Fox doesn’t seem to like Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). While Hillary’s been on their diss list for many years, they’ve got a new boy on the Presidential nominations block to smear, and they’re off to a flying start. Nice balanced fair background graphic of “Moderate Image, Liberal Record”… He went to a madrassa! He was raised as a Muslim! And he’s a smoker! And we’re going to imply that he’s a sex offender! And he’s guilty of drug felonies! Anyone might think the GOP think he’s a good candidate…
First up, “would you vote for a smoker as President?” He’s a closet smoker! You don’t see a packet in his pocket or a ciggie in his hand! It’s a secret vice! He’s a “standard issue leftist”! Let’s mention Michael Moore’s name!
Not at all discredited and indicted former Texas Congressman and GOP Minority Leader Tom DeLay (now a blogger) urges that Obama be “investigated”! DeLay says Obama is a “Marxist-Leftist”!
Self confessed “boring guy” Bill O’Reilly reveals that Obama is a cokehead!
Another subtle graphic – “Obama’s Coke Confession – Do drugs matter?”
For no discernible reason, vision of Obama supporters is shown during news reports about a convicted sex offender:
Did they mention that he’s a smoker???
He didn’t mention that he was raised as a Muslim!
Did Fox mention that he didn’t mention that he was raised as a Muslim???
It’s new news!!!
Elsewhere: More at Think Progress.
He cant dance either.
And he’s got big ears.
He’s a smoker, huh. But, but, tobacco is the white man’s drug… You’d have thought Fox could get behind that, even assuming it was any of their business.
Oh well. His last name sounds like Osama too, so it’s moot really.
He’s black. To be an American prez you need to be white, Christian, born in America, and have balls (literally).
Kim:
Just dropped my suggestion for an American Dream Team on the end of Saturday Salon thread …..
“As long as we do it on issues and not personally I’m fine with it”!!
From O’Reilly. Right after he’s been trying to call Obama a coke-head. Jesus.
Excellent vid spread, Kim. Unless Obama takes the swiftboaters head on and pronto, he’s finished in the Big League. W’s got the oxygen for the next few days. I give Obama till the weekend to nix this slander before his bang nomination becomes a wimper. Let’s see if he’s got the bottle.
Obama may not have attended a “Madrassa” school, but he is unelectable regardless. Disregard his blackness – can anyone raised as a Muslim get elected the US of A in the current climate? Of course bloody not. Google “Obama” and “Muslim” to get a good picture of how the right wing noise machine is going to attack Obama. He’ll be constantly attacked for “hiding his extremist Muslim past.”
And yes, his name sounds like “Osama” and his middle name is Hussein. Of course that’s superficial and has nothing to do with his qualities as a candidate. Voters are superficial, haven’t you noticed.
The Democrats have a notorious habit of self-destructing, and if the only two big hats in the primary race are Hillary and Obama, the press corp should nickname them “Unelectable” and “Unelectable-er.”
The poll numbers on whether Americans would be prepared to elect a female and/or a black candidate have moved considerably over the last decade, as the Condi for Prez boosters pointed out. In fact, it’s interesting that comparatively little is being made of race and gender with regard to Obama and Clinton.
Obama proved himself very electable in Illinois.
I’m with Enemy Combatant – he’s got an opportunity to punch back but it should be quickly. Let’s have a version of JFK’s Ministers’ address speech.
The bizarre thing about starting the campaign a year before the primaries might be that the oppo research crew have fired their shots far too early.
Normally I’d find that sort of faux political analysis amusing but the rank stupidity has left me dumbfounded.
Piss of then Shaun. Go and squirt a tree somewhere else.
Obama proved himself very electable in Illinois.
By his own confession he’s apostate bloody Muslim. Winning a Senate election is nothing compared to surviving the scrutiny of a presidential election. Vermont has a self-proclaimed democratic socialist as a senator. All the right wing noise machine has to do is portray Obama and the Democrats as “not like us”, as “in league with Muslims”, and social identity theory will take care of the rest.
The poll numbers on whether Americans would be prepared to elect a female and/or a black candidate have moved considerably over the last decade
I have no doubt that Americans are prepared to elect a female and/or a black candidate. I just believe that there is a snowball’s chance in hell that they will elect these particular female and black candidates.
According to a poll performed by Pew associates in 2002, 38 percent of Americans would not vote for a “well qualified” Muslim for president. 10 percent wouldn’t vote for a Jew, and 8 percent for a Catholic. The only group less popular is atheists, for whom fully half of the electorate won’t vote for them.
You can bet that the noise machine will soon have the electorate convinced that Obama is a closet Muslim. Even I wonder about the sincerity of Obama’s conversion of convenience, so you can bet how he’ll be received in the Bible Belt.
ffs Henry what are you on about?
CNN actually visit the school Obama attended rather than the preferable FOUX outrage and Snopes chimes in as well.
I don’t doubt that it’s possible these could bite (look at the Swift Boats nonsense with Kerry), but I think that it’s a bit pre-emptive to write Obama off here. He went to a Muslim school when he was six, for gods sake, before going to a Christian school. It’s such a stretch, and Obama is so good on the stump, that I think he’ll have little trouble dealing with this tripe on the campaign trail.
Kerry fell over in 2004 because he didn’t know how to respond to the Swift Boat attacks, and it brought into question his one trump card (Vote for me! I’m a war veteran!). I just can’t see that attacking someone who trades primarily on being a unifying figure (and someone as charismatic as Obama) for having gone to a Muslim school when he was six is likely to have the same effect. The drugs issue could be more of a problem, but I still think he’s likely to be able to talk his way out of it fairly effectively.
