monsoonmartin

It’s been a long time since I’ve weighed in on the presidential race—mainly because I have become rather bored of it all since the intense, protracted primary battle concluded with an Obama victory.

I am still a strong supporter or Barack Obama for President—and I loved the pick of Joe Biden for Vice-President, despite Biden’s ties to the Washington establishment. And I, along with more than 38 million others, watched his incisive, forthright, and sometimes inspiring acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night. There is much about Obama and his campaign to admire, and during the speech I even felt something like optimism and hope thaw away the edges of my cynical heart. Before I heard a word of his “American Promise,” he had me with the U2 song “City of Blinding Lights” that accompanied his entrance—though he almost lost me when Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” twanged obnoxiously from the stadium’s sound system immediately following his speech. (And yet, it didn’t nearly match the race speech in either the breadth or the erudition of its message.)

But damn it all, there have been times since he wrapped up the nomination in June that I’ve been disillusioned and even sick to watch the turn his campaign has taken. It’s called the “run to the center,” and it’s nothing new: a Democratic candidate runs on a progressive platform to appeal to the party’s liberal base, then when he (or she) has the nomination wrapped up, all of those progressive ideals fall prey to equivocation, obfuscation—and sometimes just plain contradiction.

Friends, I had no illusions that Barack Obama was the uncompromisingly liberal candidate this country really needs—and indeed, he bears little resemblance to the liberal bogeyman that has been conjured from the lousiest tax-and-spend, immigrants-run-amok, gay-agenda fears of conservatives. The positions he’s taken on gay marriage (he opposes it, but supports civil unions) and capital punishment (he wants to reform it, but he supports its use in limited cases), for example, have been disappointing in their apparent desire to have it both ways: embracing all positions so as to alienate no one.

But Barack Obama talked an awful lot—and still does—about being a different kind of candidate. He wants to change the way things are done in Washington. He wants to do away with “politics as usual” and govern in a new way: with the full support and participation of ordinary citizens moved to action by his campaign. I believed him, but the “run to the center” got so out of hand at a few points this summer than I almost took down my Obama yard sign:

• He voted—against most of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate—to support warrantless wiretapping, all but ceding Americans’ fourth-amendment rights.

• He expressed enthusiastic support for President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives, and promised he would expand these programs. These funding schemes for social services provided by religious organizations were a blown kiss by Bush to the evangelicals who helped elect him twice. Under the program, religious-based programs—which are already tax-exempt—can now conduct their proselytizing and their hiring discrimination with the full support of the Federal government. Obama’s pandering here is useless, since most of the evangelicals who would get all hot and bothered over such an announcement have already written the candidate off for his support—albeit tepid—for civil unions and abortion rights.

• Speaking before AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) in June, Obama said, “We will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security. … Those who threaten Israel, threaten us.” His even-handed stances of the past, in which he took appropriately nuanced views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even engaged in a frankly critical assessment of Israel’s behavior in the region, are long gone.

• Seeking to reassure jingoists and warmongers across the nation that he would not be hesitant to use America’s military might, he outlined a plan to deploy as many as 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and to attack Iran if the country threatened the U.S. or its interests. He also backed off his earlier statement in a debate that he would meet with foreign leaders with no preconditions, lest it make him seem like too much of a diplomat and not enough of an ass-kicking hawk.
• Finally (but there was probably more that I missed), he supported the Supreme Court’s reversal of a long-standing gun ban in Washington, D.C., tarnishing his encouraging gun control credentials.

There are four main schools of thought when it comes to Barack Obama, I’ve come to realize:

