whether justified or not, but I will give serious credit to those who put their asses on the line to fight—for the poor grunts humping it for college money, or a sense of duty or family tradition. And for someone like Prince Harry who deigned to serve when he—unlike the VAST majority of the children of political privilege here in this country—could have sat on his ass, sippeing at Pimms and Sevens till he was a silver-haired do-nothing King. Via birthright he could have ducked anything—he could probably garotte “Who Want's To be A Millionaire's” Chris Tarrant in the middle of a programme and in the end, walk away unscathed.
But...he chose to serve and was doing so with an understanding that it would be kept secret as a matter of national security until apparently Matt Drudge ran out of unflattering Hillary pics to run and ran dry of synonyms for ragheaded darkie to pillory Obama with—so, he went with a stupid, attention-getting, red-cheeked shit-in-the-street leak of confidential and potentially danger-increasing information.
You know Goddamned well that were it one of President Bush's responsibility-phobic daughters' Apple-tini sodden asses on the line in a secret war-zone location, Drudge would've made the Sphinx look like a sodium-pentatholed Chris Tucker with not only his silence, but a vicious lashing out at anyone daring to break that silence.
And that's the crux of it—his naked partisanship and a-moral “fuck propriety—I'll run with any manner of story about anyone who isn't fellating me with deference and perks” style. He'll trash you not out of any sense of wrong or right (or whether what he's pushing is actually true or not—as Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton all would painfully find out), but just because he can, because it serves his wingnut masters, and because dirt fucking sells.
Many have asked about the egg reference in my earlier post. It comes from an article in Salon back in 2000. Jeannette Walls had a spat with Drudge over her book entitled “Dish” in which she revealed some of Matt Drudge’s preferences. She actually never mentioned anything about eggs in the book. Matt brought it out into the open:
After a mutual friend of both gossips tipped off Drudge as to just what these “lurid allegations” (about him—LM's note) were—a nasty case of pubic lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre egg fetish—he began to spread them himself….
“He likes to have sex with eggs. He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies.”
“It’s all very well sourced,” she told the New York Post’s Page Six. “If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass.”
Drudge is a fine example of a nut-job. He’s obsessed with being known—starting non-gay rumors about himself, pestering big papers to get coverage—but wants absolutely nothing “out” about his personal life. Certainly not the kind of details he’d splash across his page, anyway. Unless it’s a rumor he tried to start about himself and Laura Ingraham. He even reportedly asked the New Times that no full body photos accompany that interview. That is either one of the gayest things I’ve ever heard or one of the craziest.
Pretty secretive little panty-sniifing (or should I say,“tighty-whit-ey sniffing”), garbage-picking parasite...ain't he? He uses his contacts and “ins” all over the place to gather dirt on pissed-off, would-be retaliators to keep them from ratting out his own creepy-fuck behavior. The day's gonna come though when somebody bigger, badder and with a more powerful “gun” than him will cut him off at the knees and leave him choking on the refuse cloud in history's dustbin. It happens to 'em all. His political and temperamental forefather Walter Winchell saw his once-mighty influence first blunted, and then quickly drained away as people finally tired of his knee-jerk reactionaryism and then saw himself mocked mercilessly in the media—particularly the scathing classic film (One of my all-time favorites) “Sweet Smell Of Success”...
“The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after (screenwriter) Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell Of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.”
In the end, the once omnipotent and widely read Winchell was reduced to standing on a Hollywood street corner handing out mimeographed copies of his “column” for free to disinterested passers-by like some sandwich-boarded, nudie-show barker passing out coupons for “Live Girlz!” Drudge's years of hypocrisy—just like Winchell's—and rank amorality will certainly bring him low when the worm turns, as it always does at some point. It'll be the ultimate comeuppance for a turd-gobbling little cyber-thug like him. Countless people unfairly outed. Security and highly sensitive relationships fatally compromised. Reputations...trashed. Lives actually endangered.
All for the sake of a nasty addiction to running people down, spreading gossip, and shilling for parties who mean no one well. All that and what cheap, fleeting fame it grants. That day of payback's pimp-slap'll be a sweet and vicious one...as it is for all “can't take it” bullies.
