The “Bitter” End

A Nap...Or Something Seems Necessary Here. For Her. For All Of Us.


It was almost a month ago when the lower right side of my jaw turned against me and played LAPD on my nerve endings. It was during the height of what was deemed “Bittergate”, in which Senator Barack Obama while at a San Francisco fundraiser sparked a national “conversation” with these now infamous words:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or anti-pathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I was in the midst of writing a post on the whole brouhaha when the tooth fairy got ahold of some bad acid and spaced out in my mouth with a shotgun, but this is what I was working on at the time:

While this was a private function with its words not meant for general consumption, the age we live in is what historians may well call years from now “The Peek-a-boo-isticeine Era”, where nothing one wishes to remain clandestine or for one audience alone ever would. Be the recorder friend or foe, expect that your words and actions will be recorded somehow—especially on the campaign trail, as found out to the ultimate of dismay by former Virginia Senator George Allen via his infamous “Macaca” statement.

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What Obama said, is something that many wonks and think-tank babies have postulated for years. Senator Clinton herself used even more brusque language to describe that demographic in 1992. Obama's near-grievious mistake was those words issuing forth from an erudite, and yes—somewhat aloof and “edumacated” Black man's mouth. It was an inartful and clunky phrasing more suited to the hash-it-out style of an academic bull session than the three-word sloganeering that so dominates American politics these days. I got what he was saying there, as did I think a lot of Americans. It is not so much that those embittered among us merely “cling” to those issues of religion, safety (guns), and national security (immigration), but the point that has been made by progressives since the Age of Reagan is that the powers-that-be who are hell-bent on looking out for their own and no one else heavily push these “third rail” issues through the media in an attempt to throw chaff into the air of debate on the things that really affect Americans.. Never mind that you can't afford to see a doctor—how 'bout those gays a' smoohcin' and a' feelin' all over each other! Yes, yes...we know we facilitated your company's shipping your gig halfway 'round the world for 40% of the compensation, but hey, the real pisser is that people want to limit your ability to buy guns that'd blow a moose's head into so much Hamburger Helper™ with a trigger squeeze of 1.75 seconds releasing fifty rounds.

When people are drowning, they will grab at whatever is close by. And if after pushing them into the sea, you throw specific things of your choosing at them to float on—not something that would actually propel them anywhere—they will desperately grab at those things too. Flag-burning. Gay marriage. Willie Horton. Threat levels. Assault weapons bans. All pushed while savings and loans failed, Habeas Corpus was mauled beyond recognition, Bin Laden went unpunished, our privacy ceased to exist and so on, and so on , and scooby-dooby-doo. People are manipulated to where they think these are the issues placed before them are the true issues of the day—not the ones that actually impact them from day to day.

Faux outrage is the true “opiate of the masses”—and this government is its sleazy -ass pusher.

But yes....Obama stumbled with this. Most folks got exactly what he meant, but to the “three word slogan” crowd, he left enough ambiguity there to where he gave his opponents a loaded gun and begged them to blast him in the grille with it—Yosemite Sam-style. Obama has a lot of Adlai Stevenson in him,—a tendency to be very “thinky, sometimes overly-professorial, and yes, sometimes annoyingly analytical. To the point where for all of his soaring rhetoric and verbal élan in-speech, there is a bit of the “I'm going to let you see me figuring this shit out 'cause it's so cool to see my gears working.” when he's just plain talking.

My move out of that rundown was this: Taking into account the mathematical situation Sen. Clinton was in electorally against him, there really is no reason why she shouldn't have tried to maximize the damage ithose words could cause him. It was a desperate time, and regardless of what camp you come down in, strictly on the political maneuvering tip, when your opponent trips and falls into a hole, you toss in snakes, rocks and raw meat so tigers dive in too. We're all adults here and I think we get how the politics game is played. As correct as the statement was, Sen. Obama found himself amending it (as it was open to being easily twisted to a slam on a demographic group) and apologizing for any misconstruement.

Bluntly, he fucked up there, albeit a petit mal fuck-up when you get right down to it. In the ensuing days there were people on the street interviews with Americans in the affected areas who agreed with his statement. Be that as it may, it scanned to many as a huge “kick me” sign taped to his crotch. And kick people did, until Rev. Wright deigned to touch down in D.C., make goofy faces, and rail away as “the pastor scorned”.

Senator Clinton made hay of that too. Again, considering her electoral position, magnaminity was not something to be expected. My father had a saying that “Sometimes in life, there's an ass-whipping or two you just have to take”. “Wright Redux” was one such ass-whipping for Obama. And the media joined in gleefully with Sen. Clinton in the “jolly stomping” as the story and the language around it was vinyl-car-seat-in-the-noonday-sun hot. For two weeks she and the media grabbed Wright by the feet and beat Obama over the head with him like he was a lead pipe used in a gang-fight.

Again. I hold no rosy-eyed view of the media, nor do I expect a mathematically-cornered candidate to have done any less than she did. This ain't beanbag.

However, as far as the media goes, at least in terms of debates, I expect at the minimum, the barest modicum of fairness. In fact—fuck fair, as screwed up as they are, I'd almost accept “Fair-esque—If you like the smell of fairness, you'll love (whispered) Fair-esque!”

The Wright thing was a feeding frenzy, and that I can understand. The shitty, “Power Rangers”-level stunt work that George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson pulled at the pre-Pennsylvania debate was a whole other smoke—laced with PCP, donkey piss and battery acid I think. I would love to tell you that what they did lowered my opinion of ABC “News” but it couldn't have. I'd crossed them off my list of reputable broadcast outlets more than a year before over their handling of the wingnut pile-on of Amanda Marcotte/Melissa McEwan/John Edwards:

“Sooo...

A talking head for the network and news division that recently hired documented racist hatemonger Glenn Beck (google Glenn Beck and Media Matters) has the gall to feign moral outrage over a liberal blogger hired by the Edwards campaign's impassioned rants?

Even as said talking head's own brother, who runs a quiet, non-bomb tossing site called "Right Wing Nut House" (!) rails at the left in far worse terms? And has also taken this "story" up as a wingnut hobby horse along with the rest of the wingnutosphere?

Well...okay. I'd love to say hypocrisy like this is the reason I no longer watch ABC, (in spite of my actually being interested in getting into "Lost" this season, and watching "Grey's Anatomy" the last two seasons) but after "Path to 9-11", the entertainment-iaztion of "Nightline", and the general right-wing tilt of the Disney-owned network, the die was set.