• From the far right, the racist, and the insane (often, all three defects reside in the same individual), there is the cry that Obama is either a Muslim terrorist who will lead jihad against the U.S. from inside the White House, or an unpatriotic, anti-white atheist who will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a flag pin and will turn the country into a socialist state. There are also the softer objections to his lack of experience; his “arrogance” and his wife’s “uppity” attitude (thanks to Monsoon's mom for this insight); his effete, seemingly detached manner; and so on. And finally, in the “No-Bama’ category, there are the Hillaryites: mostly middle-aged women who are certain that sexism—not a superior message—was the sole factor in keeping Hillary Clinton from being nominated as either President or Vice-President; despite the fact that their values are represented by Barack Obama, most polls indicate that some 20% of these Hillary supporters are actually considering voting for John McCain.
• From the center and moderate Republicans and Democrats, the feeling that Obama is a gifted orator with sensible ideas who has quite correctly moved his policies to more reasonable positions; he will make necessary changes to address problems with America’s economic woes and foreign-policy challenges without questioning the fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism and corporate hegemony that underlie them. And these folks tend to look down their noses at those on the left who would criticize Obama for his shortcomings as a progressive candidate, preferring to present a united front of support. In short: he’s a swell guy.
• From the progressive and “liberal” Democrats, there is much of the admiration for Obama as stated immediately above, tempered with some grumblings about his “all-things-to-all-people” tendencies” and his run to the center—but folks in this cohort remain cautiously optimistic that when he reaches the White House, he will listen to the voices of those whose hard work propelled him there and reflect his more firmly progressive stances when he governs.
• From the far left wing—Communists, socialists, anarchists, conspiracy theorists, inveterate cynics, and I’d say the insane probably factor in here as well—we hear that there is very little substantive difference between Obama and McCain: both are agents of the ruling parties, neither of whom will really challenge corporate dominion over our lives, the collusion of government in such dominion, or the war machine. For these angry curmudgeons, the political process is an intractable parade of capitalist dirty tricks that will not be addressed in any meaningful way unless and until there is full revolution, or until a Noam Chomsky-Angela Davis ticket sails into the White House and fires the other two branches of government.

I fall in the third group, with some admitted sympathies toward the fourth. Let’s see how this works out.

A final few comments, if you’ll indulge me, about John McCain and his just-announced Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah “Barracuda” Palin, Governor of Alaska.

First, I want to direct you to an interesting article from AlterNet that reviews Michael Moore’s new book (Mike’s Election Guide) and takes note of his provocative discussion of John McCain’s “war hero” status.

Second, regarding his Vice-Presidential pick: I’ve never seen a more cravenly desperate, insulting, ill-advised, and cynical appointment in my life. John McCain met Sarah Palin exactly once at a meeting before he rang her up last week and asked her to join his fledgling ticket.

The Religious Right is over the moon about this pick, so it stands to reason that I’d be disgruntled. Let me outline a few reasons I find Sarah Palin objectionable:

• She has very little political experience, as has been noted; the little experience she does have has been marred by scandal—her office is being investigated for improprieties stemming from the firing of a state trooper.
• She is a lifetime member of the NRA who likes to shoot animals and pose with their carcasses, which I find to be vile (see the photo below, in which she and one of her kids celebrate the killing of a caribou; I’ve cropped it to spare you all the graphic details).

• Her children’s names are Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. I mean…really? Really, times five??
• Palin is a devout, born-again evangelical who opposes abortion without reservation—even in cases of rape or incest. What a gal.
• She believes Creationism should be taught alongside the “theory” of evolution in public schools to encourage “healthy debate.”
• She strongly encourages and has worked toward oil and natural gas drilling in pristine areas in Alaska and other sites.
• She opposes same-sex marriages and supported a referendum for an amendment to Alaska’s constitution that would deny health benefits to same-sex couples.
• She supports capital punishment without reservation.

An odd realization struck me as I began researching Sarah Palin after the announcement was made: I hated her before I even knew she existed.

I mean, she’s the embodiment of every single thing I reject, and she’s wrapped up in a seemingly unthreatening package. (If I hear one more pundit describe her as “hot” or “cute” I am going to seriously lose it.)

And finally, speaking of colossally insulting, McCain’s choice is so nakedly designed to woo disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters that it should be seen not as a final “shattering” of the glass ceiling, as Palin said in her introductory speech, but as one of the true mileposts in 21^st-century sexism. (I can’t imagine Hillary supporters suddenly deciding to vote for Sarah Palin just because she’s the first woman to receive a Republican Vice-Presidential nomination. The only things Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have in common are two X chromosomes.)

The good aspect of all this for us Obama supporters is that her inexperience and notorious bluntness is bound to lead to gaffes, and her utter lack of foreign policy chops means Biden is going to chew her up in the Vice-Presidential debate. I think ultimately the choice, though bold, will backfire wildly on McCain and Barack Obama will comfortably be elected the 44^th President of the United States.

I’ll leave you with two outstanding columns about Palin from the Sunday papers:

Maureen Dowd’s column from the August 31^st New York Times.

Chris Satullo’s column from the August 31^st Philadelphia Inquirer.

As always, I welcome your comments and criticisms. I’m up for a lively political debate on here, if anyone’s game.

