Archive for April, 2008
April 30th, 2008
The political sophisticates who figure that the flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has pretty well doomed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy had better think again.
The latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll SHOWS that Americans are more troubled by the relationship between two other men.
Guess who.
POSTSCRIPT: That same poll shows Obama with a national lead of 3 percentage points over Hillary Clinton and 3 percentage points over John McCain. THIS OTHER POLL shows Obama leading Hillary by 8 percentage points and tied with John McCain.
Yeah, that Rev. Wright stuff is just killing him, isn’t it? Maybe he should get out of the race.
UPDATE: Pat Buchanan tonight on MSNBC:
”If President Bush is more unpopular than the Reverend Wright, the Republicans are in a lot of trouble.”
Maybe George Stephanopoulos will ask this question the next time he interviews McCain: “Do you think President Bush loves America as much as you do?
UPDATE II: Jonathan Martin of Politico is out with THIS REPORT, which includes the following passage about sentiments among Republican activists:
“From top to bottom, from McCain down to the youthful campaign and party staffers who work nearly around the clock to get him elected, the working assumption seems to be that the Democratic contest is over and Obama has won.
“Even when Clinton attacks McCain, President Bush or GOP policies, the response is either outright silence or snarky, dismissive ridicule about a failed campaign barely relevant enough to merit a response.”
UPDATE III: And then there’s THIS GOOD NEWS for Obama.
April 30th, 2008
That Clinton-McCain gas-tax holiday scheme is getting THUMBS DOWN from leading economic and political pundits.
Can you say “panderers,” boys and girls?
POSTSCRIPT: It seems appropriate that I re-post this video of a speech in which Barack Obama addresses the gas-tax issue:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GYikzsK9rMY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
April 30th, 2008
Five years! Time flies, doesn’t it?
That means we have only 95 years left in Iraq, by John McCain’s figuring.
But let’s be fair. The White House SAYS the big sign on the big ship was some kind of abbreviation for something else.
UPDATE: Here’s a “Mission Accomplished” ad from those fine folks at MoveOn.org:
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April 30th, 2008
This went so well yesterday, I thought I’d give it another whirl.
I’m off to do a radio gig with Ken DeCoster on WNTA this morning, and I’ve got errands to run.
Chat among yourselves in my absence.
April 30th, 2008
I don’t mean to dance on the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s grave, but I have to wonder why John McCain has yet to explain exactly why he embraced the infamous TV preacher when it was widely known that Falwell had blamed America for Sept. 11 (a verbatim reminder of which is PROVIDED by Chuck Sweeny this morning on his blog).
When McCain first ran for president back in 2000 as a maverick Republican who suffered fools badly, he denounced Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” and faulted George W. Bush for being too friendly with them.
But as the saying goes, that was then, and this is now. When McCain decided to run for president again this year, he cast himself as less a maverick and more a reliably conservative Republican. Accordingly, he made up with Falwell and Robertson and even deigned to deliver the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University (see photo above).
This was despite Falwell’s well-known record of outrageous utterances, not the least outrageous of which was the aforementioned blaming of America for 9/11.
Here are few others:
Back in the ’80s, after Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith told a Religious Right gathering that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,” Falwell offered an identical view. “I do not believe,” he told reporters, “that God answers the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew.”
Also in the ’80s, Falwell lost a lawsuit that stemmed from his having condemned the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Churches as “brute beasts” and “a vile and Satanic system” that will “one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.” His attorney, without any disagreement from Falwell, said the Jewish judge in the case was prejudiced against Christians.
In 1993, despite his promise to Jewish groups to stop referring to America as a “Christian nation,” Falwell gave a sermon in which he said, “We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours.”
In 1999, Falwell told a pastors’ conference in Kingsport, Tenn., that the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible is alive today and “of course he’ll be Jewish.”
John McCain has never renounced, rejected or disowned these and countless other bigoted statements made by Falwell — at least not since he decided that the road to the Republican presidential nomination ran through the precincts of the Religious Right.
Nor have the media made nearly the fuss over McCain’s relationship with Falwell (and other such crackpots) as they have over Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
Falwell’s dead now, but his hateful legacy lives on. And John McCain says nothing about its poisonous effect on America.
April 29th, 2008
If you’ll bear with me, I have a personal story to tell here that relates to a few of the issues that loom in this year’s presidential race.