And I don't miss it a bit. By all means Mr. Moran, enjoy your and your network's relegation to the "I used to watch you" dustbin.

Posted by: LowerManhattanite | Feb 7, 2007 1:53:55 PM

I wrote that on the ABC website TO Terry Moran and the network, and I fucking meant it. I still have the e-mail exchanges between Steve and myself from the year before where I was telling him how things had exploded at my then-job as we were dealing with ABC and their promotion of the revisionist, jingoistic “Path To 9-11”. There was an in-company revolt with e-mails flying back and forth between divisions to the point where I found myself forced to e-mail Steve outside of my job (because the goings on were so hot internally that outside communication of it being discovered would have cost people their jobs) to brief him on the contretemps. I walked away from ABC for good that day. That walk would be proven justified months later when I read about this:

This Week with George Stephanopoulos, May 13, 2007:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings where you're out on the campaign trail, and I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: That's interesting.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your friends told "The New Yorker" magazine that the mainstream is just not ready for a fire-breathing black man so do you turn down the temperature on purpose?

That's the idiot media we're cursed with.They have their special interests and ties to this and that and they do what they do. Which is why we often do what we do here and in other places in our blogroll to counterbalance all of that billion-dollar, pancaked and blow-dried stupid. All flag-pins, fancy salad greens, and fiery Reverends (of their selection, of course).

As I said downpage:

What's that old saying about “The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know”?

I know what I'm getting from the media. They play their stupid little games when the cycle gets light and gin up shit. They'll break a story down to smaller bits to create “new“ stories to fill the broadcast day and self-perpetuate their phony-baloney jobs. It's when people who should know better pick up on their slime-trail and try to sell it as spring water that I find myself wanting to scream.

And that leads us here...to something either so indescribably dumb, ridiculously ill thought-out, or worse—desperately venal— that...that I...I just have to shake my head in disbelief:

USA TODAY INTERVIEWER KATHY KELLY: How does Hillary Clinton win the nomination?


SENATOR CLINTON:Well Kathy, you know there was just an “AP” article posted that found how Senator Obama‘s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again. And how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me, and in independents I was running even with him and doing even better with Democratic leaning independents. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.

There's a pattern emerging here.”

The hothead in me wants to say “Yeah. You're right. That whole statement does indeed indicate an emerging pattern from you, ma'am.”

So, I'm gonna give Mr. Hothead a tumbler of Maker's Mark—neat—and have him chill for a few minutes as I look at this...statement.

Here is the deal. There is nothing wrong with discussing demographics and voting breakdowns. Both campaigns do so every damned day in their back rooms as they go over polling data. But when a reporter asks you “How can you win?”, and you start talking about demographics in terms of race, you'd better be Goddamned sure you can do so and finesse that language without coming off like either a.): a dog-whistling bigot, b.): an idiot just winging it off the cuff, or c.), the former and the latter combined.

Why, on God's green earth when asked the question “How can you win?”—asked ostensibly in the spirit of things looking dim and “What can you do to reverse that?”—would she start yammering about working, hard-working Americans, white Americans and whites in general shifting back to her?

There are so many awful tropes at play in that statement.

Is it a desperate call to, “come on home folks” to that group to save her candidacy?

Why the split off of “hard-working Americans” into their White sub-component?

Is that noting she has a “broader base” because of the support of “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” another call-out to Black and Latin folks that when the rubber meets the road, your votes don't really count for much?

Never mind the seeming verbal exclusion of anybody other than Whites from the rubric of being “hard working”.

Senator Clinton's biggest downstate NY African American backer, Rep. Charles Rangel (who earlier this year called Obama “absolutely stupid” over his interpretation of Clinton camp statements about MLK and LBJ;s relationship) said the following:

But some of her supporters - including Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan)— slammed the comments.

“I can't believe Sen. Clinton would say anything that dumb,” Rangel told The News as he headed to the House floor, where earlier he had embraced Obama.

Yes Charlie. She did.

And there are so many reasons why she may have said it. Unfortunately...none of them are good ones.

Perhaps she misspoke. Or spoke inartfully. Or chose her words poorly. If so, this off-the-gorge gaffe makes Obama's “Bitter” statement look like a mere stumble.I want to believe it was a misstatement, but God, it's so damned specific, what with citing an AP article and all, and the odd, dissonant hammering of the racial paradigm that I don't know HOW that statement could ever be finessed in public discussion. Private? Closed-door talk—candidate to team? Okay.

But this ham-fisted kind of Bond-villain “I-shall-explain-my-plan-to-you-and-thus-expose-myself-to-destrcution-shortly-thereafter” pronouncement does her no good—in the short and the long run. You want to explain it away as a by-product of the fatigue of a long, brutal campaign? An effect of a strategic breakdown of command and control structures iin-campaign as key message personnel are now distracted with cutting their own financial deals that don't involve the candidate? Those are possibilities. But Melissa over at Shakesville deals with it thusly:

Now, I'm not particularly interested in discussing the veracity of the argument that white, working class voters' preference for Clinton makes her a stronger candidate—though, for whatever it's worth, I quite honestly believe that the vast majority of left-leaning voters are going to get behind whoever is the nominee, and the bigots who wouldn't support Obama solely because of his race are a wash with the bigots who wouldn't support Clinton solely because of her sex. That said, I know there are people who legitimately disagree, and fine, wev.

What I am keenly interested in is Clinton's having either intentionally or unintentionally equated "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Because, you know, on one hand, it's a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness—and, on the other hand, it sounds exactly like a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't intend to imply that non-white Americans aren't hard-working, the effect is the same.

And, since the best-case scenario is the one generally used to avoid apologies, I'm going with that only to show why she still needs to apologize, anyway.

An apology is in order as this was indeed a fuck-up, whether a simple marble-mouthed, accidental verbal gaffe (kind of unlikely) or a sleep deprivation-fueled “I-thought-I was-using-my-inside-voice” screw-up. Sadly, I doubt one is forthcoming. It's late in the game and when teams are down or feeling frustrated, “flagrant fouls” are likely to occur. Sorry doesn't get said at that point in the game. It's an outgrowth of the situation at hand. It may not have been intended to injure, but you've already clotheslined the mother-fucker and sent the message to the other side, and the whole arena—those who haven't headed for the exits—know the game's situation. And I can only pray that this wasn't an intentional play to super-spike the numbers in the decidedly less-progressive West Virginia and Kentucky where she'll probably win big, just to score some “Bubba vote”-credited “garbage time” points. To cynically goose the margins to the point where she can point and claim “See! I am popular!” Leave us not venture there, please? That isn't a discussion of demographics—that's an appeal to the “Deliverance” crowd.