I also think that these issues will be of most concern to the Obama campaign in the Democratic primary, where they’re probably less likely to hurt him. If he gets the nomination and he’s smart, he’ll choose a popular, centrist Southern governor (Warner or Richardson most probably – both of these two are far more popular and useful as VP candidates than Edwards was as a southerner in 2004) as his running mate, and this could very well offset the qualms of some of the voters who might be swayed by the above nonsense.
“According to a poll performed by Pew associates in 2002, 38 percent of Americans would not vote for a “well qualifiedâ€? Muslim for president.”
The year after 9/11, it’s a wonder the number was as small as 38 percent.
Times have changed. The Iraq debacle means the voters won’t show the same obeisance to the verities if Fox News.
“so you can bet how he’ll be received in the Bible Belt.”
Probably badly. But he doesn’t need to win all 50 states.
But it’s early days. He might crash and burn for any number of reasons unrelated to his middle name.
Brilliant post, Kim.
What an extraordinary smear campaign.
If only he was running against Rudolph Hitler, that would be a clash worth betting on.
apparently, it wasn’t a clinton camp leak, nor was it a muslim school http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/224517,CST-NWS-sweet23.article
So I guess we wait for the retraction from Fox…
Well despite the fact that he can’t dance and the sheer impossibility of anyone who’s an ex-boozehound cokehead ever occupying the Oval Office, Kim’s post raises a more fundamental point, and that’s the narrative that about to be spun about the major contenders. And remember, facts don’t matter.
The punditorship is definitely having problems getting to grips with Obama, but the line on Hillary is already well-developed.
The original report about Obama being raised as a Muslim at a “madrassa” in Jakarta (he must be a terrorist sleeper!) was originally published in the Washington Times – owned by the loony Moonies. The story was attributed to sources “connected to” Hillary’s campaign (What a bitch! Will she stop at nothing on her ruthless ascent to power?).
The facts are that as a child, Obama spent four years in Indonesia with his step-father, a non-practicing Muslim, and his mother.
Between ages 6 and 8, Obama attended a local Muslim school in Jakarta; after that, he was enrolled in a Roman Catholic school.
But this didn’t stop the slurs on both the Obama and Hillary campaigns being smeared across the Fox Network and possibly other outlets.
Even at this great distance Ms Ove from the National People’s Daily was quick to repeat the lie: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/coverington/index.php/theaustralian/comments/hillarys_in_and_in_to_win/
On the Hillary side we had Ackwit over at the Terror pushing this pile of frogshit today: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/el_hillarys_politics_of_delusion/
Yes, years of digging by Republican hacks into false allegations spread by Republican hacks, and a three year investigation into Whitewater by Puritan nutcase Ken Starr couldn’t uncover anything, so let’s give it another airing shall we?
So, the narratives to watch out for (apart from those so thoughtfully compiled by Kim and sublime cowgirl are:
Obama: He claims to be a Christian. He did drugs when young. Is he really black?
Hillary: Sure, she wants to have a conversation. That’s because she can personally suck people in. In reality she another ambitious(!) Clinton(!) whose appearances are scripted(!). She’s a ruthless robot, people! She may even have had people KILLED!
That’s on the money, Christine.
Is Ms Ove angling for a spot on a Fox program?
Mark:
The early start to the US presidential campaign just might be because Bush and Cheney’s resignations – and impeachments? – are getting closer.
Rebecca:
The blame for John Kerry’s delayed and soft response to the attacks by renegade – and possibly well-paid – war veterans can probably be laid right on those faceless armchair experts and arcade-gamers pretending to be Dems political strategists,
Kerry’s big mistake was in not exposing and sacking these party backroom boys in mid-campaign for their stupid advise (there would have been no problem replacing them immediately). A risky move admittedly but one that would have created the impression that he was a man with real cojones, a man with real leadership and not afraid to take tough decisions right on the spot. He would not even had to respond to the “Swift Boat” stooges, ignoring them and getting on with his election campaign would have been a loud enough reply. Neither Barack nor Hilary would be so kind to anyone involved with their campaign who gave them such disasterous advice.
Okay, call me a Monday morning quarterback if you like ,
Actually I’m surprised that the Hilary campaign hasn’t taken the opposite tack – that as an “apostate Muslim” he could not deal with Muslim states (we all know the sharia penalty for apostasy). It’s a charge that won’t hurt him with Republican voters (who tend to want to nuke the lot except those selling cheap oil) but may resonate with those Dem voters who like to think of themselves as sophisticated on foreign policy.
They may yet do that, of course – publicly point to his apostasy as disqualifying him for the presidency (framing it, of course, as an “issues” rather than “personality” question) while privately spreading rumours that he’s not apostate at all. The Clintons aren’t usually above Rove-like tactics, even if their final goals are a bit less despicable.
Graham:
You’re a Monday morning quarterback.
In the unlikely event that Bush/Cheney are impeached, Speaker of the House gets the gig as provided for in Constitootion.
This impeachment talk is coming from I don’t know where. It’s insane. What “high crimes and misdemeanors” are they supposed to have committed? What investigations are underway? Is there a clamour in Congress to launch impeachment proceedings?
The answers are none, none, and no. Good grief. After the trivial, highly partisan, and ultimately unsuccessful impeachment proceedings against Clinton nobody should be going within a million miles of this.