The prescient words of a then-Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson come rushing to mind...
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
How true those words rang...especially when the bullying Tyson would ironically find himself on the receiving end of a sea-changing “punch in the mouth.”
Do “dirt” and you set yourself up for a “dirt-nap” Trade in shit, and you'll find yourself eating it. Callously play around with people's lives and you'll eventually see your own ruined.
Pimp a secret...push a lie. When fate bites back...don't wonder why.
There's more...
Barack Obama at Key Arena, Seattle. Feb 8, 2008. photo Jesse Wendel. Click for LARGE.
I've gone to great pains to proclaim my neutrality between the candidates, and it's genuine. I like them both, and I see their differences as small. For certain, I'll vote for whomever heads the Democratic ticket this fall. Really.
Some folks have suggested Clinton operatives are pushing "Obama as cult" around the press. Please don't tell me I'm being told to think this about cults. I hadn't read Krugman's article when I came to the same conclusion about Obama as a cult of personality. And I did so all on my own.
I went to both the Clinton and the Obama rallies here in Puget Sound last Thursday night/Friday afternoon. (More detailed reports to follow; consider this a sidebar.)
The Clinton rally Thursday night at Pier 30 was remarkable to me in three ways:
1. Personally, for how the staff knew I was coming and took care of me, even though I was late, bringing me through the long lines of people, getting up on the riser with the rest of the national press, bringing me water for my medicine. They were smooth and professional, without being cloying in any way.
2. Clinton presented a plan to withdraw for Iraq which I found detailed, specific, and credible. She then did the same with her plan for universal health care, and after giving details, she said, "I have staked my campaign on universal health care."
3. The crowd was inspired by her, cheered for her, but all in the ordinary way of a political rally. Call it 2-1 women, 30+ white/Hispanic, and happy to be there.
Friday morning I headed out to the Obama rally. They made the press wait outside in 40 degree cold in the wind for an hour before letting us in to searches and more waiting around, showing of press credentials and signing in. The Obama staff didn't know me from Adam and couldn't have cared less. (Sam, on their national blogging team has been nice to me.)
Frozen, I headed down to the convention floor. While I won't go into details (I hate process stories), I'll simply say the Obama volunteers pushed the local press around. I made it clear as a national blogger I wasn't going to put up with crap at all.
In comparison to how the Clintons treated the press, the Obama people treated the press disrespectfully and arrogantly. Furthermore, they didn't have anyone available to us except starry-eyed volunteers.
Shorter me: the Clinton camp was respectful of me and other press. The Obama camp was arrogant as all hell (with the exception of national web-guy Sam.) HUGE difference, and differences like this in my experience come from the top down.
Then came the actually Obama event. The best I can liken it to is a cross between a rock concert and a religious revival. The place was filled, probably over 20,000 people (the Clinton event was only 3,000+ people) and both turned people away. From the moment Obama hit the stage, everyone (but the press) was on their feet and never sat down.
Obama almost never got into specifics. It was change, change, save the country, change, yes we can, change. He did talk about both his health care plan and his education plan, and gave specifics in both cases, briefly. But then it was back to broad strokes. He spent a lot of time defending himself against the lack of experience charge.
Then Obama ended with "there is a moment in the the life of every generation where we decide. This is our moment. We will win. Together we will change the world."
Watching Obama reminded me VERY strongly of watching Werner Erhard, the est leader, on stage in front of tens of thousands of people in the 80s (and on videotape of Erhard at the Hollywood Bowl in the 70s.) Obama has precisely the same kind of universal appeal, the same kind of declarative "making a difference" saving the world approach. He's even using many of the same words and the crowd ate it up.
Well, daughter #3, Kyle, 17, didn't. But then she's hung out with transformational speakers since she was a kid, so she's had her shots against this stuff. She said, "A lot of people who were all excited were yelling and cheering over stuff that didn't really seem that exciting but everyone was really excited anyway no matter what he said, even though it didn't seem very inspiring to me."