Monsoon

My friends,

The day has come to get out and vote in the Democratic primary for the United States presidency. Our state is center stage—Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are on MSNBC talking about what may happen in Lancaster County, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading area, and how it would affect the chances of either candidate—in a primary for the first time in my memory.

I’ve written about this election before several times in this space, but let me reiterate here and now that I wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Below are two lists: the first, a list of reasons to vote for Barack Obama; the second, a list of reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton. I have tried to be as succinct and straightforward as possible, and have based my comments on things I have heard and read from reliable sources.

Fifteen Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama

1. He was against the criminal, disastrous Iraq war from the start.

2. He wants to overhaul NAFTA and punish companies that outsource, both of which have damaged the base of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

3. He takes no lobbyist or PAC money; he would be at least less beholden to special interests. I believe he would stand up to corporate bullying and obscene profits in American life.

4. He is not a divisive politician who engages in bickering and backbiting, but a visionary leader who will bring people together.

5. His experience as a community organizer and activist bespeak his connection with the problems of ordinary people and his ability to negotiate in good faith. His election as President, given his diverse background and broad worldview, would immediately raise the dismal status of the U.S. in the eyes of many around the world.

6. His March 18^th speech on race and American life at the National Constitution Center is the most searingly honest and significant discourse on the topic in my lifetime.

7. His favorite TV show was “The Wire” and he would be the first president versed in hip-hop culture; he made a Jay-Z reference in a speech the other day, for god’s sake!

8. He has clear, substantive plans to tackle the problem of global climate change; as today is Earth Day, this should be in the forefront of voters’ minds.

9. He has stated he would create a prison-to-work incentive for former inmates transitioning back into society.

10. His views on education are progressive; he wants to abolish “teach-to-the-test” curricula and opposes vouchers.

11. He opposes death penalty in all but the rarest cases and is a proponent of legislation that makes it easier for innocent death-row inmates to win new trials.

12. He seems to genuinely have a sense of humor; that may seem like an insignificant trait, but I think it’d be pretty damned important if he wins the presidency.

13. He likes (and plays) the sport of basketball instead of being obsessed with tired, wanky pastimes of the rich and powerful like golf.

14. He voted against the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. As a colleague and I were discussing yesterday, he has the courage to disagree with his constituents on some issues rather than simply telling them what he thinks they want to hear. He will not insult the intelligence of the American people by pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is true leadership.

There are plenty of other compelling reasons to vote for Barack Obama, but these stand out for me as I sit here late on Monday night and contemplate the long-awaited primary battle.

If you’re still thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton—after all, you might say, some of the above are also true of her to some extent, notably numbers 8 and 10—I have compiled a list to try and sway your allegiance a bit. Again, all of these are based upon what I have seen or heard from reliable sources about Hillary Clinton.

Fifteen Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton

1. She voted for President Bush’s ill-conceived, ill-fated Iraq War, and has compounded the error by repeatedly reauthorizing funds to fight the war and refusing to acknowledge her error in failing to read the National Intelligence Estimate before her initial vote.

2. She voted for the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 in the hysteria following the 9/11 attacks.

3. She supported Israel’s brutal military assault on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza; she has said she would support large-scale U.S. “retaliation” against Iran if it or any of its proxies attacked Israel. And finally, she was the only Democrat to vote for the aggressive Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to authorize unilateral U.S. force against Iran.

4. She opposes the full repeal of the conservative, anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

5. She co-sponsored legislation that would have made it illegal to burn the flag of the United States, wasting precious congressional time on a symbolic issue around which she was pandering to conservatives.

6. She doesn’t seem to have any core convictions; she seemingly believes she is entitled to the presidency and will do anything to get elected. (Sure, this is an opinion. But it’s based upon what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s my weblog.)

7. She has engaged in unrelentingly dirty campaign tactics, seizing on minor gaffes and unrelated issues to obfuscate her own policy and leadership shortcomings; the day before the Pennsylvania primaries, her campaign released a fearmongering attack ad subtly linking Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden.

8. In an interview on “60 Minutes,” when asked whether Obama is a Muslim, she said he was not, then quickly added, “as far as I know.”

9. She lied shamelessly about the “harrowing” Bosnia plane landing in 1996, then lied to cover it up by claiming that her misstatements were out of fatigue rather than admitting they had been orchestrated to inflate the magnitude of her foreign policy experience while First Lady.

10. She served on the Wal-Mart board of directors and there is no evidence she challenged Wal-Mart’s fierce anti-union tactics; she served as a ruthless corporate attorney at the notorious union-busting Rose Law Firm. As a result of this history (and other factors), her populist rhetoric in the current campaign rings rather hollow.