On the Swift Boat matter, I have no idea whether he lost because of the attacks, or because he was an imperious long-winded bore.
Obama’s a talent for the future. I’ve got the chicken entrails and puppy-guts laid before me and they tell me his star will arc and fade after demonstrating a singular lack of experience in knife fighting.
Clinton/Edwards ‘08.
Derrida, can’t you read? This nonsense about Obama’s campaign had nothing to do with Hillary.
So have you guys actually watched Fox or do you like to pretend through You Tube sound bytes they are the only channel bias and stupid journalism?
O’Reilly isn’t a far right nut anyway. He’s just an old fuddy duddy. At least they put Mancow on now sometimes.
The fact of the matter is the guests, not the hosts are the overly political, unpleasant personalities. For example, Ann Coulter and some of the former prosecutors who appear on van Susteren.
All Obama has to do is advocate moderate tax custs for all, personal responsibility and how Bush has fumbled with the war on terror and he can nix any “railroading” that arises.
You’re right Mark. Apart from Fox, stupid journalism permeates not only the Washington press corps but (horror!) the pages of august journals which should know better like the Washington Post and the NY Times.
But I think you’re wrong about it being the guests as the “unpleasant personalities.” Psychopaths like Ann Coulter (“liberals are worse than wrong; they are traitors out to destroy the American way of life”) are wheeled out to fill just such a role, and given carte-blanche to make any ridiculous, criminal libel they like. These “claims” are, often as not, then dutifully recycled as news.
Coulter’s been on the cover of Time magazine for crying out loud.
Is it any wonder that in this environment the Daily Show and the Colbert Report appear as voices of sanity and reason?
Of coure this nonsense hasn’t come from Hilary, Christine – yet. I’m simply expressing surprise that they haven’t already grabbed it and an expectation that they will do so in future
PS: a tad more politeness might be in order
OK on the politeness thing, but what’s this “apostate Muslim” stuff?
Christine – Initially brought up a Muslim (albeit a non-practicing one), he now says he’s a Christian. That, in Islamic law, makes him an apostate – a renegade. The Koranic penalty for apostasy is death.
Now I think even the Iranians are not so literal that they would let that affect negotiations over war and peace with the US, but I’m saying Hilary is likely to claim otherwise. All while encouraging rumours of the opposite – that he is a Manchurian Candidate.
Why would Hillary claim it when the Fox crowd are going to do the work for her?
If you could sell the public the idea that you were a Wanted Outlaw in I-ran and I-raq, then you’d be a shoo-in.
i like your blog miss kim. you know, you can’t spell quagmire without i r a q….
more seriously, why can;t the dems mount a serious challenge – they always fall down with limp, half baked alternatives and the american people have been so cowed and scared into submission that they still prefer decisive half baked lies to indecision. cathc me offline if you like – p
Christine Keeler:
As you said about John Kerry
True enough and that certainly didn’t help his chances of getting elected. (If the ticket had been the other way, Edwards for President; Kerry for VP, it would have been a Democrat landslide, IMHO). But as I said, neither Hilary nor Barack would have allowed themselves to get bushwhacked by a handful of renegade veterans as did Kerry.
Of course President Pelosi would get the gig; that’s the way the Yanks do things.
Surely you don’t imagine Bush and Cheney could ever get the chop for what has happened in Iraq? Much as they deserve it, nobody in the U.S. is ever going to delight America’s enemies by doing that. No! Never! Never! Never! The more honourable, safer, swifter and more certain course is to hit them both for domestic naughtiness and apple-pinching ….. for which there might be a bit more evidence than anything that consumed so much of Bill Clinton’s time. Then again, now that there are thousands of Americans who saw their buddies die on miltary service because of political bungling, there is another traditional American way of changing the president …. about which we shall not speak, shall we?.
Eh, so what, so there’s a smear campaign. A basic Darwinian rite of passage for a presidential comer; all it proves is that somebody’s flying monkeys are doing the job they’re paid for. If Obama can’t handle Fox news saying a few naughty things, what’ll he do when the Chinese and the Iranians come knocking? Kerry couldn’t get over that simple hurdle, and it was telling about what a schmoe he was.
Besides, these kind of crude smears are just a mirror image of the equally superficial gushing that got Obama into the limelight in the first place. OMG! He’s a black politician who isn’t an operator like Sharpton and Jackson, or a cartoon character like Maxine Waters! Save us, Barack, with your multi-culti combination of street mojo and mad crazy Harvard Law skillz! Isn’t that just as silly?
The guy is well-spoken and he projects a certain basic strength of character, which is a relief, and is probably more than what Kerry could do. On the other hand he’s had a very limited political career in terms of meaningful points scored. His claim to fame is that he made a big speech where he sincerely wished that things could be nicer than they are at the moment. Well I’m just fainting with relief that the cavalry has arrived. Interesting that his Senate victory was in such weird circumstances, where he basically defeated a last-minute substitute candidate in the formidable person of Alan Keyes, the hardest-working most luckless guy in American politics since W.J. Bryan. I wish I could of seen the Obama-Keyes debates, woulda been pretty interesting.
In terms of his inexperience relative to the staggering bumbling of Bush, I’m reminded of that great old exchange from Henry James…
“The man has no achievements. What has he ever done?”
“What has he done? Well, he has not done anything that has had to be *undone*…”
Still, he’s got promise, and it’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with. This could just be a trial run for a later more serious campaign down the road; after all, demographics will increasingly favor him as time goes by. Is America ready for a black president? Hell, in 12 years’ time we’ll have a president who can’t even speak English…
…thought you already do
“thought you already do”
Well, there IS that, isn’t there.
