Does Wright Doom Obama?

I wrote my good buddy Paul Bunyan that I was concerned about the white backlash to the Wright controversy. When the general public gets wind of the worst of what Wright has said, I'm afraid it will doom Obama. Paul kind of talked me out of it. He said:

You really think it dooms him? I don't. The African American church is an intense thing, really almost inseperable from being black in america. Or at least that's what black friend of mine in grad school told me. This church was the way he found to connect to that, which he was not born in.

I think it depends on how crazy this Jeremiah Wright guy is. Hmm.. site's down...hmm...wikipedia....

I think it's okay. I was afraid of some anti-semitism, but looks like the worst is some anti-Israelism, a little Blaming-AMerica-for-9/11, and a lot of Blackness-centered theology. Here's an excerpt: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/print

"Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

Uncle Sam here again, resonding to Paul Bunyan quoting Rolling Stone (above). My thinking has expanded on the subject, mainly due to the point of placing the Black Church in the context of American freedom of religion. It got me thinking, and I wrote this while I was traveling the highways and byways of America:

As an American, I appreciate what it means to have the black church. I have actually been a big fan of some of the rhetoric of Farrakhan, and at times even dig where he's coming from. He takes care of his own, and believes in wholesomeness, speaks truth about his own people's problems, and aspires to greatness (as does Wright). His last formally racist comments were 24 years ago, and if you read them, there is the interesting distinction he makes between the “true Jews” which he respects, and the “false Jews,” which he doesn’t. Similar distinctions have been made about Christians through the millenia, and in the Bible, even by Jesus when referring to a "tepid Christianity" (most famously quoted by Dostoevski), and so anyway it’s possibly not 100% straight up Jew hating. It’s probably more complicated.

The million man march was a huge moment in our history, and Farrakhan's speech there rocked my world. I even love the way some black churches have taken aspects of Islam and connected them to black people, half-baked as it may sound to a true Muslim. It's enough truth with enough creativity that enables it to fly.Black people have had their culture ripped from them and to have a new American-style made up culture to bolt onto such a fragmented experience does make sense. But Wright and his ilk, starting with Farakkhan, broke from the Black Muslims, and focused more on roots. And what these connections to "roots" do is nothing short of transformational. Look at Muhammad Ali. Without the Black Muslims, he never would have been who he was. He could not have been the true Champion of the World, the all time greatest, as Cassius Clay. And to anticipate what Obama is gonna do when it all hits the fan about Obama and Trinity, Ali in all his name changing self creation is at its heart as American as it gets. So Trinity kind of does this same "connection with your roots" thing, only not so much with Islam as with Africa itself. Not perfectly or perfectly true, but better. But neither is the Jewish people connecting with 2000 years ago Israel entirely true. But it's true enough and it gives the identity the Jews need to survive. People need that historiocity. It's crucial. So 1) it saved Obama, and 2) it's a super American thing the way it saved him. The challenge is how not to lose a sufficiently large % of votes when people simply SEE what that Trinity website looks like. I appreciate that it's not that different than a Huckabee or a Romney. Americans have these intense churches with intense sermons that we get a lot from. But in the case of Trinity, it has a militant tone. And black people still scare white people, though the heroes of the 20th century have begun to dismantle that. But Obama offers proof that when white people mix with black people, musically, socially sexually, through fighting or sports, or even if just mixing DNA, black people win. Obama is half and half, but he's black. He is way more white then black, but because black is so much more powerful, he's still "black." America is ready for Bill Cosby, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. I doubt we will ever be ready for anger from a black presidential candidate though. So once this story gets circulated, and people feel the anger coming off the page, it will be on Obama big time to somehow let the anger out, and reassert himself as a man of peace. But from all I've seen so far, I think he'll do it.

It's 3 am and all is well

The 3 am ad literally says: do you want somebody in the white house who already knows all the world's leaders, as if being the president itself would not be enough. I really think Hilary has stopped to a new low with this ad. I think Barack should simply identify the types of situations that that call could represent (another terrorist attack, our nuclear submarine held hostage, etc., etc.) and in so doing both demonstrate his mastery of the complexities of foreign policy and show that he is capable of handling specific, not vague, scenarios.

Betsy Ross for Nader

My darling dear friend Betsy and I were IMing yesterday, and here it is folks:

[8:44:54 PM] betsy r says: victory gardens are happenign

[10:24:52 PM] betsy r says: Matt Gonzalez is running for V.P. with Ralph Nadar

10:13 PM can you imagine

10:13 PM crzy

[10:48:17 PM] Uncle Sam says: !!!

[10:50:47 PM] Uncle Sam says: how could he run against obama?

[10:55:13 PM] betsy r says: he is no race

[10:55:19 PM] betsy r says: but i still will vote nadar

[10:55:24 PM] betsy r says: i am an idealist

[10:55:30 PM] betsy r says: and want a 3rd party

[10:55:36 PM] Uncle Sam says: will you let me try to talk you out of it?

[10:55:44 PM] Uncle Sam says: not now, i mean

[10:55:52 PM] Uncle Sam says: but sometime in the next months?