11. She has been a cheerleader for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which has moved the party away from its progressive roots and toward a more centrist, pro-business platform.

12. She was a member of the College Republicans and in some substantive ways, has never left the party.

13. She supports the death penalty, almost without exception.

14. She unconscionably voted against a resolution against using cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. She is a war hawk, a polarizing figure here and abroad, and has demonstrated a disturbing tendency to respond with indignation and rage when her motives or policies are questioned.

Thanks for listening…now get out and vote!

Analysis of Barack Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, 18 March 2008

Senator Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday was billed as “historic” before a word of it was even uttered, and has received near-unanimous praise since its delivery. I thought it was a very, very good speech with a lot to admire, but there were a few things that trouble me.

[A couple of notes here: first, I invite you to comment on and argue with my ideas here. Second, I’ve added a couple of new features to the weblog, which I’m still figuring out how to use to its fullest potential. You’ll notice that at the very end of each posting are links that read “Email” and “Print”—these will enable you to (you guessed it) easily email to your friends and print out each posting!]

Being an English teacher, I’ll first approach the speech as a work of literature, evaluating its structure, its pacing, its symbolism and recurring themes. Then I’ll try briefly to foresee how the speech might impact the primary election, and how Americans will respond to it.

First, the speech began with a quote. If one of my students had begun a writing piece with a quote—even one that set up the thematic milieu of his speech, as Obama’s did—he or she would have been docked points. But here, it was effective to begin with “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,” because his speech then went on to discuss how “the American experiment” continues to work, sometimes falteringly, towards perfection.

Obama stood in front of six gigantic American flags in the National Constitution Center and romanticized the Constitutional Convention of 1787, whose resultant document was “a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.” Though the setting was so ham-handedly patriotic that it could have come out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film, Obama’s words softened the effect, talking as he did about America as a work in progress—citing protest, struggle, civil war and civil disobedience as part of the great history of perfecting this union. He also pointedly mentioned slavery as one of the Constitution’s—and our nation’s—great failings, and its eventual eradication as one of its great triumphs.

“This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign,” he went on, deftly connecting America’s past struggles—grassroots and governmental—with his own candidacy. “To continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” Obama went on to say that he has such faith in the ability of the American people to make change because of his own story, and went on to cite his oft-mentioned upbringing. “It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one,” he went on, citing the American motto “E pluribus unum.”

He moved then to an appraisal of his own campaign’s success at crossing racial lines and indeed transcending race: “Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country.” Obama lamented several times that commentators, pundits, and media figures seemed to be playing too great a role in determining what the American public is regarding as important in the race. “At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either ‘too black’ or ‘not black enough.’” In the last few weeks, he said, the primary elections have taken a decidedly “divisive” turn in their obsession with race:

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

Now he’s obviously referring to the racially charged comments made by Geraldine Ferraro about a week ago and referenced in one of my recent postings. And “purchase reconciliation on the cheap” is one of many examples in this speech of brilliant turns of phrase. (Remember that Obama writes most of his speeches, and reportedly wrote almost every single word of this one; he’s an accomplished wordsmith in addition to being a spellbinding orator.) He also brought up his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as expected.

The words he chose and forcefulness with which he condemned and dismissed Wright’s statements is where I part company with the candidate a bit. He referred to Wright’s comments as expressing a “profoundly distorted view of this country … a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

Oh, Barack. Wright’s views about the culpability of American foreign policy being causally responsible for the September 11^th attacks; his suggestion that the CIA played a role, however distant, in fomenting the devastating crack epidemic in the inner cities; his criticisms of prisons and the justice system—these are views that are shared by plenty of intelligent, rational, clear-thinking individuals in this country and around the world. Granted, these are not mainstream views, but denigrating Wright’s views as “profoundly distorted” leave a very bad taste in my mouth as an Obama supporter.

And his simplistic appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—essentially, that Israel can do no wrong, and Palestinians’ struggles are motivated solely by radical Islamic jihad or intifada—is alarming to me. (I had mentioned such concerns in my endorsement of Obama back at the beginning of February, and he’s shown me nothing to allay those concerns.) He may have scored a few points in distancing himself from rumors of being a Muslim, and attracted the fawning attention of Zionists, but his flip, absolutist summation of this morally and historically complex situation is unacceptable.