Still and all…
“Captain! We’re picking up a banana cream pie on the radar! It’s sailing across the Pacific from a distance of over 2,000 miles, and holding steady! Should we say we saw it coming?”
Good point about the smear campaigns jpz. The guy who wrote the novel which ‘Wag The Dog’ was based on made that point brillantly in his last book ‘The Librarian’ where the Prez is deliberately goaded into losing his temper during a Presidental debate so it can be spun that if he can’t handle that, then how can handle the real bad guys.
And yeah Obama really seems to have risen without trace. As for Hilary, well I reckon she’s got more balls than either Dubya or Bill but would probably polarise the place as much as Bush has done.
Though the majority of yanks now seem to be uniting around at least one issue.
Also the New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, has thrown his Dude Ranch stetson into the ring.
I’m hoping JEB puts his hand up too. That would be a satirists and cartoonists dream. “Vote Bush. Third Time Lucky!”
But ultimately whoever becomes the next Oval One from whichever party will still be utterly enmeshed in vested interests of one sort or another and faced with a right steaming Augean Stables from which the horses have well and truly bolted.
Maybe its time the States considered dissolving into six or seven different countries. No one there seems very happy being united.
“Should we say we saw it coming?â€?
“Let’s wait until Condi gets round to reading the briefing memo first.”
Nakakov and j-p-z:
Of course she would polarize the place. Well. as I said elsewhere, if Hilary gets elected, as soon as she gets her hands on that funny briefcase with all the lights and switches ….. and checks out the winds forecasts for the next few days, she would not hesitate to “unleash h*ll” on any regime that is foolish enough to really upset her …. which is something Kaiser George would dither over…. and she would not send any coming-ready-or-not messages for months beforehand either.
It’s interesting Graham that in John Birmingham’s alt-history war trilogy he postulates a future global nation-based jihad clash where Hillary turned out to be a very ruthless and effective wartime President – to the point where the USN even named a CVN class carrier after her, something they’d never do for her husband.
Boadicea, Catherine the Great, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Maggie never had much problems unleashing the dogs of war.
I wouldn’t mess with any of them or Hillary even if they couldn’t summon up a cavalry charge or call down an airstrike on my head.
And if you can squeeze a pumpkin through your vagina and wrangle a bunch of sugar-crazed seven year olds, dealing with a war cabinent should be a piece of cake.
Clinton/Edwards ‘08
Winfrey/Stewart ‘08
“America needs a good cathartic cry and a good sharp belly laugh. Vote for the smart empathetic Black one and the funny truthful Jewish one. Unlike WASPs, we get how information and opinion really moves around in the 21st century. Plus we’re both self-made millionaires, living the American dream. Not to mention the State of the Union address would finally really rate.”
Hmm, perhaps a bit long for a bumper sticker slogan. How about then:
“Oprah ‘n’ Jon: You know it could be much much worse.”
Kim
Get with the program. Obama is a two primaries screamer. Rupes is firmly in Hillary’s camp.
I have always maintained that the first Black US president will be a Republican.
Gore/Obama ‘08!
I reckon JG is right – and probably the first woman too. Same reason the post-Keynesian economic reform was undertaken by the ALP. Makes the folks feel more comfortable.
“the first Black US president will be a Republican.”
Warren Harding?
But I can see where you’re going here. It’s the “only Nixon can recognise China” gambit.
I just look forward to a 21st century US President who’s not just a dogpaddling scion of the crumbling Northeast establishment frantically battening onto paranoid, pointlessly greedy and geo-politically confused South West oil and defence combines.
It’s more than about time America’s real wealth generating oligarchies now – the ones who drive the US’ exports through leveraging IP – hired and placed a reasonably competent account exec in the Oval Office.
Either Edwards or Romney would probably most fit the position description here. It’s been a very exciting time for America lately and it’s stayed up way past its bedtime. A return to normalcy (“Hello Warren”) under a bland centrist technocrat is probably what’s called for now. Of course like a Xanax it’ll wear off eventually but the long term is never on your mind when you pop one is it?
You mean like an iPres?
Steve Jobs as the Perot of 2008?
“You mean like an iPres?”
You iNailed it iDarling. Wish I’d thought of that one. ‘cept it should be spelt iPrez and everyone should be able to download policies into iPrez for $1.69. Getting your finger on the shuttle wheel will of course cost rather more.
“Steve Jobs as the Perot of 2008?”
I really don’t think he’d accept the cut in pay and power.
Also Bush may not have conspired to wreck his daughter’s wedding…
Two words: Norden bombsight.
They fix everything.
Is The Last Superpower running a candidate in the GOP primary?
Yes Mark, as a matter of fact they are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIRT7HWEXnA
Heh!
I do think the last US Prez to really use the office and not be used by those who put him there was FDR.
Nowadays America’s too big, crazy, whacky and wilding to have one single person truly take the wheel anymore.
Look at poor old Dubya – a former affable frat boy hustler with a pretty shrewd political gladhanding mind reduced to a haggard, incoherent marionette with strings frantically tangled up by an increasingly panicky cabal who are starting now to realise they’ve utterly and completely outgamed themselves.
At least under the Clinton Adminstration, someone read a pop-science book about chaos theory and spread the meme in the Whitehouse Mess.
And certain sections of the Republican Party are still going apeshit about him more than sixty years later.