Because Obama is not saying what he is for, not laying out specifics, and not making genuine promises, but instead making powerful declarations, making himself the candidate with whom everything changes and NEVER SPECIFYING WHAT IN THE HELL THAT MEANS, people are free to, and they damn well are, projecting onto Obama all their hopes and dreams for a better future. He is their mother, their father, their lover, confessor, their priest, their shining city on a hill.
Obama event, Key Arena, Seattle, February 8, 2008. photo Jesse Wendel. Click for LARGE.
When the mass media which as we all know is in the bag for the Republicans, tears Obama down off the pedestal they presently are promoting him on, it will rip the heart out of these children of our future, much as it destroyed the hopes of the JFK/MLK generation four decades ago.
And the media is coming for Obama. Just as soon as they've got him where they want him, which is running against McCain. He's better ratings than Clinton, and (editorial assessment) Rove/Bush and the Republicans do NOT want to run against Clinton, who has whupped them every time she's run against them.
The kids supporting Obama at the Seattle event, from the volunteers to the people in the stands, seemed high, as in not in full control of themselves. That they were high with a peak experience is great and good for them, but they still weren't in control. They were filled with this great joy. They bumped into things and laughed.
When I talked to them, all were thrilled I was there to write a great story about the Senator. When I softly corrected them I was just there to write a story on the event and what happened, not to make it great about the Senator, you could see their claws come out, anger cross their face, and then as one, they would paste a smile on, almost as if they knew they had to be nice to someone not yet in the club.
I've been around cults, religions, and high-dominance authoritarian institutions much of my life. While I won't go so far as to call the Obama organization a cult, as clearly the volunteers live out in the world and have their lives, people are VERY focused on Obama and don't really know much about what he stands for (and he's not saying.) They are making a demon out of Clinton, and get very twitchy when crossed. The volunteers are putting their hopes and dreams into Obama.
This at the least, approaches a serious cult of personality, and perhaps more. It is easily up to the Werner Erhard / George W. Bush level, and without much trouble, will go further.
Such personality veneration has never played well with others, and it isn't now.
NOTE: Nothing in this post should be construed as an endorsement of either Democratic candidate for president. It is an article with facts and opinions about politics. I have not made up my mind, and GNB is not endorsing any candidate until there is a clear nominee.I intend to add this to all my political posts from now till we have a nominee.
As I've got friends and family toiling in the pharmaceutical industry, I'm tempted sometimes to do with them what folks often do with me when we become close and they find out that I work in the publishing and entertainment industries—pitch 'em “product” ideas.
I hope that my brainstorm will be something akin to the next “Viagra”, or “Lunesta”, or “Enablex” or something else that sounds like a Marvel Avengers villain's name, but reels in hundreds of millions of dollars from jittery, hypochondriacs everywhere.
I've mulled pitching cures for tinglefoot, and underarm deodorant-clumping. But I think I have the one panacea that could rake in countless millions of pharma-dollars, enabling me to finally be able to afford that immortal, Insta-fuckwit-endorsed robot body to download my consciousness into.
I would call that miracle dream drug...Preemalex.
It would be a combination barbiturate/muscle relaxant that would act on the brain—specifically the triumphaloid gland and the still-mysterious nyah-nyahicus blusterex section of the brain, while also anesthetizing wildly hyperactive jaw muscles.
I've even got a target market demographic that desperately needs the drug—Premature victory ejaculating wingnut pundits. The marketing folks could come up with all the scary, “Do you have these symptoms?” copy that a reassuring voice-over artist could sonorously read off.
“Preemalex... (Sound of a rooster crowing) ...for when the cock crows too soon.”
Karl Rove's a sufferer. (“I have THE MATH!”—Nov. 3, 2006) So's his Libertarian, non-conservative, rope-belted tenure-baby pal Instapundit (“Okay, I'm officially declaring the Plame scandal bogus”—December 3, 2003), shillhistorian Victor Davis Hanson (“We're winning the war!”—Spring, 2005), and skipping over about 7,594 examples since that time, we now have the sniffy, condescending Charles Krauthammer.
Charlie's a tough one to take. He's NOT dumb. And when the subject is a non-political one, I have occasionally found him to be thoughtful, enjoyable...and even, witty. But let the conversation turn to politics and it's “Moe! Larry! The cheese!”, and he's off his rocker, swinging madly at everyone in the arena. And to and to cap it all off, when arguing for wingnut causes, he tends to veer towards the realm of angry, disingenuous jerk.