I mean, It's been evident for quite some time that there's a level of upset in the Clinton camp over the seeming abandonment of them by a once-faithful African American voting public. It was as late as December when pundits across America were wondering whether Obama was “Black enough” and how he'd have difficulty in poaching much of the Black vote from Clinton. And when it happened, it seemed to catch them both—the senator and the former president woefully off guard. There has been a palpable frustration in them over that new reality—and voiced loudest by her most prominent surrogate, her husband Bill. The statements spoke for themselves. And that loss of a key voting bloc identified for years with them had to hurt. We all know that. And when someone you've counted on for-ever stops “picking up the phone”, you look elsewhere for help. And maybe...just maybe you throw a dig at the abandoner to make yourself feel a a little better. You play up your replacement suitor to stem your feeling of betrayal—Hey, he/she/they want me—and to appear to the world as still being desired.

That's human nature. But it comes with a cost.

Whatever short-run gain it achieves with the “new” paramour, once word gets back to the old one, especially if the two of you still have to deal down the road...you will have a problem. Last night I went out to a meeting at a coffee spot in Brooklyn and stumbled into an open mic night. There was no “quiet policy” and people still chattered as the various poets and troubadours did their thing. I overheard a verrrrry animated conversation between four Black women ranging in age from their early thirties to mid fifties.

Having moved from talk of a project they were all working on, they lapsed into discussing Senator Clinton's statement on “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans”.

They were merciless.

There were lots of “Can you believes?...”, “Oh no, she knew exactly what she was sayings”, and worst of all “I will remember THAT shit come her next election days” bandied about.

This...is Senator Clinton's home state for the U.S. Senate where this heated discussion was going on. Now, throw that in with Rangel's angry response, and the feeling—founded or unfounded—that she has been a bit too liberal with the shiv in dealing with Sen. Obama and you have a to say the least, very disillusioned portion of a voting bloc she will desperately need for Senate re-election. It's kind of a “Black New York: Drop Dead!” kind of thing. And don't think for a second that when her Senate re-election time comes around that some enterprising opponent—either a lefty-leaning Dem upstart, or a wrench-in-the-works GOP'er won't trot those words out against her again and again and again.

Black folks in NYC are not happy with her right about now. This shit? Ain't helping out with it.

These are the wages...of bitterness.

And bitterness is an ugly thing indeed. It twists you. It curdles your soul and hardens your heart. It deadens the eyes and rots your relationships. It will drive you to say and do things that a clear-minded person wouldn't dare. Senator Obama's statement about what bitterness brings echoes like a brick ricocheting down an elevator shaft. People will cling to polarizing things as a way to express their frustrations.

I don't like the way this primary season is ending, in spite of my long-held, heartfelt desire for the damned thing to be over. There are things happening here—ugly, unseemly things that'll have a shelf life far beyond this mere blip in time. Class splits unearthed. News agencies exposed and de-legitimized. Reputation-damaging gaffes and cynical plays to people that lower you. Ugh. As a student of history and politics, I forget very little of what I've learned over the years, and I'm already wishing I could forget some of the things I've seen this year. But sadly, I won't.

I guess I'm a little bitter too. Maybe we all are. And a little broken-hearted to boot.

It was a couple of weekends ago when I was at the peak of my dental suffering when the blogospheric story broke about Senator Clinton's meeting with fundraisers where she was imploring their deep-pocketed help. This was never meant to be heard publicly (I think) but when it got out I was very, very down about it. I wasn't alone. From Jane at FireDogLake:

The Huffington Post has Hillary Clinton on tape disparaging Barack Obama and his support from MoveOn, saying that the organization "didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan.”

I've tried to stay out of the pie fights of late, but as a long-term defender of MoveOn and other progressive organizations -- this is completely unacceptable.

"MoveOn opposed military action in Afghanistan" is a Republican talking point, articulated specifically and purposefully by Karl Rove:

Rove went on to say that conservatives wanted to "unleash the might and power" of the military against the Taliban in Afghanistan, while liberals wanted to submit petitions. He cited a petition he said was backed by MoveOn.org that called for "moderation and restraint" in responding to the attacks.

And via The Huffington Post:

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

------------------------------------------

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama]—which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with.”

Jane was very hurt by that, namely seeing the senator use a Rovian lie—an actual Rovian lie—as a stalking horse for grubbing campaign dough. And In spite of my pain, I was too when I read it.

Yet, I wanted to understand. Give the benefit of the doubt because not doing so would've sent me deeper into despair. Sen. Clinton's being angry about MoveOn's “endorsement” I could understand somewhat. Even her holding a grudge against them. It was in many ways yet another abandonment.

That's human nature again—especially when one considers the irony of how MoveOn came to be.

The group was originally called “Censure and Move On”—founded as a bulwark against the evils of Ken Starr's vendetta against Bill Clinton.

What was the knife in my gut was her slandering a progressive FORCE with a straight-out-of-Karl-Rove's-mouth lie. Her bitter, (yes, bitter) “how could they”-ish line about MoveOn “not supporting Afghan intervention” was a lie that Rove himself has repeatedly used to pillory the group. His quote in the blockquote a little ways up verfies that.

And the salt water on that knife to the gut was her trotting that shpiel out to fat cats at the fund-raiser as some sort of “I'm not with them!” bona fides. It got me to wondering in one of my more lucid moments, “just who those financiers were and WHY SUCH A ROVIAN SENTIMENT WOULD BE FIGURED TO RESONATE WITH THEM.” I didn't want to be lucid after thinking on that for too long. So I popped a vicodin and went off to the land of nod, where anger and bitterness could not find me. But before I did, I remembered something that FDL's Jane, who has been decidedly, refreshingly fair about the whole primary season said last fall to Elizabeth Edwards:

“So here’s the rule. You never repeat right wing talking points to attack your own, ever. You never enter that echo chamber as a participant. Ever. You never give them a hammer to beat the left with. Just. Don’t. Do. It.”

I remember thinking on her “Just. Don't. Do. It.” as sleep enveloped me.

And when I awoke, I was angry again. And yes...bitter. That event was pretty much the nadir for me. All that has come since is just after-the-coma cock-punches. Wright Redux. Hard-workin' Whites. Sillyfuck debates.

There is no joy in Mudville.