Sidney Blumenthal has an interesting take on the Bushies – they’re incarnating the obsessive GOP undo FDR’s legacy thing. Rove, apparently, has been quite explicit about it.
The GOP wants to undo FDR’s legacy? Obviously not the bit where he created and handed off the American Empire and the burgeoning national security state to his successors.
I say make the gom jabbar a requirement for entering the primaries, and cull some of these knuckleheads that way. Of course, it’d practically ensure a Hilary presidency, but it’d be a small price to pay for starting a useful tradition!
Nope, the social security bit.
But j_p_z, who would play the Bene Gesserit role?
“Nope, the social security bit.”
Marky Mark, you’re never gonna carve out a niche for yerself as a leftwing 21st century funky Hitch if you assume your interlocuters need the bleedin’ obvious explained to them. Go straight for the high ground, morally, intellectually and historical and pop culture reference-wise and let those that wanna take you down scramble up there first. Besides it’s much easier shooting downhill than up.
“But j_p_z, who would play the Bene Gesserit role?”
Dunno but I imagine George Soros would have funded the Institute from whence those witches hailed. And nothing wrong with that either. At least, unlike Richard Mellon Scaife, Georgie got rich through his own hard work.
In fact it’s interesting to note that many of the richest people in the world under 55 are now out there turning themselves into very well funded, completely autocratic and rather zany NGOs.
Eg: if ten years ago, someone told you a bloke selling books through a computer would have his own space program, you’d have gone “bullshit”.
Even Robert “The Man Who Sold The Moon” Heinlein would have blanched at that bit of blue sky extrapolation.
And it’s gonna get even whackier once the next generation of “You saw me nude on You Tube” billionaires from around the planet picks up steam and starts messing with global capital, data and attitude flows.
Quite forgotten the original topic now. Oh yes, “the spice must flow”.
“But who would play the Bene Gesserit?”
Well, in an ideal world we’d summon back from the dead Dee Dee Ramone and John Coltrane (who both after all knew a bit about both truth and pointy things), and then maybe add Elzie Segar and Carole Lombard for pure fun. But I think nowadays, a credible panel of cryptic Wise Ones could be put together consisting of say, Clint Eastwood, Mary J. Blige, Angelina Jolie, Ornette Coleman, Thomas Pynchon, and a couple of the guys from Los Lobos. With Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine acting in an ‘of counsel’ capacity.
ChristineKeeler:
Cinton/Edwards ?
Now that is an interesting call …… but what do you do with Barack Obama?
iPrez?
Haven’t they already got iDiot , iNcompetent or iNdecisive in that job? (Oh for pete’s sake, somebody show him how to change the batteries before he hits the “Surge” button again)
j-p-z:
Your Wise Ones make more sense that what’s there at the moment
Obama’s going to need some time to recover after the GOP slowly tortures him with switchblades and finishes him off with paper-cuts. He’ll keep.
All true. The puppy-guts told me.
I nominate the boards of Phillip Morris, BAT and the rest of the Big Five as latter-day Bene Gesserit. They’ve got it all: a talent for Jesuitical argument, historical dependence on the social control of a drug, behind-the-scenes political power and superhuman abilities to change other people’s minds. Also, they’re an all-female secret society with thousands of years of collective memory. Right?
Alternatively, once the South American slum gangs and narcotráficos are brought in from the cold as part of an industrialised, regulated part of the marginal State and the medical economy (circa 2015 I reckon), they could be in it too. Sure, the Democrats can reach out to organised labor and to the grassroots, and the Republicans the top end of town and everyone who’s had their brain eaten by Christ, but which Party is going to be able to better deal with the M-13?
It’s all over for Hillary. Ms Ove has told me so http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21123624-7583,00.html
You heard it here first folks: Hillary Rodham Clinton is Bill Clinton’s wife.
“You heard it here first folks: Hillary Rodham Clinton is Bill Clinton’s wife.”
Reminds me of an old joke (delete me if you’ve heard this one already)…
Bill and Hilary are driving through some rural back country, and they stop at a gas station. The service attendant starts wiping their windshield, and suddenly he looks in the car and says, ‘Well I’ll be! Hilary? How you been, girl?’ Turns out Hilary and the station attendant were high school sweet-hearts, and so they have a friendly re-union chat.
As they’re driving away, Bill says, “Just think, Hil. If you had married that guy instead of me, you’d be working in a gas station right now.”
Hilary says, “No, schmuck. If I’d married him, *he* would have been president.”
Oldie but a goodie.
I should have pointed out that I’m surprised that HC’s relentless robotic campaign death-machine hasn’t picked up on the Constitutional limit on Clintons prior to this. Seems to have been a bit of an oversight.
“Oldie but a goodie.”
Okay, this one’s even worse. (no politix connection, though.)
A guy is coming home from work. He’s tired, hungry, annoyed. On his way up to the front door, he nearly steps on a snail. “Fucking snail.” He picks it up, and hurls it down the street with all his might.
Twelve years go by. The guy is sitting at home one day, when there’s a knock at the door. It’s the snail.
The snail says, “What the fuck was *that* about?”
The vexed question of whether Obama is really black:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/22/obama/
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/01/23/race_in_america/
“The vexed question of whether Obama is really black…”
Yup, uh-huh, you *know* there’s gonna be *that*. God help anyone who reads the English-speaking press for the foreseeable future, if Obama has any legs as a candidate. We will all have to wade through acre after acre of bloviating about ‘race’ and ‘blackness’ and what Obama ‘means’ and so forth for years to come. Some will be interesting, like a bunch of the paragraphs in Mark’s links; and the rest will be gaseous enough to form a second Crab Nebula when it finally condenses, if it ever does.