Obama got back on track, though, when he expressed a desire to move past a preoccupation with race and build unity in addressing a set of “monumental” problems: “two wars, a terrorist threat, a failing economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.” It’s his inclusion of healthcare and economic concerns that gives me hope that Obama will live up to campaign promises to retool NAFTA, punish companies who outsource workers overseas, pursue serial polluters and predatory lenders, and force the reevaluation of a system that elevates profits above people. (Well, he hasn’t said all that explicitly, but I’m hoping he’ll tackle some of these issues.)

After denouncing (or rejecting, or whatever) Wright’s “distorted” views, Obama then stops short of casting aside his former pastor and mentor altogether. After all, he said, “that isn’t all that I know of the man.” Wright is a reflection of the Black community, Barack insisted, and very much a product of the turbulent era in which he grew up. The Black church, he explains, is misunderstood by many outsiders because of its complex admixture of the contemplative and the exuberant, the holy and the secular: “The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”

It was this passage that made me fall for Barack Obama all over again. Having studied African American culture for many years, I have often lamented that a lot of folks outside the community fail to grasp the complex forms of expression and variegated interactions inside the Black community. Black churches are houses of worship, yes, but many of them are also places of emotional release, of the struggle for social justice, of crass comparisons and exaggerations, of gossip and aid and tough love and mercy. Those who would dismiss Black churches—and by extension, the Black experience—as simple-minded, repetitive, overenthusiastic or inane are missing the richness and depth that has earned my profoundest respect and sustained my sincerest interest for more than 20 years.

“I can no more disown him,” Obama concluded here about Rev. Wright, “than I can disown the black community. He went on to very skillfully connect Rev. Wright’s ideas to the casual racial slurs of a relative:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Who among us does not have at least one stunningly ignorant distant relative who spouts racial slurs or anti-Semitic rants from time to time? Many of us even have a closer relative—a mother, a father, a sister, a brother-in-law—who is otherwise tolerant and sharp, but who once in a while lets a jaw-dropping homophobic phrase or embarrassing anti-Muslim stereotype slip? (I would not have been—nor am I generally—so forgiving or generous in dealing with racist white folks, but hey, he’s trying to run for President, here…) Speechmaking is all about getting the audience to identify with what the speaker is saying and feeling—where he or she is coming from. It’s an act of empathy, which is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do. I think he accomplished it here.

“These people are a part of me,” Obama stated pointedly—the patriots and the scalawags, the tolerant and the racist, the seekingly intelligent and the willfully ignorant. “And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Rev. Wright and others in his generation have experienced a great depth and breadth of the frustration and anger of the Black experience in this country—“the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through.” He cited school segregation, employment and real estate discrimination, and a “lack of economic opportunity” which all helped to “create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.” (Another beautifully turned phrase.) He made several references to the “anger” and “bitterness” of those years and wrapped up his discussion of Wright’s generation by saying of this anger: “[It] is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

(Small criticism: “among the races” would have been better there, given that we’re not just talking about Black and white, but people of multiple ethnicities and backgrounds who have to work out their differences.)

Next, he moved on to white people, and I think this section has the potential to be the most soundbited and most pounced-upon by conservatives and 527 groups. But I thought it was strong and strikingly honest—like nearly all of the rest of his speech—and will work well for him. “Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,” he said, and I think it’s quite possible that with that one sentence, he may have turned off the switch of racial animus in working whites all around this country. (Alright, maybe it’s not “off”; maybe if we could imagine the simmering and lingering racism of some whites as mood lighting, he may have dimmed it quite a bit right there.)

And he didn’t dismiss this resentment out of hand as merely inarticulate racism that needs to be discarded and buried; he acknowledged that there are legitimate experiences and sources of these feelings: “Politicians routinely expressed fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.” In one passage, he laid the smackdown on George H.W. Bush and his Willie Horton ad; while exposing the sniveling likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for the fearmongering half-wits they really are. Bravo, Barack!

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white,” he went on, “I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.” But the path before us provides a clear choice—remain stuck in the past or move together into the future. In this sense, it echoes Martin Luther King’s statement that “we must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Obama illustrated the choice in this way:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

“In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. … For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.”

Here I think he’s quite pointedly rejecting the dirty campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton and refusing to join her in the seamy muck of politics as usual in America.

“We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”

What a brilliantly succinct review of American politics over the past 20 years, at the very least.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

Obama went on to talk about the importance of addressing three other key issues in addition to education: healthcare, the economy, and ending the war.