Maybe soon. But right now? As Phase One of “Campaign '08” draws to an end? No. I see it a bit here, but even moreso at other stops I used to love frequenting around blogtopia. There is rancor. There is angriness. And smoldering semi-loads of just-dumped / mixed-in-with-old-mountains of bitterness. A teeming, ever-growing landfill of bitterness.

It needs to stop. But how?

Well, whenever I'm feeling a bit down, I've found that music tends to help me through, and one of this blog's longtime regulars—DocBopper e-mails me regularly with this message in every missive's footer:

“The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing”---James Brown

The man's got a point. I ain't talkin' 'bout a tired-ass “kum-ba-ya” circle of Cowsills-like blended tenors, sopranos and baritones swaying choirfully...I mean an ass-shaking, soulful on-the-two-and-four get down. For release. To get back “on the beat”, if you will, as we gear up for “Phase Two”. As “The Godfatrher” himself said:

People, people
We got to get over
Before we go under...

Hey, country
Didn't say what you meant
Just changed
Brand new funky President.

Who sure as hell ain't the bearings-challenged John McCain.



Dance it out, ya'll.

There's more...

Dear Paul Begala and Chris Matthews...

Thank you.

Thank you for your clarity.

Your unvarnished truthfulness.

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 .

From Chris Matthews last month:

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?

And this from the revelatory Paul Begala during the heat of last last night's rollercoaster primary coverage:

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...



...where Medgar lay.

There's more...

I Am Your Riot-starter!

Singin' 'Bout “Hot Hate In The Summertime...”

It would appear that a certain OxyContin-ed, sex-touring, um...poorly-circulated someone's, ohhhh I dunno...just a wee bit desperate over November's GOP electoral prospects, wouldn't you say?

I mean, when you're hoping for public mayhem to spark “the base” to vote for your party's dishwater-tepid standard-bearer, wellllll...

Via ABC-7 Qenver:

Rush Limbaugh 'Dreaming' Of Riots In Denver

Talk Show Host Wants America To See Actions Of 'Far Left'

DENVER— Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments that appear to call for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don't elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday's radio broadcast. He then went on to say that's the best thing that could happen to the country.

--------------------------------------------

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh's comments, when he later stated, “I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver.”

Meanwhile, Melissa at Shakesville picks up Rush's flop-sweat and feces-stained ball, and spikes it in his hate-swollen face

All Spin Zone's Richard Blair wonders. given that inciting riot is a crime, "How is it that a GOP attack dog frontman can call for riots in the streets of Denver during the Democratic National Convention, and not be currently residing in a jail cell someplace?" while Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper says, "Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings." That's polite.

--------------------------------------------

That guy is so full of shit he's like a walking compost heap. It's amazing there aren't glorious sunflowers growing out of every orifice.

Rush's Armageddonal wet dream hits on a couple of pathologies at once.

One: He's still pretty damned wan insofar as his ability to conjure any warmth for the-candidate-who-lucked-out-and-survived-the-GOP--primaries-and-is-now-the-de-facto-nominee and knows “the base” is equally “eh” on him as well. McCain on his own inspires about as much feel-good-ism as a four-alarm orphanage fire. So, if you don't get the hoped-for Al-Qaeda attack (and they have been hoping for another one of those pretty much since Sept. 12th 2001) that'd give wingnuts that something to rally around like a flaming...something, you “pray” for the next best thing—civil fucking unrest. It's the old “law n' order” fallback used by the likes of Tricky Dick Nixon, Reagan and scores of governors and legislators (NY's Rudy Giuliani and Nelson Rockefeller come to mind immediately)—except, in the case of Nixon and Reagan (while California governor), they exploited recent, actual instances of America's streets flaming up. Limbaugh is cravenly and desperately staking his guy's election on a prayer for riots, mayhem and death that aren't anywhere near happening. But it's what's needed to insure a republican victory, right?

That should tell you everything you need to know about the GOP's power-brokers internal thinking about their '08 electoral chances.

There's nothing good to say about John McCain as a candidate. And because of that—there being no tangible positive there to move folks to the polls to pull the lever for him, an external catalyst is needed. Riots, motherfucker! Flames and busted glass. Spectres of sweaty, dusky hordes carting appliances down smoke-filled thoroughfares get wingnuts harder than times in '29, as fear—the thing that drives them 24-7—could be the one thing that brings enough of them out of their Bush-malaise hidey-holes to vote.

But make no mistake, Rush isn't just talking about things going buck-willy in Denver alone. This pharmaceutically-addled demagogue will take shit blowing up anywhere he can get it—preferably with people of color at the center of the unrest. It's why he's also been stoking the fires over the anger about the Sean Bell verdict. Anything that gets melanin-filled people angry enough to be public with their anger is good-to-go for him. Because all that does is remind the most fearful and race-struck of potential voters about just what that fella from Illinois is and effectively dog-whistles—no...fucking screams like Sam Kinison “By God, you don't want one 'a them TV-stealin nigras up in th' White House, do ya?”

That's what he's/they're left with. I await the photoshop of Obama sitting in Huey Newton's wicker chair with a black leather jacket and beret. Ungowah!

And the second pathology ol' Rush is evidencing here is plain, old shit-stirring. As the GOP's candidate gives him and his listeners nothing to sing about and thus is probably a ratings drag in this election season, he has to spark interest in his show somehow. Fuck red meat—statements like his “riot prayer” is “heart-still-beating, animal-flesh-still-on-the-hoof” for those still inclined to dig on his terrestrial radio hate-schtick. As the faithful busy themselves with other things, conceding a GOP loss, they're not listening to him, not fattening his ratings, and thus, not fattening his coffers. Silly, crazy shit like “the riot prayer” is also said to bring the drifting, lapsed Rushistas back to the ray-did-io and back into the white-sheeted and sooty-handed “activist” fold. Does the bastard believe what he's saying? Yes. But he also realizes that spicing it up with fifty extra shakes of coarse-ground crazy is good for the bottom line as well. Cha-ching, ditto-heads. Fill his ample pockets with barely-earned coin while you scratch your head to figure how to afford enough gas to get back and forth to work this month.

Cha-ching, bitches,

And that's what it's about ya'll. Fear and greed. The two things that have ended every great society of the past that dared take them from the bosom to the blood within. I'd like to say that I'm amazed that people who are the first to squawk about the hot words of folks who are actually being done wrong, have no problem and are rarely censured for their thermonuclear words as they sup at the table of privilege. Fallwell. Robertson. And al the rest, right down to ol' Rushie. I'd love to say I'm amazed...but I'm not. And neither should you be. Remember, this is a place where there are hundreds of thousands, if not several million people who rationalize the acts of Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph as being based on some sort of response to oppression and tyranny.