[10:56:06 PM] betsy r says: :)

[10:56:08 PM] betsy r says: NO

[10:56:09 PM] betsy r says: sorry

[10:56:17 PM] Uncle Sam says: really?

[10:56:22 PM] betsy r says: i will move to belgium where there are 12 parites

[10:56:26 PM] betsy r says: or norway

[10:56:35 PM] Uncle Sam says: but you said you were voting...

[10:56:45 PM] betsy r says: i am down for porportional governing

[10:56:52 PM] betsy r says: represent the peeps

[10:56:55 PM] betsy r says: in the house

[10:57:01 PM] betsy rf says: i know it does not exist here,

[10:57:06 PM] betsy r says: but i believe in it

[10:57:14 PM] amy f says: and wil vote for those who believe in it

[11:03:58 PM] Uncle Sam says: well if you DO ever want to discuss it

[11:04:03 PM] Uncle Sam says: i'd be curious what you mean

So we'll see how much of a non-story this ends up being...

Valentine to McCain

McCain. So he's gonna be the Republican nominee for president. Well, sorry the media has misled you, but the guy actually is not such a hero. Were I to wish to identify those qualities in a John McCain that voters might need to know to accurately compare him with his rival, I might point out some of the following items about the man. He:

1) moved all over the country, admitted he never got an education

2) graduated at the very bottom of his military class at Naval Academy (894th out of 899)

3) nicknames were "Punk" and "McNasty" cuz he had a temper problem and fought all the time

4) never paid attention to details of flying an aircraft, got shot down, may have caused a major fire which consumed a bomber aircraft while screwing off

5) wrote a lame confession under duress trashing the USA, which he said he regretted ever doing

6) lived for most of his life as a super-playboy, dating strippers and trashy women, driving race cars, kind of an "I'm Mr. Flash" self-image

7) cheated extensively on his first wife, who was loyal to him while he was being tortured in the 'Nam, and left her soon as he was stateside, and only because, in his own words, "I was 40 and wanted to be 25."

8) lied to his trophy wife, the Stepford-looking Cindy, about his age (admitted doing this) to get her to marry him

Finally, he's 71, and does seem to be slowing down a bit. He might be a bit dottie. He has had skin cancer, now in remission, but it was really serious and for awhile it looked fatal or at least that he would never be able to run. He almost become Kerry's running mate. He almost left the Republican party. He helped bring about the S&L debacle. He can't raise his hands above his head. He's pro-life, pro-Iraq, pro capital punishment, anti-gay marriage, pro Bush tax cuts, and the list goes on. He cusses a lot, drinks a lot, shoots first and asks questions later, and is about as "old school" a guy as we could get. I just don't think we're going back to my old school this time. Another sort of a loser / pretty boy son and grandson of royalty. It's just too similar to W, and that's subtext will out down the stretch.

Obama needs to paint McCain as the trigger happy Dr. Strangelove that he is. He needs to make it so that America is more afraid of what McCain would do in an emergency situation than Barack.

Got two responses to this, one from Babe the Blue Ox, the other from Paul Bunyan. Paul says:

I agree, with the minor variance that I think Hillary would lose worse.

If so, then we have an interesting situation. Our fate lies in the hands of a man who has shown glimmers of decency and honesty in the past, but who kissed the ring of the godfather 8 years ago and has been raving like a madman ever since.

The money machine, the stupidity machine, the power machine--It's not meant to be fascism at first, its just rich fat guys rolling around in piles of money. It leads to fascism, terror, bankruptcy, and failure, but that's a byproduct.

Normally it would not matter so much who wins, but we need someone to stop the bleeding. To stop the Scalias and the Wolfowitzes and the David Addingtons and the Roves (Injustice, War, Torture, Deceit, respectively). There's a chance McCain might stop those things, but that chance rests on the idea that he has spent 8 years pretending to be evil in order to be president and do good. It seems a dark prospect. By the way, McCain, just today, voted against a bill to ban waterboarding. It passed the senate with 51 votes.

Babe wrote me:

On a flight from Burlington, Vt., to Warwick, R.I., on Thursday, Mr. McCain volunteered that Brooke Buchanan, his spokeswoman who was seated nearby and rolling her eyes, “has a lot of her money hidden in the Cayman Islands” and that she earned it by “dealing drugs.” Previously, Mr. McCain has identified Ms. Buchanan as “Pat Buchanan’s illegitimate daughter,” “bipolar,” “a drunk,” “someone with a lot of boyfriends” and “just out of Betty Ford.”

It is only a matter of time before some viewer, listener or reader complains — recovering addicts, for example, mental illness sufferers, or, for that matter, Pat Buchanan himself.

One of the trademarks of Mr. McCain’s rebel image has been his inability to cloak his emotions, especially anger. He has been prone to volcanic blowups over the years. And while he would hardly be the first president with a temper, Mr. McCain has been ever vigilant of late about resisting provocation.
>

So says one of those wry NY TImes campaign articles. Nobody has gotten away with this kind of humor in front of reporters since Johnson and Nixon. You gotta have very big balls to do it these days.

By the way, can somebody explain why the right-wingers hate this guy? As far as I can tell, he is as right wing as Satan, with the one single exception of stem-cell research.