On a side note, though, the smug subliminal assumptions by pundits of some essential stratum of indelible ‘racism’ (the most egregiously and frequently misused word in all of present political discourse) of American whites is, well, pretty breathtakingly silly. The professional “black” American political reading of the “white” American political mind is still the stuff of a Richard Pryor routine; one of the sharp, funny ones from the early 70s, like ‘White Man on Acid’ to be sure, but comical and cartoonish all the same. Meantime the mainstream black political establishment of the Jesse-and-Al roadshow variety remains as myopic and pathological as it’s ever been. Again, not without plenty of practical and historical grounds, to be sure; but still. What high-school student government would elect the Association of Chronically Abused, Emotionally Damaged Kids to head all the key prom-planning slots? Might as well just call off the prom for this year. That’s one of at least the side reasons why Obama, say, or Jamaican-descended Colin Powell, gets a leg up over the dreams of a President Chuck D; the other reasons I’m sure are well beyond my tea-leaf-reading capacity.
The most amazing thing about the US presidency has been that in a nation of close to 300 million people, the presidential vote boils down to a choice between these pairs of turkeys:
Bush vs. Gore
Bush vs. Kerry
(blank) vs. Clinton or Obama
.. and Jesus wept.
“bloviating about ‘race’…”
Yoiks, see what I mean? They’ve already got *me* doing it, too…
I don’t think this is a sidenote j_p_z, it’s right in the mayor’s office.
The test of indelibility is whether a mark withstands determined attempts to erase it.
Now that raises three questions:
1. Was there a deep and pervasive mark of racism in the first place.
2. If so, has it been largely erased?
3. If it hasn’t been largely erased, is it because the erasers haven’t tried hard enough?
Now there is little doubt that the first reflex in American public discourse is to treat race as the independent variable. And the popular media do little to challenge that supposition.
And there is no doubt that images of race are quite plastic. A racist in 2007 may hold opposite opinions about the Other from those held in 1907 and still be accounted a racist.
Yet it is also true that certain prejudices and stereotypes remain quite static over time.
It is difficult, but not impossible, to overcome those habits of mind. But the task is made no easier by its reiteration and elaboration in public discourse. In the popular media this discourse has been formularised into a virtual liturgy — a substitute for independent and critical thought.
But on the other hand, about 95% of Blacks do vote Democrat. That’s a higher strike rate than even the percentage of Saab owners who voted for McGovern in 1972.
So race must mean something important.
Your all on drugs!a black in the Whitehouse? ho,ho, ho,not in a thousand years.If the Democrats nominate Obama,oh forget it.
“The test of indelibility is whether a mark withstands determined attempts to erase it.”
This is mere playing with words, in a sort of quasi-Scholastic fashion: you have isolated a word I used in casual illustration and now run with it literally. I could have used other more precise expressions, but it would have taken up too much space. In other words here, you’re looking at the finger, not at the moon.
“Now there is little doubt that the first reflex in American public discourse is to treat race as the independent variable.”
I can’t accept that as a ‘doubtless’ conclusion, sorry. But it’s probably the case that ‘race’ simply doesn’t/didn’t/won’t mean the same things, politically or ontologically, in America as elsewhere. Or perhaps it’s the case that America, because of its reach and influence, has fooled other, very different peoples, into thinking that its own bug-eyed attitudes about ‘race’ are universal, when of course they aren’t. But even still: look at all the hair-splitting Obama himself, an odd prodigy, has already inspired in Mark’s links. In any event it’s all far too complex to summarize that way; knot after knot after Gordian knot. A tentative tangling of tendrils, as Vonnegut once humorously said about something else entirely.
“A racist in 2007 may hold opposite opinions about the Other from those held in 1907 and still be accounted a racist. Yet it is also true that certain prejudices and stereotypes remain quite static over time.”
Basically, I’m afraid I don’t accept any of your major premises as categorically ‘true.’ It would take far too long to explain why, and besides, my reasons would not necessarily lie along the same axes as those you’ve used to assert this.
“In the popular media [a] discourse has been formularised into a virtual liturgy — a substitute for independent and critical thought.”
Well, I can certainly agree with *that* one… with a few reservations. But in that case, really all we’re both saying is, that children playing at kindergarten should be supplied with crayons, glue, spangles, and safety scissors.
“on the other hand, about 95% of Blacks do vote Democrat…”
See my remarks above re: myopic, pathological, etc. etc.
I don’t mean that either Democrats or blacks as a whole are myopic & pathological (though plenty of both classes are, as are plenty of white GOP). I mean that a black leadership and establishment that consistently blinkers itself, narrows its choices and possibilities for both itself and its constituency, and operates within the confines of what is frankly an archaic vocabulary, has a few issues it ought to discuss with a qualified professional before it proposes credible candidates for the presidency. (Though I’d exclude Obama from that taxonomy, for the reasons discussed in Mark’s links.) In another world, you could of referred to my never-to-be-written doctoral thesis, “Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Vs. Plain Crazy Thinking in Game Theory, or: Why Would A Smart Guy Like Al Sharpton Do Something As Stupid As Play The Tawana Brawley Card? Well, Becaaaauuuse, Silly!”
“‘I limit myself, yes,’ said the dog, ‘but I’m happy.’”
– Jim Carroll & Bill Berkson
“So race must mean something important.”