But I'm glad to see that Limbaugh isn't actually inciting anything with his words. He's merely “praying” I mean...if a blogger were to “pray” that Rush be involved in a fiery auto wreck, with his broken body sprawled alongside the road with flames licking at his paralyzed form, and said blogger was to come upon him there and opt to toss stray kindling, papers and the contents of a vodka bottle on Rush rather than urinate on him to douse the blaze, what would be wrong with that? It would simply be a harmless prayer, right? Not an active desire that a terrible, painful fate befall him or anything. What's the harm in a heartfelt prayer?

We should all “pray” for Rush. Not incite anything, mind you.

Just...pray

Bow your head...and pray on something for the man.

Can't hurt.

P.S. Click on the “album” art at the top of the post for extra song-title goodness!)

There's more...

SCI FI Author Larry Niven Wants to Kill Hispanics?

Over at SadlyNo I read the sad tale of how Fatherland Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, (Science and Technology Directorate, or Операции и технологии Директорат in the original Russian.) is putting people on a panel discussion who belong to a group called SMEGMA SIGMA. Which is a group of mentally deranged people like author Larry Niven, "Ringworld", presumably they arrived at the discussion on a itty bitty bus. Here is what our fellow American Niven had to suggest to DHS.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

Politically incorrect? Jerry Pournelle thinks he was being PC. Jer... He is advocated letting people die, sick people. In order to strengthen the fatherland, sound familiar?

SIGMA is the brainchild of Arlan Andrews Sr., who noted that many of the writers have advanced degrees, have jobs with the government or have been hired to advise the government in the past.

Wait, backup... Somebody took these lunatics advice in the past? You have to be kidding, oh wait, I forgot for a second, it's the Bush administration.

Makes me think of Nivens' law: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Too true Larry, too true.

There's more...

“You can have your Tiger Woods, we've got Senator McCain."

“I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.”—Ty Webb, from Caddyshack

My friends...they simply can not help themselves.

Via The Hotline:

What's With The Tiger Woods Comparisons?

Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia introduced John McCain at Vets for Freedom Rally today with this unfortunate line, linking Barack Obama with golfer Tiger Woods. But not in a good way:

“Fortunately, I have the privilege, the distinct privilege today, of introducing a true American hero who defies political norms in Washington,” Bellavia said. “Sen. John McCain has spent a lifetime in service to our nation. His example of unwavering courage is a model for every American. Rest assured that men like Senator McCain will be the goal and the men that my two young boys will emulate and admire. You can have your Tiger Woods, we've got Senator McCain.”

This one is funny. More pathetic than funny, actually—but still pretty funny, albeit in that-idiot-aggressively-backflipping-and-nunchucking-himself-unconscious-on-YouTube kind of way. Take a gander at it. Marvel at its ridge-browed Neandertahalism, and just try not to rush to your medicine cabinet for mercurochrome and gauze for the poor idiot's asphalt-scraped knuckles.



Now, when I first saw the video of Mr. Bellavia's revealing little grump-fest, I was taken aback a little by his marble-mouthed inability to join subject and predicate to form cogent sentences. But of course, the real payoff here is his improvised, bitter swipe at something or rather, someone who obviously annoys him—namely an opponent of his beloved Senator John McCain.

The comparative he oddly uses to name-check this opponent is for some reason the golfer Tiger Woods, who the last time I checked wasn't running for President, but instead about to run a field of duffers off the greens and fairways of Augusta National this weekend at The Masters. I liked the “Ooooooooh, Davey said a naughty”! reaction from the assembled crowd of like-minded dolts. It kind of spoke volumes, as a lot of Bellavia's statement did itself. The usage of Tiger Woods as some sort of shorthand for an “undesirable” for his two unfortunately fathered boys to emulate, ehhhh..doesn't quite jell as anything other than a racially tinged dig.

Last I recall, Tiger Woods is someone you'd probably have to consider one of the squeaky-cleanest modern-day athletes strapping it on these days. He's ridiculously successful, a good citizen, no scandals, a family man and no so-called publicly-known vices to speak of. I mean...you'd probably have to be a golf buff to know who I'm talking about here, but the in-sport inverse of Woods' impeccability would have to be the drunken, drugging, gambling, spouse-battling, human-train wreck of a PGA long-driver John Daly—who has never met a vice he didn't like save for those he hasn't tried.

As the talk was all about Presidential politics and who was good and who was bad from Sgt. Bellavia, it just struck me that when he went for the polar opposite to his beloved, but dangerously flawed John McCain he didn't opt to pick a person you'd have some difficulty in admiring like the very compromised Daly.

He instead for some reason sees Tiger Woods as McCain's bête noire, arch-rival and uh...well, bugaboo.

(Author's pause for laughter)

Okay, I'm back. Here's the deal—Bellavia, regardless of his service to his country boasts all the speaking ability of a drunken, head-whipped sloth. You can see that on the tape. But he's got piss-poor little guile too, and that lack of guile is what utterly exposes him as an unreformed, dull-witted race-baiter. He thought himself slick by going to an allegory to describe McCain's nominal general election opponent Senator Obama, but totally muffed the play with an obvious splash of racist idiocy.

I personally like the silly venom in his “You can have”. “We've got” coupling. It tells a multi-leveled story, actually.

You see, the usage of Woods as a slang shorthand for Barack Obama speaks to a certain racial paranoia of the part of folks like Bellavia. I was in Augusta, Georgia the weekend that Tiger Woods officially burst onto golf's lily-white scene in 1997. I wasn't there for the tournament mind you, but rather, I was visiting a significant other who was performing in town. I found myself at trip's end at Bush Field, the city's airport waiting for my flight home, aimlessly walking from my gate to the oddly crowded bar and back. I finally stopped at the bar's fringe—I couldn't get in it from the huge crowd packing the place—and noticed what everyone was looking at, namely the final round of the Masters tournament just a stone's throw away in which first-year PGA pro Tiger Woods was ripping through the course like Caddyshack's Ty Webb on a fast-drip adrenaline and espresso I.V.. There was a 99% White crowd in that airport bar, and all you could hear over the hushed announcer tones from the TV were grunted “God-damns”, “Fucks”, and an almost percussive slamming down of beer bottles and cheap glass tumblers at every dead-solid-perfect drive and seemingly magnetically-guided putt.