South Carolina

Paul Bunyan sent me this after South Carolina.
> Watched Obama's victory (or whatever you call it) speech for South
> Carolina. Happened to catch it live. I was moved. I haven't had that
> reacation to a political speech in a long time. And it's been a long
> time since I saw a crowd for a national candidate look so into it, and
> so real. Wow.

and Paul is as big a cynic as I am. I think the only excuse not to vote for him is that it's too good to be true. But forget that. What's true is whatever we want to be true. I think this is the beginning of a new era in American Politics.

Dirty Money

Thereis a big issue being discussed in this presidential campaign, and it involves who candidates will and will not take money from.

The idea is that somehow, if you accept donations from a criminal, it rubs off on you. I think that's nuts. All you're doing if you take money from a bad guy is separate him from his money! There's no way that's why the criminal made his money illicitly to begin with, so you're not exactly supporting their life of crime. But once they got it, I say: Take it. Were I to be running, my motto would be: "I'll take money from anybody!"

Giving money is a different issue: that's where you have to screen where your energy goes. You need to vote with your dollars. But if money is energy, then why not separate money / energy from evil? If Exxon wants to give me a million bucks, I will take it.

Tit for Tat

This campaign is getting really interesting!

I love the current wrinkle, essentially amounting to whether Obama gets any play out of any response he can muster to the end of New Hampshire attacks that absolutely did hurt him.

His team did try to recoup, by pointing out that the attacks were a little bit racist, or unfair, and that got some play. But whether it translates depends on their response to Clinton's response.

Clinton responded by saying:

"I think that his story line is not accurate,” he said. “And in 15 debates, no one ever once bothered to ask Sen. Obama, ‘How can you say you were always against the war, and your judgment is better than theirs, and they were wrong to vote for that resolution which authorized force, when two years after you gave the anti-war speech in 2004, you, Sen. Obama, said you didn’t know how you would have voted on that anti-war resolution, number one, then two days later, you said there was no difference between you and President Bush on the war?’ ”

So for me now, the question is: what's Clinton talking about, and did Obama say those two things, or are they out of context? If Obama did say them, that was dumb, since it's the main thing that distinguishes him (the other two things are 1) I will talk to bad guys, and 2) I'm really going to fuck shit up and we all know it so I'm not going to say anything specific, which is what "change you can believe in" is code for.

I assume, in the Clinton quote, he's referring to the 2nd anti-war resolution, which Obama was absent for. But Clinton isn't being specific. And I'm not sure if it is that, that that makes Clinton's point that that means there's less of a difference, or how much less of a difference, between Hilary and Obama (I guess it's just going to be that for awhile: Hilary and Obama, unfair and sexist as using the female's first name and the male's last name is). But I really would be surprised to find substance behind the 2nd part of Clinton's quote, where he says the no difference thing. I just can't imagine. But again there's no reference.

Furthermore, Obama's side isn't responding so far. My feeling is that at this point they ought to. Barack (there, I used his first name) should very factually call Bill Clinton out and say what he meant in these two instances, especially if that meaning differs at all from how Clinton is portraying it. So my question is: does Barack respond?

Barack Obama's Church

I got an email from one of my right wing friends today. It said in part:

Barack Obama mentioned during his appearance with Oprah that he belongs to the Trinity Church of Christ. Below is a link to that church's web site.

Go to that site and read what is written there. This man wants to be president of the United States. On the first page of this site you will see that this congregation has a non-negotiable commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Also, notice what color you must be should you want to join.

Click here for Trinity Church of Christ web site:

www.tucc.org/about.htm

So that got me worried that all this racist stuff would come back to bite Barack. I emailed my old pal Paul Bunyan to see what he had to say, as he's pretty good at minority issues, being a giant and all (giants still don't have equal rights in this country). Paul told me the following:

Yeah that is his church, and it's a little controversial. God forbid black people get angry about anything.

This emailer is foaming at the mouth "No where is AMERICA even mentioned." In classic style.

This church is a big deal for Obama, it's how he came to religion from a non-religious childhood, and it's very heavy on black pride and as they put it, the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. There is a firebrand preacher guy at the head of it, and it's a gigantic Chicago congregation.

It's dangerous stuff in a way, and Obama has had to back off from forefronting this too much. The concept is, you can counteract 10 generations of oppression by staking a claim to prior freedom in one's land of origin. But then the Outraged Masses can say it's anti-american. And they can say it's blacks-only. And both claims are true in part, if you refuse to understand the subtleties.

It reminds me of the Pryor routine in which he goes to Africa and finds there are "no niggers," in his words. What he found there was the absence, not just of oppression of blacks by whites, but the absence of the *ghost* of oppression. It opened his eyes to the american situation. There is this bind that america is in, where the history of subjugation is always present, where a black guy is always dealing with it, either fighting it or becoming it or imagining it or wondering if he's imagining it, etc. It's as though every interaction between blacks and whites is tainted by this sin.