So must the Ghost in Hamlet; so must the double-finale of ‘Don Giovanni’; so must that hypnotic E-chord at the beginning of the ‘Ring’. People have been arguing over what the meaning of that stuff is for centuries, and they will probably continue to, I hope. So it is with ‘race’. Myself, I have a few of my own amateur ideas about all that, but they require way too much background to get into here, and who knows, they’re probably wrong. Maybe some day I’ll start a blog on the topic, and if I do, I will be honored to welcome you to come and argue about it over there.
“Quasi”?
And much cavilling, until this:
Blacks don’t have to take notice of their traditional leadership. Other groups, coalitions and interests have a much weaker association with putative spokespeople, and more importantly a much weaker political association with each other. For example look at the voting record of US farmers or blue-collar Catholics, or white women. I bet you could think of some more.
The Black middle class grows apace in the US. Blacks have spread out across the country. Blacks have had formal electoral equality since the mid-1960s. Virtually all formal segregation has been swept away.
When these “objective” conditions changed for other groups, their political behaviour changed. This change in political behaviour reflected in some way a change in outlook and expectation.
How do you measure how “archaic” a vocabulary is? How would one recognise an “archaic” vocabulary if one were to trip over it? Hamlet is “old” but it’s never “archaic”.
There must be more compelling reasons than “myopea” and “pathology” for this.
“How do you measure how “archaicâ€? a vocabulary is?”
Well, a good start would be, by actually living in the country where the vocabulary is being used, and checking the ‘words’ being used against the reality of the ‘objects’ they purport to describe. Roll on down to a ‘no justice, no peace’ rally in NY with me some time. I’ll show you some really funny things.
Sorry, just having some fun with you there. (btw, “cavilling”?! ??! C’mon, gimme some credit, here!)
“Blacks don’t have to take notice of their traditional leadership. … The Black middle class grows apace in the US. Blacks have spread out across the country. Blacks have had formal electoral equality since the mid-1960s. Virtually all formal segregation has been swept away.”
Hey, no fair! You’re proving my argument FOR me!
Our little exchange, while interesting as always, is getting further and further away from the original point, which is to be found, if I remember right (it all seems so long ago!) in my response to a part of the Dickerson article, which is Mark’s first link. (I don’t think I ever cited the thing expressly; I’m not an academic, alas; careful scholarship will never be a deadly weapon wielded in my hands.) Or maybe it was the second link, by Kamiya? Or maybe a response to both. Anyway…
Somewhere in those two links, amid some perfectly interesting other bits of analysis, Dickerson or else the other guy asserts something like the following: whites can profitably salve their guilty ofay consciences towards “real” “black” Americans by cheering for the “non-black” or “fake-black” Obama because, whilst ‘looking’ black, he isn’t “really” black, being sired by an immigrant, not a descendant of American former slaves, and so his pseudo-black appearance lets whites off the hook because they can then seem to be not racist, though they “really” “are” still racist, and as a bonus, they still won’t have to deal with the terrifying spectre of electing a “real” black like, say, President Shaft.
While some of the internecine claims about layers of authenticity in “cultural blackness” in all this have some merit (although it would also all be glaringly fucking obvious to most people who lived in the US, so no points for originality or brilliance there), a good deal of the reading here of the ostensible “white” frame of mind is (and this was my real point) smug, shallow, out-dated, and plumb not useful. I can’t speak for *all* the whites in the US of course, because as Chris Rock used to say, I didn’t go to the last meeting. But the general trend of that line of thought is at best simplistic, and at worst (where I tend to locate it) downright daffy. My second point was in support of this: it’s possible that whites cheer on the “non-black” black candidate simply because he doesn’t grow from the arsenic-laced soil of the “real black” political establishment, which is demonstrably zany in many regards, and thus not palatable to whites for said zaniness, not because of “guilt”. Why do whites admire Colin Powell, but they don’t like Al Sharpton? Sharpton is a very smart guy and an adept political operator. But he is culturally beholden to a structure that is, as I said at the top, myopic and pathological. Powell is not. Nor is Obama. To deny this and cry ‘racism!’ is, at the very least, failing to consider all the reasonble options.
I think it’s also possible that white folks like Obama so much right now simply because he seems on the surface so much like the perfect exact opposite of George Bush, who, so I’m told, isn’t polling very strongly these days. Hmm, wonder why.
At any rate, in sum, I think both the word and the concept ‘racism’ should be handled every bit as carefully as that radioactive stuff that was used to poison that Russian spy dude in London. Dropping the word ‘racism’ around carelessly has been very detrimental lately to helpful political discourse in the US and the West at large. Although it benefits the people who want things that way. We should be smarter than that. English is a very rich language, with a lot of words, a lot of distinctions, and a lot of shades of meaning. Let’s all pretend like we care a bit more about what we mean and what we say.
Katz
I am sorry, but I am far too old to allow the sophomoric pap of “the other” to invade grown-up discussion. What may charm the undergraduate tutorial kills adult debate. Please.
No, j_p_z. that’s my argument.
Note that I said that gving primacy to race was only the “first reflex”. We begin many things on a “first reflex” and not follow through on them.
Note, also that I was talking about blacks as subject and not object, whereas in your last post you referred to blacks as object of whites’ thinking (as diverse as that may be) and not as subjects (i.e., the thinkers themselves).
However on that issue it would appear that you are in danger of committing the sin that you accuse others of, viz.:
Fair point. Racial attitudes are being redefined all the time (i.e., “plastic”). Moreover, there appears to be a general erosion of the racial attitudes that justified slavery, then Jim Crow and other forms of segregation. I agree with this generalisation.