No slurs...just a palpable displeasure with what was transpiring. There was a lot of head-shaking and napkin-tossing. And I must say, more than a few almost hissed “Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievables”. I intentionally lingered there amongst that grumpy assemblage, maybe courting trouble, but mostly getting a secondary visual dig in at that unreasonably angry bunch. There were two Black people within thirty feet of that ball of anger. Me, and a guy I thought was an airport employee as he had a uniform-ish-looking outfit on and was leaned against a trash bin. He and I made eye contact for a moment and there was a knowing smile. He was lingering too, a fellow “chip in the cookie” like me. He shook his head with a silent laugh as Woods trod the green grass back to the clubhouse, post-massacre, and the man pulled his wheeled bag hidden by the bin and walked down to his gate...with a big “Callaway Golf” logo on the back of his windbreaker. Golf fan? Duffer? I don't know what he was exactly, but he was getting as much enjoyment out of the first wave of the “sea change” we had just witnessed. I turned back to the crowd and couldn't help but notice their noticing us. There was an odd silence amongst them as they looked on. An almost collective audible and visual sigh from them looking at us, clearly translating as an exasperated “Oh great...we'll have to hear about this shit from 'them' forever about this.”

Woods' win there and his subsequent hyper-dominance and revolutionizing of the game is something that many look at with a level of awe...and a lot of others scowl at with barely-concealed disgust. He effectively took a game—golf—away from the demographic group that pretty much owned it outright since its inception 600 years ago.

He's in the process of re-writing the record book, and doing so at a younger age and with a more punishing dominance than his predecessors. Those facts have upset many of his peers, with requests that courses be “Tiger-proofed” with new and more challenging layouts, spiteful talk of how the game's popularity is in jeopardy due to Woods' “Colossus amongst men” skewing of the sport's talent curve (“If no one else is gonna win—why watch?”), and even outright verbal denigration from...well, there's no other word to use but “haters”.

Exhibit A in the “hater” camp, South African PGA player Rory Sabbatini on Tiger Woods—and note the sniffy tone of his logic-defying, truth-ignoring disses. Why would the under-talented, egomaniacal South African go there? While sipping at an adult beverage let me say, “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to. ”

“The funny thing is after watching [Woods] play on Sunday,” Sabbatini said today of the final round at Wachovia, “I think he's more beatable than ever. I think there's a few fortuitous occasions out there that really changed the round for him. And realizing that gives me even more confidence to go in and play with him on Sunday again.”

Sabbatini continued: “I've seen Tiger when he hits the ball well. And I've seen Tiger when there is not a facet of his game that you look at and you -- you're not amazed. But I think Sunday he struggled out there. He had to battle for that win. And I think that made me realize, you know, he is -- I'd say as beatable as ever.”

---------------------------------------------

Before the final round of last week's Wachovia Championship, Sabbatini, the third-round leader by one, all but begged for a Sunday pairing with Woods. Sabbatini got his wish, then blew the lead and lost to Woods by four.

This otherwise no-name hacker's claim to fame are those statements. He doesn't have a single major tour victory to his credit, so it stands to reason that maybe, just maybe in comparison to Woods, he comes up just a tad short in the talent department. Yet. he went sooooooooo far out of his way to slag a beyond-all-doubt better. Why? As they used to say in those old commercials during “Wide World Of Sports” “You make the call.”. By the by, as Woods mauled him on the back nine holes to take the tournament by four strokes, a spectator asked a seething Sabbatini as he walked to the 10th tee, “Still think Tiger's beatable?”

An enraged Sabbatini had the spectator forcibly removed by course security.

And then we have Exhibit B in the “racist concern troll” camp, Golf Network commentator Kelly Tilghman on Woods dominance and how to curtail it. I'm sure you remember this one.

(PGA golfer Nick) Faldo and Tilghman were discussing young players who could challenge the world’s No. 1 player toward the end of Friday’s broadcast at Kapalua when Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while.”

“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman replied.

The root of the hate for Woods by peers, commentators and so-called fans of the game is rooted in a special strain of racism—the desperate and clutchy, “How dare you enter and rule my last bastion of power?” variety to be precise. Tennis' barrier-shattering Williams sisters got the same treatment from status-challenged “protetctors” of the status quo.

Which leads us back to Bellavia, McCain ans Obama.

Bellavia's ham-fisted “speech” most certainly was rally-'round-the-cross stupid for that segment of voters of the mulleted, “Fuck yeah!” school of political action. His conflating of Obama and Woods—two very different people—as interchangeable half-breed “Negroes Of Prominence” is typical racist diminishment and disrespect. We do all look alike you know. Mo'nique and Halle Berry always make it a point not to show up at the same award shows lest there be confusion by people running name chyrons in the control room. And my God! the millions of times former Rep. Julian Bond has been mistaken for Chicago Bulls forward Ben Wallace is something we just chuckle at during the secret, twice-monthly every-Black-person-in-America-on-the-phone-at-once conference calls.

But the underlying zing from the mumbling, GOP-backing sergeant is that aforementioned fear-and jealousy based dissing that Tiger Woods is the constant recipient of. When you think about it, Bellavia's stuttering blather smacks of that same “How dare you enter and rule my last bastion of power?”-speak—I mean, this is the Presidency we're talking about here—not too many last bastions beyond there. And as Woods' emergence represented some serious applecart upsetting, just the consideration of an Obama's ascending to the Presidency flips the whole damned orchard upside-down.

'Oh no. This is the one thing you will not take take from us. not this. NOT the fucking Presidency'.

It was a punk-ass scream for help that he thought was a silent dog whistle.

Well...woof-woof, mother-fucker.

And then of course he handed the stage over to his man McCain, who smiled his usual stiff, soul-sold smile and embraced his carny-barking “hype” man without thinking for so much as an instant that there might have been something amiss in that introduction.

'Ah my friend, my friend...thank you for that. Really. Straight talk time! Heh! Eh...what pointy hats and flaming crosses?'

We've seen that same kind of thing from John McCain before. His “tendency” to play the Sgt. Schultz “I know nothing...no-thing!” card before when confronted with an over-zealous, mouthy supporter while on the trail.

Senator Clinton was the butt of a sexist slam at the hands of a McCain supporter late last year when at a Q&A coffee klatsch for the fosssilized fascist, he was asked point-blank, “How do we beat the bitch?”, and never said a mumbling word about the caustic rip. He just kept a' doddering along, laughing with his audience of haters as usual.