At the risk of saying something awful, I think one reason whites can accept Obama is that he comes from a recent immigrant black origin, not a slave-descendant family. I'm not reifying Pryor's self-hatred here, and I don't think slave-history taints black people. But it does hang over the *relationship* between black and white, and Obama is partly free from that. God help me, but I think this is what Biden was saying when he said he was "clean." The flip side is that he also seems to inhabit the african-american tradition, in his speech and manner. Much more than say, Tiger does.

But anyway, yeah, Obama belongs to this pretty radical Afro-centric Black-empowerment church, which is essentially, if not literally racially-exclusive. Plus its charismatic leader is a big mentor to him. I think there will be nothing too crazy in his theology. I only hope he stares this issue down head on, cause it could be a problem.

Who Loses To Whom

I wrote my old buddy, Babe the Blue Ox, recently, saying: Hilary loses to Huckabee or McCain in a heartbeat. But Obama can beat him.

Babe had some interesting things to say, so I share them with you here:

Huckabee---It's interesting. I fear the Christ-power, but in most ways, he's a weak candidate. I know that we have a born-again president right now, but this really is an aberration. The genius of the Bush branding strategy is that he won over %100 of the white trash evangelicals, while normal right-wingers missed the crazy christian stuff, and just saw the good-guy/frat-boy/cowboy act. The strength of Bush, such as it is, is that he truly is an empty vessel. He just never says anything, and his deepest bloody-jesus talk is all in code. Some people see him as hard and vengeful, some as charming and fun, some as a holy-blood-guzzling Christian, and all that and barricading black neighborhoods in Florida added up to just enough votes.

But with Huckabee, its all right out front and center. He and his whole family are white-trash monsters. He's a crazy preacher who talks to god from the podium. His son is a glock-toting dog-killer, and looks like he may really be a sociopath.

I mean this is real christian stuff, cult of death and sexual inversion. This is not Alkie George grabbing the phony born-again lifeline cause it's the only way to save his Yankee Yalie ass. There's a lot of people who will be seriously repulsed by hick like Huckabee. Yeah I know Bill was a charming musician outsider hick from Arkansas, but I don't think that lighting strikes twice

Still, Hillary could lose to anybody. Her campaign must have the same moles in it that Kerry's did. I don't know if she's fucking up in oversight, or if it's her idea, but her campaign is earning a reputation as petty, hyper-manipulative and vicious. I want to like her. I'm trying. But I don't. I hate her.

Please let us have us Obama.

Local Living Economies

Areas that Barack should emphasize that we haven’t heard about: The need for reporting on products, a green label, more transparency with ingredients, methods of manufacture. That the idea of local is what can fight the obesity epidemic. Corporations want us to blow up. But he promotes local living economies, Saves America.

Post Plays Racist Card

There was a story in the Post recently where it was very hard to tell if the Post was saying that Obama was a Muslim or saying that there was a rumor that he was a Muslim. The Editor, a guy named Hamilton (!), responded in a way that struck me as quite lame. There is not a single statement in the followup to the article that takes any ownership of what the Post did. You don't really need to read the Post story to get it from the following, but Politico did a good job of following up. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7193.html

The paper’s intention, Hamilton said, was “to write a story about the kind of rumors that are out there,” and added that “saying something is a rumor is not saying it’s true.”

“We didn’t say it was a false rumor,” Hamilton added. “To me, a rumor is not true.”

In the Post article, the madrassa story is described as “an early rumor,” rather than a “false report,” which is how CNN summed it up in Jan. 2007.

“I don’t mean to be immune to criticism,” Hamilton said. “Obviously we did something that we should have been careful about.”

However, he added, “Not every imperfect story generates this type of controversy.”

Accepting internal criticism, Hamilton said that the Post “is a big family, and families have lots of disagreements.”

“We’re not a hierarchical organization that promotes message discipline,” he added.

Each of these sentences is empty. And the premise - that simply to say something is a rumor is to say it is false - is surely weak. If this kind of thinking or explanation from an editor at one of the world's biggest newspapers is not ingenuine, it is at least unforgiveably naïve. The guy sounds like a putz.

Affirmative Action

Obama should say: "I hear people saying I don't deserve being president because I haven't served in Washington as long as some of my opponents. I reiterate: I view this, and I think the American people are ready to view this, as a competitive advantage at this stage in the game. And if you still want to say that I don't have the experiencee, then I would only refer you to my opponent's experience, and say that Affirmative Action is a better reason to vote for somebody than nepotism!

I'll Talk to the Bad Guys

People say Barack isn’t clear on his policy statements. I think he is. Who else has said, “I’ll talk to the bad guys.” That’s earth-shakingly clear. So how is Barack going to talk to the bad guys? The vision is of a big round table. America will admit these people in in some fashion and they can move around freely. Even “our enemies” insofar as we host the UN. Muslims of the world, come to us, tell us your problems. He preps us as a people, says: Hey America. We’re going to have a live media event. One week long, at the UN, representatives from any organization that has as a grievance will be admitted and will be safe. We are going to hear them out and enter into a dialog.