If you didn't know, Krauthammer is disabled—paralyzed due to a diving accident during his undergraduate years in college. One might assume that dealing with that issue, and as a reknowned member of the medical community, (his work as a psychiatrist is heavily cited in many medical journals) he could conceivably be a receptive ear, and perhaps a strong voice for the myriad potential benefits of stem cell research. More specifically, government funding for embryonic stem cell research—stem cells that are incinerated anyway as the leavings of in-vitro fertilizations of couples that have successfully brought a child to term, or have given up trying—cryogenically frozen remnants left at medical storage facilities.
One might assume that research using those embryos—in lieu of throwing them out—to aid in the cure of various ailments such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Diseases, or even finding a way to repair nerve damage in the paralyzed would be something that this medical professional would consider beneficial, without the silly rancor and talking points of a mocker of the disabled, like Rush Limbaugh.
But you all know what happens when you assume, right? 'Cause apparently Charles didn't.(Via Daily Kos:)
(KRAUTHAMMER:)A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.
(KOS DIARIST DARKSYDE:) Except that one likely way to say ‘embryo free way to produce genetically matched stem cells" in light of current procedures is ’cloned.’ Which plenty of ignorant, mostly conservative politicians also oppose. But this sucker gets worse, much worse. Steel yourselves:
(KRAUTHAMMER:)The embryonic stem cell debate is over. Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated.
( DARKSYDE:) And that's the tone for the rest of the article more or less: George Bush is a genius -- one could almost read savior in the editorial -- because his unpopular policy forced those lazy scientists to do without embryonic stem cells. Of course, the real moral objection to Bush’s ban on Federally Funded lines is that the blastocysts used to produced them are slated for destruction anyway. A few could be saved for ESC research. Preventing that in anyway won’t 'save them,' quite the opposite in fact.
So Charlie got all fired up and triumphant, letting his mania for screaming winger talking points like an air raid klaxon with an unconscious Tor Johnson sprawled across the “on” button get the best of him.
“Oh noez! You are the loosrz! LMFAO&ROTFL!”
This otherwise intelligent man blew the whistle and wanted to call the game over after a scoreless drive where his team moved the ball thirteen yards.
What happened next? You guessed it—he got 56 unanswered points thrown up on him before he could say Roman-fucking-Gabriel, via a stern rebuttal in the same paper five days later...
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all. Being able to reprogram skin cells into multipurpose stem cells without harming embryos launches an exciting new line of research. It's important to remember, though, that we're at square one, uncertain at this early stage whether souped-up skin cells hold the same promise as their embryonic cousins do.
Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.
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While commendable, these efforts remain preliminary, and none so far has suggested a magic bullet. In the same way, the recent tandem advances in the United States and by Shinya Yamanaka's team in Japan are far from being a Holy Grail, as Charles Krauthammer inaccurately described them. (Ed. note: Original link appears IN online version of the rebuttal!) Though potential landmarks, these studies are only a first step on the long road toward eventual therapies.
Krauthammer's central argument -- that the president's misgivings about embryonic stem cell research inspired innovative alternatives -- is fundamentally flawed, too. Yamanaka was of course working in Japan, and scientists around the world are pursuing the full spectrum of options, in many cases faster than researchers in the United States.
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Unfortunately, under the policy President Bush outlined on Aug. 9, 2001, at most 21 stem cell lines derived from embryos before that date are eligible for federal funding. American innovation in the field thus faces inherent limitations. Even more significant, the stigma resulting from the policy surely has discouraged some talented young Americans from pursuing stem cell research.
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We hope Congress will override the president's veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. Further delays in pursuing the clearly viable option of embryonic stem cells will result in an irretrievable loss of time, especially if the new approach fails to prove itself.
“A stern rebuttal in the same paper five days later”...FROM THE SAME SCIENTIST WHOSE REPORT KRAUTHAMMER CITED AS PROOF OF HIS REVERSE POINT!