During my vacation up North last summer, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller “Blink — The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.”
Toward the end of this wonderful book, Gladwell writes of what he calls “A Revolution in Classical Music.” Sounds boring, I thought, but the tale turns out to be about music only in a sociological sense.
Not so long ago, Gladwell notes, there were very few female musicians in symphony orchestras. The problem, as the evidence now makes irrefutably clear, was latent sexism.
Auditions were held where the maestros who were doing the hiring could see as well as hear the prospective employees, and thus biases, unconscious or otherwise, came into play.
Lots of orchestra bosses had the notion that women weren’t well-suited to play certain instruments — trombones, for instance. And even with regard to more presumably feminine instruments like strings, women applicants weren’t always judged purely on the merits of their music.
But when the idea arose that auditions should be held with the musicians unseen behind screens, the world of classical music changed forever. The bosses had no choice but to make hiring decisions without regard to gender. Not even their subconscious prejudices could influence the process.
Writes Gladwell: “In the past 30 years, since screens became commonplace, the number of women in the top U.S. orchestras has increased fivefold.”
Two experiences of my own last year were not unlike what those orchestra maestros must have felt when they discovered their perhaps unconscious biases against women musicians.
Both of these cases involve prominent bloggers, one who writes under a pseudonym and the other whose face I never saw in a photo until he died.
The pseudonymous blogger is known to readers of the Hullabaloo site simply as Digby. I’ve long been a big fan of Digby, whose work I frequently cited in a blog I had before this one. When Digby won some kind of hotshot award, I considered it well-deserved. But when the plaque (or whatever) was conferred at a gala ceremony, Digby turned out not to be the clever guy I had expected. She’s a clever woman.
I was almost embarrassed at how surprised I was. Why did I assume that Digby was a man? Do male pundits write differently from their female counterparts? I wasn’t the only one. Nobody in the blogosphere knew Digby was a woman, and expressions of surprise abounded. (Incidentally, she still hasn’t revealed her real name.)
The other blogger in this tale was Steve Gilliard, who ran a popular site called The News Blog until his death from heart and kidney problems in June 2007 at age 42.
Gilliard, a great writer and passionate partisan, was hugely influential among liberal blogs. His expertise on military history in the Middle East added authority to his perspectives on the war in Iraq, and he was quoted widely.
As a great admirer of Gilliard, I was shocked at news of his sudden death — and shocked again to learn that he was black. Why, I asked myself, should I be surprised?
As this presidential campaign season progresses, with issues of race and gender at the forefront, I occasionally think of the musicians in Gladwell’s story and of the writing talents of Steve Gilliard and Digby.
I can’t help but wonder how the American people would react if they could read the position papers and the statements in debates offered by John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama without knowing that one was a septuagenarian, one a woman, and one a black man.
What roles do our prejudices, even if they’re only subconscious, play in our opinions of these candidates?
When we look back on the great statesmen of American history, most of them are politicians who were never heard or seen (except in drawings or paintings) by most of the public they served.
It used to be that the only way Americans had of judging their leaders was to read what they had to say. (Of course, the race and gender angles were taken for granted. Only white men were eligible.)
So, there are two other questions to consider here before closing: 1) How would today’s politicians fare in the kind of system that gave us Jefferson and Lincoln, et al? And, 2) How would those giants of long ago fare in the kind of system we have today, with its white-hot media focus and its obsession with trivialities?
April 29th, 2008
Politics aside, this is just plain fun to watch:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Om96_VB0-QE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
April 29th, 2008
Hillary touts it in this ad:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1jv1_H8xsIs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Barack Obama debunks it in this speech:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GYikzsK9rMY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
April 29th, 2008
There’s a good overview HERE, and various reactions can be found HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.
As for me, I’m not sure if this is the beginning of the end of this issue as a political distraction. Nor can I yet guess whether Obama’s remarks today will help him in next Tuesday’s balloting in North Carolina and Indiana.
But one thing’s for sure, Obama’s break with his former pastor is complete and final.
POSTSCRIPT: If I read one more time that Obama has thrown Wright — or anybody else has thrown anybody else — ”under the bus,” I’m going to hurl. It’s time for that expression to be thrown under the bus. It’s sooo last year, y’know?
April 29th, 2008
OK, let’s give this thing a try.
I’m going out for a while, so you’re free to engage one another here on whatever subjects you like.
But play nice, please.
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