Spiritual Activation

Normally when there's a good story, I just link to it. But this is so good, I am posting it here. I've been to a lot of "spiritual leadership retreats" where the leaders of the progressive or environmental or spiritual activism communities talk about how they wish they, or "the left," or "the movement" could claim the mantle of God from the Republicans et al. Well, read this little story people, and tell me what you think. I think it portends big things for our country, not to mention Obama's candidacy.

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.

"I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic party to not cede values and faith to any one party," Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

"I think that what you're seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away," he said.

Obama noted that he was pleased leaders in the evangelical community like T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren were beginning to discuss social justice issues like AIDS and poverty in ways evangelicals were not doing before.

"I think that's a healthy thing, that we're not putting people in boxes, that everybody is out there trying to figure out how do we live right and how do we create a stronger America," Obama said.

During the nearly two hour service that featured a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama shared the floor with the church's pastor, Ron Carpenter. The senator from Illinois asked the multiracial crowd of nearly 4,000 people to keep him and his family in their prayers, and said he hoped to be "an instrument of God."

"Sometimes this is a difficult road being in politics," Obama said. "Sometimes you can become fearful, sometimes you can become vain, sometimes you can seek power just for power's sake instead of because you want to do service to God. I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

He finished his brief remarks by saying, "We're going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth."

Asked by CNN if he talks about faith more in churchgoing South Carolina than he does in the other early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama said: "I don't talk about it all the time, but when I'm in church I talk about it."

Hilary's Old Stuff

So who is going to be President? I know it's not going to be Joe Biden. But I am reasonably confident it's not going to be Hilary Clinton. There just aren't enough (any?) good reasons to vote for her. People need to connect with their President. Good or bad, it's absolutely got to be somebody millions of people are interested in staring at for an hour. Maybe if she kept going in the direction she's going, gained some weight, became more of a big tough old Mama figure, and worked that characature. You know, started wearing a mumu. But it can't be Barack Obama. It's not that he's black or did coke, it's that he's made it with white women. That is not OK. But newly or soon-to-be widowed John Edwards? Insane, vain and grieving don't go well together. But is it really going to be Rudy Guiliani?

From last 3 graphs of today's Reuters:

Biden suggested Clinton's experience as first lady in the administration of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, when she tried unsuccessfully in the 1990s to reform health care, would hamper her effectiveness as a U.S. president.

"I'm not suggesting it's Hillary's fault. I think it's a reality that it's more difficult, because there's a lot of very good things that come with all the great things that President Clinton did, but there's also a lot of the old stuff that comes back," Biden said.

As Clinton fixed a chilly stare on him, Biden hurriedly added: "When I say old stuff, I'm referring to policy, policy."

Hilary Needs a Veep

I got an email from Babe the Blue Ox recently, and he said:

I write about the fatal weakness in the hillary candidacy. My thinking is that people really will vote for a woman, and the opponent will be weak, and everybody in America wishes her husband was still president. But, there is one potentially insurmountable obstacle: she has to have a running mate, and the public is going to experience deep mental trauma at the prospect of a man, any man, playing #2 to a woman. The juvenile american mind will see them as a kind of "couple," and in that context she will be cemented as a ball-busting battle-axe, and the VP will carry a mantle of shame, and people will have a secret revulsion that will result in a last minute inability to pull the lever in the voting booth.

But I think the solution really is Obama. The reason is, his blackness, jackie robinson-ness, his "rock star-ness" (why does everyone say this "rock star" thing about him? Does it just mean he's hot? He does have a kind of balls, I mean really in a sexual sense, that we haven't seen since Kennedy. But mainly, I think there is a subtle displacement here, where "rock star" stands for the real referent "sports star." The concepts of "Tiger Woods" and "Barack Obama" have secretly become confused in the collective psyche.), these category memberships overwhelm and obscure his "maleness," so that hillary can get away with it.

Imus is a *&%#!

Kinky, don't make me come kick your ass. Sorry you're close and personal with the big jerk there, but if you won't let sleeping dogs lie, I gotta come after ya. First of all, I view your charactarizing the name-calling of the Rutgers University black varsity basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" as ridiculous is the very problem we're trying to address here. They made it all the way to the finals on hard work, scholarship, integrity and guts. It's way beyond ridiculous. It's a national dialog we're in, we are trying to say it is not OK to knock people down like that. I don't care a whit about whatever extraneous information you're about to impart on me on what a righteous dude Imus really is, he's made a career of being a shock jock, and he was an asshole for doing what he did and you're one for trying to minimize it. It's not ridiculous to synthesize the key problem this country has in one offhand comment; it's criminal. And don't excuse it as an accident. The guy's a pro. It was calculated to hurt and to be funny, and it did and I'm sure to a few Bubba's it was, but the bottom line was that it revealed more than the guy bargained for. Don't make light of it. It made reference to a major belief in this country, that black people are scum. Remember Earl Butt's comment, which really was a joke, about black men wanting loose shoes and a warm place to take a dump? Or Buzzy Bavasi's comment that black people lack the fundamentals to be baseball managers? They both deserved to be fired for those comments, and were, but they aren't nearly as harsh as Imus's. Butt's was referencing an already existing joke. And Bavasi said he meant that blacks never got the education or training to be managers, which considering that he's the guy who brought up Jackie Robinson, I believe him. But tough; he still deserved to lose his job. Why? Cuz white people brought hundreds of thousands of black people over from Africa on slave ships, and you gotta deal with that fact. Whitey whipped and beat and sold human beings as property for hundreds of years, then treated them literally as 2nd class citizens for most of the remaining time. Once you've got that kind of a track record, you gotta skate on thin ice for awhile. It's only right. It's not ridiculous; it's deadly serious. And it's exactly what we don't need. It fuels the flames of hate, and it's not OK.