Imagine a sneering, unlikable guy swaggering around the locker room and school hallways, haughtily bragging to everyone who'll listen that he'd slept with a really popular girl who everyone knows—reveling in all of the graphic, salacious detail.
“Yeah...nailed her.”
And then picture when said “girl” catches wind of the braggart's his lies, and publicly exposes him with proof that not only had they not slept together, but had never even gone out?
You get what happened to Krauthammer. An embarrassing exhibition of partisanship and hubris grabbing hold of an otherwise intelligent person and sending him careening face-first into a runny, oversized cream pie of “What-the-fuck-were-you-thinking?”
As multitudes watch.
Let me amend that. I said “embarrassing”. That would actually mean that Krauthammer is capable of feeling shame. It's more like we feel embarrassed for him.
He's Monty Python's Black Knight.
Or The Kids In The Hall's hapless “Sid”—the Bruce McCullough character who picks fights daily, howling and spoiling for trouble—but cannot fight to save his fucking life, and routinely, laughably gets his ass kicked, running headlong into clenched fists and knocking himself out.
You laugh at them. You have to.
In the comedy cases, it's because they're so ridiculous. And in Krauthammer's—yes, it's because he's so ridiculous, but also sadly...just to keep from crying.There's more...
This “can't-reach-the-pedals” guy'll do 70 clean laps at Talladega before the Bush admin gives the straight dope on a fuck-up. He'll hit the pits sweet as honey, too.
You don't have to look very hard for where it all started to go all lumpy-headed, drag-ass wrong for the Bush adminsitration. Oh, they'd been screwing the pooch like a pheromone-torqued Mickey Kaus at a petting zoo for years and years, but for about five years or so, they'd gotten away with it brazenly, with very few questions asked, and no challenges when exposed. That is, until an uncanny six month span between March and August of 2005 when three sirens of political bed-shittery came a' calling on BushCo LLC. Our mighty compatriot Driftglass (one of the best things outta Chi-Town since Curtis Mayfield), dubbed them exquisitely and perfectly as “The Three Fates”—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, and I thank him for saving the post where I ran down where the wheels came off and the axles bounced and bit into hard macadam for Bush and his crew of sycophantic salad-tossers. The sweet ride was over. Now there'd be hard, actual driving from here on out. Drifty poetically called' em “The Three Fates”...but I name-checked 'em as Schiavo, Sheehan and Katrina.
"People make much of the "Rovian" strategy of turning your opponent's strength into a weakness, and one of Bush's alleged strengths (as his people like to put out there) is his surrounding himself with supposedly strong women, thus creating a "nanny shield" of protection around himself. From "Quaker Oats Guy" Mama, to dewy-eyed Condi, to Fraü Blucher Hughes, the Bush machine loves to trumpet his confidence in/dependence on these retrograde wet nurses.
This, they declare is one of his strengths.
So...God looks down, and in his infinite wisdom, sense of irony, and penchant for kicking the lead's *ss in the third act, says, "Wouldn't it be funny (apologies to the late Allen Funt) if I were to take this idiot's purported 'strength' and make it the thing which ultimately busts him in his grille? Yeah...that would be funny!"
And with a twitch of a celestial pinky, there appeared three female apparitions...
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Oh, no, it wasn't the dems. It was "Beauty" killed the Beast.
Funnier still, is how each of those fists-to-the-face Bush has taken from the three sisters of the whup-*ss convent came while the ignorant little sh*t was on vacation in Crawford.
Schiavo--he flies back to scawl a shaky, DT'ed "X" on legislation to suck up to the christofascists and winds up getting himself crucified.
Sheehan--he hides out in a hay-bale fort reading old copies of "Grit" to get his news while occasionally peering out and wincing at her still being outside there.
Katrina--hung out at Crawford an extra coupla days falling off Segways, leaving bits of skin on bike-trail rocks and clearing brush--copy and pasted from a computer at Pixar while a Great American city drowned.
It was from there that Rove's legendary ‘Math” got all fucked up with the subtrahends, polynomials, postulates and integers colliding, and fusing and fracturing all over the blackboard. The polls got Herve Villechaize on a drunken-crawl low, and have stayed there. A Democratic, but still brush-clearing whipped