The final couple of minutes of his speech, he told a story about a white woman organizing in a predominantly Black South Carolina district for the Obama campaign—a story that nicely illustrated the manner in which people of diverse backgrounds are coming together for real change in this election year, but which ultimately felt shoehorned in and somewhat forced.

But at this point, really, it didn’t matter. He’d already been dazzling, and he regained his stride in his final sentences: “But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two hundred and twenty-one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

Over all, I think Obama’s speech is one of the most important—and searingly honest—speeches about race made in my lifetime. And I think it’s going to be received extremely well by most Democrats and supporters of Obama.

But there are elements that are going to be picked apart and harped on. At one point, Obama seems to admit that he was present in the pews when Reverend Wright made some incendiary statements (though not for the ones being circulated in the videos). Some will jump on this as a contradiction of his earlier statements that he hadn’t been present for Wright’s remarks, and if he had been, he would have confronted him about them afterward. In addition, some of his comments about race—a subject that is rarely talked about openly in this country—may rankle some, particularly those he referenced in the speech as thinking that serious discussions about race are simply an instance of political correctness run amok.

The speech in history it reminds me most of is Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech, in which he urges unity for the sake of saving the union: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It’s a paraphrase of Matthew 12:25, and it’s a powerful and evocative phrase that influence many citizens’ views on the matter and led eventually to the Civil War.

Obama’s speech revived his campaign, solidified his frontrunner status, and likely comforted many “superdelegates” whose votes are ultimately going to decide the nomination. He may still not win Pennsylvania, but I think he’ll win the nomination handily.

In the last few days, yet another minor uproar has arisen stemming from comments made by an associate of Senator Barack Obama—this time a series of videos depicting Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, making incendiary statements about US foreign and domestic policies.

On the Huffington Post website, Obama posted a statement in which he categorically denounces and rejects the words of his long-time spiritual adviser, and the man who officiated at his wedding.

To his credit, though, Obama refused to “repudiate” Rev. Wright as a man in an interview with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, insisting that it is possible to deeply respect a person and disagree with some of the things that person says or does. And though Obama’s opponent in the general election—or rather, 527 groups handling the dirty work for John McCain—will surely seize on the Reverend’s comments as evidence that Obama is insufficiently patriotic, at least maybe those rumors that he’s really a Muslim will be put to rest!

Obama clearly had to distance himself from Reverend Wright’s most inflammatory remarks, given that many of those whose votes he is courting will have knee-jerk responses to the remarks as deeply offensive and borderline treasonous. But I thought I’d take a closer look at Reverend Wright’s remarks in the three principal video clips that are currently circulating and try to consider just how unreasonable or off-base they are.

In the first clip, delivered several days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Reverend Wright says: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

The concluding statement here echoes one made by Malcolm X at the end of his association with the Nation of Islam (in fact, this statement was one of the factors that brought about this break). After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X was asked by a reporter for his reaction to the event. It’s a case of “the chickens coming home to roost,” he replied, adding that “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming to roost never did make me sad, they’ve always made me glad.” Later that day, he clarified his statement by explaining that there has long been a climate of hate and brutality in the United States, particularly against Black people. The death of President Kennedy is a natural “result of that way of life and thinking.” The New York Times ran a screaming headline the next day citing his chickens comment, and Malcolm X was further marginalized and vilified by American society.

Two things were wrong with Malcolm’s comments, as far as most Americans were concerned: they suggested that the beloved President somehow deserved to be killed, and their timing right after his death bespoke an alleged insensitivity on Malcolm’s part. What folks missed here is that Malcolm did not seem to have been stating that President Kennedy deserved to die; he was arguing that a sense of karmic retribution had come to pass—that the oppression and abuse of minorities in this country had finally boomeranged to victimize one of the elites. Its timing was problematic, perhaps, but what more opportune time would there have been for Malcolm X to reach large numbers of people with his message—in this hope that they might begin questioning their own responses to President Kennedy’s assassination?

I think similar arguments hold up what scrutinizing Reverend Wright’s comments from September 16^th, 2001. He cites the actions of this government in inflicting or supporting the infliction of pain and death upon untold millions around the world in the last 60 years or so, citing the Japanese atomic bombs and state support for the terrorism of foreign governments. (He might also have mentioned the My Lai massacre, the invasion of Grenada—or the US-backed military coup of Chile’s democratically elected president on September 11, 1973, which installed General Augusto Pinochet, who soon became known for his flagrant human rights abuse and widespread corruption.)