Your next point, that rappers make similar references, is actually not quite true, but anyway, so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Who cares if there's a double standard.

Now on to your last point, raging against people (who are trying to protect people) as being PC. You write: "Political correctness, a term first used by Joseph Stalin, has trivialized, sanitized and homogenized America, transforming us into a nation of chain establishments and chain people." I beg to differ. I think political correctness, Stalin notwithstanding, has saved this country. Political correctness says it's not OK to rip people apart in public and deny them their humanity based on the color of their skin. America was created for the sole purpose of what today we would call being politically correct. Politically correct is one of those funny Republican words, like pro-life, or right to life, that makes you think you don't want to be on the wrong side of it. PC makes it sound like it's a sissy thing. An uptight thing. Freedom on one side -- PC on the other. But let's really look at what PC means.

Thanks to the constitution, and supreme court rulings upholding it, it's politically correct not to torture people. Also not to wiretap people, or search their homes without a search warrant. The Miranda Act, that forced cops to read people their rights before beating the shit out of them was one of the great politically correct acts of this country. Outlawing hate sppech: policitally correct The Emancipation Proclamation, saying black people were't actually 3/5ths a person: a great act of politicaly correctness. Giving women the right to vote: politically correct. Not calling Japanese people Japs, or outlawing signs that said: no jews, no dogs, no niggers, which my father remembers seeing all around Florida. That's the Policitaly Correct police doing their job. The voting rights act, saying you couldtn't administer a test to black people to see if they were allowed vote, also politically correct. It goes on and on. All the way back to the Pilgrims, coming to a new land where they could be free to worship as they wished, is really a desire to live in a land where there was respect for others, which is all the PC thing really amounts to.

See, PC is not about intolerance. It's about ensuring conditions where we actually can and do tolerate each other. PC is not about stopping people from being free. It's about stopping people who want to stop people from being free. To be PC is to question when we allow it to be OK to oppress each other. "The PC police are telling me I can't go fag bashing!" Yes! Exactly! They are limiting your freedom to be intolerant! This is a very complex notion in America, but it has a long philosophical background: you're free except to the extent you limit others' freedom. Or stating it backwareds, the only thing it's OK to hate is hate.

Kinky's piece to me really misses the point. There's nothing in it that addresses the core issue: There are some lines that when you cross them, they stay crossed. My grandpa used to always say: you can't take back something you said. True enough.

Hoe-Headed Shock Jock

You know, I've never liked the shock jock world. Insulated as it is from the real elbow jabs of mixing it up that harshly in person, the radio version of being the biggest loudmouth is kind of like the raging drivers who only act that way because they're behind the wheel. No one can hit you back. And if there's one thing in the world of media communications that's consistently underestimated by those of us who lament the passing of planet earth, it is the degree to which all of us human beings continue to be operated by our lizard brain.

I'm not saying we have to run the world from the brain stem, it's just that without a lot of yoga and massage, in one form or another, that's where things normally end up. Not that it's all Lord of the Flies, but we better be honest here: we're capable of being the most horrible and brutally monstrous animal of all the animals. Slapstick, practical jokes, insult humor, mob mentality, lowest common denominator, the rat race, dog eat dog, the world is really not funny. Why? Because we so easily can put our whole brilliant apparatus - and by default usually do - at the service of a largely fear-based, dinosaur-style brain. So there's a lot at stake in stoking those fires.

They're cheap laughs. Hit 'em when they're up. Hit 'em when they're down. Just hit 'em. Me, I learned early on to check myself. What's so funny here, I would ask. I get no pleasure from seeing the kid end up crying and run off alone. I feel something really hollow inside when I join the bully on the block. I don't like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Newt Gingrich or Jim Scarborough, and I'd even be willing to exile Howard Stern if I could lose the rest of them. I just think once they're gone we won't miss them. And while I'm still a few One-A-Day vitamins away from being a true blue-haired old lady, I am starting to agree with my Grandma Pearl that the biggest problem facing America is a lack of civility. We're just not nice. Whether it's the jerk who just stole my parking spot, or all of us collectively and how we act abroad, the image of the American as a total jerk is not doing hardly anybody much good any more. Like I say, we have to check ourselves.

So when this hater Imus spiels his spleen like he did, I am already predisposed to rule: "Dude. You are fired." But when I think about this country even a little, and think about what Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson were able to accomplish, there is nothing I am more proud of America for than how our country managed to honor these heroes (except perhaps what they did in the first place). And there is nothing I am more ashamed of than how much racism has existed and continues to exist. It's a 300+ year old scandal and what we continue to see and see amplified is that it's killing our country, both figuratively and literally. And when you think of what it must take to be a young black girl in this country, and make it to the college basketball finals, only to have one of the most well-known, talented, articulate, highly-paid radio personalities call them "nappy headed hos (whores)" - well! It blows my mind that the discussion is about whether to fire this man! The discussion should be about whether to lynch him.