It is always a hoot to see what a little desperation...and a little fear that there might be someone who simply changes the optics of what a leader might be will push the weak-minded to blurt out. And that's exactly what this verbal diarrhea is all about.

“Tiger”. “The Bitch”.

“Some People Just Don't Belong.”

Oh. That last quote? It's from an old movie poster. Here it is.



Show me someone who roots for Ted Knight's “Judge Smails” in that movie and I'll show you a heartless, GOP-loving loser who blindly backs the stodgy, status-quo, and “Smail-ish” John McCain

Sergeant Bellavia, don't you have a boat to go christen for your stick-in-the-ass political “dad” or something?

There's more...

McCain Against MLK Holiday

In 1983 John McCain voted against allowing the national holiday, Martin Luther King day. What kind of racist panderer would be against this holiday? Dr King was a selfless pacifist who was assassinated for his positions. If we couple this with McCain's support of the KKK Confederate flag, it's clear this guy is... well, let's just say he may not have an open mind about race. I won't say he is a racist fuck. cuz that might be libel or something.

Now, that he needs support from African Americans and he isn't just pandering to lily white Arizona, he travels down to Memphis to "honor" Dr. Kings sacrifice and is roundly booed. Is anyone buying John McSame's bullshit?

There's more...

“Lucky”

The Not-So-Soft Bigotry Of Spite-Tainted Expectations.

The last 48 hours has been a deep and serious exercise in restraint, and within that restraint—reflection for me over one particular story that blew up in the news like a grenade tossed into a parade-filled porta-potty. No, it wasn't the Spitzer/prostitution/career self-immolation. The words came easily on that. There was enough distance where I could with little emotional investment just comment on the facts as they spooled out. Hypocrisy. Sex.. Flameout. Skullduggery. There was the emotional angle of its hometown implications for me, but the story itself didn't hit personally “close to home”. The story that did hit personally “close to home”...moved me to step back and really...well, what to say?

Let's begin with this, shall we?

“When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.”

Dame Edith Sitwell, British Poet

And taking that clear-eyed statement to heart, let us move to the following recent, patience-trying episode of awfulness...

Geraldine Ferraro (on Barack Obama's campaign):

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh-kay....

I believe most of you are aware of this...this statement of hers, and the dizzyingly tone-deaf follow-ups to it—by Ms. Ferraro and a rightfully solar plexus-punched and defensive Clinton campaign. But for the record, let's lay those secondary statements out—naked and cold on the autopsy table, if you will.:

Geraldine Ferraro defended her remarks and went even further in another interview with the Daily Breeze, where Ferraro's original comments appeared. This time SHE claimed to be the victim of racism and said, “Sexism is a bigger problem.” ...

But far from backing off from her initial remark, Ferraro defended it and elaborated on it.

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,' Ferraro said. 'Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?”...

-----------------------------------------------

We agreed then. We agree today. Supporters from both campaigns will get overzealous. Senator Clinton today reiterated that when asked about Geraldine Ferraro’s recent comments:

“I do not agree with that and you know it’s regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides say things that veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this focused on the issues. That’s what this campaign should be about.

Senator Obama’s campaign staff seems to have forgotten his pledge. We (The Clinton campaign) have not. And, we reject these false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of a primary.

And finally, as the pan heated and the oil caught fire and flames licked at the kitchen wall...the ugly denouement:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Geraldine Ferraro stepped down Wednesday from an honorary post in Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign amid a controversy regarding her comments that Barack Obama wouldn't be succeeding in the presidential race if he weren't black.

Ferraro notified Clinton by letter Wednesday that she would no longer serve on Clinton's finance committee as "Honorary New York Leadership Council Chair."

---------------------------------------------

In a letter to Clinton, first reported by CNN, Ferraro says: "Dear Hillary, I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what's at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen. Thank you for everything you've done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren. You have my deep admiration and respect, Gerry."

--------------------------------------------

NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones reports that Clinton had to deal with the race issue almost exclusively at last night's black newspaper conference. She was asked about Geraldine Ferraro's remarks and whether she had done enough to make sure those involved in her campaign knew that such comments were not acceptable. “Well, I said yesterday that I rejected what she said, and I certainly do repudiate it and regret deeply that, you know, it was said. Obviously, she doesn't speak for the campaign. She doesn't speak for any of my positions and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee,” Clinton said, before going on to say that both she and Obama had had to remind supporters and staffers that this primary campaign should be about the issues.

“We are aware that this happens, but we are particularly sensitive to it because of the nature of this campaign and who each of is. We do stand against it. We repudiate it,” she said. “I think that given the intensity of feelings surrounding this campaign, we have been able to manage it well. It's not been common but when it happens, we both have spoken out and taken appropriate action.”

When asked afterwards if she was satisfied with Clinton's answer, Barbara Reynolds, the NNPA columnist who asked the question said she had hoped for more. “Sometimes I don't think that she can feel the racial insensitivity like we can. This is why they don't get it. It's not that she's a bad person, but when people say things, you know, she can't get it, because she doesn't feel like we feel and I think some of us are very sensitive anyway, because of how we have lived and sometimes these things can fall on her ears differently. But she should rely on her black staff people to immediately tell her, 'Oh this is horrible,' because she should have come out immediately and demanded that Geraldine Ferraro disassociate herself from the campaign.”

Okay. Let's do this.

As a New Yorker, I am quite familiar with Ms. Ferraro. I remember her tenure in Congress well as she was part of that wonderful wave of woman polticos that came out of New York City in the late sixties through the seventies. The groundbreaking Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Liz Holtzman were her congressional forerunners and Ferraro acquitted herself well during her time on the hill. I remember her VP run verrrry well as I worked for a woman who knew Ms. Ferraro and her family and found myself in her old neighborhood off Deepdene Road in Queens. It was a madhouse in those pre-cable days with reporters darting to and fro amongst the dark Tudor-style homes in Kew Gardens.

I remember the media's hubbub around her candidacy and the buzz over her being the first woman to realistically have a chance at that high a level of executive office. It was by and large, fawning press. The country was coming off the pitched and heavily-covered battles of the women's movement of the seventies and her being elevated to that position on the Democratic ticket was looked on as a good thing.

It was a good thing.

Was her being a woman a factor in her being put in that position?

It probably was, what with the tenor of the time all about us saying as Jack Nicholson did in “Batman”, “Let's broaden our minds!”

Many of us did. I voted for her without compunction.