Surely it was not proper for the leaders of this country to think that they could perpetrate such wantonly violent, extreme, and usually unprovoked attacks on other peoples and not deliver the consequences to their own shores, to their own people? “Why do they hate us?” was the familiar refrain after the attacks. “They hate our freedoms,” was the pat answer. But more honestly, they hate our actions—not those of its individual citizens, necessarily, but the actions of the country in which we live and to whose allegiance we pledge each morning. I cannot imagine that he was suggesting the repugnant notion that those who died on September 11, 2001 deserved to die; but the question of whether America, by its actions, its dirty politics, its aggressive foreign policy, may have rightfully earned the animus of folks throughout the world—that’s another, more complicated, question, and one whose answer is too uncomfortable for many Americans to deal with.

As for the “timing” problem, I’ll return to my argument from above: What better time to challenge one’s flock than when they are still grappling with their own grief and indulging the a great national orgy of victimhood and outrage? Surely some minds were changed, some thinking was challenged, by this sermon—though I suspect that now, it is just dismissed out of hand as the anti-American rantings of a leftist preacher caught up in his own argument and the power of his pulpit. That’s unfortunate.

The second clip from a 2003 sermon deals with the reasons African Americans should be critical of their government: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no. God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Whoa. First he’s referring to some of the more frequently cited reasons for the continued socioeconomic disadvantage of African Americans in relation to whites: the prison-industrial complex and the disparate incarceration of African Americans. Angela Davis has written eloquently on this subject, particularly in her book Are Prisons Obsolete?. In a controversial series in 1996 that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, Gary Webb wrote extensively about an alleged link among the CIA, Nicaraguan Contras, and crack cocaine; the article implied, but did not establish, that the CIA was at least indirectly responsible for introducing crack cocaine into the inner cities in the early 1980s, devastating those neighborhoods.

You all know I love a good conspiracy theory, and this is as plausible as any, as far as I’m concerned. (In fact, there’s a conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory here: Gary Webb was found dead of an apparent suicide in his apartment in 2004, but the circumstances surrounding the “suicide” are very suspicious. Is’t possible that the US government not only orchestrated the sale of crack cocaine to the inner cities, but sought to cover it up years later by killing the journalist who exposed them? Yes.)

Though African Americans and Latinos make up only 25 percent of the US population, they constitute 63 percent of the prison population in this country. Much of this disparity is caused by the “three strikes” and other laws, as well as the “drug war.” Blacks are prosecuted much more aggressively for crack or rock cocaine than their white counterparts for power cocaine. So his complaints at the beginning of this statement are legitimate.  (Find a nice summation of grievances about racial bias in the US corrections system here on the website of Human Rights Watch.

But Reverend Wright got himself into some rhetorical trouble when he began vitiating the sacred phrase “God bless America.” Politicians frequently end their speeches with “God bless you, and God bless America!” And of course after the September 11^th attacks, the phrase became as ubiquitous on bumper stickers and t-shirts as “My child is an honor student at…” With all apologies to Irving Berlin, who wrote the song, and Lee Greenwood, who altered it slightly for his star-spangled jingo-fest “God Bless the USA,” I’ve always loathed this phrase. It sums up what people outside this country dislike so much about it—so we think God is on our side, apparently? God wants us to go bomb the living shit out of other people? As if God concerns herself with protecting the citizens of one country at the exclusion of citizens of all other countries.

I’ve noted a couple of instances in recent popular culture that tried to tweak this saying: In the otherwise vapid and dreadful movie Head of State, Chris Rock’s ultra-conservative Republican opponent ends speeches by saying, “God bless America—and no one else!” Nothing could have better captured the xenophobic “we Merkins are special, and all you foreigners suck” attitude of the most knee-jerk and cravenly nationalistic among us. I’ve seen bumper stickers recently as well that read, “God bless the whole world, no exceptions.” It’s an inclusive message—one that emphasizes the fact that the bonds we all share as humans are (or should be) far stronger than the bonds we share because we live within the same geographical entity.

So while I agree with the content of his comments there, even I realize that you can’t go around saying “God damn America” and not expect to have your ass handed to you on a red-white-and-blue platter.

The third clip is more recent and specifically discusses the relative merits of a Hillary Clinton vs. a Barack Obama candidacy: “Barack knows what it means to be black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.”