I know. Lynching is bad. Bad for black people. Bad for white people. OK. But at least somebody should hit him. I mean physically hurt him somewhat. He has a total bully pulpit, millions of dollars, he's king of the talkers, and this is what he uses his super powers for. That's a special violation. So please understand that it's for those reasons, in addition to the fact that he's made a career of being mean, that I say: Hang him! Exceptions are OK once in a while. It's fair turnaround.

Anyway, whatever, I give up on the physical violence. But he should pay for it, and we should not let him or the cultural zeitgeist move on until he does.

And what the hell is going on anyway? What evil voodoo are these old hippie-like pseudo-cool white men channeling?

Speaking of which, here are my votes on four public comments today regarding this issue:

YES = Hillary: 'I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly don't ever intend to go on his show'...

YES = Obama calls for Imus to be fired...

NO = Rosie on Imus: 'Thought police' are coming...

NO = Edwards On Imus: 'I Believe In Forgiveness'...

And here is a transcript from a 60 minutes Mike Wallace interview:

MIKE WALLACE: You told Tom ANDERSON, the producer, in your car coming home that Bernard McGuirk is there to do "n-----" jokes.

DON IMUS: Well I've n-- I never use that word.

MIKE WALLACE: Tom?

TOM ANDERSON: I'm right here.

DON IMUS: Did I use that word?

TOM ANDERSON: I recall you using that word.

DON IMUS: Oh, okay, well then I used that word, but I mean-- of course that was an off the record conversation-- [LAUGHTER]

MIKE WALLACE: The hell it was!

The Great Memory Hole of China

I highly recommend the story Kremlin, Inc. in last week's New Yorker. It's a very good piece, and it awakens me to the corrosive by degrees nature of our own compliance in corporate evildoing. If this age truly is the age where the most technically useful aspects of all the previous ages are gathered up and re-used, then the practice of dealing with ones' enemies by simply having them killed, which here and there throughout history has enjoyed some popularity, would certainly be central to the combo platter of options considered available to today's leaders. And while we may be correct in saying: we can't fight them, the fact that we likewise refuse to protest in small ways seems the most disingenuous of all.

I'm thinking specifically of Google, both the richest company and the first to ever adopt as its mission statement "Don't be evil." I'm thinking of hanging out with Sergei Brin, which I actually did a couple of weeks ago at a party, and what we talked about. And I'm thinking of Professor Ding Zilin, whose son was shot dead protesting freedom on the night of June 3rd, 1989, and who since has been collecting names of those who were killed around that night. At the end of June 2006, she was able to confirm 186 deaths. But when she logged onto the Internet and went to Google.cn, which began operating in China in January of 2006, and typed in Tienanmen Square, zero results showed up. She typed in her son's name. There was no such person. In exchange for what could be billions of dollars of revenue, Google agreed to censor all of its Chinese searches to exclude, how did the Nazis put it, "any unpleasantness."

How many people died at Tienanmen? According to Wikipedia: "Estimates of civilian deaths vary: 23 (Communist Party of China), 400–800 (Central Intelligence Agency), 2600 (Chinese Red Cross). Injuries are generally held to have numbered from 7,000 to 10,000." Wow. That’s a lot of human sacrifices for freedom, in a country without, shall we say, a history of strong protest movements. These people were killed or injured for doing nothing but peaceably assembling, one of the cornerstone reasons for why there is an America. And while it was American freedom that gave birth to the Internet, ironically none of these people will ever turn up on a Google search in China. Look it up. It never happened. Imagine being someone who knew them, loved them, someone like their mother, like Professor Ding.

The BBC wrote: "Google's launch of a new, self-censored search engine in China is a 'black day' for freedom of expression, a leading international media watchdog says. Reporters Without Borders joined others in asking how Google could stand up for US users' freedoms while controlling what Chinese users can search for." The article continues: "The BBC news site, for example, is inaccessible, while a search on Google.cn for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement directs users to a string of condemnatory articles." Please keep in mind: this isn't the fascist Chinese government building these algorithms; it's Google! Big Brother says these people are disappeared, and Google complies. They fix it so these trouble makers never existed. I know it sounds shocking, but this is the deal Google made.

Microsoft and Yahoo!, by the way, do the same thing. Big surprise, but they aren't run by two Jews who founded a company with an ethical imperative. The lame argument they make is: "They would do it anyway, so why not make money on it?" What would happen though if the big search engines refused to play China's game? Government's wage war but if the soldiers won't pull the trigger there isn't much of a war. Is it really better to assimilate and hope for the best? What possible motive would China have for changing? But unless we as Web users agree not to support them, which is almost impossible, why would they ever feel the need to change?