But then, this:
It would appear to me that this statement more or less diametrically contradicts the nuanced formulation of the earlier quote. While it is most likely true that many more whites admire Colin Powell than Al Sharpton, what proof do you have that their dominant reason for disapprobating the Rev Al is because Whites believe that he is doing his black constituency no good?
It might be argued, for example, that many whites fear and despise Al Sharpton’s encouragement of a continued culture of negritude among blacks. Now it, is well known that this tension between cultural integration and cultural distinctiveness has coloured racial attitudes in the US. The debates between Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois, the writings of Richard Wright, the thought of Malcolm X are examples of this tension.
The “if only they could be more like us” argument is very recent in white attitudes to blacks. The “they can never really be like us” argument has had a much longer period of dominance.
Many blacks may understandably question just how sincere is whites’ current commitment to liberal sentiment. Perhaps these blacks are being paranoid in these suspicions. But stranger things have happened. Just ask Weimar’s Jews.
So cleaving to the Rev Al may appear to be a sensible insurance policy against possible rejection and renewed marginalisation.
Katz — The general tenor of what you’re saying partakes of much humane good sense of a perfectly solid kind, so it’d be quite churlish of me to pick apart individual pieces of ideas in order to score ‘back atcha.’ [although, trust me; there's enough places where I could!
]
The topic “Race Relations in America” is oceanic, and people of good will all want the same beneficent outcomes, but to get there, many of us differ on the details. In all of this I’m merely trying to get a handle on a few small, solid bits of coral reef in the great sea, so it’s necessary to scale down and try to say things in a certain key, for concreteness’ sake, with the awareness that they can be reasonably put in other keys, too. For all that, there are still places where I think you’re reading me sideways, but that’s not the most dreadful thing in the world.
A few specifics, as we approach the endgame of this interesting little volley… not trying to shoot back here, just trying to be clearer…
“what proof do you have that [whites'] dominant reason for disapprobating the Rev Al is because Whites believe that he is doing his black constituency no good?”
Well, ‘proof’ is a strong, big word, but you might ask, what ‘evidence’ do I have? Well, the evidence of talking to and living among people, all sorts of people, and listening to what they say with an open and non-judgmental mind. That’s not the evidence of a trained social scientist, true, but whaddaya gonna do. And ‘doing his black constituency no good’ is one of many ways to phrase the thing.
Do I believe that whites walk around wringing their hands with worry about what’s best for the black community? Of course not, that’s not really what I’m getting at. I’m getting at something a lot bigger, which is, that in the long run, the best version of ‘good’ for a community, micro or macro, is the ability to successfully lead a quiet, normal life. Whites want that for themselves, and at the end of the day, they want it for blacks, too, not out of altruism, but because they know that on some level the slogan ‘No Justice, No Peace’ is true — only, not true in the way that the Sharptonites understand it. (I might add that Al’s working definitions of ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ could do with a little rigorous Socratic enquiry, too, but that’s for another day.)
Still, it’s a sad fact of American history that on the whole, whites simply have more experience of what makes up a quiet normal life than blacks do. There’s all sorts of things you could say about that, but if this experience is frequently ignored, then it’s to the detriment of all concerned. That’s oversimplifying things, naturally, but you have to start off by saying *some*thing.
The perfect, perpetual case in point: the folly of the black establishment’s responses to the sad and unhappy cases of questionable police shootings that crop up in NY and elsewhere with such unpleasant regularity. This isn’t to say there ain’t folly enough to go around for all parties, but just trust me when I tell you that the play of forces as we so frequently see in these cases, and the spin on the ball that the black leadership habitually uses, is simply not helping, it is not best practice by a country mile, and it only makes matters worse. It does not lay the groundwork for positive, lasting long-term results. ‘The emmet’s inch, and the eagle’s mile,’ as Blake said. We want the mile, not the inch.
Your bringing up the ‘culture of negritude’ here is interesting, but it is matter for a whole thread, maybe even a whole blog, so I won’t address it here. Suffice to say there’s many different ways to put bubbles in that bathtub.
Your last point, about the practical usefulness of black political reasoning in these matters, is well taken. But the question of course is complex. I’ve been using the term ‘pathology’ with a certain amount of care; a pathology forms a natural constellation of symptoms, and its course has an organic and ’sensible’ logic. But it’s still a pathology. The term does not of course compass the whole of black political behavior by any stretch; but it’s a thing that’s there. It’s not being derisive to admit that it’s a damaged culture in some ways; a strong and resilient one in others, but it is damaged, and there’s no reason to think that damage wouldn’t express itself in understandable patterns. Put that observation into a feedback loop with white perceptions both perceived and actual, the circus ring of politics, the misuses and misunderstandings of the word ‘racism,’ and also genuine instances of racism as we find them in the world, and you have a model of what I’m talking about. It’s not a comprehensive solution to anything, not even what Stevens called ‘a momentary end/ To the complication,’ but at least it’s a start from one corner of the room.
As always it’s instructive and pleasurable to break a lance or two with you. Thanks for your thoughtful responses, and if you have more to say I look forward to it, but I think I’m pretty much tapped out on this ‘un. Cheers!
j_p_z,
I think your second-last paragraph states well the multifaceted and cross-grained issues ingrown into black/white relations in the US.
I thank you for your patience, frankness and candour.
Nabakov @ 50
That was a bloody scream, except your download price is low by about 10 to the power 6.
iCackedMyself