Now, aside from the fact that Reverend Wright was surely “preaching to the choir” in making these comments to his mostly-black congregation, I see no problem with the first sentence. The notion that this country is controlled by “rich white people”—is there anyone who doesn’t realize the essential truth of this statement? The second and third sentences give me pause, though. Surely it’s valuable to have someone with Obama’s experiences in the White House—someone who knows what it’s like to be discriminated against, someone who has a diverse background and experiences. But it seems as though Reverend Wright is suggesting that Barack Obama’s experiences of discrimination and bias have been more valuable than what Hillary Clinton has experienced because of her gender.

You all know that I do not like Hillary Clinton—and in fact, I doubt that I’d be able to bring myself to vote for her if she was the Democratic nominee—but she does not deserve the mean-spirited attacks she endured through much of the 90s from the right. (Remember the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” she talked about at the time? It’s real.) She doesn’t deserve to be referred to as disrespectfully as she was back in November by a (female!) McCain supporter who assumed Hillary would be the Democratic nominee and asked McCain at a campaign event, “How do we beat the bitch?” (McCain’s response, without missing a beat or expressing disappointment at her choice of words—he even seemed kind of amused—was, “That’s an excellent question. You might know that there was a poll yesterday, a Rasmussen poll, identified, that shows me three points ahead of Senator Clinton in a head-to-head matchup.” Classy guy.)

So…the verdict on Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Obviously Obama needs to distance himself from Wright’s statements for political reasons, and it would seem that Reverend Wright might begin to choose his own words more carefully. But I hope that when he wins the White House in November, Obama does not forget some of the most though-provoking questions his pastor raised in those controversial clips. By considering issues like America’s role in the world and bias in the US correctional system, Obama can evolve into the true leader this country—and world—so sorely needs.

Monsoon

Daylight Saving Time can kiss my dragging arse. And so can the yammering hair helmet on the evening news who keeps telling me to check my frigging smoke alarms when I change my clocks. (OK—I checked ‘em, they’re A-OK, Muffy. Now sod off!) And so can George W. Bush (for this and many other reasons), who signed an idiotic bill in 2005 extending DST from March to November rather than April to October, which was bad enough. And, for that matter, so can Ben Franklin, whose precious ramblings formed the basis for DST in the first place.

And while we’re at it, Hillary Clinton can pucker up and plant a big one on my hindquarters, too, for proving that she will leave no dirty campaign tactic unslung. Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser Samantha Power was fired for saying in an interview that Clinton is a “monster” who will “tell any lie” and “stop at nothing to win.” Well, I have no such high-profile ties to the Obama campaign, so I will say it now: Hillary Clinton is a monster who will tell any lie and stop at nothing to win. (A note about the picture below: I realize it is a horribly unflattering and almost daemonic picture of the candidate, but please understand that I have never made—nor would I ever make—any pretense of unbiased reporting here on the Monsoon weblog.)

Finally, Hillary Clinton operative and one-time Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro can go to hell (I don’t want her anywhere near my arse) for her unequivocally racist statement, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” This statement has not been repudiated, nor has Ferraro been either denounced or rejected, by the Clinton campaign.

I hope that on April 22^nd Pennsylvania Democrats reject her pandering, her divisive politics, and vote in large numbers for Barack Obama—who won both the Wyoming caucuses and the Mississippi primary with 61% of the vote and still has a lead of more than 100 delegates—as the next President of the United States.

But on to nicer, more palatable topics: spring is only a bit more than a week away, the two-week forecast is relatively dry, and the temperatures are (eventually) going to start edging up in accordance.

Today will be partly to mostly cloudy; becoming rather windy, but nothing like the high, damaging winds of last weekend. High 53, low 30.

Thursday will see some sunshine during the day, but clouds will dominate in the evening and overnight. High 48, low 36.

Friday will be overcast and quite mild with the chance of showers on and off throughout the day. High 56, low 38.

Saturday will be breezy and somewhat colder with rain and drizzle in the afternoon and evening. High 45, low 33.

Sunday is looking sunny to partly cloudy and pleasant with temperatures a bit below normal for late winter. High 42, low 28.

Monday 3/17 will be partly cloudy and nice. High 46, low 33.

Tuesday looks overcast with the slight chance of a sprinkle or two. High 52, low 36.

Wednesday will be partly cloudy and milder still. High 55, low 30.

Thursday and Friday look to be partly to mostly cloudy and colder with highs in the low 40s and lows in the mid 20s.

Next weekend will be more of the same, essentially: highs in the low to mid 40s, lows in the low to mid 20s.

Beyond: the cooler pattern breaks the following week, I think, when highs will be in the 50s and we will have left below-freezing temperatures behind us until December.

Monsoon