I'm only 230 years old, a young adult in Nation Years, but I remember being a grown teenager and coming out of the shadow of the Cold War, with Rod Serling and Hannah Arendt and Mad Magazine and Edward R. Murrow and Elie Weisel laying bare the cultural shame surrounding what it means to be silent. It was as if a generation of WWII survivors were dedicated to teaching the next generation never to stand by as they come for your neighbors, for they will soon be coming for you. I witnessed a tremendous amount of science fiction and social fiction and social analysis, created in the aftermath of WWII. What Americans learned about human nature after WWII was unprecedented, and there was an unprecedented effort then made to ensure that a society would be able to identify it when the powers that be start to wear these freedoms down. Through melodrama and satire, a new and clear picture was painted of what constitutes an unacceptable un-human response. And yet that is the picture I see today.

It's tough to watch it all go to hell. I have a particular soft spot for that generation that received giant cultural inoculations of this freedom virus. I am still moved by all the TV shows that have the lone man stand up and shock the community and say, "But I saw what happened..." or who refuses to pretend that all is well. And yet I see virtually none of my fellow 'liberals' and 'activists' paying attention to this pernicious threat. Indeed, I did all my research for this article on Google. And so when should you begin to doubt its complete objectivity?

For more on the subject, here is Human Rights Watch's take:
http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/china14867.htm

And here's the original New Yorker story: http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2007/05/31/the-new-yorker-kremlin-inc-why-are-vladimir-putin%E2%80%99s-opponents-dying/

Osama, Obama, what's the diff?

I couldn't have seen it until I saw it but now here it is. They’re going to try to take down Obama by tarring him as a Muslim. Say it enough and it will stick, especially with a scandal-hungry press ready to report every rumor and lie as a “controversy.” Obama’s only hope of survival is to meet the charges head on, exactly as he would have to if the charges were actually true. He must realize, as Kerry was to dim to understand, that it simply doesn’t matter whether a political attack has any basis in truth. TV creates the reality; the truth is whatever is on TV.

It was reported the other day that Barack means 'Blessed' in Arabic, and that Barack's grandpappy was a hard core Muslim. That means in the minds of most Americans he was hanging out fighting whitey with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's grandpappy. And Barack's middle name is Hussein, and his first name rhymes with Osama, so that’s that. He might as well be wearing a turban and carrying a scimitar.

OK. There's only one way to handle this. Right here, right now, big throwdown. Obama has got to hold a Checkers-style, prime-time 1/2 hour of plain speaking about himself and his God-blessed American-ness. And at the end he's got to cry about how much it hurts him to have anyone cast aspersions about how much he loves this country. He's got to detail everyone in his family's lineage that was Muslim, and tell the heartwarming story of their conversion to God’s real religion, and how converting is part of what a free nation allows its free people to do.

But mainly, he's got to say that we're not in a war against Islam, we're in a struggle for the hearts and minds of a billion Muslims. He's got to say that our leadership, by making this moral struggle a shooting war on terror, has terrorized the Muslim base, which is at it's core actually quite conservative and religious, and apt to be friendly to good American Heartland people. Obama has to compile a list of all the great people who say that we are not at war with Islam and read it to us. He's got to paint a devastating, super-scary and super-detailed picture of what's going to happen if we keep treating this like it is a war--really paint the full-on doomsday scenario. And all the while he does this he must wrap himself in the flag.

He has to explain that we can't militarize our way out of this situation, and that while we will go after specific people who are known to be bad, we have created a global war out of our conflict with a few small and isolated bands of fanatics. It is only a global war because we made it one. And he's got to make it look bad. Really bad.

Then he's got to offer us a way out. Instead, he would say, we will play the long game, using our real strengths: our moral vision, our honesty, our can-do attitude and good old American ingenuity. And we're going to do what half a trillion dollars has been (intrinsically) unable to do: we're going to calm these people down. We're going to get enough of them back on our side that we aren't doomed. How? Well, he'll explain, we're going to try to become as energy independent as is reasonable, we are going to reach out to the international community, we are going to try to work with the world to stabilize this region, we are going to try to figure out what the source of disaffection among the populace at large is such that we can help address their grievances in ways other than having them blow themselves up and us with them. Subtext: I can deal with these people.

So he gives this talk and the whole thing shifts. Imagine the headline: Presidential Candidate Denies US In War on Terror! It would make worldwide news. Can you imagine Obama in the follow up interview: "Look, one crazy guy with a few crazy followers managed to do something very smart and cunning, but the cleverness of the hijackings doesn't prove that entire countries and their populations were behind it. Indeed, prior to the bombings, only 3% of the Muslim populations advocated bombing US soil. Now 56% do! It wasn't the bombing of Americans that made their world hate us. We had their sympathy! It was our idiotic and indiscriminate response. We have to undo some serious damage here, and you are lucky you have me at your disposal to do it."

Then, by not fighting, we win. In summary: if Obama creates a strong enough cognitive dissonance, and makes it utterly clear at the outset that the problem is that we've ignited a world to hate us, and that only a guy with an Islamic inoculation can address the situation, we win. Though not a Muslim, Obama has Muslim antibodies. It's not a liability. He's our secret weapon. If Obama flips his Muslimness thus, in essence saying: “I can get these guys off your back,” then with each subsequent attack he only gains strength.