But alas, not enough voters did. It was the age of Reagan, and America was in the midst of a bender with Ronnie at the bar, handing out shot after shot after shot until the country eventually walked to it's collective car and plowed into the abutment called post-Reagan reality. During that drunken haze though, we—America laughed with alcohol-vapored breath in Mondale's and Ferraro's faces for their daring to ask for the keys to get us home safely. To this day, that run is looked at historically as a bad joke, with Reagan holding the seltzer bottle and Mondale and Ferraro taking the blast in the mug, time after time.

“Hok-yok-yok.”

It was cruel. They got smoked electorally. The story was all about the ineffectual Mondale and the woman who Barbara Bush said made her think of the “word that rhymes with rich”. Barbara Bush whose husband G.H.W. Bush had said of Ferraro after their lone debate “I kicked a little ass”. Ferraro would say twenty years later that she could understand Mrs. Bush's words as she was merely “protecting her husband”. It's amazing how...understanding people can be when they want to be.

I think that understanding was at best, superficial, and at worst—an absolute load of self-serving bullshit.

She, Ms. Ferraro is still seething. I think about the country's basic dismissal of her in 1984 and the subsequent trail-out of her political career comet. She would run for Senate in New York and lose in primary. She would then be appointed to an ambassadorship by President Bill Clinton, but from there—politics was ultimately over for her. She would enter private life after another fated run at the Senate, losing to Chuck Schumer in the primary. There would be seats on corporate boards and oddly, a spot on Fox News as an analyst. Six years in congress, two as an ambassador. All in all, a rather brief career considering her status in Democratic circles. I don't think it's a stretch to say that there's a lot of “could have been” floating about her, along with a lingering and unfair aroma of “novelty”.

Flash forward to 2008. The Hillary Clinton candidacy in which Ferraro has invested a lot of time and energy and perhaps deep personal empathy is not going as well as envisioned a year ago. The reason? Beyond the serious strategic errors, her Democratic opponent is savvy, has a “gift of gab”, a boatload of charisma, money and an outstanding on-the-ground and behind-the-scenes team. There was, up until a few months ago an air of...“inevitability” to the Clinton candidacy, and now...a markedly different air. That of bad math, doomsday scenarios and time and opportunity growing short.

Frustration.

Senator Clinton has made a few eyebrow-lifting remarks in the heat of the campaign, as has Mr. Clinton. Plans go awry, emotions get hot, people lash out—for sake of release, and in the employ of strategy. Some have allowed a narrow corridor for campaign statements, while others have allowed a wider berth. I have allowed the latter in my consideration of campaign season rhetoric because of the unique nature of this run. It's longer, more heavily covered and analyzed and maybe more fraught with emotion considering we're coming off the eight years of Bush-Horror. I have let a lot slide. I said the following about the Clinton camp's questionable-at-best “South Carolina” strategy:

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.

Frustration.

Geraldine Ferraro's words though—crudely bolting on some clunky, imagined “privilege” or leg-up to one's being a Black man in America (as opposed to a White woman) are also born of “frustration”. Except her frustration seems a deep-rooted one drawing not only from Senator Clinton's campaign travails, but also from an underground lake of venom and bitterness over how her own big electoral moment in the sun went so horribly awry. There seemed a decidedly personal edge to her knifing words. Considering what she went through humiliation-wise in that smackdown of a run in '84, I think some bitterness is understandable. But the differences in her run and his are stark enough that you think she'd be savvy enough to see them. She was chosen, he chose to run. Re-active versus pro-active. And so on, and so on, and so on...

But...

At it's core—what she said wasn't merely bitter or fucked-up.

It was condescending. It was spiteful. It was odious. And it smacked of the angry beneficiary-as-victim, Alan Bakke-ish, bigoted double-speak we've all come to mock.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.“

Really? And what of our present C-plus, reknowned half-wit-in-chief? Or the grinning, mentally-addled man who bested her and Mondale in 1984. What of those poor, ill-advantaged White male unfortunates?

“And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.“

I was out late on Tuesday night and missed much of the primary news. When I got in, I saw that Obama had won Mississippi handily. It was later that night when I heard Ferraro's remarks, and I took them in the context of the night's events. The idea of a Black man winning a presidential primary in Mississippi over a White woman is frankly stunning to me and many people of color. Especially when you factor in that state's lethally loaded racial history. When I thought of ‘lucky” Black men that night, this young man came to mind.

If you don't know him, his name is Emmitt Till. He was 14 years old in 1955 when he “recklessly eyeballed” a White woman in the town of Money, Mississippi and for that was brutally beaten, repatedly shot and then had a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire just before his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River. It is a seminal event in the mid-fifties tipping point in the American Civil Rights movement and is a touchstone of the shared history of African Americans in the second half of the 20th Century. I've written on it here before and its implications. The infamous photo of Till's horrifically damaged body I will not show here. For those who wish to see that, here is the link. Till's mother fought for an open-casket funeral so that America could see what racism had done to her son. It's not for the weak-stomached.

This was not a “lucky” Black boy.

Neither was this man.

Medgar Evers dropped out of high school during WW2 and enlisted and served in Europe at 17. He returned to America and found himself having to fight for the right to vote in his native Mississippi. He would go to college and then work as an NAACP field secretary in his home state, specifically battling for voting rights in that job when he was shot down on his front porch by a rifle bullet fired by violent local segregationists.

I could run pictures and bios of James Byrd, Michael Griffith, Yusuf Hawkins and any number of the same of the hundreds of anonymous Black men lynched, burned and slaughtered in this country in the last 100 years because they were unlucky enough to be who they were. I'd like to think that a reasonably intelligent person like Ms. Ferraro is aware of America's legacy on this—a tape still sadly unspooling—and if she is, it makes you wonder that much more about the wellspring of her patently inane and insane remarks.

“Lucky?”

I must have missed the big rabbit-foot handout at “BMOC” (Black Men On the Charge) headquarters. Was I lucky back when my old boss T. used to drive me the four blocks to the Union Turnpike subway station instead of letting me walk from her home on Deepdene Road after dark—where Ms. Ferraro lived, because she was afraid of what would happen to me were I caught out on the street by toughs who didn't look like me? “Lucky?” Maybe I was. Just as “lucky” as I was a month ago when I was not-subtly accused of plagiarism by an entertainment industry exec when a piece of writing came across his desk that looked a lot like something I'd given him a year before. My piece was first, but somehow I'm the plagiarist? Of course, that second piece was sent in by a White guy I'd dealt with a few months before—a producer's assistant who'd never written anything before. But I'm the guy who has to produce evidence of provenence? “Lucky-ass me&#